I'm sorry; I misspoke. 100'x100' would be a quarter *gram* per year. A quarter kilogram per year would take a 1km by 1km collector. Again, assuming your mythical 100% efficiency/no night/no interference/heliostat setup.
Yes, we have. Other missions have detected hydrogen.
Cite. The Apollo astronauts' samples yield hydrogen in ppb quantities. Lunar Prospector suggested there might be some at the poles, but subsequent followup attempts to find water or any other hydrogen-bearing minerals have come upempty.
As I understand it, if it's distributed throughout the regolith
Yes. In *ppb quantities*. Completely impractical to extract.
As I recall, about three quarters of the solar wind is hydrogen. The other quarter is virtually all helium, which is also useful.
For what, making your voice sound funny? The main use for helium in rocketry is as a pressurant, but on the moon, there are much better approaches than that.
And don't get into the Helium-3 fusion pipe dream.:P
Whether harvesting roughly a quarter kilogram (halved for lunar night) of hydrogen per square meter per year
*MILLI*gram, not kilogram. A quarter *milligram*. A quarter kilogram per year would take a collector 100'x100' across, *assuming* no celestial or collection losses, no night, and a heliostat tracker. And a quarter kilogram is nothing.
A Pinto is relatively small and light, just about 2400 pounds,
And the Enzo is 3,000 pounds, but with a massive 500lb engine and a bunch of other heavy performance-designed components. And the Pinto that they're talking about is *lead-acid* based. PbA cells have ~1/4th the energy density of automotive-style li-ions, and a small fraction the power density as well; they're used because they're dirt cheap. The fact is, is this is a cheapo conversion and it can accelerate as fast as a million dollar supercar. Try to get that kind of performance out of a Pinto using gasoline on that kind of budget.
Hey, if you want to talk motorcycles, the Killacycle does 0-60 in under a second, and there are faster ones than that out there. We're not talking motorcycles; we're talking cars. It doesn't matter how you cut it; 0-60 in 3.5 seconds is *fast* for a car. And for a Pinto? An amateur conversion Pinto? I mean, come on! Pintos aren't exactly optimized for racing. And this conversion used heavy lead-acid batteries to boot, rather than lightweight, higher-power li-ions.
The thing is, so far, we haven't found ice. Or any relevant quantities of hydrogen in any form. The concept of harvesting hydrogen from the solar wind seems silly; the solar wind at 1AU averages about 4 atoms per cubic centimeter. At an average 350km/s speed, this means a collector could gather no more than 0.7 milligrams per square meter per year. At 100% efficiency with no celestial shielding of the solar wind of any kind and with a heliostat. And not all of that would be hydrogen.
Don't forget to package it in an watertight/airtight package with plenty of silica gel packets and store it in a cool place with little temperature fluctuation.
The real goal is being able to build it easily on other planets. Although I don't know what they're thinking when they mention the moon. We're yet to find ice on the moon. Hydrogen is exceedingly rare on the lunar surface.
T-Mobile has no data coverage where I am. Which is a real shame as I really wanted a T-Mobile G1; I would own one right now otherwise.:P I guess I'll just have to wait.
You simply misunderstand human development. It's not "body parts that they were not born with or genetically determined to have". We're all genetically determined to have the same body parts. The clitoris and penis are the same organ. Male and female breasts are the same organ. Testes and ovaries are the same organ. And on and on and on. It's simply what activation factors they're given and when. We're all the same up until about week six. By then, all of the major organs are already differentiated. The hormonal cascade that leads to sex differentiation simply changes what's already there; it doesn't make new things.
Now, there are timing issues. And many changes are irreversible. So, for example, you can have a male develop breasts by giving estrogen, but a woman's breasts won't go away when estrogens are removed. As for timing, this can limit potential. For example, androgens in a fetus can lead to the clitoris/penis developing into a fully normal penis. If they're not present, the child is born as a woman, with a clitoris. If the woman is given testosterone, the clitoris will start to develop into a penis. However, it won't reach full size, and will end up as a micropenis; the capacity for a full-sized one has been cut off due to timing.
