This seems like a great win for users everywhere in general and OSS in specific. The article is light on details - who exactly will have access to these open specs? How will licensing be applied? Is it patented - apparently you can patent everything these days.
I'll wait to see ALOT more details before becoming giddy with excitement...
I am not sure that moving businesses out from the city center to the 'bedroom communities' makes any sense... that's exactly what has caused the transportation nightmare in Los Angeles. You assume that everyone who works in these 'bedroom businesses' is going to live close to them?
People don't frequently move to be closer to work, and the average person changes jobs often enough that trying to do so would be ridiculous (particulary with housing costs - sell that house which has appreciated 300%, buy another one and pay out your arse in property tax!).
The opposite of what you say is true - business SHOULD be MORE centralized. This is the only way that mass transit can be effective - and exactly why it's so difficult in Los Angeles to implement any mass transit that makes a difference: too many people need to go to too many places of business scattered everywhere. Rather than a hub-and-spoke arrangement (such as many European cities) we have a 'matrix' arrangement in Los Angeles and lots of other US cities.
Your assumption considers the car to be our major and only transport conduit for now and the future, and I think that thought does not have a long-term shelflife. The problem is that people here want to have the benefits of open space, traditionally the perk of the rural resident, but the high-paying city job and the trappings of a major metropolis. These two are fundamentally incompatable as you scale up population.
There are ALOT of social problems which will come out of extreme human longevity. It seems to me that a good read of Kim Stanely Robinson http://www.kimstanleyrobinson.net/ would be in order long before something like this has human applications.
Not exactly - it's actually a case of the performance gain by the improved fuel consumption initiated by the hydrogen injection offsetting the current used by the electrolysis system. From the company's website documentation, this draws about 35A - that is far more than any 'excess generated power' available from a freewheeling alternator.
Your headlights draw about that kind of current, maybe a bit less.
The more current draw, the harder the alternator is to turn.
No, it's nothing like a hybrid. RTFA:) Hydrogen combustion has a flame propagation rate several times that of hydrocarbon fuel. This 'kickstarts' the combustion process and causes more hydrocarbons to be burned, rather than spewed out the tailpipe. More power, improved mileage, reduced emissions. These have been installed for a little while now, and there are distributors all across the USA and Canada.
Peltiers are notoriously inefficient. If it were otherwise, we'd probably see them employed in this capacity in large-scale power production where heat is generated rather than turning a turbine.
Speaking of which, you could create a steam turbine with water heated from the exhaust, which could also generate electricity. There you take double-hits though - heat -> mechanical -> electrical. I'm guessing it's still more efficient than Peltiers.
One other note: this hydrogen-oxygen injection system is supposed to cool the exhaust gasses in the process - one comment I read was that the exhaust pipe could be "held in your hand". That might not work well if you are depending on heat at the exhaust to create electricity....
Ummm, no. The hydrogen-oxygen gas mix is produced "on the fly" - there is never much onboard to cause an explosion, as it's fed right into the induction system, and is not produced when the vehicle is not running.
From the company's website, the device is injecting a hydrogen-oxygen gas MIX. This is highly EXPLOSIVE, and is not well-suited to long-term storage. H2 from a bottle would provide many of the same benefits to combustion, but then you have to produce it, add a storage facility, refueling facility, etc etc.
Bear in mind that the system is injecting not just hydrogen, but hydrogen-oxygen gas. The first is relatively safe; the latter is HIGHLY EXPLOSIVE.
That is the reason it's not stored in the vehicle is because it's so very explosive. Others have mentioned that the hydrogen is causing more of the hydrocarbon fuel to burn, thus the net increase in efficiency.
This might be a good match for a car with regenerative braking - the power created from the braking action could power electrolysis. Of course, then you'd need some type of hydrogen storage, which this system doesn't have... but, the point in general is that using braking to generate power is not only useful in an electric/hybrid car...
According to the company's website http://www.chechfi.com/ it can be used on ALL internal combustion engines:
Q: Will this product work on Gas, Diesel, Propane or Natural Gas?
