Storing hydrogen in a solid media makes the whole system even less efficient than the already atrocious well to wheels efficiency of a hydrogen car. Plus, it's still gaseous as it *leaves* the storage medium. A tubing or fuel cell leak will still vent it and allow it to collect under your hood, in the cabin (it diffuses through almost anything and likes to follow pipes), a garage, an overhang, etc. And it has a minuscule ignition energy requirement and an extremely broad explosive range for fuel-air mixtures. Plus, H2 deflagrations readily evolve into detonations.
Oh, and to the GP: Power transmission in the US is 92.8% efficient (a lot more efficient than most people assume), and li-ion batteries are 96-99.9% efficient. There are a few other losses -- chargers are ~93% efficient and electric motors will usually get 85-90% efficiency in a normal drivecycle.
It's not so much any one aspect of a hydrogen car that's the problem as it is all of them. Commercial electrolysis is 50-80% efficient. There are some new techs coming out like liquid or nanoparticle catalysts that could boost this higher; we'll have to see. Fuel cells are ~60-70% efficient in and of themselves, but they need support infrastructure, such as compressors and heaters, which add parasitic losses and bring the fuel cell stack as a whole down to ~40% efficiency. There's also hydrogen compression and pumping, which will lose you another 10-20% of your total enregy. And, of course, there's still an electric motor. All in all, it's pretty darned bad, and there's no ready solution to make it anywhere close to EV efficiency.
Even with green power, efficiency is critical. Who wants 3-4 times the desert acreage covered in solar? Who wants 3-4 times the coastline covered in wind turbines? Who wants 3-4 times the rivers flooded for hydro? And so on.
I have a feeling these myths are going to be around for a long time:P
You still don't have me convinced. The fact is that batteries have to get a whole whole whole WHOLE lot better before they are reliable
You've never used LiP before, have you? LiP, stabilized spinels, titanates, SCiB, etc, are all good for thousands of cycles, many years, and operation at temperatures ranging from well below zero to hotter than it ever gets on Earth in normal conditions. They can take abuse like it's going out of style.
These are not the batteries of ten years ago.
and compact enough to compare to the energy density and ease of use of gasoline.
In a typical car, batteries don't compete for size and weight with gasoline. They compete with the ICE and all of its support systems. Electric motors are small and lightweight. It's a case of one side having a heavy drivetrain and a light fuel, while the other has a light drivetrain and heavy fuel. Yes, gasoline vehicles still win in this regard, but the competition isn't as far off as it used to be, and the next gen batteries should be pretty much breakeven if not better.
Charging has to get a lot faster
You've never heard of Level 3 charging, have you? Ranges from a couple dozen kilowatts to 250kW or so. There's already a network of 60kW chargers across Oahu. As for charger prices, the lower-end level 3 chargers are $30-40k, while the upper end are $100-150k. Look up AeroVironment's PosiCharge line for an example. As for the batteries, LiP and stabilized spinels can charge in 15 minutes, the titanates in 5-10, SCiB in 5 or so, and so on.
lifetime has to get a lot longer.
To give you an idea of what we're talking about, LG Chem expects ~40 years out of their cells, and most new EV makers are looking at ten year warranties on their packs.
then you aren't saving the environment
No lithium ions are very toxic. The ones with cobalt cathodes are minimally toxic. Many automotive li-ions don't even have that, and are essentially nontoxic.
Sounds like you may want something like the Aptera Typ-1e. Doesn't have ABS (at least as far as they've announced), though -- however, it's only 1500 pounds, so the stopping distance should be similar to that of a normal car with ABS. Also, doesn't have power steering, but again, at Aptera Forum or Aptera Wiki if you want to learn more about it than I have space to cover here.
Actually, this implies just the opposite. Cell membranes (meat) are easy for the body to break down. Cell walls (plants) are quite difficult, and cooking greatly facilitates their digestion. Cooking meat usually somewhat increases its caloric density (by driving water off, making it denser), but *decreases* its total calories (by driving fat off and breaking some proteins down). Cooking plants doesn't increase their calories, but generally makes them more bioavailable. It also lets you eat a more diverse variety of plants; many wild plants are toxic in their uncooked form, and heat denatures the toxins. In many more, heat won't denature the toxins, but repeated boils in changes of water can get rid of them. And, apart from some certain hunter gatherer societies (such as the Innuit), most hunter-gatherer groups get about 80% of their calories from plants.
So, really, it's just the opposite of what you're suggesting.
1. A display control apparatus for image forming apparatus that features: a first operation panel with which operators can select multiple functions of an image forming apparatus that has aforementioned multiple functions; a second operation panel that is configured so that it can be loaded and unloaded freely to/from the aforementioned image forming apparatus and with which operators can select aforementioned multiple functions; a detection means to detect whether the second operation panel is loaded or not when the aforementioned image forming apparatus is turned on; and a controlling means that controls items that are displayed on the first operation panel according to the result of detection by the aforementioned detection means.
