Ah hell... just to liven the discussion up... how about we take this design, replace the engine and gasoline with a very small fuel cell and hydrogen? That would solve the environmental problems.
Btw, where is the gasoline stored in this bike? Inside the frame?
Instead of shutting down high bandwidth users or charging them extra fees, the ISPs should just prioritize packets: the more bandwidth a user uses, the more his packets get deprioritized. That way the heavy users get to use all the "leftover bandwidth" that the light users didn't use, and the light users get priority (and hence, good network performance).
Such a setup would allow for full utilitization of the network bandwidth and avoid all the hassle of pissing people off by sending them extra bills or suspending their account.
I guess any space technology improvement is a good one, but does it really need to be so brute-force-ish? Whatever happened to the NASA of old that created the shuttle?
You consider blasting yourself into space on top of a giant, fuel-guzzling, uber-polluting tower of burning noxious chemicals more graceful than simply climbing up at a leisurely pace? I think you've got it backwards.
I think it is good to at least gaze into the future of possibilities and while this certainly would make for cheap satellite launches, etc.. I am skeptical at how safe it would be to send humans up or back on it.
I think you are suffering from a blind spot -- just because rocket launches are what you're used to doesn't mean they are "safe" by any stretch of the imagination. Getting into space by means of a space elevator (where a malfunction means you can simply abort and safely descend again) is much safer than by rocket launch (where a malfunction means you will be either blown into a million pieces or fall to the ocean to be smashed flat)
Say it comes to a grinding halt 1/2 way up. What on earth do you send to rescue the people off it this time?
Most likely, people in the elevator would just evacuate to the escape pod, which would then use friction braking and gravity to deliver them safely back to Earth. Afterwards, a climber vehicle could be sent up to fix or remove the broken elevator.
Newby question here (IANAPhysicist), but wouldn't the elevator be a heavy load on the satellite supporting it? Wouldn't it exert a force downward towards the earth, thereby forcing it to continuously pull up to counter that force?
It would, but fortunately the spinning of the Earth provides that continuous upwards force (the same force that would cause the whole thing to fly off into space if we "let go" of the bottom of the ribbon). As long as the center of mass of the ribbon was sufficiently farther away than the "break even" point between gravity and centripetal acceleration, there wouldn't be a problem.
Re:'Because We Can' good enough reason?
on
The Space Elevator
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· Score: 1
Well, sure, shuttles are quite expensive to launch and are not flawless by any means. But what was lost recently? 7 lives, a bit of research and a relatively moderate chunk of change
... and we also lost the future, the one where broad exploration of space was possible. Right now space exploration is completely stymied by the high cost, high risk, and high complexity of reaching Earth orbit.
Ever thought about the effect of a disaster with one of these elevators? Use your imagination.
Yes, people have. And if you set aside paranoia and fear of the unknown, there simply isn't any significant danger.
Neato factor just doesn't cut it for me, I need real reasons that outweight the risks
The risks of a space elevator are smaller than those of our current space program. The reward is access to space that is two order of magnitude or more cheaper than it is now.
If we our choice is between mining the Earth and mining the moon, I prefer mining the moon. There are fewer species to drive to extinction there (AFAIK;^))
I tend to agree. First of all, who betrays their friend by releasing job-endangering material to the public?
Well, as the Yale article says (around paragraph #357, boy that's a long article!), everybody and nobody. Most likely she sent it to people who thought it was cool and confidential, but one or more of them shared it with someone they trusted, who didn't realize it was confidential... and the rest is history. There's no need to posit maliciousness when carelessness will suffice.
Perhaps so... in which case you could modify your program so that after a certain amount of such abuse, it blacklists the abusing IP address -- ie. it drops all connections from that IP address and refuses to accept any more from it.
(Yeah, I know, then the spammer can just connect from other IP addresses... but you have to admit it would be a pain for him to have to do that)
Never mind whether MHz or MFLOPS or any other particular speed measurement matters -- I submit that speed itself no longer matters.
