Posts by GraemeMRoss 7 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Dec 2013
The company is also consistently in the top ten places to work (UK and other countries)
I have worked for them (in Scotland) for almost ten years and I have to say I have never worked for an employer as good as them.
They understand the importance of good staff and treating them well, they understand the software industry. It is the only place I have ever worked where there is a proper "No blame - lets just get this fixed" culture.
Off course the track record for NHS IT projects fills me with complete confidence that this app (and the server infrastructure) will be delivered in a very timely (and within budget) timescale.
Going by the past track record it should be available by September (2030) with only a small 500 million cost overrun...
One other thing... everyone has been very careful to say "the NHS as developing...." do they really mean that or should they be saying "the Government is developing... (and will be controlling)".
Two very different things.
The problem about government funding is that Reaction Engines have explicitly said they are very reluctant to accept it.
The story is that during the HOTOL debacle the government came in and said they would fund it if they (British Aerospace and the designers) signed a confidentiality clause. This was duly done and the first tranche of money arrived, for feasibility studies etc. These studies were successful (yes there were problems but nothing insurmountable), however the government turned around and said, sorry we don't want to fund it any further.
British Aerospace said ok can we go out to the market and get funding, to which the government said "No you have signed a confidentiality clause you cannot release any details of what has been developed and you cannot develop it further"
This has meant that Reaction Engines had to go back to the drawing board and completely design the SABRE engines from the ground up, so as not to violate the governments rulings.
You can understand why they don't want to get involved with the dead hand of government again
VW say that the range is 90 odd miles.
To my way of thinking that means, driving on a perfectly flat road, at 60 mph it will take an hour and a half to exhaust the battery. The motor is supposed to be 60kw which means the battery must hold 90kwh - sounds reasonable!
However they say that charging the battery with a 2.3kw charger will take 9 hours or 6 hours with a 3.8kw charger - which equates to roughly 20kwh battery capacity ie approx 20% of the power that is needed to do the full range!
To charge the battery fully should take closer to 50hours i.e. two days!!!
So I can do my commute (about 70 miles) on monday and then I have wait until thursday before the battery is charged enough to go back to work again - my boss is going to love that!!
In fact if it takes 5 times longer tpo fully charge the battery then the cost of the electricity if over a a tenner - remind me how electric cars are cheaper to run?
Am I missing something?
Too late .... it is unpatentable because you mentioned it in a public forum without first getting "non-disclosure" waivers from everyone who reads it.
However this won't stop a large company patenting it and then defending the patent viigorusly. It only seems to be the little guys who can't get patents!
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