2. A display control apparatus for image forming apparatus that features: a first operation panel with which operators can select multiple functions of an image forming apparatus that has aforementioned multiple functions; a second operation panel that is configured so that it can be loaded and unloaded freely to/from the aforementioned image forming apparatus and with which operators can select aforementioned multiple functions; a detection means to detect whether the second operation panel is loaded or not when the aforementioned image forming apparatus is turned on; and a controlling means that controls the display items so that predefined display items are displayed on the aforementioned first operation panel when the aforementioned detection means determines that the aforementioned second operation panel is not loaded, and adding to the predefined display items, at least a mode button that can switch the display items on the second operation panel is displayed when the aforementioned detection means determines that the aforementioned second operation panel is loaded.
3. A method of providing user interface displays in an image forming apparatus, the image forming apparatus having a first, standard display device and a second, optional display device, the method comprising testing if the second, optional display device is available if the second, optional display device is available, then providing a first standard user interface to the first display device and an operation guidance interface to the second display device if the second, optional display is not available, then providing a second standard interface to the first display device wherein the first standard interface includes an option for the user to select a different interface and the second standard interface lacks an option for the user to select a different interface.
4. The method of providing user interface displays in an image forming apparatus of claim 3, wherein if a user selects the option for the different interface, then providing the different interface to the first display device and the second display device
5. The method of providing user interface displays in an image forming apparatus of claim 4, wherein the different interface comprises an advanced interface.
6. The method of providing user interface displays in an image forming apparatus of claim 5, wherein the advanced interface includes an option for the user to select a custom interface.
7. The method of providing user interface displays in an image forming apparatus of claim 6 further comprising, if the user selects the option for the custom interface, then providing the custom interface to the first display device and the second display device.
8. The method of providing user interface displays in an image forming apparatus of claim 3, wherein the first standard interface and the second standard interface are substantially identical except for the option for the user to select a different interface.
9. The method of providing user interface displays in an image forming apparatus which i
Very good points all around. Indeed, even if nothing else of use comes from this, the amount of experience SpaceX has been building that's been sorely lacking in this country for decades will be a great boon to whoever follows them.
It shows wealth and passion for geeky interests, which fundamentally disroves the above claim. If you're wanting to revise the claim, then go ahead, but don't get mad at me for demonstrating that what was written is false. Of course, even a revised claim, such as "even weathy geeks aren't willing to invest in high-risk items that require an interest in geeky passions", is likewise easily disprovable, given how readily SpaceX has gotten investments (including $20M right after their last failure) from this same community. And likewise, Tesla Motors, for that matter.
I'm talking about exactly what I said I was talking about: Folks who *both* "share the passion" amd "have significant money to invest" are *NOT* zero overlap. There's quite a large number of them, actually.
Even if it's only an extra few hundred thousand barrels of oil, it behooves us (and the entire world) to have that capacity online and ready to go. Because if we see the day that demand exceeds capacity, even by a few barrels per day, get ready for some truly high prices.
It doesn't work that way. The tighter the capacity, the higher the prices. There's no sudden point where oil jumps from $100 a barrel to $1000 a barrel because someone consumed an extra gallon. The tighter the capacity, even if there's potentially excess, the harder it becomes to keep all markets supplied.
Also, I've seen that claim of 200,000 barrels per day but I haven't seen the source material. Do you have a link handy?
And you want to bank our future on the bet that the national and worldwide economic recession will be bad forever?
It's going to be bad as long as energy costs are high. You seem to be having trouble with the fact that there's no sudden tipping point when consumption surpasses production and prices suddenly make a gigantic spike. High oil prices hinder economic growth. Increased supply can help, but decreased consumption is far more effective in the short term; you can decrease consumption far faster than you can add supply.
Two answers: 1) The "5-10 years" is not accurate. When an oil company decides to drill, it doesn't take that long to deploy. 2-3 years is more accurate.
According to my father, who is a president of an oil supermajor's US division, when I asked him about how long it'd take for a new offshore facility (especially the deepwaters, as we're talking about in a lot of these places) to come online, his estimate was about 7 years. So, let's see. Oil company president or random slashdot poster, who to believe here...
Are you even aware of the rig and drillship shortage that's causing problems for the industry right now?
2) We need a long-term solution, not just a quick fix.
No, we need *both*.
No-one is saying that it doesn't make sense to conserve, too.
*You* are. You were making fun of Obama for calling for conservation as though it was the only element of his energy plan, which is what ticked me off enough to write my initial post.
But, short-term economic problems notwithstanding, the long-term trend of the country and for the world is growth.
That's because the long-term price for resources is downwards. When, in the short or mid-term it's not, the economic trend is for stagnation or recession.
Even if save 600,000 barrels of oil inflating our tires, the economy will still eventually grow and need more than those 600,000 barrels--even if we keep inflating our tires. We STILL need to drill to prepare for the future.
You seem to have gotten the wrong impressison here. I'm not against all drilling. I'm pointing out how ridiculous it is that you're making fun of Obama for advocating something *completely reasonable*, and for your treatment of drilling as a short term solution, especially when we're talking about such a small amount of capacity. I actually see trading trilling for repealed tax incentives as a reasonable compromise. And, apparently, so does Obama.
We're talking about capacity, not the amount produced. As the report itself says on page 31: "Tight spare capacity is another supportive factor, especially against the background of rising tension over Iranâ(TM)s nuclear activities." Spare capacity means there's still an ability to produce more than we need, and that's all that's necessary to keep prices in check. When we no longer have that ability, we're toast.