Gaming aside, both at work and at home, any processor faster than around, say, 500Mhz is fast enough for most anything I need it to do. HOWEVER, at work we are having problems with modern chips because they are too power hungry and produce too much heat. (Adding bigger fans isn't a good solution, since our systems get used in front of audiences and thus need to be very quiet... plus, fans are moving parts that will eventually fail, leading to a cooked CPU)
Hopefully in the future we will see more chips like Centrino, that are only "fast enough" but also feature low heat generation, low power consumption, and high reliability.
Give each rural dwelling a WiFi repeater node, and the signal can daisy-chain its way back to the nearest ISP-equipped town. Well, conceivably it could, anyway.
but I really doubt this will be very useful in improving many low-income families lives. I mean, sure, having Intenet access is fun and all, but I mostly see it being used for music-sharing, IM, and porn.
Music-sharing, IM, and porn are all ways to better someone's life. (if you think porn isn't, recall that it has the same effect as Viagra, which is often covered by health insurance)
Anyways, my point is the money could probably be used better somewhere else
Perhaps, but the fact is that it won't be used somewhere else, because people are unwilling or unable to apply that money elsewhere. Given that, it's nice that it can be used here.
They don't want to see a quarter-of-a-square mile of land dedicated to a gas-fired power plant here in the U.S., so how are they going to feel about 100 times that for the equivalent renewable source?
Some of the less thoughtful environmentalists will object, but the majority, who see that the alternative is worse will approve. Sometimes you have to do the right thing even if it does mean taking some heat.
Of course there is also the matter of transporting the waste safely to whatever remote destination you have in mind. Here in California the San Onofre power plant has been trying to get rid of an old reactor vessel for months, but nobody is willing to take the risk of transporting it anywhere (it's too obvious a target for terrorists, I suppose).
On the other hand, wind power is now approximately competitive price-wise with other power-generation methods, and has the advantage of not being convertible into a nuclear weapon or Chernobyl-style environmental nightmare.
It's not as if the USA is running short of land (or sea, for that matter -- there's plenty of wind offshore). So given the choice, I'd much prefer to live in a world where every country has lots of windmills as opposed to one where every country has easy access to uranium.
It is a reasonable assumption that we will develop the technology necessary to reverse the environmental impact of several hundred years of fossil fuel burning.
It is? What are you basing that assertion on, other than head-in-the-sand hope-the-problem-goes-away blind optimism?
It is also very plausible that the geosystem is not suceptible to our meddling in the first place, and would need no "fixing"
It's certainly possible, but on the other hand the vast majority of scientists agree that human CO2 emissions are causing significant global warming. If we are going to ignore their warnings just because they don't suit us, then why do any scientific research in the first place? Are you willing to gamble our civilization on the hope that things will just work themselves out? Beause I'm not.
So the only real motivations for us to change our energy sources are economical and political.
To the extent that the long-term survival of the human race and large portions of the Earth's ecosystems are economical and political issues, you're quite right.
Where do you think the electricity comes from to charge it?
In my case, it would come from wind power. Hence, it would be non-polluting. Of course this isn't an option for everyone, but as more and more non-polluting energy plants are made, electric devices such as the Segway become cleaner and cleaner. The same isn't true automobiles (yes, your new car may be less polluting than the old one you got rid of, but any given car will never improve)
Nuclear is renewable. You can breed and reprocess fuel practically forever.
According to this document, nuclear fuels can be extended by about 30% via reprocessing, which is useful but hardly makes nuclear power "renewable". Common sense and the Second Law of Thermodynamics say that you can't get something for nothing -- you have to keep shovelling new energy into the system.
"Appropriate Technology" will ruin us. Listen to the engineers, they still believe in a better tomorrow.
Their "better tomorrow" isn't better enough. I want a tomorrow where our energy sources never run out (at least, not for billions of years) and nuclear materials do not find their way into the environment or into the hands of people who would use them to kill. The best way to accomplish this (at least until fusion reactors are viable) is via non-nuclear renewable technologies.
Can you make electricity which costs 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour yet? Don't forget to add disposal costs. When you can do that, your photovoltaics will be competitive with nuclear power and sometimes natural gas.