Sure, go ahead and tell a XY person with female-typical musculature, breasts, a vagina, etc that she's not a woman, and tell an XX person with male-typical musculature with a penis, testes, male-typical musculature, etc that he's not a man. And how do you deal with non-XX, non-XY karyotypes?
Sorry, but XY=male and XX=female is just the most common situation. It's anything but an absolute. It's just that the Y chromosome *usually* has a *working* SRY, and the X chromosome *usually* doesn't.
And FYI: we define male seahorses as male because they produce sperm and not eggs. Seahorses don't have a human-typical XX/XY karyotype distribution. I don't know why you assumed XY is universal. There's the ZW system, the XO system, and even non-genetic sex determination systems (such as incubation temperature-based, like alligators use). The platypus has a really weird 10-chromosome hybrid XY/ZW system.
I oversimplified. There's many variants of AIS. I should have said "CAIS" (Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome), which is what most people think of when they refer to AIS (even though it's one of the less common form) -- that's where the person appears fully female. Yes, people with CAIS tend to be taller than average women, but they tend to have weaker bones and lack the skeletal muscle advantage of even the low-levels of androgens normally present in women (Sheffield-Moore, 2000). Also, those without CAIS but with Kennedy's Disease can have significant muscle mass loss (although more often then not they have a male presentation, so not applicable here).
Or she may just genetically overexpress the genes to produce androgens. Or -- and here's something you didn't consider -- she might not overproduce androgens at all, but her androgen receptors may be overactive.
Honestly, I feel really, really sorry for this woman. No matter what the board says, there's going to be an question mark hanging over everything she does for the rest of her life. Imagine what this will do to her in relationships, too, having her gender publicly questioned in the press. Must be horrible.
Yes, in fact, women with AIS tend to be *less* masculinized than normal women. They're XY, and yet athletically disadvantaged compared to your average XX woman.
And an XX man who has a migrated SRY on one of his X chromosomes, in the GP's system, would be competing against women. Testosterone and penis and all.
To me, I think the test should be simplified down to, "Does she have an unnatural advantage?". I think they need to develop a test to determine not simply level of androgens in her bloodstream, but *androgen activation in her muscles*. It's not only the amount of androgens, but how sensitive you are to them. So I think they need to study gene activation of her muscle tissue at her serum androgen levels. Of course, that'd probably be a pretty intrusive test; I'd think they'd have to biopsy at least some kind of muscle tissue. But perhaps there's a less intrusive way.
Indeed. In fact, for example, XY women with CAIS (Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome) are not only phenotpically female, but tend to be *weaker* and *less* masculinized than normal XX women.
It's not the X chromosome or Y chromsome that's the key. There's this whole cascade of reactions that lead to prenatal masculinization/feminization. This is started off by the complex SRY (Sex Region Y), which is normally found on the Y chromosome. But it can be defective. Or it can migrate to the X chromosome. And even if it's perfectly normal, what about each subsequent step in the cascade? For example, AIS women produce androgens, but their body just ignores them.
And then there's some of the really weird cases, like 5 alpha reductace deficiency syndrome. It's also called "guevedoche" in the parts of the Dominican Republic where it's unusually common. Guevedoche means "balls at twelve", and yes, it's like it sounds. A child is born, sometimes phenotypically intersexed, but sometimes seemingly a perfectly normal female. But when "she" hits puberty, "she" grows body hair, testes descend, the clitoris develops into a micropenis, and on and on. They usually develop a male gender identity, and in some cases, they can even father children.
