The free, unhampered exchange of ideas and scientific conclusions is necessary for the sound development of science, as it is in all spheres of cultural life. (Albert Einstein, 1952)
What really makes me laugh is the fact that the world's other launchers, including Ariane and ULA don't have a hope of replicating this for a very very long time. Their rocket engines are highly tuned machines, akin to top fuel dragsters. They are so powerful only a small number of them are used for each rocket, usually two. These engines could never be used to land like the Falcon 9 lands because they are incapable of throttling down to a low enough power output to land. The Falcon 9 uses nine engines. Because of this, the engines are individually less powerful than, say the RD180. When landing, the Falcon 9 uses only one engine at its lowest throttle setting. Even then, the engine is too powerful for hovering, and must land with a suicide burn instead.
ULA wants to drop its engines off the rockets, put out parachutes, and catch the engines with helicopters. While creative, this will mean a substantial amount of labour expended to re-install the used engines. There is no comparison to Elon Musk's stated goal of re-using a Falcon 9 after a 24 hour turnaround (likely 24 hours of work rather than actually launching the next day). I wouldn't want to be an employee of a legacy rocket company. Successful re-use of rockets by SpaceX will likely sound a death knell for these lumbering giants.
She wasn't centered very well, must have had a hard landing due to a swell or wave.
The landing was hard because the stage had an extremely difficult landing profile, the most difficult one so far. It entered the atmosphere at a ridiculously high speed. The speed at the beginning of the re-entry burn (just before the stage really bites into the atmosphere) was 8600km/hr and 6600km/hr at the end of the burn. Going at 6600km/hr through the upper atmosphere puts you right on the edge of burning up. The final landing burn had to use three engines as opposed to the usual one engine.
In comparison, for the CRS11 landing, the second stage was going at 4500km/hr at the beginning of the re-entry burn, and 3500km/hr at the end of the burn. The landing burn was using only one engine. Because of the slower speed, it was far more easy for the stage to make a nearly perfect landing.
IIRC, on a really dodgy landing like today's the stage actually aims for the side of the ship and not the centre, so that if the landing burn fails, the stage doesn't sink the drone ship. When the landing burn begins, the stage corrects its target towards the centre. If you watch the feed from the ship, you can see from the water disturbance that the stage is over the water on the far side. It must have done a crazy divert to land on the near side of the ship, which explains the fact that the legs used their crush core shock absorption. It was probably 50/50 that this stage would survive.
This sudden media push against Tesla couldn't be part of a United Autoworker's Propaganda campaign to unionize Tesla. The UAW has nothing to lose when Tesla becomes the first company to fully automate car assembly (including the interior and wiring). Other automaker's would never copy Tesla's new automated assembly lines, reducing the number of autoworkers by a large percentage. Unionized Tesla employees would never go on strike to prevent increases in automated assembly. Nothing to see here. Move along.
But your argument seems supposes that all (or most) non-Linux-users en masse would switch to Linux. You know that IN REALITY most people are NOT going to switch to Linux, and therefore Linux is NOT going to become the largest market portion any time soon.
Android is Linux based. As is Chrome OS. MacOS is Unix based.
You don't need the energy density of petrol, since electric motors are 90% efficient or more (that is why electric cars beat gas cars on raw acceleration). If you would have bothered to read my links, you would have seen that batteries are likely to last the life of the car. Troll.
literally isn't enough electricity production on earth to do this.
Solar energy is practically unlimited. If you add battery storage, then it becomes a truly practical energy source. And car batteries count as battery storage.
Install a charger in your garage. A dryer plug will provide enough energy to charge to full overnight. When you get up in the morning, your car is charged.
Barring that, imagine your work parking lot has a charger. Plug your car in when you get to work, and it is charged when you leave. No trips to the gas station necessary.
If you are traveling, you can use the Superchargers. 20 minutes to 50% and 40 minutes to 80%. That is enough time for a nice coffee/bathroom break on a long trip.
Who will pay for all the charging stations that will have to be built?
