The failure rate of space launches is fairly horrible. We'd be dropping dirty bombs on ourselves pretty frequently.
Not to mention their being a super-attractive hacking target.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 160 North State Road #203 Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
That would be either 1965 or 1977:
The 1965 version of the birthrate increase was debunked: However, I couldn't find anything on 1977 either pro or con.
I missed most of that. The quake allegedly trashed the road to my house. Access was jealously guarded by volunteers lest the residents injure themselves attempting to drive on the dangerous road. After 4 days of getting told that the road was impassible, I ran the roadblock only to find no obstructions and one small landslide that was easily bypassed. The fridge was a botanical nightmare and the ice cream was liquid slime.
Yep. The bulk of their population will older. Whether the younger generation is able to support their parents and grandparents is questionable. We have a similar problem with the post WWII baby boom, but nothing as dramatic as in China. Perhaps what they needed was a one parent policy? Ummm... never mind, that won't work.
Well, you have a choice. You can have a managed society and economy, which invariably results in a bureaucratic elite (or tyranny of the masses). Or, you can have an unmanaged society, which tends to concentrate wealth and power among a financial elite. The best we've done is oscillate between these two extremes.
Social engineers do have one major advantage. They're usually dead by the time their policies fall apart.
Sorta. What I've seen is replacing a failed unit with a repaired unit. Usually, the repaired unit doesn't last very long as there are usually some hidden defects. Western Dismal has turned this into an art form. If you file a warranty claim for a sick or dead hard disk drive, you do NOT receive a new drive. What you get is a rebuilt drive, apparently assembled from the pieces of other failed drives. WDC doesn't even extend the warranty to the remaining warranty period on the original drive. If a 5 year warranty drive fails after 1 year, the replacement drive usually comes with a 1 year warranty. Sometimes it's a little more than 1 year, but most often it's less than 1 year because it's been sitting on the shelf waiting for a suitable warranty claim. In any case, the remaining 3 years of the 5 year warranty are lost.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
What is the bottleneck that limits the power to tens of houses?
None of this segmentation matters. On a few nights of the winter (or days of the summer) there will be peak loads that can not be throttled without reducing the function of the HVAC units. They can't be throttled because they need to run 100% through the peak need time.
If you are time slicing houses at a low level, how would you throttle power at the next higher level? The only thing you can to is to cut off the heavy load equipment and that is already being done even if those units will no longer keep homes warm.
Yeah, that is why they design power grids to meet the peak loads required.
Is that your mantra? The utility control over HVAC is purely optional now and brownouts are not remotely frequent and often have point causes. Is there a reason why we can't continue to provide enough power in the US? My understanding these programs are an effort to reduce peak loads so they can save money on power generation, not to prevent brownouts.
-- Rick C
Better yet, when equipment is installed use the stuff that optimizes insulation so the power is less *all* the time. I have a burger place as a neighbor and the owner was saying they lost power for a few hours and had to chuck all their freezer goods. The freezers are designed to optimize space at the cost of higher electric bills. Maybe this was a choice that was made when they were installed, but seems like they would have trouble with a power cut at peak times, especially considering that is their busy time as well. I guess that is just one type of utility customer though.
-- Rick C
Ok, I'll play the devils attorney.
Reliability will hopefully improve with practice: 2015 2016 so far In 2015, 86 launches and 5 failures. Note that failures include satellite functional failures, such as forgetting to remove the lens cap. If you scroll down to "Launch Vehicle by Success Rate" there are several rockets with perfect records.
The Cassini probe successfully toured Saturn carrying 72.3 lbs of Plutonium: NASA's wildly optimistic risk estimates are not very reassuring. Maybe NASA was lucky, or perhaps they've figured out how it's done.
Yep. I wouldn't mind seeing some terrorist hackers launched into orbit. However, that's politically unacceptable. I suppose a terrorist could somehow reprogram the flight profile of a nuclear waste carrying rocket to land on the new One World Trade Center. That's unlikely but possible. The problem is that if you subscribe to the terrorist menace theory, doing literally anything important or dangerous can be considered an attractive nuisance for terrorists. I'm not about to stop progress simply because a few lunatic suicide bombers find post mortem fame an attractive proposition. There should be an acceptable statistical risk that we would be willing to accept. A perfect launch every time, and zero screwup are not attainable. If we refuse to accept some risk, then we can continue burning fossil fuel until we run out and have no other options left besides nuclear.
Incidentally, I suggested using a space elevator, not a rocket. The space elevator is a major engineering challenge, but might be worth the cost (and risk).
The offense rests.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Not sure what you are saying. If the solar array needed is this large (the above calculation provides a full charge if the car is plugged in
*all day*) you need 1400 sq feet to charge *ONE CAR*. That's bigger than my house! I guess you are saying the solar panels can be elsewhere... but that doesn't make them smaller.You drive to work at Gaggle Inc who has built solar to charge everyone's cars while at work. They have a parking lot for 200 cars which would be around 1.3 acres. The solar farm will take up 6.5 acres.
In contrast the office space only requires 0.7 acres.
What does "daily" usage have to do with it? I can't average my distance traveled. I care about my usage pattern. I commute to the office once every two weeks with each leg being 120 miles. What do I care that the car sits on most of the off days?
If you let the power company use your battery as a load leveling device it does. Personally, I think that would be a bit like letting the power company use the motor in your gas car to generate electricity at peak times. The miles a car will go seems impressive at some 200 kmiles. But at an average of 45 mph that's around 4500 hours. Add just three hours a day of powering the grid and that's an extra 1100 hours per year or in other words, your engine would reach the equivalent of 200 kmiles in 4 years or less. I think the same thing would happen to the electric car's battery which would seem to be the Achilles's heel of the plan.