Sorry, but it doesn't work that way. The tigher the capacity, the harder it is to get it where you need it, and the more prices rise. The more prices rise, the more the world economy slows There's no magical tipping point when pric
The Merlin 1-C has nearly twice the thrust of a Centaur engine (~110k versus ~65k). I doubt the Lewis Research Center has the capability to handle engines that big. At the very least, it's certainly not big enough for an entire Falcon-1 first stage; that wouldn't even fit inside the chamber (max height of 50 feet).
The residual thrust problem -- short of building a gigantic vacuum chamber, what do you expect them to do that would have determined that residual thrust was going to be more than they expected? They're already doing CFD simulations.
In any case, they aren't doing that well at reducing cost - Falcon 9 for instance is 5 million dollars per flight more expensive than Proton (albeit it with a slightly bigger capacity)
Falcon 9: $36.7M / 12,500kg Falcon 9 Heavy: $94.5M / 29,610kg Proton M: 21,000kg. Price was $85-90M in 1999 ($107-$114M today with US CPI inflation, more if you use Russian inflation, and even more when you consider that the inflation for rocketry components is higher than that for general consumer goods)
I don't see how you can criticize the Falcon launch series on pricing. Especially since they're not assuming reuse in Falcon pricing, yet the vehicles are designed to be able to have some degree of reuse if properly recovered, which would lower prices further.
No, but some told him he'd be daft to launch from a high-corrosion environment;) That said, they seem to have dealt with the corrosion problems from the first flight well.
Compared to almost all of the other private space startups (and there've been a lot of them), SpaceX, by virtue of having practically gotten to orbit on flight 2 and making it this far on flight 3, is way ahead of the game. Most don't even make it to the point of actually shooting for orbit.
That might have been the original intent, but if you listen to his quote, he's basically insinuating that there's no need to drill because we can supposedly save more simply by inflating our tires; he's mocking the need to drill for oil by suggesting that we can essentially get just as much by inflating our tires.
He's mocking how little oil drilling in the restricted areas would return. And he's absolutely right about that.
Even if you use his 3% figure, that's 600,000 barrels per day. To suggest that that's more than we can get by drilling our known petroleum reserves is not accurate.
The Bush admin's estimates for offshore drilling are 200,000bbl/day by 2030. The most extreme estimate I've seen is 3m bbl/day, but, for starters, that also includes ANWR, which neither Obama *nor* McCain support drilling in, and assumes that all of the oil will be immediately exploited, which is obviously unrealistic, given today's drill ship and rig rents and the fact that oil is a fungible commodity -- you get it wherever it's cheapest first.
But our economy and demand for oil will continue to grow.
Have you checked our economic growth figures lately? Or the world's, for that matter? We're in the red, and the world is only slightly in the black.
So we'd get a one-time bump of 3% but our consumption will still increase so we still need more oil.
What part of "short term" is it that you're having trouble with -- the word "short" or the word "term"? This is one of several *short term* things Obama has suggested, and one that is recommended by virtually every expert in the field. The fact that you're making fun of it is really just a pathetic reflection on you. If you want to discuss his many other short term plans, or his medium to long term plans, I'd be glad to, but you'll actually have to have *READ* them first.
It does NOT negate the need to drill for more oil which is what Obama's mocking statements effectively imply.
Feel free to put all the words in his mouth that you want. It should be obvious to anyone that he's showing how little oil offshore drilling will give, in that merely inflating your tires properly can equal it.
Of course, Obama has started waffling. He originally believed (accurately, I might add) that we shouldn't tap the strategic oil reserve but now he thinks we should.
Wrong (although, since this has been misreported a fair amount, you can be forgiven for believing that). He believes that we should do a swap of light oil from the reserve for heavy oil. Which I think is a great idea; right now, we have a lot of capacity for handling light but not enough for heavy. New heavy capacity is being built, but it's not ready yet.
Which is an inherent admission that to reduce prices, we need more oil on the market. Guess what? Drilling will produce that.
There are several things wrong with that statement.
1) Offshore drilling means oil in 5-10 years -- not in 2 years, and certainly not now. Drilling is a *long term* way to adjust market supply. 2) Reduction in consumption is equivalent to adding more supply, except that reductions in consumption happen *immediately*.
Obama has an energy plan? Regardless of what his stated plan is, it seems it's more dictated by tire inflation and the whims of polls telling him he was fighting a losing battle.Nope. There is still more oil being produced on a daily basis than there is consumed.
Nope. World oil supply today is 87M BBD, while world demand is 88M BBD.
The price of oil is currently being driven by perceptions of the market, not by insufficient oil.
Gee, now who's energy plan, in the "short term" section, includes cracking down on speculators? (hint: not McCain's).
If you want to see REAL high oil prices, wait for the day that the world actually needs more oil than it is producing. At that point, we're toast. Which is why we need to start drilling
I look forward to seeing your vaccuum chamber that's large enough to accomodate a Merlin 1-C engine test firing and can remove the exhaust as fast as it's created so as to maintain the vaccuum.
Even NASA couldn't have done tests that would have revealed this one. You might argue that their simulations would somehow have revealed it better than SpaceX's, but even that would be a tough claim to make. I doubt SpaceX is using anything but top of the line CFD simulations on their engines.