I already pay for generation when I pay $0.15 per kWh. Maybe the rates will go up a bit, but not that much. As for charging stations, the best solution is to install a dryer plug in your garage...cost will be fairly low for most people. The charging box for a Tesla is on the order of $500.
Who will pay for all the charging stations that will have to be built? What about replacing the EV's batteries every 1000 charges?
You did notice that I said the tested battery capacity was 92% after 1200 cycles? If your range was 200 miles per charge (which is lower than the actual number), then your 1000 charges would allow you to drive 200000 miles. How many of us actually keep a car that long? The battery will last as long as the car. It seems to me that you are writing to confuse casual readers, rather than understanding reality.
I remember very clearly reading a printed pamphlet in 1993 describing the invention of hypertext and the NCSA Mosaic web browser. There was no World Wide Web before that. There was just Gopher and other file browsing protocols. The idea of clicking a word in a document to get to another document blew my mind. Now I have fibre optic internet to my condo and I can buy most anything I want from my phone. The technological world can change VERY quickly.
Is your car moving 24 hours a day? If not, why not charge it where it is parked, be it at home in the garage, or at work in the parking lot. The lack of "5 minute charging" is completely irrelevant for people who charge their cars in their home garage. You get up in the morning and your car is charged. Just like your phone.
Charging overnight is when demand is normally low. One just needs to run the power plants longer. In the long run, solar energy with battery storage will have to pick up some of the slack. Cars charging during the day could be charged in part by solar generated electricity. The cars themselves could become a primary means of energy storage.
Most of the charging infrastructure has already been installed. It's called "the electrical grid". In your house, or even in your condo, all you need is a dryer plug (NEMA 14–50) to charge your car overnight. The charger is on the order of $500. When building new condos, the cost of installing plugs for some of the parking spots will not be prohibitive.
Well, the price of the Tesla Model 3 starts at $35000, which puts it in the price range of a BMW 3 series. That is the market they are initially going for. Over time, as more electric cars are manufactured, they will enter the used market. That will lead to lower prices for the rest of us. Also, if these cars actually become self-driving, and if regulations adapt to this, you may be able to send your car to a charger by itself. I'll believe that when I see it, but I've learned from experience not to discount Elon Musk's promises. Most of what he promises does actually come true, although the time scales are sometimes somewhat longer than initially stated.
Well, our gas prices are $1.31/L or so, which is somewhat expensive. However our electricity rates here lower than I mentioned. We pay about $0.086/kWh for the first tier, and $0.12/kWh for the second tier. This is a comparatively low rate, which is why I didn't quote it. However, it makes the relative cost savings for electricity even more pronounced than I mentioned. Admittedly not everyone's electrical savings will be so pronounced. However, I think that the costs per km for electricity will be cheaper than gasoline for everyone.
As for charging, if you have a house with a garage, it is a relatively minor task to get a dryer plug installed in the garage. With that, you can always have a charged car (and pre-heated) when you leave in the morning. Condominiums are a problem, but over time it will be a huge asset to have car charging installed in your parking garage. New condos will increasingly come with charging facilities. Governments could help with building codes, but I think the market will eventually pull us in the direction of more residential charging.
This is pretty speculative, but let's imagine that Tesla does achieve full self-driving. Let's assume that it is proven to be far safer than human drivers. Let's assume that regulations allow the cars to drive around without a human. If that becomes a reality, then what is to stop you from allowing your car to travel by itself to a charging station and charging itself? If that became possible, then you could realistically own an electric car, even if you didn't have charging facilities in your condo. I still think though that the best solution would be to have charging both where you live, and where you work. Luckily, building new charging facilities is not very expensive, as the electrical grid is already ubiquitous.
Why don't you point out exactly which of my numbers you think is wrong. Why don't you make a quantitative counter-argument. Otherwise I will assume that you are only pretending to have a counter-argument by trying to sound confident.