Gender is not as simple as we'd like to pretend. Did you know that your average man can lactate? I'm dead serious. Men have undeveloped breasts, including undeveloped mammary glands. Take estrogen for a year or two (to trigger breast development), then take a large dose of domperidone for two weeks. Domperidone inhibits dopamine levels (outside the brain; it doesn't cross the brain-blood barrier, so it doesn't lower brain dopamine). Dopamine inhibits prolactin production, so dropping its levels stimulates the production of prolactin, which stimulates the production of breast milk.
We're all made of the same body parts, just with different degrees of development and activation of them.
I'm surprised they only had a list of ten. There must be 50 ways to wipe your platters.
Just give it a whack, Jack. Smash it with a van, Stan. Shoot it to destroy, Roy. Just listen to me. Soak it till it rusts, Gus. You don't need to discuss much. Toss it in the sea, Lee And get yourself free.
Except for the fact that Glen Canyon's water balance has been extensively studied, and it *is* losing vastly more water than it had been previously.
And I seriously doubt that increasing the water-covered-area from almost nothing to 186 square *miles*, intercepting up to 500 gigawatts of solar energy, could ever be comparable to simply churning cool waters in the shade (in terms of water loss).
Of course, burning that diesel emitted about 15% more CO2 and a *LOT* more particulate matter than burning that much gasoline would. Just adjusting the mpg for the gasoline/diesel density difference, that equates to about 86mpg for the Lupo.
The VW 1L car will *not* get 250mpg highway when released. Let me count the reasons why that number is bogus.
* First off, there's the gas/diesel difference, as mentioned. That won't affect the number, but will affect the pollution. * That was achieved while hypermiling at 45mph. * The car is having a huge drag area increase, as they're transitioning from tandem to side-by-side seating. * The car is going to increase in mass several times over as they up the safety features and add in the necessary creature comforts; the "250mpg" number was achieved in a prototype that didn't even have an AC (much less having the AC on). * They're upping the engine power, as the prototype had almost no accel.
It'll still be a *very* efficient car, but don't expect anywhere near 250mpg.
False. Gasoline Jetta versus Diesel Jetta (or Golf, or Passat, or Beetle) == ~60% better MPG.
False yourself. Let's first make sure to compare equivalents. Automatics sell better than manuals, so let's go with automatics in both cases. For the diesel, that leaves one choice: the 4cyl, 2l turbocharged 3MODE CLKUP. There are two possible gasoline competitors: the 4cyl, 2l premium gasoline turbocharged 3MODE CLKUP, and the 5cl, 2.5L regular gasoline 3MODE CLKUP. The diesel makes 140 horsepower. The 5cl makes 170 horsepower; I can't locate the hp for the 4cl. So let's go with the 5cl, regular gasoline one. That's a combined mileage of 33 versus a combined mileage of 25. This means that the diesel engine is 32% more fuel efficient on a per-gallon basis than the gasoline engine. But the diesel engine also has only 82% as much horsepower. Subtracting for the horsepower difference, 25% is about right.
>>>half of which is simply due to the denser fuel.
Jeez. False again. DON'T YOU KNOW HOW TO USE GOOGLE???
Geez, DON'T YOU KNOW THAT A CURSORY SEARCH ISN'T THE SAME AS KNOWING WHAT THE F*** YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT? Diesel doesn't have a single energy density. There are different blends sold in different places and even variation at different times of year. Hence my use of a (somewhat generous) "about half" term.
Mentioning only evaporation was also an oversimplification. There's another issue: water seeping into the porous rock that makes up the walls of Glen Canyon. They're losing almost as much extra water in that manner as they are through extra evaporation, and there's no evidence that it's even close to becoming saturated.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry; I misspoke. 100'x100' would be a quarter *gram* per year. A quarter kilogram per year would take a 1km by 1km collector. Again, assuming your mythical 100% efficiency/no night/no interference/heliostat setup.
It's just not realistic.
Yes, we have. Other missions have detected hydrogen.