People like Pike ignore history. Just look at the failures that occured when they merely tried to modify Atlas for commercial launches -- let alone when they started out the Atlas program. Virtually-from-scratch rocket designs are incredibly risky ventures. And apart from a couple things like the pintle injectors, that's what the Falcon series is -- from scratch. It's utterly ridiculous to expect a from-scratch orbital rocket to work perfectly right away. And really, only their first failure could be credited to anything close to negligence in design or testing (incompatible alloys in contact with each other, combined with the salty, corrosive environment at Kwaj). In their second launch, their simulations had shown that they wouldn't need a baffle; a number of rocket upper stages have gotten by without baffles before. It turns out that the simulation was wrong. What more could they have done with another thousand, or ten thousand people for that matter? It's not like you can do several minutes of zero-G vaccuum flight testing in any environment other than an actual launch. With this third launch, their engine testing was no less vigorous than that used by NASA when testing modifications to its engines. The problem was that while thrust was well exhaused on earth 1.5 seconds after cutoff, in a vaccuum, it lasted longer. It'd have been virtually impossible on Earth for them to have discovered the residual thrust problem from their new engine; you're not going to realistically be able to construct such a massive vaccuum chamber that can evacuate that much rocket exhaust that fast, and you'd still have the corrupting influence of gravity on your tests anyways.
Exactly. I find this sort of talk a breath of fresh air. It reminds me of Gene Kranz -- the take-no-prisoners, failure-is-not-an-option NASA ground control manager who, among other things, ran the mission control "Tiger Team" during the Apollo 13 disaster.
Musk isn't so much speaking to investors as he is to his own people back in SpaceX. Anyone who watched the video could hear the elation of the crowds at SpaceX, mostly SpaceX employees, as the rocket lifted off the pad, and the renewed cheers with every significant milestone -- Mach 1, Max-Q, etc. You didn't need to be able to see them to picture their faces. I'm sure this was crushing to them. What they need right now isn't generic manager-speak; they need to know that some guy with deep pockets at the top of the company is going to fight like a tiger to keep this thing going until they hit their goal.
Its not that there's not the potential for big returns. Quite to the contrary, if they actually get the bugs ironed out and hit their price target, they're going to make an utter mint. The problem is the risk. The private rocketry landscape is littered with the graves of equally ambitious companies. What makes SpaceX interesting is how much capital they have behind them and how far along they are. They actually stand a chance of pulling it off, and I think that's what makes them so interesting. But it's still a very risky investment, because rocketry is a very tough business in comparison to other investments people might throw their money into.
The problem being that the sets 'folks who share that passion' and 'folks who have significant money to invest' have essentially zero overlap.
There's pretty much a whole class of dotcom-wealthy geeks in Silicon Valley who are a living contradiction to that statement. Let me tell you, for the most part, it's not movie stars who are plopping $100k down for Tesla Roadsters.
Investments as far out on the bell curve as SpaceX have always had a hard time finding capital.
SpaceX's third failure in a row just occurred and they just got a brand new influx of investment capital.
The thing that drives me crazy about this whole thing is when people like you act like this is Obama's energy plan. He was asked what people can do right now to affect our oil consumption, and he answered with something that's A) absolutely true, and B) recommended by people on both sides of the aisle (I watched the Governator say almost the exact same thing on CNN just a week earlier). So why on earth are you mocking him for it? He's released detailed energy plans, so it's completely unfair to pretend like his energy plan is "inflate your tires". If you want to criticize his *energy plan*, then by all means, go ahead, but don't mock something that's true that he said in response to a question! It's people like you that Stephen Colbert is making fun of when he talks about truthiness.
It's a fact that pretty much all people can do *right now* is properly inflate their tires, drive slower, accelerate slower, combine or eliminate trips, and take alternative transportation. The question is what can be done in the medium and long term. This is where reasonable people differ. McCain calls for a one-time $300M "battery prize", a revenue-neutral cap and trade system, offshore drilling, no ANWR drilling, improved CAFE standards, a gas tax holiday, oil released from the strategic reserve, and tax breaks for all companies, incl. oil companies. Obama calls for crackdowns on excessive speculation, is willing to compromise on offshore drilling, no ANWR drilling, significantly improved CAFE standards, a strategic reserve oil swap (light for heavy), enhanced oil recovery, a revenue-positive cap & trade system ($15B/year), several B$ more from repealing oil company tax incentives, and with all that revenue to go investments in renewables, with a focus on BEVs/PHEVs and a smart grid to stabilize intermittent power sources. In short, they share some elements and oppose others. *Neither* of them has the plan, "inflate your tires and hope for the best", the ridiculous straw man people like you are bantering about.
(And, FYI, the cost benefit of everyone inflating tires properly isn't that it saves you that much money directly. It's that the market is so tight right now that *any* relevant decrease in consumption can lead to significant oil price reductions. Look at how much oil prices have dropped recently from people reducing their driving 3-5% over the same time last year)
Slashdot Mirror
Storing hydrogen in a solid media makes the whole system even less efficient than the already atrocious well to wheels efficiency of a hydrogen car. Plus, it's still gaseous as it *leaves* the storage medium. A tubing or fuel cell leak will still vent it and allow it to collect under your hood, in the cabin (it diffuses through almost anything and likes to follow pipes), a garage, an overhang, etc. And it has a minuscule ignition energy requirement and an extremely broad explosive range for fuel-air mixtures. Plus, H2 deflagrations readily evolve into detonations.
