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Those Magnificent Googlers and Their Flying Machines
theodp writes "To paraphrase Sean Parker: "Flying your fleet of planes using NASA-discounted fuel isn't cool, you know what's cool? Flying your fleet of planes using zero-cost fuel." Having piqued CEO Larry Page's interest with its solar and battery-powered aircraft, Solar Impulse is partnering with Google to promote its goal of circumnavigating the globe in 2015, a Green Movement take on Wiley Post's 1933 achievement."
Didn't I just read that circumnavigation was no longer considered a moral or medical necessity?
Solar Impulse is doing all the work.
Google is just using this for publicity for their products.Yahoo! or Facebook could just as easily been the "partner".
So let's concentrate on the folks who are doing the real innovation here, shall we? Instead of getting sucked into the PR horseshit like the little lemmings we are.
The kids of Slashdot who were once the innovators have become the lazy old leeches, so it's natural for them to admire the biggest online leech of all.
Of course, no "one man feat" is impressive when you have billions of dollars and dozens of top quality engineers to back up your effort. Pioneers are impressive precisely because they have none of that, and try as they might, these spoilt kids aren't going to enter the history books for anything more than "largest advertising platform on the planet, and a good variant of Apple's iPhone".
It really pisses me off that these billionaires like to get these sweet deals at our expense and have the nerve to blame us when we unemployment is high.
The billionaires are getting richer and in the meantime, our wages are stagnant at best or are going down - and it doesn't matter how hard you work or what your educational background is.
Those people rigged the game in their favor and then make it sound like it's our fault. And then you have people who go out and protest to allow the game to be further rigged in the billionaires' favor - Tea Party.
The numbers ARE showing that the billionaires are getting the bulk of the pie and it's all because they've rigged the system. I went and did the right thing and went to school - a state school - got a graduate degree because more education is always better, right?! and I'm worse off. And yet assholes like those people get cheap Jet A subsidized by you and me.
Remember that when you hear Rush, Hannity, or some other Fox News/Talk Radio asshole condemn the progressives for wanting wealth redistribution and for acting on class warfare.
Yeah, there's wealth redistribution all right - from the poor slobs like us to the billionaires - and it's NOT because they work harder or are smarter. They CHEAT!
Nobody gives a crap about some unwieldy gossamer solar-powered plane that's built solely as a publicity stunt. If Google really wants to change the world, they need to focus their resources, brains and dollars, on making the über battery.
Can we NOW put the "do no evil" bullshit to bed since TFA points out the fat cat CEOs of Google were flying on fuel that the American taxpayer was footing the bill for? If that would have been Cook or Ballmer pulling that shit the pitchforks would already be out and screams for a fraud investigation would be heard across the net, so fair is fair and I think an investigation is called for to see what other bills they may be sticking the American people. Of course since the DoJ was defanged ages ago its doubtful anybody will say boo to Google but at least it would be brought to the attention of the public.
As for solar planes? The problem is that even the best solar cells simply can't generate enough power to make it viable, the cells just haven't reached the level of efficiency required to get the job done. There is a reason why nobody has been able to truly replace internal combustion engines and that is the amount of energy per pound is unmatched by anything we've come up with so far,IIRC the closest we have come up with is hydrogen but it has 10 times less energy per pound than gas. Until we can come up with much more efficient solar cells and electric motors it'll always be a novelty.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.