Cite. The Apollo astronauts' samples yield hydrogen in ppb quantities. Lunar Prospector suggested there might be some at the poles, but subsequent followup attempts to find water or any other hydrogen-bearing minerals have come up empty.
As I understand it, if it's distributed throughout the regolith
Yes. In *ppb quantities*. Completely impractical to extract.
As I recall, about three quarters of the solar wind is hydrogen. The other quarter is virtually all helium, which is also useful.
For what, making your voice sound funny? The main use for helium in rocketry is as a pressurant, but on the moon, there are much better approaches than that.
And don't get into the Helium-3 fusion pipe dream. :P
Whether harvesting roughly a quarter kilogram (halved for lunar night) of hydrogen per square meter per year
*MILLI*gram, not kilogram. A quarter *milligram*. A quarter kilogram per year would take a collector 100'x100' across, *assuming* no celestial or collection losses, no night, and a heliostat tracker. And a quarter kilogram is nothing.
A Pinto is relatively small and light, just about 2400 pounds,
And the Enzo is 3,000 pounds, but with a massive 500lb engine and a bunch of other heavy performance-designed components. And the Pinto that they're talking about is *lead-acid* based. PbA cells have ~1/4th the energy density of automotive-style li-ions, and a small fraction the power density as well; they're used because they're dirt cheap. The fact is, is this is a cheapo conversion and it can accelerate as fast as a million dollar supercar. Try to get that kind of performance out of a Pinto using gasoline on that kind of budget.
Hey, if you want to talk motorcycles, the Killacycle does 0-60 in under a second, and there are faster ones than that out there. We're not talking motorcycles; we're talking cars. It doesn't matter how you cut it; 0-60 in 3.5 seconds is *fast* for a car. And for a Pinto? An amateur conversion Pinto? I mean, come on! Pintos aren't exactly optimized for racing. And this conversion used heavy lead-acid batteries to boot, rather than lightweight, higher-power li-ions.
The thing is, so far, we haven't found ice. Or any relevant quantities of hydrogen in any form. The concept of harvesting hydrogen from the solar wind seems silly; the solar wind at 1AU averages about 4 atoms per cubic centimeter. At an average 350km/s speed, this means a collector could gather no more than 0.7 milligrams per square meter per year. At 100% efficiency with no celestial shielding of the solar wind of any kind and with a heliostat. And not all of that would be hydrogen.
Bah, electric cars are just glorified golf carts, dontcha know.... ;)
One of my favorite lead-ins to an article about electric cars:
"The one-million-dollar Ferrari Enzo can do zero to 60 in about 3.5 seconds. So can Mike Willmon's 1978 Ford Pinto."
it's another flawed study.
I don't know... it seems to explain Limbaugh.
I was going to suggest the same thing.
Don't forget to package it in an watertight/airtight package with plenty of silica gel packets and store it in a cool place with little temperature fluctuation.
The real goal is being able to build it easily on other planets. Although I don't know what they're thinking when they mention the moon. We're yet to find ice on the moon. Hydrogen is exceedingly rare on the lunar surface.
T-Mobile has no data coverage where I am. Which is a real shame as I really wanted a T-Mobile G1; I would own one right now otherwise. :P I guess I'll just have to wait.
You simply misunderstand human development. It's not "body parts that they were not born with or genetically determined to have". We're all genetically determined to have the same body parts. The clitoris and penis are the same organ. Male and female breasts are the same organ. Testes and ovaries are the same organ. And on and on and on. It's simply what activation factors they're given and when. We're all the same up until about week six. By then, all of the major organs are already differentiated. The hormonal cascade that leads to sex differentiation simply changes what's already there; it doesn't make new things.
Now, there are timing issues. And many changes are irreversible. So, for example, you can have a male develop breasts by giving estrogen, but a woman's breasts won't go away when estrogens are removed. As for timing, this can limit potential. For example, androgens in a fetus can lead to the clitoris/penis developing into a fully normal penis. If they're not present, the child is born as a woman, with a clitoris. If the woman is given testosterone, the clitoris will start to develop into a penis. However, it won't reach full size, and will end up as a micropenis; the capacity for a full-sized one has been cut off due to timing.