Comparing the prices of renewable power to non-renewable power to judge environmental effects isn't appropriate unless you factor in the cost of depleting the (irreplaceable) fuel supply. Of course the non-renewable processes will be cheaper; they get their energy "for free" from the Earth's dwindling supply of fuels. You might as well say "why work for a living, when it's so much easier to spend my inheritance"? That's trivially true, but only until your inheritance runs out.
Not to mention that the cost of fossil and nuclear power almost certainly doesn't factor in the (non-trivial) costs of safeguarding their supply of fuels (i.e. how much will this year's Iraq invasion cost the US? How much does it cost to secure each nuclear plant against terrorists? How much does it cost to clean up after a nuclear plant when it is closed down or blown up?)
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Btw, where is the gasoline stored in this bike? Inside the frame?
Such a setup would allow for full utilitization of the network bandwidth and avoid all the hassle of pissing people off by sending them extra bills or suspending their account.
Whatever happened to the NASA of old that created the shuttle?
You consider blasting yourself into space on top of a giant, fuel-guzzling, uber-polluting tower of burning noxious chemicals more graceful than simply climbing up at a leisurely pace? I think you've got it backwards.
I think it is good to at least gaze into the future of possibilities and while this certainly would make for
cheap satellite launches, etc.. I am skeptical at how safe it would be to send humans up or back on it.
I think you are suffering from a blind spot -- just because rocket launches are what you're used to doesn't mean they are "safe" by any stretch of the imagination. Getting into space by means of a space elevator (where a malfunction means you can simply abort and safely descend again) is much safer than by rocket launch (where a malfunction means you will be either blown into a million pieces or fall to the ocean to be smashed flat)
Say it comes to a grinding halt 1/2 way up. What on earth do you send to rescue the people off it this
time?
Most likely, people in the elevator would just evacuate to the escape pod, which would then use friction braking and gravity to deliver them safely back to Earth. Afterwards, a climber vehicle could be sent up to fix or remove the broken elevator.
supporting it? Wouldn't it exert a force downward towards the earth, thereby forcing it to continuously
pull up to counter that force?
It would, but fortunately the spinning of the Earth provides that continuous upwards force (the same force that would cause the whole thing to fly off into space if we "let go" of the bottom of the ribbon). As long as the center of mass of the ribbon was sufficiently farther away than the "break even" point between gravity and centripetal acceleration, there wouldn't be a problem.
recently? 7 lives, a bit of research and a relatively moderate chunk of change
Ever thought about the effect of a disaster with one of these elevators? Use your imagination.
Yes, people have. And if you set aside paranoia and fear of the unknown, there simply isn't any significant danger.
Neato factor just doesn't cut it for me, I need real reasons that outweight the risks
The risks of a space elevator are smaller than those of our current space program. The reward is access to space that is two order of magnitude or more cheaper than it is now.
Well, sort of.
If you use a space elevator, on the other hand, it's like printing free money...
If we our choice is between mining the Earth and mining the moon, I prefer mining the moon. There are fewer species to drive to extinction there (AFAIK ;^))
He's using the new definition of the word "liberal", meaning roughly "someone I don't approve of".
public?
Well, as the Yale article says (around paragraph #357, boy that's a long article!), everybody and nobody. Most likely she sent it to people who thought it was cool and confidential, but one or more of them shared it with someone they trusted, who didn't realize it was confidential... and the rest is history. There's no need to posit maliciousness when carelessness will suffice.
What word should he have used instead, O wise one?
(Yeah, I know, then the spammer can just connect from other IP addresses... but you have to admit it would be a pain for him to have to do that)
Bah. I miss the days when the fastest Mac around was an Amiga running a Mac emulator.
Gaming aside, both at work and at home, any processor faster than around, say, 500Mhz is fast enough for most anything I need it to do. HOWEVER, at work we are having problems with modern chips because they are too power hungry and produce too much heat. (Adding bigger fans isn't a good solution, since our systems get used in front of audiences and thus need to be very quiet... plus, fans are moving parts that will eventually fail, leading to a cooked CPU)
Hopefully in the future we will see more chips like Centrino, that are only "fast enough" but also feature low heat generation, low power consumption, and high reliability.