I see a lot of people confidently asserting opinions here without actually giving arguments refuting much of anything in the source article. So let's do some basic cost calculations. Let's say that your electric car has a capacity of 85kWh. That capacity with the very heavy Tesla Model S will give you an approximate EPA range of 426km (265 miles). If your electricity cost was $0.15/kWh, that means the cost to charge your car fully from empty would be $0.15/kWh x 85kWh = $12.75. Since you would seldom fully empty your car battery fully, you would typically charge less than this, and it is likely the EPA range does not bring the battery to full empty. Even so, I will assume the price of driving the range of 426km would still be $12.75 (charged from the charger in your garage...fully charged when you get up). This gives an electric cost of $12.75/426km = $0.0299/km.
Now let us consider a gasoline car. I'll assume an optimistic 10L/100km. That would mean that driving 426km would use 426/100 x 10 = 42.6L of gasoline. Gasoline costs $1.32/L where I live, but let's give it a cheaper price of $1.11/L. This would give a cost for driving 426km of 42.6L x $1.11/L = $47.29. The cost per km would be $47.29/426km = $0.111/km. In other words gasoline costs $0.111/$0.0299 = 3.7 x more or 370% more than electric per km! Electric cars are simpler. The battery technology is constantly improving. There are Tesla electric cars that have driven 200000 miles with no battery replacement (the car linked to here did have its battery replaced at 200000 miles, but it actually had most of its range, and it is likely Tesla wanted to examine the battery). Recent improvements in battery technology promise batteries that will last the life of the car. The announcement referred to here was in reference to an increased voltage battery chemistry that showed 92% capacity remaining after 1200 charge cycles. If your car has a range of 230 miles per charge cycle, than that would allow the car 230 miles x 1200 = 276000 miles and still have 92% battery capacity! For most of us, that would be longer than the lifetime of a fossil fuel car.
The cost of the cells is already dropping precipitously. The trend shown over the last few years is going to continue. There is no such trend in gasoline cars. Costs are for fossil fuel cars are going up. Electric cars will appear at lower and lower points in the market, first in the used market, and later in the new car market. In the end, electric cars will be the only economical choice. It is simple physics and economics. You can deny it all you want, but in the end, physics will win. Steam won over horse transportation because it was cheaper and better. Gasoline won over steam power because it was cheaper and better. Electric will win over gasoline because it is cheaper and better.
Hydrogen as an energy storage method is extremely inefficient. It is a distraction. Battery power with grid recharging is far more efficient and convenient.
With automobile pilots we tolerate faulty humans whose decision-making processes we absolutely don't understand such that car crashes don't even make the news, but every car AI pilot fender bender will "raise deep questions about the suitability of robots to drive cars."
If AI is better than humans, then fewer people will die in cars. Period.
It is all about past experience. If some humans drive well then we predict they will continue to drive well and give them an insurance discount. If they drive poorly, we charge them a lot for insurance, under the prediction that they will continue to have more crashes. If a particular AI has a better driving record than humans, then it would be logical to give it a lower insurance rate, based on past experience. We don't have to know the details of how the human brain works to predict these things, and we shouldn't need the exact details about how the AI works to predict its behaviour. Better is better.
Netflix Marvel: First season of Daredevil...great! Second season...still pretty good. Both were soooooo much better than the original movie. Luke Cage...unique style, excellent. Jessica Jones...not bad. Ironfist...didn't really like.
ABC Marvel: Agents of Shield...couldn't get into it, despite Joss Whedon. I don't know, there was something about the writing, the casting that did not work for me. The production values just felt cheap, like any other boring network TV series. Netflix Marvel series feel more like movies. The cinematography, the fight scenes on Netflix were often very well done. Their series have a sense of atmosphere that is lacking in the big network's shows.
I cut my cable TV a while ago, and I will never go back. Commercials seem like a slap in the face now. I hate them hate them hate them! As far as I'm concerned, the big three networks can just die.
Slashdot Mirror
A-effing-men.