A: Yes. It will work on any internal combustion engine using hydrocarbon fuels.
One question: how long until we can get downsized (and hopefully down-priced) units for personal automobiles and trucks, be they gas, diesel, or other dead dino hydrocarbon fuels? Will Detroit need to use this type of device to meet emission standards in the future?
I'm not sure that the trend is toward unity and consolidation. You can only nebulously call the EU unity - a loose economic federation, the constitution of which does not pass ratification in key member states and may not pass in the for some time in the future. Is that your only evidence of the trend towards unity?
It seems to me that more and more people are trying to erect new walls throughout the world: Catalonia, Basque separatists in Spain; Corsica and Brittany in France (also the independence movement of French Polynesia); the Palestinians; witness the breakup of Yugoslavia; Czech Republic and Slovakia; Kurds in Turkey/Iraq (and, will Iraq hold together without the point of a rifle barrel?); East Timor in Indonesia; Quebec in Canada...there are more, these are just those which come to mind quickly. It seems to me that alot of peoples want their own state to embrace their own cultural values and are clearly not interested in integrating and assimilating.
Where are these sweeping consolidation movements which don't fall under the category of 'conquer' and 'vanquish' in recent history? Where do we see the will of the people yearning for a unity instead of partition?
If you force people together long enough they may intermingle and over generations forget about their notions of independent states, but a simple survey of many parts of the world would quickly suggest the will of the people in *many* places is to erect new borders, not tear down existing ones.
Sadly, I think we have a long way to go as a world to reach a point where cultural identity is less abrasive than it is inclusive.
...that the Russians, with their Soyuz design, are moving to a winged vehicle at the same time the US is moving to a capsule (a la Soyuz) design, with everyone here (and elswhere) championing how much better the Russian approach has been?
Bear in mind the the Kliper is no Shuttle - it's much better thought-out. I think the greater flexibility of the reentry profile is invaluable, and am generally excited to see this bird fly.
My undergrad professor for feedback and control systems used to complain about the idiocy of the ISS design (before it was built), claiming that this configuration didn't take into consideration free molecular flow (the fact that there are still some atmospheric particles at that orbital altitude which cause drag) and solar pressure when creating the design. The result would be a very maintenance-intensive beast requiring constant RCS (reaction control system) and re-boosting.
By just turning orbital motion into electricity you are not doing anything to help the orbital decay situation. In fact, you would have to be inducing some sort of drag to create the current (you can't get something for nothing) and just deploying a tether would actually SPEED the decay from orbit.
However, if you used that induced current to power an (electric) ion thruster (or ten..) maybe you could remedy the situation.
If it's possible to use tethers to generate power: (http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast15oc t98_1.htm/)....it seems possible that the elevator cable could be harnessed to do the same. Either way you are swinging a cable through a magnetic field.
It's a 'sweet spot' for the chemistry and weather based on methane much as the earth sits in a 'sweet spot' for chemistry and weather based on water.
For earth, water exists in solid, liquid and vapor form, and shifts between the three, causing weather and geologic change on the surface of the planet.
This same thing is happening on Titan, but with methane.
One of the sustainers of life on Earth is the fact that water transforms itself readily and frequently. Could there be a Titanian equivalent with methane? Who knows. But for methane, this is the place to be.
You seriously do not understand the US infrastructure making a statement like that (some Rednecks would complain? Who modded that insightful?). Taxing the hell out of oil suddenly would bring the economy here to a hault at worst and at least make the lives of lower income folks miserable (overall lowering their standard of living the most).
The sin of the past was planning for cheap oil and cheap personal (and industrial) transportation with this country's infrastructure - or, really, no planning at all (fully capitalistic expansion). That theme explains the layouts of most of the cities in the US, and the current distribution of goods/services/etc.