Give each rural dwelling a WiFi repeater node, and the signal can daisy-chain its way back to the nearest ISP-equipped town. Well, conceivably it could, anyway.
Music-sharing, IM, and porn are all ways to better someone's life. (if you think porn isn't, recall that it has the same effect as Viagra, which is often covered by health insurance)
Anyways, my point is the money could probably be used better somewhere else
Perhaps, but the fact is that it won't be used somewhere else, because people are unwilling or unable to apply that money elsewhere. Given that, it's nice that it can be used here.
Some of the less thoughtful environmentalists will object, but the majority, who see that the alternative is worse will approve. Sometimes you have to do the right thing even if it does mean taking some heat.
Of course there is also the matter of transporting the waste safely to whatever remote destination you have in mind. Here in California the San Onofre power plant has been trying to get rid of an old reactor vessel for months, but nobody is willing to take the risk of transporting it anywhere (it's too obvious a target for terrorists, I suppose).
It's not as if the USA is running short of land (or sea, for that matter -- there's plenty of wind offshore). So given the choice, I'd much prefer to live in a world where every country has lots of windmills as opposed to one where every country has easy access to uranium.
bother fixing what was broken anymore.
You're assuming that any climatic changes will level out after 3-4 years. I'm not sure that's a valid assumption.
Or to put it another way, no matter how bad things get, there's no reason they can't continue to get worse
Today's smart oil executive will take some of his vast savings and invest in some wind farms, so that he can be tomorrow's rich wind executive.
impact of several hundred years of fossil fuel burning.
It is? What are you basing that assertion on, other than head-in-the-sand hope-the-problem-goes-away blind optimism?
It is also very plausible that the geosystem is not
suceptible to our meddling in the first place, and would need no "fixing"
It's certainly possible, but on the other hand the vast majority of scientists agree that human CO2 emissions are causing significant global warming. If we are going to ignore their warnings just because they don't suit us, then why do any scientific research in the first place? Are you willing to gamble our civilization on the hope that things will just work themselves out? Beause I'm not.
So the only real motivations for us to change our energy sources are economical and political.
To the extent that the long-term survival of the human race and large portions of the Earth's ecosystems are economical and political issues, you're quite right.
In my case, it would come from wind power. Hence, it would be non-polluting. Of course this isn't an option for everyone, but as more and more non-polluting energy plants are made, electric devices such as the Segway become cleaner and cleaner. The same isn't true automobiles (yes, your new car may be less polluting than the old one you got rid of, but any given car will never improve)
According to this document, nuclear fuels can be extended by about 30% via reprocessing, which is useful but hardly makes nuclear power "renewable". Common sense and the Second Law of Thermodynamics say that you can't get something for nothing -- you have to keep shovelling new energy into the system.
"Appropriate Technology" will ruin us. Listen to the engineers, they still believe in a better tomorrow.
Their "better tomorrow" isn't better enough. I want a tomorrow where our energy sources never run out (at least, not for billions of years) and nuclear materials do not find their way into the environment or into the hands of people who would use them to kill. The best way to accomplish this (at least until fusion reactors are viable) is via non-nuclear renewable technologies.
Comparing the prices of renewable power to non-renewable power to judge environmental effects isn't appropriate unless you factor in the cost of depleting the (irreplaceable) fuel supply. Of course the non-renewable processes will be cheaper; they get their energy "for free" from the Earth's dwindling supply of fuels. You might as well say "why work for a living, when it's so much easier to spend my inheritance"? That's trivially true, but only until your inheritance runs out.
Not to mention that the cost of fossil and nuclear power almost certainly doesn't factor in the (non-trivial) costs of safeguarding their supply of fuels (i.e. how much will this year's Iraq invasion cost the US? How much does it cost to secure each nuclear plant against terrorists? How much does it cost to clean up after a nuclear plant when it is closed down or blown up?)