The free, unhampered exchange of ideas and scientific conclusions is necessary for the sound development of science, as it is in all spheres of cultural life. (Albert Einstein, 1952)
What really makes me laugh is the fact that the world's other launchers, including Ariane and ULA don't have a hope of replicating this for a very very long time. Their rocket engines are highly tuned machines, akin to top fuel dragsters. They are so powerful only a small number of them are used for each rocket, usually two. These engines could never be used to land like the Falcon 9 lands because they are incapable of throttling down to a low enough power output to land. The Falcon 9 uses nine engines. Because of this, the engines are individually less powerful than, say the RD180. When landing, the Falcon 9 uses only one engine at its lowest throttle setting. Even then, the engine is too powerful for hovering, and must land with a suicide burn instead.
ULA wants to drop its engines off the rockets, put out parachutes, and catch the engines with helicopters. While creative, this will mean a substantial amount of labour expended to re-install the used engines. There is no comparison to Elon Musk's stated goal of re-using a Falcon 9 after a 24 hour turnaround (likely 24 hours of work rather than actually launching the next day). I wouldn't want to be an employee of a legacy rocket company. Successful re-use of rockets by SpaceX will likely sound a death knell for these lumbering giants.
She wasn't centered very well, must have had a hard landing due to a swell or wave.
The landing was hard because the stage had an extremely difficult landing profile, the most difficult one so far. It entered the atmosphere at a ridiculously high speed. The speed at the beginning of the re-entry burn (just before the stage really bites into the atmosphere) was 8600km/hr and 6600km/hr at the end of the burn. Going at 6600km/hr through the upper atmosphere puts you right on the edge of burning up. The final landing burn had to use three engines as opposed to the usual one engine.
In comparison, for the CRS11 landing, the second stage was going at 4500km/hr at the beginning of the re-entry burn, and 3500km/hr at the end of the burn. The landing burn was using only one engine. Because of the slower speed, it was far more easy for the stage to make a nearly perfect landing.
IIRC, on a really dodgy landing like today's the stage actually aims for the side of the ship and not the centre, so that if the landing burn fails, the stage doesn't sink the drone ship. When the landing burn begins, the stage corrects its target towards the centre. If you watch the feed from the ship, you can see from the water disturbance that the stage is over the water on the far side. It must have done a crazy divert to land on the near side of the ship, which explains the fact that the legs used their crush core shock absorption. It was probably 50/50 that this stage would survive.
This sudden media push against Tesla couldn't be part of a United Autoworker's Propaganda campaign to unionize Tesla. The UAW has nothing to lose when Tesla becomes the first company to fully automate car assembly (including the interior and wiring). Other automaker's would never copy Tesla's new automated assembly lines, reducing the number of autoworkers by a large percentage. Unionized Tesla employees would never go on strike to prevent increases in automated assembly. Nothing to see here. Move along.
But your argument seems supposes that all (or most) non-Linux-users en masse would switch to Linux. You know that IN REALITY most people are NOT going to switch to Linux, and therefore Linux is NOT going to become the largest market portion any time soon.
Android is Linux based. As is Chrome OS. MacOS is Unix based.
You don't need the energy density of petrol, since electric motors are 90% efficient or more (that is why electric cars beat gas cars on raw acceleration). If you would have bothered to read my links, you would have seen that batteries are likely to last the life of the car. Troll.
literally isn't enough electricity production on earth to do this.
Solar energy is practically unlimited. If you add battery storage, then it becomes a truly practical energy source. And car batteries count as battery storage.
Install a charger in your garage. A dryer plug will provide enough energy to charge to full overnight. When you get up in the morning, your car is charged.
Barring that, imagine your work parking lot has a charger. Plug your car in when you get to work, and it is charged when you leave. No trips to the gas station necessary.
If you are traveling, you can use the Superchargers. 20 minutes to 50% and 40 minutes to 80%. That is enough time for a nice coffee/bathroom break on a long trip.
Hydrocarbons are a dense way to store energy that is quickly and easily transferred with negligible losses.
LOL Except for the 80% loss in energy when burning the fuel!!!
Who will pay for all the charging stations that will have to be built?