Oh, and to the GP: Power transmission in the US is 92.8% efficient (a lot more efficient than most people assume), and li-ion batteries are 96-99.9% efficient. There are a few other losses -- chargers are ~93% efficient and electric motors will usually get 85-90% efficiency in a normal drivecycle.
It's not so much any one aspect of a hydrogen car that's the problem as it is all of them. Commercial electrolysis is 50-80% efficient. There are some new techs coming out like liquid or nanoparticle catalysts that could boost this higher; we'll have to see. Fuel cells are ~60-70% efficient in and of themselves, but they need support infrastructure, such as compressors and heaters, which add parasitic losses and bring the fuel cell stack as a whole down to ~40% efficiency. There's also hydrogen compression and pumping, which will lose you another 10-20% of your total enregy. And, of course, there's still an electric motor. All in all, it's pretty darned bad, and there's no ready solution to make it anywhere close to EV efficiency.
Even with green power, efficiency is critical. Who wants 3-4 times the desert acreage covered in solar? Who wants 3-4 times the coastline covered in wind turbines? Who wants 3-4 times the rivers flooded for hydro? And so on.
From the article let us assume this car requires $2000 worth of batteries every year.
If you're dumb and use lead-acid, sure.
If you use the long-life automotive li-ions, you're set for either most or all of your vehicle's entire lifespan, factory to recycling center.
I have a feeling these myths are going to be around for a long time :P
You still don't have me convinced. The fact is that batteries have to get a whole whole whole WHOLE lot better before they are reliable
You've never used LiP before, have you? LiP, stabilized spinels, titanates, SCiB, etc, are all good for thousands of cycles, many years, and operation at temperatures ranging from well below zero to hotter than it ever gets on Earth in normal conditions. They can take abuse like it's going out of style.
These are not the batteries of ten years ago.
and compact enough to compare to the energy density and ease of use of gasoline.
In a typical car, batteries don't compete for size and weight with gasoline. They compete with the ICE and all of its support systems. Electric motors are small and lightweight. It's a case of one side having a heavy drivetrain and a light fuel, while the other has a light drivetrain and heavy fuel. Yes, gasoline vehicles still win in this regard, but the competition isn't as far off as it used to be, and the next gen batteries should be pretty much breakeven if not better.
Charging has to get a lot faster
You've never heard of Level 3 charging, have you? Ranges from a couple dozen kilowatts to 250kW or so. There's already a network of 60kW chargers across Oahu. As for charger prices, the lower-end level 3 chargers are $30-40k, while the upper end are $100-150k. Look up AeroVironment's PosiCharge line for an example. As for the batteries, LiP and stabilized spinels can charge in 15 minutes, the titanates in 5-10, SCiB in 5 or so, and so on.
lifetime has to get a lot longer.
To give you an idea of what we're talking about, LG Chem expects ~40 years out of their cells, and most new EV makers are looking at ten year warranties on their packs.
then you aren't saving the environment
No lithium ions are very toxic. The ones with cobalt cathodes are minimally toxic. Many automotive li-ions don't even have that, and are essentially nontoxic.
Where's that 60 cents coming from? That implies well over a hundred thousand dollars in your average car's lifespan.
Sounds like you may want something like the Aptera Typ-1e. Doesn't have ABS (at least as far as they've announced), though -- however, it's only 1500 pounds, so the stopping distance should be similar to that of a normal car with ABS. Also, doesn't have power steering, but again, at Aptera Forum or Aptera Wiki if you want to learn more about it than I have space to cover here.
Actually, this implies just the opposite. Cell membranes (meat) are easy for the body to break down. Cell walls (plants) are quite difficult, and cooking greatly facilitates their digestion. Cooking meat usually somewhat increases its caloric density (by driving water off, making it denser), but *decreases* its total calories (by driving fat off and breaking some proteins down). Cooking plants doesn't increase their calories, but generally makes them more bioavailable. It also lets you eat a more diverse variety of plants; many wild plants are toxic in their uncooked form, and heat denatures the toxins. In many more, heat won't denature the toxins, but repeated boils in changes of water can get rid of them. And, apart from some certain hunter gatherer societies (such as the Innuit), most hunter-gatherer groups get about 80% of their calories from plants.
So, really, it's just the opposite of what you're suggesting.
Your thoughts on this one, then?
------
Claims:
It is claimed:
1. A display control apparatus for image forming apparatus that features: a first operation panel with which operators can select multiple functions of an image forming apparatus that has aforementioned multiple functions; a second operation panel that is configured so that it can be loaded and unloaded freely to/from the aforementioned image forming apparatus and with which operators can select aforementioned multiple functions; a detection means to detect whether the second operation panel is loaded or not when the aforementioned image forming apparatus is turned on; and a controlling means that controls items that are displayed on the first operation panel according to the result of detection by the aforementioned detection means.
