Rotary Engine Quotes

made up his mind that human society is one of these cycles-within-cycles things* and now he’s trying to figure out whether it is like Turing’s bicycle (works fine for a while, then suddenly the chain falls off; hence the occasional world war) or like an Enigma machine (grinds away incomprehensibly for a long time, then suddenly the wheels line up like a slot machine and everything is made plain in some sort of global epiphany or, if you prefer, apocalypse) or just like a rotary airplane engine (runs and runs and runs; nothing special happens; it just makes a lot of noise).

The military implications are obvious, if difficult to act upon in today’s fiscal environment. There’s a clear and continuing need for Marines, for amphibious units and naval supply ships, for platforms that allow operations in littoral and riverine environments, and for capabilities that enable expeditionary logistics in urbanized coastal environments. Rotary-wing or tilt-rotor aircraft, and precise and discriminating weapons systems, will also be needed. There’s also a clear need to structure ground forces so that they can rapidly aggregate or disaggregate forces and fires, enabling them to operate in a distributed, small-unit mode while still being able to concentrate quickly to mass their effect against a major target. Combat engineers, construction engineers, civil affairs units, intelligence systems that can make sense of the clutter of urban areas, pre-conflict sensing systems such as geospatial tools that allow early warning of conflict and instability, and constabulary and coast guard capabilities are also likely to be important. The ability to operate for a long period in a city without drawing heavily on that city’s water, fuel, electricity, or food supply will be important as well, with very significant implications for expeditionary logistics. I go into detail on all these issues, and other military aspects of the problem, in the Appendix.

The second, much larger group of “motors” includes all organic or mechanical arrangements that move bodies in a more complex fashion than the “motors” of the first category, which simply push or pull loads linearly. Although this second category ranges across ten orders of magnitude—from flying insects and bats, through birds and running and swimming mammals, to electric motors and piston and jet engines—the maximum force output of all of these motors scales at an almost perfectly isometric rate (M1.0), with exponents of 1.08 for electric rotary motors and bats, 0.96 for flying birds and aircraft turbines, and 0.95 for running animals!

From the steam engine to the assembly line, from the double-rotary printing press to the communications satellite, the capital constraints on action were such that simply wanting to do something was rarely a sufficient condition to enable one to do it.

Waterhouse is thinking about cycles within cycles. He’s already made up his mind that human society is one of these cycles-within-cycles things1 and now he’s trying to figure out whether it is like Türing’s bicycle (works fine for a while, then suddenly the chain falls off; hence the occasional world war) or like an Enigma machine (grinds away incomprehensibly for a long time, then suddenly the wheels line up like a slot machine and everything is made plain in some sort of global epiphany or, if you prefer, apocalypse) or just like a rotary airplane engine (runs and runs and runs; nothing special happens; it just makes a lot of noise).