-- Rick C
I don't see the connection between my comments and your example of moral equivalence (i.e. traffic deaths and guns killing people). I also fail to see how tolerating the deaths of 3500 birds so that Ivanpah can continue to operate is somehow morally equivalent to allowing the death of billions of birds so that cats can continue doing what cats do naturally.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
The only one I know was in the DoD community. The difference between mechanical and civil engineers is that mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets. ;)
-- Rick C
It will be a long time before we need to reuse spend nuclear fuel. Before we start building reactors to burn the "spent" fuel from our present reactors, we will build thorium reactors. There is literally "tons" more thorium than uranium in the earth's crust. That fuel would be *much* safer to use and create *much* less waste. In fact, the spent fuel we are stock piling now could be burned in a thorium reactor.
It will take a while for the US and Europe to get with the program, but I understand the Chinese are working on them now. They got all the info we could give them from the tests we did in the 50s. We don't pursue it because the nuclear industry is about refueling reactors rather than building reactors. With thorium their business would dry up. They won't support any research into thorium reactors and the US government doesn't have anyone pushing for it. We'll be able to buy them from the Chinese in a few more years though.
-- Rick C
My dear god! I've never heard such an ill-informed statement from a supposedly educated person. The Pacific plate moves 3-4 inches per year or 300 feet in a thousand years! In most places it does this by jumping a few meters at a time which results in... yes, earthquakes! So let's dump our nuclear waste in a location that will take many thousands of years to move it underground significantly and earthquakes will threaten to split open the containers. Yup, I don't know why John isn't in charge of all our nuclear waste...
-- Rick C
I'm not sure what you are shooting into space, anything other than science stuff seems silly. Easier to truck/ship the waste to somewhere on Earth.
If you are sending off spent Uranium fuel rods, then there is still lots of nuclear energy left. Maybe we'll want that (energy) in a few generations?
George H.
On Tuesday, May 24, 2016 at 5:37:46 PM UTC-7, rickman wrote: ...
...
It sounds like you have two weeks to fully recharge the car then - you don't need to fully charge it in one day. Maybe provide enough capacity to give 30-40 miles of added range. It will be fully charged by the time you need to do a long trip again.
kevin
I think we are talking two different things. You seem to be confusing my personal driving habits with the general public. I simply mentioned that one of my requirements was to go over 120 miles on a charge. That has nothing to do with how cars are used by other people.
If I buy a Tesla, which may happen, but the Model 3 won't be available until nearly 2018, I would install a fast charger in one home which has virtually no other charging facility for some 25 or more miles. I can't see trying to save a few bucks by giving up the convenience of being able to go when you want to go. It would also be a safety issue if I was alone. I would need the car to be ready to go if something happened, like the nuke plant sirens sound! Those things are very eerie when they go off... and I'm a mile away from the house in a kayak!
-- Rick C
ce
e edon't need to fully charge it in one day. Maybe provide enough capacity to give 30-40 miles of added range. It will be fully charged by the time you need to do a long trip again.
...
I was going from your statements as to your needs not anybody else's - you said you needed to do a 120 mile trip every two weeks. You didn't mention w hat your needs were on the other days. If that is the only requirement then you don't need to recharge in one day.
If you have a smaller requirement on the other days, eg 25 miles, that coul d be met with a smaller solar array to provide 50-60 miles of charge per da y.
The 120 mile trip can only be done by the Model S at present with the Model 3 and the Chevy Bolt in the next year or two. The Rav 4 EV and the Kia Sou l EV are close. The upcoming BMW i3 with 33kWH battery and the eGolf with the recently announced larger battery are also right on the edge of your ne eds.
kevin
Batteries degrade, and sometimes you want headlights and a/c or heat, and batteries don't work well when they are cold. So cutting it close might be tricky.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
Like I said, we are talking about two different things.
-- Rick C
Fact check: Headlights, the low efficiency halogen types use around 50 watts each, so 100 watts. It would use 0.2 kWHr in the 2 Hrs it takes the rest of the car to use 19 kWHr, or around 1% of the battery life. Not really a range factor. A/C uses about 3 kW so that would be more of a factor reducing range by around 30%. With a 210 mile range that gets me far more than the 120 miles I'd like.
-- Rick C
For thin but good insulation they could fit vacuum insulated panels to their cold room or freezer - those will give R40 insulation in 1 inch /
25mm thickness iirc. You can buy the panels for building the boxes on fishing boats where they keep the fish cold. Just make sure you order the right size as you can't cut them down later as "the vacuum will leak out"!Also (not space-saving in this case) they could keep some tubs of frozen phase change material (brine?) that will melt and absorb heat at e.g.
-18 degrees C. That should prolong the time that a power cut can be tolerated without the temperature rising much.
Chris
I don't think you understand. They skimped on the insulation to save space. I doubt they are going to sacrifice freezer space or floor space to deal with the once per decade multi-hour power failure. Heck the four or five out failure we had a few years ago might be a once per lifetime thing. The only other time I experienced that was at a remote house where a hurricane knocked down the utility poles and power was out for a week.
-- Rick C
Think about the situation from the network point of view.
Assuming multiple EV owners have grid connected solar panels on their houses, they only need to produce the _average_ consumption of all those cars, thus a much smaller panel is required. One day you may consume more than you produce that day, on other days, you may produce more than you consume and other cars can benefit from it.
I have never suggested such stupid idea. First of all, it consumes the limited number of charge/discharge cycles. Secondly there are extra conversion losses.
Charging car batteries should be done in the morning, if done with solar power and after the afternoon/evening peak load, if generated by other means. This essentially reduces battery charging during peak hours. Of course, this requires that charging sockets are available at parking lots.
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