Converting electrical power to and from microwave radiation is an order of magnitude more efficient than solar. Also remember that the solar panels placed in space have a large surface area than the antenna, receive more solar energy per area (due to not having losses due to the ozone layer, etc), and can beam power 24/7. So imagine if the sun was 4x more powerful, and the solar panels were 80% efficient, rather than 20%. Using these (thumbnail estimate) numbers, that makes microwave 16x more efficient per unit area than solar. It becomes even more efficient when you take into account that the sun is not as bright at other times of the day (such as 8AM, or 11PM).
If the solar panels are 80% efficient in space, you can make them 80% efficient on Earth. No matter what, you've still really only made a 4x improvement over an ideal array on Earth. Now realize that the conversion to/from microwave energy is at best only 80% efficient. So now you're down to 3.2x the efficiency.
You misunderstand, and I misspoke. It's not the panels that are more efficient, but the total system. A better way to put it is imagine the sun was 4x stronger and was high in the sky 23 hours every day. With the same panel in space, you get 16x the energy per day. After an 80% efficient microwave transmission, that comes to about 13x the power for the same number of panels.
You bring up good points about the economics of it all, I merely wanted to point out that from a physics and engineering standpoint it's a sound idea.
honestly, I haven't seen any features yet that I really consider an upgrade over XP, so perhaps someone could enlighten me about why I would even consider buying an upgrade?
Windows are stored as vector graphics in video memory under Vista and 7. Previously, they were stored as bitmaps that needed to be redrawn every frame. This enables things like viewing a thumbnail of a window from the taskbar (including video) and windows still drawing their last good state when the process locks (unlike XP and before, where the window will be plain white). It's similar to the OS X system.
There are security upgrades as well, but this reason is good enough for me.
How is explaining my favorite feature of a new operating system to someone who asked about the features a troll? In fact, how can pointing out good qualities be a troll at all?
And there was roughly the same pricing structure for every incremental release. Upgrading from Vista to Vista SP1 to Vista SP2 to 7 should still be cheaper than from OS X to 10.2 to 10.2 to 10.3 to 10.4 to 10.5.
honestly, I haven't seen any features yet that I really consider an upgrade over XP, so perhaps someone could enlighten me about why I would even consider buying an upgrade?
Windows are stored as vector graphics in video memory under Vista and 7. Previously, they were stored as bitmaps that needed to be redrawn every frame. This enables things like viewing a thumbnail of a window from the taskbar (including video) and windows still drawing their last good state when the process locks (unlike XP and before, where the window will be plain white). It's similar to the OS X system.
There are security upgrades as well, but this reason is good enough for me.
If wifi,bluetooth and am/fm waves are so similar, there must be plenty of energy floating around us. Why can't we just recover that energy?
Power your laptop from your WiFi signal.
Heck, with all the radio stations transmitting around us we should be able to pluck a few dozen frequencies and power the radio itself.
How efficient are these antennas again?
The stray microwave radiation is of a much lower average power. In addition, it is spread across a much larger spectrum, making it difficult to grab all the energy at once.
This plant will send a higher power, focused beam of a single frequency, making it highly efficient. Nokia is working on a system like you describe, though it only gets about 10mW of power currently.
So imagine if the sun was 4x more powerful, and the solar panels were 80% efficient, rather than 20%.
And yes, I am an Electrical Engineer.
The issue is that the best cells in the world are still in the high 30% range...
And yes, I do build satellites for a living, and will certainly not invest my money in this company.
Many ground based photovoltaic cells are not operating at this maximum efficiency. Regardless, microwave power efficiency will always be greater than solar. I only intended the efficiency numbers as a rough estimate.
As a satellite designer you should also recognize that it's the solar power density in space, rather than panel efficiency, that make solar so useful in space. The panels receive more energy from the sun, regardless of how efficiently they convert this energy to electricity. In space, it's about 1300W/m^2, at the equator it's about 1000W/m^2 at noon on a sunny day.
If we want another thumbnail calculation, a square meter solar panel in space gets 1300W 22.7hours a day, making an average power of 1230W. For a panel at the equator on a sunny day, assuming it gets full sun 12 hours a day, its power is only 500W on average. Any practical application (not at the equator, cloudy days, additional shade, etc) will reduce this number farther.
Obviously, the power is more efficient per unit area, both of ground and solar panel. If the costs of the satellite are low enough (to be determined), the beamed energy plant will be much more efficient.
This orbiting solar plant would have to be in a geosynchronous orbit to beam the energy to the antenna. It could not beam power 24/7.
You are correct, this was a slight overstatement.