2. A display control apparatus for image forming apparatus that features: a first operation panel with which operators can select multiple functions of an image forming apparatus that has aforementioned multiple functions; a second operation panel that is configured so that it can be loaded and unloaded freely to/from the aforementioned image forming apparatus and with which operators can select aforementioned multiple functions; a detection means to detect whether the second operation panel is loaded or not when the aforementioned image forming apparatus is turned on; and a controlling means that controls the display items so that predefined display items are displayed on the aforementioned first operation panel when the aforementioned detection means determines that the aforementioned second operation panel is not loaded, and adding to the predefined display items, at least a mode button that can switch the display items on the second operation panel is displayed when the aforementioned detection means determines that the aforementioned second operation panel is loaded.
3. A method of providing user interface displays in an image forming apparatus, the image forming apparatus having a first, standard display device and a second, optional display device, the method comprising testing if the second, optional display device is available if the second, optional display device is available, then providing a first standard user interface to the first display device and an operation guidance interface to the second display device if the second, optional display is not available, then providing a second standard interface to the first display device wherein the first standard interface includes an option for the user to select a different interface and the second standard interface lacks an option for the user to select a different interface.
4. The method of providing user interface displays in an image forming apparatus of claim 3, wherein if a user selects the option for the different interface, then providing the different interface to the first display device and the second display device
5. The method of providing user interface displays in an image forming apparatus of claim 4, wherein the different interface comprises an advanced interface.
6. The method of providing user interface displays in an image forming apparatus of claim 5, wherein the advanced interface includes an option for the user to select a custom interface.
7. The method of providing user interface displays in an image forming apparatus of claim 6 further comprising, if the user selects the option for the custom interface, then providing the custom interface to the first display device and the second display device.
8. The method of providing user interface displays in an image forming apparatus of claim 3, wherein the first standard interface and the second standard interface are substantially identical except for the option for the user to select a different interface.
9. The method of providing user interface displays in an image forming apparatus which i
Very good points all around. Indeed, even if nothing else of use comes from this, the amount of experience SpaceX has been building that's been sorely lacking in this country for decades will be a great boon to whoever follows them.
Buying Tesla's at retail is not investing.
It shows wealth and passion for geeky interests, which fundamentally disroves the above claim. If you're wanting to revise the claim, then go ahead, but don't get mad at me for demonstrating that what was written is false. Of course, even a revised claim, such as "even weathy geeks aren't willing to invest in high-risk items that require an interest in geeky passions", is likewise easily disprovable, given how readily SpaceX has gotten investments (including $20M right after their last failure) from this same community. And likewise, Tesla Motors, for that matter.
I'm talking about exactly what I said I was talking about: Folks who *both* "share the passion" amd "have significant money to invest" are *NOT* zero overlap. There's quite a large number of them, actually.
Even if it's only an extra few hundred thousand barrels of oil, it behooves us (and the entire world) to have that capacity online and ready to go. Because if we see the day that demand exceeds capacity, even by a few barrels per day, get ready for some truly high prices.
It doesn't work that way. The tighter the capacity, the higher the prices. There's no sudden point where oil jumps from $100 a barrel to $1000 a barrel because someone consumed an extra gallon. The tighter the capacity, even if there's potentially excess, the harder it becomes to keep all markets supplied.
Also, I've seen that claim of 200,000 barrels per day but I haven't seen the source material. Do you have a link handy?
This cites an EIA (DOE) study on the subject.
And you want to bank our future on the bet that the national and worldwide economic recession will be bad forever?
It's going to be bad as long as energy costs are high. You seem to be having trouble with the fact that there's no sudden tipping point when consumption surpasses production and prices suddenly make a gigantic spike. High oil prices hinder economic growth. Increased supply can help, but decreased consumption is far more effective in the short term; you can decrease consumption far faster than you can add supply.
Two answers: 1) The "5-10 years" is not accurate. When an oil company decides to drill, it doesn't take that long to deploy. 2-3 years is more accurate.
According to my father, who is a president of an oil supermajor's US division, when I asked him about how long it'd take for a new offshore facility (especially the deepwaters, as we're talking about in a lot of these places) to come online, his estimate was about 7 years. So, let's see. Oil company president or random slashdot poster, who to believe here...
Are you even aware of the rig and drillship shortage that's causing problems for the industry right now?
2) We need a long-term solution, not just a quick fix.
No, we need *both*.
No-one is saying that it doesn't make sense to conserve, too.
*You* are. You were making fun of Obama for calling for conservation as though it was the only element of his energy plan, which is what ticked me off enough to write my initial post.
But, short-term economic problems notwithstanding, the long-term trend of the country and for the world is growth.
That's because the long-term price for resources is downwards. When, in the short or mid-term it's not, the economic trend is for stagnation or recession.
Even if save 600,000 barrels of oil inflating our tires, the economy will still eventually grow and need more than those 600,000 barrels--even if we keep inflating our tires. We STILL need to drill to prepare for the future.
You seem to have gotten the wrong impressison here. I'm not against all drilling. I'm pointing out how ridiculous it is that you're making fun of Obama for advocating something *completely reasonable*, and for your treatment of drilling as a short term solution, especially when we're talking about such a small amount of capacity. I actually see trading trilling for repealed tax incentives as a reasonable compromise. And, apparently, so does Obama.