Sure, go ahead and tell a XY person with female-typical musculature, breasts, a vagina, etc that she's not a woman, and tell an XX person with male-typical musculature with a penis, testes, male-typical musculature, etc that he's not a man. And how do you deal with non-XX, non-XY karyotypes?
Sorry, but XY=male and XX=female is just the most common situation. It's anything but an absolute. It's just that the Y chromosome *usually* has a *working* SRY, and the X chromosome *usually* doesn't.
And FYI: we define male seahorses as male because they produce sperm and not eggs. Seahorses don't have a human-typical XX/XY karyotype distribution. I don't know why you assumed XY is universal. There's the ZW system, the XO system, and even non-genetic sex determination systems (such as incubation temperature-based, like alligators use). The platypus has a really weird 10-chromosome hybrid XY/ZW system.
We may all be able to lactate, but the primary difference starts with only one gender can lay eggs.
And what about those who neither produce eggs nor sperm? Or those who can produce eggs, but also have a penis and male-typical musculature?
I oversimplified. There's many variants of AIS. I should have said "CAIS" (Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome), which is what most people think of when they refer to AIS (even though it's one of the less common form) -- that's where the person appears fully female. Yes, people with CAIS tend to be taller than average women, but they tend to have weaker bones and lack the skeletal muscle advantage of even the low-levels of androgens normally present in women (Sheffield-Moore, 2000). Also, those without CAIS but with Kennedy's Disease can have significant muscle mass loss (although more often then not they have a male presentation, so not applicable here).
It's short for "huevos a los doce".
Or she may just genetically overexpress the genes to produce androgens. Or -- and here's something you didn't consider -- she might not overproduce androgens at all, but her androgen receptors may be overactive.
Honestly, I feel really, really sorry for this woman. No matter what the board says, there's going to be an question mark hanging over everything she does for the rest of her life. Imagine what this will do to her in relationships, too, having her gender publicly questioned in the press. Must be horrible.
Yes, in fact, women with AIS tend to be *less* masculinized than normal women. They're XY, and yet athletically disadvantaged compared to your average XX woman.
And an XX man who has a migrated SRY on one of his X chromosomes, in the GP's system, would be competing against women. Testosterone and penis and all.
To me, I think the test should be simplified down to, "Does she have an unnatural advantage?". I think they need to develop a test to determine not simply level of androgens in her bloodstream, but *androgen activation in her muscles*. It's not only the amount of androgens, but how sensitive you are to them. So I think they need to study gene activation of her muscle tissue at her serum androgen levels. Of course, that'd probably be a pretty intrusive test; I'd think they'd have to biopsy at least some kind of muscle tissue. But perhaps there's a less intrusive way.
Indeed. In fact, for example, XY women with CAIS (Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome) are not only phenotpically female, but tend to be *weaker* and *less* masculinized than normal XX women.
It's not the X chromosome or Y chromsome that's the key. There's this whole cascade of reactions that lead to prenatal masculinization/feminization. This is started off by the complex SRY (Sex Region Y), which is normally found on the Y chromosome. But it can be defective. Or it can migrate to the X chromosome. And even if it's perfectly normal, what about each subsequent step in the cascade? For example, AIS women produce androgens, but their body just ignores them.
And then there's some of the really weird cases, like 5 alpha reductace deficiency syndrome. It's also called "guevedoche" in the parts of the Dominican Republic where it's unusually common. Guevedoche means "balls at twelve", and yes, it's like it sounds. A child is born, sometimes phenotypically intersexed, but sometimes seemingly a perfectly normal female. But when "she" hits puberty, "she" grows body hair, testes descend, the clitoris develops into a micropenis, and on and on. They usually develop a male gender identity, and in some cases, they can even father children.