Many European countries have had the benefit of pre-existing infrastructure: OLD cities. This is a benefit because in centuries past, people lived close together due to the nature of transport (really frickin' slow). Now that proximity benefits Euros because goods/services/people are closer together - generally, quite alot so - and thus public transport has been emphasized and put in place liberally.
The US had a clean sheet to design it's cities from for the most part, and because there was little regulation, they spread willy-nilly all over the landscape (notice that the US cities with the best mass transit and fewest cars-per-capita are the older ones). Goods and services were built where they were cheapest to do so, and often easiest to get to via car (near major highways, etc). There IS NO public transportation alternative aside from slow, irregular bus service in most cities.
Simply running up taxes would do nothing but squeeze people on the lower end of the income chain and isolate them from goods and services.
There has to be a very thoughtful, multi-vector approach to solving the problem, much of it taking decades to arrive at.
1) To curb oil consumption now, forget high oil taxes (though I'd support a mild increase, see below). Increase CAFE standards and put a higher tax on 'fuel inefficient' vehicles.
2) Add a small oil tax which is to be used to fund mass transit - light rail, subways, etc. Encourage cities to build such infrastructure through various forms of initiatives. This will be ratcheded up slowly over the years as the mass transit infrastructure improves and a larger % of folks use it.
3) Provide tax breaks to manufacturers producing alternate (electric, biodiesel, hydrogen, CNG/LNG) and high-efficiency (hybrid, or any type getting very good MPG) vehicles.
4) More aggressive tax credits to perform home and corporate energy efficiency upgrades (insulation, low-wattage, high-E appliances) and local power generation ( solar, wind, local power generators - I was shocked to learn that only 10% of the energy generated at powerplants actually make it to your home). And remove pork clauses to these bills which prevent their passing, like the recent California bill which encouraged solar but had a rider requiring union labor installation! What crap.
5) Speaking from Southern California, mandate a light rail system down the center of every urban stretch of interstate/freeway. Start building it now, and make it faster and more efficient than the current sytsem (still far faster to take a car than mass transit in LA). Over the years it will be functional enough to replace the need for cars on all those freeways. There just isn't enough real estate to build more lanes here! Add park-and-rides so the far-flung suburbanites can get from home to mass transit center.
6) encourage the use of motorcycles and scooters or other smaller, fuel-efficient personal movers. There are ridiculous things hampering this, particularly with parking - such as the mandate of one motorcycle-per-parking spot (car-sized, of course). If you've been to Europe, you see the 'creative' parking which is tolerated. Do so here as well.
Is it just me, or does this type of malaise seem to afflict all of the mass-market creative arts such as television, music and now computer games?
It seems to me that each of these industries used to be highly competitive, but once major (take your pick: record label/studio/producer) moves in creativity slumps and ratings/sales have to be very high just to make a profit. The reason being, of course, that all those (label/studio/production company) builds need their nice shiny glass windows cleaned.
Now that some parts of the music industry have begun to use the internet and direct distribution (bypassing some of the label overhead) and it seems obvious that films will be next, is this not the model we should look forward to with games?
As people look more to virtual selections and rely less on walk-in sales, it seems to me all creative, easily reproduced IP will follow and further define this distribution and compensation model.
Yes, I am aware of Orbital, but organizations have not been realistically considering this configuration for manned flight until now. There has been slideware for decades, true, but no engineered flight hardware since X-15.
Carrier aircraft are highly and easily reusable, thus the return on the investment is much more recoverable than in any vertical RLV.
Take this concept to the next (and higher) level: the hypersonic launch of the 'upper' stage. Such a configuration would extract the maximum advantage of atmosphere (no oxidizer needed in launch vehicle/first stage). Hypersonic vehicle separation seems like a huge problem, however.
Slashdot Mirror
This seems like a great win for users everywhere in general and OSS in specific. The article is light on details - who exactly will have access to these open specs? How will licensing be applied? Is it patented - apparently you can patent everything these days.
I'll wait to see ALOT more details before becoming giddy with excitement...
Are you related to Hunter S. ??