We're talking about capacity, not the amount produced. As the report itself says on page 31: "Tight spare capacity is another supportive factor, especially against the background of rising tension over Iranâ(TM)s nuclear activities." Spare capacity means there's still an ability to produce more than we need, and that's all that's necessary to keep prices in check. When we no longer have that ability, we're toast.
Sorry, but it doesn't work that way. The tigher the capacity, the harder it is to get it where you need it, and the more prices rise. The more prices rise, the more the world economy slows There's no magical tipping point when pric
The Merlin 1-C has nearly twice the thrust of a Centaur engine (~110k versus ~65k). I doubt the Lewis Research Center has the capability to handle engines that big. At the very least, it's certainly not big enough for an entire Falcon-1 first stage; that wouldn't even fit inside the chamber (max height of 50 feet).
The residual thrust problem -- short of building a gigantic vacuum chamber, what do you expect them to do that would have determined that residual thrust was going to be more than they expected? They're already doing CFD simulations.
In any case, they aren't doing that well at reducing cost - Falcon 9 for instance is 5 million dollars per flight more expensive than Proton (albeit it with a slightly bigger capacity)
Falcon 9: $36.7M / 12,500kg
Falcon 9 Heavy: $94.5M / 29,610kg
Proton M: 21,000kg. Price was $85-90M in 1999 ($107-$114M today with US CPI inflation, more if you use Russian inflation, and even more when you consider that the inflation for rocketry components is higher than that for general consumer goods)
I don't see how you can criticize the Falcon launch series on pricing. Especially since they're not assuming reuse in Falcon pricing, yet the vehicles are designed to be able to have some degree of reuse if properly recovered, which would lower prices further.
No, but some told him he'd be daft to launch from a high-corrosion environment ;) That said, they seem to have dealt with the corrosion problems from the first flight well.
Compared to almost all of the other private space startups (and there've been a lot of them), SpaceX, by virtue of having practically gotten to orbit on flight 2 and making it this far on flight 3, is way ahead of the game. Most don't even make it to the point of actually shooting for orbit.
Oh, and by the way -- McCain supporters are the *last* people who should ever complain about waffling. He's made an entire career out of it.
That might have been the original intent, but if you listen to his quote, he's basically insinuating that there's no need to drill because we can supposedly save more simply by inflating our tires; he's mocking the need to drill for oil by suggesting that we can essentially get just as much by inflating our tires.
He's mocking how little oil drilling in the restricted areas would return. And he's absolutely right about that.
Even if you use his 3% figure, that's 600,000 barrels per day. To suggest that that's more than we can get by drilling our known petroleum reserves is not accurate.
The Bush admin's estimates for offshore drilling are 200,000bbl/day by 2030. The most extreme estimate I've seen is 3m bbl/day, but, for starters, that also includes ANWR, which neither Obama *nor* McCain support drilling in, and assumes that all of the oil will be immediately exploited, which is obviously unrealistic, given today's drill ship and rig rents and the fact that oil is a fungible commodity -- you get it wherever it's cheapest first.
But our economy and demand for oil will continue to grow.
Have you checked our economic growth figures lately? Or the world's, for that matter? We're in the red, and the world is only slightly in the black.
So we'd get a one-time bump of 3% but our consumption will still increase so we still need more oil.
What part of "short term" is it that you're having trouble with -- the word "short" or the word "term"? This is one of several *short term* things Obama has suggested, and one that is recommended by virtually every expert in the field. The fact that you're making fun of it is really just a pathetic reflection on you. If you want to discuss his many other short term plans, or his medium to long term plans, I'd be glad to, but you'll actually have to have *READ* them first.
It does NOT negate the need to drill for more oil which is what Obama's mocking statements effectively imply.
Feel free to put all the words in his mouth that you want. It should be obvious to anyone that he's showing how little oil offshore drilling will give, in that merely inflating your tires properly can equal it.
Of course, Obama has started waffling. He originally believed (accurately, I might add) that we shouldn't tap the strategic oil reserve but now he thinks we should.
Wrong (although, since this has been misreported a fair amount, you can be forgiven for believing that). He believes that we should do a swap of light oil from the reserve for heavy oil. Which I think is a great idea; right now, we have a lot of capacity for handling light but not enough for heavy. New heavy capacity is being built, but it's not ready yet.
Which is an inherent admission that to reduce prices, we need more oil on the market. Guess what? Drilling will produce that.
There are several things wrong with that statement.
1) Offshore drilling means oil in 5-10 years -- not in 2 years, and certainly not now. Drilling is a *long term* way to adjust market supply.
2) Reduction in consumption is equivalent to adding more supply, except that reductions in consumption happen *immediately*.
Obama has an energy plan? Regardless of what his stated plan is, it seems it's more dictated by tire inflation and the whims of polls telling him he was fighting a losing battle.Nope. There is still more oil being produced on a daily basis than there is consumed.
Nope. World oil supply today is 87M BBD, while world demand is 88M BBD.
The price of oil is currently being driven by perceptions of the market, not by insufficient oil.
Gee, now who's energy plan, in the "short term" section, includes cracking down on speculators? (hint: not McCain's).
If you want to see REAL high oil prices, wait for the day that the world actually needs more oil than it is producing. At that point, we're toast. Which is why we need to start drilling
I look forward to seeing your vaccuum chamber that's large enough to accomodate a Merlin 1-C engine test firing and can remove the exhaust as fast as it's created so as to maintain the vaccuum.