I already pay for generation when I pay $0.15 per kWh. Maybe the rates will go up a bit, but not that much. As for charging stations, the best solution is to install a dryer plug in your garage...cost will be fairly low for most people. The charging box for a Tesla is on the order of $500.
Who will pay for all the charging stations that will have to be built? What about replacing the EV's batteries every 1000 charges?
You did notice that I said the tested battery capacity was 92% after 1200 cycles? If your range was 200 miles per charge (which is lower than the actual number), then your 1000 charges would allow you to drive 200000 miles. How many of us actually keep a car that long? The battery will last as long as the car. It seems to me that you are writing to confuse casual readers, rather than understanding reality.
Very few things change that quickly.
I remember very clearly reading a printed pamphlet in 1993 describing the invention of hypertext and the NCSA Mosaic web browser. There was no World Wide Web before that. There was just Gopher and other file browsing protocols. The idea of clicking a word in a document to get to another document blew my mind. Now I have fibre optic internet to my condo and I can buy most anything I want from my phone. The technological world can change VERY quickly.
Is your car moving 24 hours a day? If not, why not charge it where it is parked, be it at home in the garage, or at work in the parking lot. The lack of "5 minute charging" is completely irrelevant for people who charge their cars in their home garage. You get up in the morning and your car is charged. Just like your phone.
Charging overnight is when demand is normally low. One just needs to run the power plants longer. In the long run, solar energy with battery storage will have to pick up some of the slack. Cars charging during the day could be charged in part by solar generated electricity. The cars themselves could become a primary means of energy storage.
The new Tesla Model 3 will start at $35000. It is initially aimed at buyers of BMW 3-Series cars.
Most of the charging infrastructure has already been installed. It's called "the electrical grid". In your house, or even in your condo, all you need is a dryer plug (NEMA 14–50) to charge your car overnight. The charger is on the order of $500. When building new condos, the cost of installing plugs for some of the parking spots will not be prohibitive.
Well, the price of the Tesla Model 3 starts at $35000, which puts it in the price range of a BMW 3 series. That is the market they are initially going for. Over time, as more electric cars are manufactured, they will enter the used market. That will lead to lower prices for the rest of us. Also, if these cars actually become self-driving, and if regulations adapt to this, you may be able to send your car to a charger by itself. I'll believe that when I see it, but I've learned from experience not to discount Elon Musk's promises. Most of what he promises does actually come true, although the time scales are sometimes somewhat longer than initially stated.
Gas cars can also be tracked. The trend is for all cars to be increasingly computerized.
Well, our gas prices are $1.31/L or so, which is somewhat expensive. However our electricity rates here lower than I mentioned. We pay about $0.086/kWh for the first tier, and $0.12/kWh for the second tier. This is a comparatively low rate, which is why I didn't quote it. However, it makes the relative cost savings for electricity even more pronounced than I mentioned. Admittedly not everyone's electrical savings will be so pronounced. However, I think that the costs per km for electricity will be cheaper than gasoline for everyone.
As for charging, if you have a house with a garage, it is a relatively minor task to get a dryer plug installed in the garage. With that, you can always have a charged car (and pre-heated) when you leave in the morning. Condominiums are a problem, but over time it will be a huge asset to have car charging installed in your parking garage. New condos will increasingly come with charging facilities. Governments could help with building codes, but I think the market will eventually pull us in the direction of more residential charging.
This is pretty speculative, but let's imagine that Tesla does achieve full self-driving. Let's assume that it is proven to be far safer than human drivers. Let's assume that regulations allow the cars to drive around without a human. If that becomes a reality, then what is to stop you from allowing your car to travel by itself to a charging station and charging itself? If that became possible, then you could realistically own an electric car, even if you didn't have charging facilities in your condo. I still think though that the best solution would be to have charging both where you live, and where you work. Luckily, building new charging facilities is not very expensive, as the electrical grid is already ubiquitous.
Why don't you point out exactly which of my numbers you think is wrong. Why don't you make a quantitative counter-argument. Otherwise I will assume that you are only pretending to have a counter-argument by trying to sound confident.