I am not sure that moving businesses out from the city center to the 'bedroom communities' makes any sense... that's exactly what has caused the transportation nightmare in Los Angeles. You assume that everyone who works in these 'bedroom businesses' is going to live close to them?
People don't frequently move to be closer to work, and the average person changes jobs often enough that trying to do so would be ridiculous (particulary with housing costs - sell that house which has appreciated 300%, buy another one and pay out your arse in property tax!).
The opposite of what you say is true - business SHOULD be MORE centralized. This is the only way that mass transit can be effective - and exactly why it's so difficult in Los Angeles to implement any mass transit that makes a difference: too many people need to go to too many places of business scattered everywhere. Rather than a hub-and-spoke arrangement (such as many European cities) we have a 'matrix' arrangement in Los Angeles and lots of other US cities.
Your assumption considers the car to be our major and only transport conduit for now and the future, and I think that thought does not have a long-term shelflife. The problem is that people here want to have the benefits of open space, traditionally the perk of the rural resident, but the high-paying city job and the trappings of a major metropolis. These two are fundamentally incompatable as you scale up population.
LinkTV has a 30-minute segment on this project I just watched the other night - http://www.linktv.org/programming/programDescripti on.php4?code=dwf_brilliant/ - if you have cable or satellite and are intertested in this project, catch this program.
There are ALOT of social problems which will come out of extreme human longevity. It seems to me that a good read of Kim Stanely Robinson http://www.kimstanleyrobinson.net/ would be in order long before something like this has human applications.
I for one welcome our new immortal headless-mice overlords!!
(come on, you know SOMEONE is going to post it, better to get it out of the way)
Not exactly - it's actually a case of the performance gain by the improved fuel consumption initiated by the hydrogen injection offsetting the current used by the electrolysis system. From the company's website documentation, this draws about 35A - that is far more than any 'excess generated power' available from a freewheeling alternator.
Your headlights draw about that kind of current, maybe a bit less.
The more current draw, the harder the alternator is to turn.
No, it's nothing like a hybrid. RTFA :)
Hydrogen combustion has a flame propagation rate several times that of hydrocarbon fuel. This 'kickstarts' the combustion process and causes more hydrocarbons to be burned, rather than spewed out the tailpipe. More power, improved mileage, reduced emissions.
These have been installed for a little while now, and there are distributors all across the USA and Canada.
Peltiers are notoriously inefficient. If it were otherwise, we'd probably see them employed in this capacity in large-scale power production where heat is generated rather than turning a turbine.
Speaking of which, you could create a steam turbine with water heated from the exhaust, which could also generate electricity. There you take double-hits though - heat -> mechanical -> electrical. I'm guessing it's still more efficient than Peltiers.
One other note: this hydrogen-oxygen injection system is supposed to cool the exhaust gasses in the process - one comment I read was that the exhaust pipe could be "held in your hand". That might not work well if you are depending on heat at the exhaust to create electricity....
Ummm, no. The hydrogen-oxygen gas mix is produced "on the fly" - there is never much onboard to cause an explosion, as it's fed right into the induction system, and is not produced when the vehicle is not running.
From the company's website, the device is injecting a hydrogen-oxygen gas MIX. This is highly EXPLOSIVE, and is not well-suited to long-term storage. H2 from a bottle would provide many of the same benefits to combustion, but then you have to produce it, add a storage facility, refueling facility, etc etc.
With their system, you add water.
Bear in mind that the system is injecting not just hydrogen, but hydrogen-oxygen gas. The first is relatively safe; the latter is HIGHLY EXPLOSIVE.
That is the reason it's not stored in the vehicle is because it's so very explosive. Others have mentioned that the hydrogen is causing more of the hydrocarbon fuel to burn, thus the net increase in efficiency.
No laws of thermodynamics broken today.
This might be a good match for a car with regenerative braking - the power created from the braking action could power electrolysis. Of course, then you'd need some type of hydrogen storage, which this system doesn't have... but, the point in general is that using braking to generate power is not only useful in an electric/hybrid car...