Even NASA couldn't have done tests that would have revealed this one. You might argue that their simulations would somehow have revealed it better than SpaceX's, but even that would be a tough claim to make. I doubt SpaceX is using anything but top of the line CFD simulations on their engines.
People like Pike ignore history. Just look at the failures that occured when they merely tried to modify Atlas for commercial launches -- let alone when they started out the Atlas program. Virtually-from-scratch rocket designs are incredibly risky ventures. And apart from a couple things like the pintle injectors, that's what the Falcon series is -- from scratch. It's utterly ridiculous to expect a from-scratch orbital rocket to work perfectly right away. And really, only their first failure could be credited to anything close to negligence in design or testing (incompatible alloys in contact with each other, combined with the salty, corrosive environment at Kwaj). In their second launch, their simulations had shown that they wouldn't need a baffle; a number of rocket upper stages have gotten by without baffles before. It turns out that the simulation was wrong. What more could they have done with another thousand, or ten thousand people for that matter? It's not like you can do several minutes of zero-G vaccuum flight testing in any environment other than an actual launch. With this third launch, their engine testing was no less vigorous than that used by NASA when testing modifications to its engines. The problem was that while thrust was well exhaused on earth 1.5 seconds after cutoff, in a vaccuum, it lasted longer. It'd have been virtually impossible on Earth for them to have discovered the residual thrust problem from their new engine; you're not going to realistically be able to construct such a massive vaccuum chamber that can evacuate that much rocket exhaust that fast, and you'd still have the corrupting influence of gravity on your tests anyways.
Exactly. I find this sort of talk a breath of fresh air. It reminds me of Gene Kranz -- the take-no-prisoners, failure-is-not-an-option NASA ground control manager who, among other things, ran the mission control "Tiger Team" during the Apollo 13 disaster.
Musk isn't so much speaking to investors as he is to his own people back in SpaceX. Anyone who watched the video could hear the elation of the crowds at SpaceX, mostly SpaceX employees, as the rocket lifted off the pad, and the renewed cheers with every significant milestone -- Mach 1, Max-Q, etc. You didn't need to be able to see them to picture their faces. I'm sure this was crushing to them. What they need right now isn't generic manager-speak; they need to know that some guy with deep pockets at the top of the company is going to fight like a tiger to keep this thing going until they hit their goal.
Its not that there's not the potential for big returns. Quite to the contrary, if they actually get the bugs ironed out and hit their price target, they're going to make an utter mint. The problem is the risk. The private rocketry landscape is littered with the graves of equally ambitious companies. What makes SpaceX interesting is how much capital they have behind them and how far along they are. They actually stand a chance of pulling it off, and I think that's what makes them so interesting. But it's still a very risky investment, because rocketry is a very tough business in comparison to other investments people might throw their money into.
The problem being that the sets 'folks who share that passion' and 'folks who have significant money to invest' have essentially zero overlap.
There's pretty much a whole class of dotcom-wealthy geeks in Silicon Valley who are a living contradiction to that statement. Let me tell you, for the most part, it's not movie stars who are plopping $100k down for Tesla Roadsters.
Investments as far out on the bell curve as SpaceX have always had a hard time finding capital.
SpaceX's third failure in a row just occurred and they just got a brand new influx of investment capital.
The thing that drives me crazy about this whole thing is when people like you act like this is Obama's energy plan. He was asked what people can do right now to affect our oil consumption, and he answered with something that's A) absolutely true, and B) recommended by people on both sides of the aisle (I watched the Governator say almost the exact same thing on CNN just a week earlier). So why on earth are you mocking him for it? He's released detailed energy plans, so it's completely unfair to pretend like his energy plan is "inflate your tires". If you want to criticize his *energy plan*, then by all means, go ahead, but don't mock something that's true that he said in response to a question! It's people like you that Stephen Colbert is making fun of when he talks about truthiness.
It's a fact that pretty much all people can do *right now* is properly inflate their tires, drive slower, accelerate slower, combine or eliminate trips, and take alternative transportation. The question is what can be done in the medium and long term. This is where reasonable people differ. McCain calls for a one-time $300M "battery prize", a revenue-neutral cap and trade system, offshore drilling, no ANWR drilling, improved CAFE standards, a gas tax holiday, oil released from the strategic reserve, and tax breaks for all companies, incl. oil companies. Obama calls for crackdowns on excessive speculation, is willing to compromise on offshore drilling, no ANWR drilling, significantly improved CAFE standards, a strategic reserve oil swap (light for heavy), enhanced oil recovery, a revenue-positive cap & trade system ($15B/year), several B$ more from repealing oil company tax incentives, and with all that revenue to go investments in renewables, with a focus on BEVs/PHEVs and a smart grid to stabilize intermittent power sources. In short, they share some elements and oppose others. *Neither* of them has the plan, "inflate your tires and hope for the best", the ridiculous straw man people like you are bantering about.
(And, FYI, the cost benefit of everyone inflating tires properly isn't that it saves you that much money directly. It's that the market is so tight right now that *any* relevant decrease in consumption can lead to significant oil price reductions. Look at how much oil prices have dropped recently from people reducing their driving 3-5% over the same time last year)
And Obama, for that matter.