I see a lot of people confidently asserting opinions here without actually giving arguments refuting much of anything in the source article. So let's do some basic cost calculations. Let's say that your electric car has a capacity of 85kWh. That capacity with the very heavy Tesla Model S will give you an approximate EPA range of 426km (265 miles). If your electricity cost was $0.15/kWh, that means the cost to charge your car fully from empty would be $0.15/kWh x 85kWh = $12.75. Since you would seldom fully empty your car battery fully, you would typically charge less than this, and it is likely the EPA range does not bring the battery to full empty. Even so, I will assume the price of driving the range of 426km would still be $12.75 (charged from the charger in your garage...fully charged when you get up). This gives an electric cost of $12.75/426km = $0.0299/km.
Now let us consider a gasoline car. I'll assume an optimistic 10L/100km. That would mean that driving 426km would use 426/100 x 10 = 42.6L of gasoline. Gasoline costs $1.32/L where I live, but let's give it a cheaper price of $1.11/L. This would give a cost for driving 426km of 42.6L x $1.11/L = $47.29. The cost per km would be $47.29/426km = $0.111/km. In other words gasoline costs $0.111/$0.0299 = 3.7 x more or 370% more than electric per km! Electric cars are simpler. The battery technology is constantly improving. There are Tesla electric cars that have driven 200000 miles with no battery replacement (the car linked to here did have its battery replaced at 200000 miles, but it actually had most of its range, and it is likely Tesla wanted to examine the battery). Recent improvements in battery technology promise batteries that will last the life of the car. The announcement referred to here was in reference to an increased voltage battery chemistry that showed 92% capacity remaining after 1200 charge cycles. If your car has a range of 230 miles per charge cycle, than that would allow the car 230 miles x 1200 = 276000 miles and still have 92% battery capacity! For most of us, that would be longer than the lifetime of a fossil fuel car.
The cost of the cells is already dropping precipitously. The trend shown over the last few years is going to continue. There is no such trend in gasoline cars. Costs are for fossil fuel cars are going up. Electric cars will appear at lower and lower points in the market, first in the used market, and later in the new car market. In the end, electric cars will be the only economical choice. It is simple physics and economics. You can deny it all you want, but in the end, physics will win. Steam won over horse transportation because it was cheaper and better. Gasoline won over steam power because it was cheaper and better. Electric will win over gasoline because it is cheaper and better.
Thank you for your detailed and loquacious rebuttal. I bow before your eloquence.
Hydrogen as an energy storage method is extremely inefficient. It is a distraction. Battery power with grid recharging is far more efficient and convenient.
With automobile pilots we tolerate faulty humans whose decision-making processes we absolutely don't understand such that car crashes don't even make the news, but every car AI pilot fender bender will "raise deep questions about the suitability of robots to drive cars."
If AI is better than humans, then fewer people will die in cars. Period.
It is all about past experience. If some humans drive well then we predict they will continue to drive well and give them an insurance discount. If they drive poorly, we charge them a lot for insurance, under the prediction that they will continue to have more crashes. If a particular AI has a better driving record than humans, then it would be logical to give it a lower insurance rate, based on past experience. We don't have to know the details of how the human brain works to predict these things, and we shouldn't need the exact details about how the AI works to predict its behaviour. Better is better.
Netflix Marvel: First season of Daredevil...great! Second season...still pretty good. Both were soooooo much better than the original movie. Luke Cage...unique style, excellent. Jessica Jones...not bad. Ironfist...didn't really like.
ABC Marvel: Agents of Shield...couldn't get into it, despite Joss Whedon. I don't know, there was something about the writing, the casting that did not work for me. The production values just felt cheap, like any other boring network TV series. Netflix Marvel series feel more like movies. The cinematography, the fight scenes on Netflix were often very well done. Their series have a sense of atmosphere that is lacking in the big network's shows.
I cut my cable TV a while ago, and I will never go back. Commercials seem like a slap in the face now. I hate them hate them hate them! As far as I'm concerned, the big three networks can just die.