According to the company's website http://www.chechfi.com/ it can be used on ALL internal combustion engines:
Q:
Will this product work on Gas, Diesel, Propane or Natural Gas?
A:
Yes. It will work on any internal combustion engine using hydrocarbon fuels.
One question: how long until we can get downsized (and hopefully down-priced) units for personal automobiles and trucks, be they gas, diesel, or other dead dino hydrocarbon fuels? Will Detroit need to use this type of device to meet emission standards in the future?
I'm not sure that the trend is toward unity and consolidation. You can only nebulously call the EU unity - a loose economic federation, the constitution of which does not pass ratification in key member states and may not pass in the for some time in the future. Is that your only evidence of the trend towards unity?
It seems to me that more and more people are trying to erect new walls throughout the world:
Catalonia, Basque separatists in Spain; Corsica and Brittany in France (also the independence movement of French Polynesia); the Palestinians; witness the breakup of Yugoslavia; Czech Republic and Slovakia; Kurds in Turkey/Iraq (and, will Iraq hold together without the point of a rifle barrel?); East Timor in Indonesia; Quebec in Canada...there are more, these are just those which come to mind quickly. It seems to me that alot of peoples want their own state to embrace their own cultural values and are clearly not interested in integrating and assimilating.
Where are these sweeping consolidation movements which don't fall under the category of 'conquer' and 'vanquish' in recent history? Where do we see the will of the people yearning for a unity instead of partition?
If you force people together long enough they may intermingle and over generations forget about their notions of independent states, but a simple survey of many parts of the world would quickly suggest the will of the people in *many* places is to erect new borders, not tear down existing ones.
Sadly, I think we have a long way to go as a world to reach a point where cultural identity is less abrasive than it is inclusive.
...that the Russians, with their Soyuz design, are moving to a winged vehicle at the same time the US is moving to a capsule (a la Soyuz) design, with everyone here (and elswhere) championing how much better the Russian approach has been?
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/kliper.html
Bear in mind the the Kliper is no Shuttle - it's much better thought-out. I think the greater flexibility of the reentry profile is invaluable, and am generally excited to see this bird fly.
My undergrad professor for feedback and control systems used to complain about the idiocy of the ISS design (before it was built), claiming that this configuration didn't take into consideration free molecular flow (the fact that there are still some atmospheric particles at that orbital altitude which cause drag) and solar pressure when creating the design. The result would be a very maintenance-intensive beast requiring constant RCS (reaction control system) and re-boosting.
I see that he was right.
By just turning orbital motion into electricity you are not doing anything to help the orbital decay situation. In fact, you would have to be inducing some sort of drag to create the current (you can't get something for nothing) and just deploying a tether would actually SPEED the decay from orbit.
However, if you used that induced current to power an (electric) ion thruster (or ten..) maybe you could remedy the situation.
If it's possible to use tethers to generate power:c t98_1.htm/) ....it seems possible that the elevator cable could be harnessed to do the same. Either way you are swinging a cable through a magnetic field.
(http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast15o
Obviously those people at the Guardian have not yet read Slashdot.
Welcome to our information age crack house.
It's a 'sweet spot' for the chemistry and weather based on methane much as the earth sits in a 'sweet spot' for chemistry and weather based on water.
For earth, water exists in solid, liquid and vapor form, and shifts between the three, causing weather and geologic change on the surface of the planet.
This same thing is happening on Titan, but with methane.
One of the sustainers of life on Earth is the fact that water transforms itself readily and frequently. Could there be a Titanian equivalent with methane? Who knows. But for methane, this is the place to be.
You seriously do not understand the US infrastructure making a statement like that (some Rednecks would complain? Who modded that insightful?). Taxing the hell out of oil suddenly would bring the economy here to a hault at worst and at least make the lives of lower income folks miserable (overall lowering their standard of living the most).