Gender is not as simple as we'd like to pretend. Did you know that your average man can lactate? I'm dead serious. Men have undeveloped breasts, including undeveloped mammary glands. Take estrogen for a year or two (to trigger breast development), then take a large dose of domperidone for two weeks. Domperidone inhibits dopamine levels (outside the brain; it doesn't cross the brain-blood barrier, so it doesn't lower brain dopamine). Dopamine inhibits prolactin production, so dropping its levels stimulates the production of prolactin, which stimulates the production of breast milk.
We're all made of the same body parts, just with different degrees of development and activation of them.
I'm surprised they only had a list of ten. There must be 50 ways to wipe your platters.
Just give it a whack, Jack.
Smash it with a van, Stan.
Shoot it to destroy, Roy.
Just listen to me.
Soak it till it rusts, Gus.
You don't need to discuss much.
Toss it in the sea, Lee
And get yourself free.
Except for the fact that Glen Canyon's water balance has been extensively studied, and it *is* losing vastly more water than it had been previously.
And I seriously doubt that increasing the water-covered-area from almost nothing to 186 square *miles*, intercepting up to 500 gigawatts of solar energy, could ever be comparable to simply churning cool waters in the shade (in terms of water loss).
Of course, burning that diesel emitted about 15% more CO2 and a *LOT* more particulate matter than burning that much gasoline would. Just adjusting the mpg for the gasoline/diesel density difference, that equates to about 86mpg for the Lupo.
The VW 1L car will *not* get 250mpg highway when released. Let me count the reasons why that number is bogus.
* First off, there's the gas/diesel difference, as mentioned. That won't affect the number, but will affect the pollution.
* That was achieved while hypermiling at 45mph.
* The car is having a huge drag area increase, as they're transitioning from tandem to side-by-side seating.
* The car is going to increase in mass several times over as they up the safety features and add in the necessary creature comforts; the "250mpg" number was achieved in a prototype that didn't even have an AC (much less having the AC on).
* They're upping the engine power, as the prototype had almost no accel.
It'll still be a *very* efficient car, but don't expect anywhere near 250mpg.
False. Gasoline Jetta versus Diesel Jetta (or Golf, or Passat, or Beetle) == ~60% better MPG.
False yourself. Let's first make sure to compare equivalents. Automatics sell better than manuals, so let's go with automatics in both cases. For the diesel, that leaves one choice: the 4cyl, 2l turbocharged 3MODE CLKUP. There are two possible gasoline competitors: the 4cyl, 2l premium gasoline turbocharged 3MODE CLKUP, and the 5cl, 2.5L regular gasoline 3MODE CLKUP. The diesel makes 140 horsepower. The 5cl makes 170 horsepower; I can't locate the hp for the 4cl. So let's go with the 5cl, regular gasoline one. That's a combined mileage of 33 versus a combined mileage of 25. This means that the diesel engine is 32% more fuel efficient on a per-gallon basis than the gasoline engine. But the diesel engine also has only 82% as much horsepower. Subtracting for the horsepower difference, 25% is about right.
>>>half of which is simply due to the denser fuel.
Jeez. False again. DON'T YOU KNOW HOW TO USE GOOGLE???
Geez, DON'T YOU KNOW THAT A CURSORY SEARCH ISN'T THE SAME AS KNOWING WHAT THE F*** YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT? Diesel doesn't have a single energy density. There are different blends sold in different places and even variation at different times of year. Hence my use of a (somewhat generous) "about half" term.
Mentioning only evaporation was also an oversimplification. There's another issue: water seeping into the porous rock that makes up the walls of Glen Canyon. They're losing almost as much extra water in that manner as they are through extra evaporation, and there's no evidence that it's even close to becoming saturated.
The air pollution score doesn't take into account CO2, which is a greenhouse gas. It's about air pollution. There's a separate score for CO2.