The sin of the past was planning for cheap oil and cheap personal (and industrial) transportation with this country's infrastructure - or, really, no planning at all (fully capitalistic expansion). That theme explains the layouts of most of the cities in the US, and the current distribution of goods/services/etc.
Many European countries have had the benefit of pre-existing infrastructure: OLD cities. This is a benefit because in centuries past, people lived close together due to the nature of transport (really frickin' slow). Now that proximity benefits Euros because goods/services/people are closer together - generally, quite alot so - and thus public transport has been emphasized and put in place liberally.
The US had a clean sheet to design it's cities from for the most part, and because there was little regulation, they spread willy-nilly all over the landscape (notice that the US cities with the best mass transit and fewest cars-per-capita are the older ones). Goods and services were built where they were cheapest to do so, and often easiest to get to via car (near major highways, etc). There IS NO public transportation alternative aside from slow, irregular bus service in most cities.
Simply running up taxes would do nothing but squeeze people on the lower end of the income chain and isolate them from goods and services.
There has to be a very thoughtful, multi-vector approach to solving the problem, much of it taking decades to arrive at.
1) To curb oil consumption now, forget high oil taxes (though I'd support a mild increase, see below). Increase CAFE standards and put a higher tax on 'fuel inefficient' vehicles.
2) Add a small oil tax which is to be used to fund mass transit - light rail, subways, etc. Encourage cities to build such infrastructure through various forms of initiatives. This will be ratcheded up slowly over the years as the mass transit infrastructure improves and a larger % of folks use it.
3) Provide tax breaks to manufacturers producing alternate (electric, biodiesel, hydrogen, CNG/LNG) and high-efficiency (hybrid, or any type getting very good MPG) vehicles.
4) More aggressive tax credits to perform home and corporate energy efficiency upgrades (insulation, low-wattage, high-E appliances) and local power generation ( solar, wind, local power generators - I was shocked to learn that only 10% of the energy generated at powerplants actually make it to your home). And remove pork clauses to these bills which prevent their passing, like the recent California bill which encouraged solar but had a rider requiring union labor installation! What crap.
5) Speaking from Southern California, mandate a light rail system down the center of every urban stretch of interstate/freeway. Start building it now, and make it faster and more efficient than the current sytsem (still far faster to take a car than mass transit in LA). Over the years it will be functional enough to replace the need for cars on all those freeways. There just isn't enough real estate to build more lanes here! Add park-and-rides so the far-flung suburbanites can get from home to mass transit center.
6) encourage the use of motorcycles and scooters or other smaller, fuel-efficient personal movers. There are ridiculous things hampering this, particularly with parking - such as the mandate of one motorcycle-per-parking spot (car-sized, of course). If you've been to Europe, you see the 'creative' parking which is tolerated. Do so here as well.
Is it just me, or does this type of malaise seem to afflict all of the mass-market creative arts such as television, music and now computer games?
It seems to me that each of these industries used to be highly competitive, but once major (take your pick: record label/studio/producer) moves in creativity slumps and ratings/sales have to be very high just to make a profit. The reason being, of course, that all those (label/studio/production company) builds need their nice shiny glass windows cleaned.
Now that some parts of the music industry have begun to use the internet and direct distribution (bypassing some of the label overhead) and it seems obvious that films will be next, is this not the model we should look forward to with games?
As people look more to virtual selections and rely less on walk-in sales, it seems to me all creative, easily reproduced IP will follow and further define this distribution and compensation model.
...we need to learn how to build a better mousetrap!
Yes, I am aware of Orbital, but organizations have not been realistically considering this configuration for manned flight until now. There has been slideware for decades, true, but no engineered flight hardware since X-15.
Carrier aircraft are highly and easily reusable, thus the return on the investment is much more recoverable than in any vertical RLV.
Take this concept to the next (and higher) level: the hypersonic launch of the 'upper' stage. Such a configuration would extract the maximum advantage of atmosphere (no oxidizer needed in launch vehicle/first stage). Hypersonic vehicle separation seems like a huge problem, however.