However, the ammount of time where the satellite is in darkness is significantly less than when a ground based solar panel is in darkness. As well, when not in darkness, the solar energy density is very close to its average maximum, which is significantly more than even the noon-time maxiumum for a ground-based solar. In other words, a solar panel on earth generates less energy at 7PM than at noon (due to light passing through additional atmosphere, and even less if the panel is not aimed), but a satellite produces nearly the same amount of power whenever it is in sunlight.
The earth will occlude the sun for about 20 degrees of its 360 degree rotation at geostationary orbit. So the system will not be in sun for 1 hour, 20 minutes each day. Not 24 hour power (more like 22.7 hour), but still much better than solar. A pumped storage or other facility would still allow nighttime off-peak energy to be used during this "dark" time, or during peak hours.
First, a "few times" noon sunlight power, I think would be pretty brutal. To take you literally, it would be like standing in the sun at noon where the sun is say three times brighter than it is. I'm not a physicist, so feel free to tell me why a three times more power sun at noon wouldn't be a problem for me.
Sunlight has two components that make it uncomfortable or dangerous. First is the infrared, which is the heat energy. Second is the Ultraviolet, which can damage skin cells. Because the energy is not in infrared or UV radiation, you will experience neither of these effects. If you're worried about microwave radiation, remember that this includes the frequencies that make up the WiFi, Bluetooth, and AM/FM radio waves that pass through your body all the time.
Secondly,
Doesn't a "few times" noon sunlight power mean that your getting only a "few times" what you'd be getting from the sun by itself, which isn't all that much. Doesn't sound like your going to deliver the concentrations of power that cities need.
So, I'm inclined not to put too much stake in what you said.
Converting electrical power to and from microwave radiation is an order of magnitude more efficient than solar. Also remember that the solar panels placed in space have a large surface area than the antenna, receive more solar energy per area (due to not having losses due to the ozone layer, etc), and can beam power 24/7. So imagine if the sun was 4x more powerful, and the solar panels were 80% efficient, rather than 20%. Using these (thumbnail estimate) numbers, that makes microwave 16x more efficient per unit area than solar. It becomes even more efficient when you take into account that the sun is not as bright at other times of the day (such as 8AM, or 11PM).
But so can the smart good guys. More (and possibly better) penetration testing and verification also means that there are fewer exploitable holes. Sounds like a win-win, both from the standpoint of security and privacy.
I mean that it's possible to cite a source and yet still plagiarise. for example: When you identify a source, you do it for each section quoted. And if you don't, then you haven't identified the source. (Hognoxious) would be plagiarism, because I did not identify as a direct quote. However: "When you identify a source, you do it for each section quoted. And if you don't, then you haven't identified the source." (Hognoxious) is the proper way to direct quote. Alternatively, I could rephrase what you said and cite you as the source. However, direct text passages must always be identified as a quote.
I don't. The more we interfere here, the more likely it is that someone new is going to form a grudge against us.
Only if you help the wrong guys (i.e. those who lose)...
We helped Afghanistan against the Soviets, and they won. It didn't turn out so well when Osama Bin Laden then used a lot of the weapons and bunkers we gave them in his campaign against us.
Moral of the story: those we help will not always repay us with kindness.
Imagine the DOD budget being spent to enforce laws.
Imagine accidentally leaking classified operating parameters of our spy satellites in a (relatively) minor domestic case. And I doubt any prosecutor would want to rely on this kind of information. The defense could just claim that some classified parameters were needed to mount an effective defense, then the judge throws the evidence out when it's clear that they can't do that
Too much cost for too little payoff, even beyond the fundamental disagreement.
"Classified" is too often abused, that includes things that perhaps should automatically belong to the General Public. Public funds used to pay for things that end up privately patented or copyrighted is also another form of stealing from the public.
Besides, if you have to hide it then you must be doing something wrong is a fairer assumption on a government then it is on a free person.
Are you arguing that the satellites that detect foreign missile launches and nuclear tests aren't actually related to national security, and their results should be publicly available to other nations?
More importantly, this is one of the few times that I have heard of unclassified data obtained by a classified program being distributed. Seems odd that there is a reliance or expectation for this data, considering it originates with a classified satellite system, let alone which is directly related to national security.
Of course, neither of these numbers gives a truly useful measure: how prevalent is Blu-ray movie watching? We have an upper bound (PS3s plus stand-alone players, about 15%) on viewers. We also have a count of Blu-Ray sales (1 in 6-months per American) and a comparison to DVD sales (about 1/6th). All three taken together show that the format is far from prevalent, but also not dead on the vine. If the buying rate is distributed to the install base, then the average Blu-ray household buys about one disk every month. Is this enough to sustain the format?
"... which was launched in March". That is not "getting on a bit" - it says that replacements are not fully-functioning copies of the originals, which is worrying.
"The Air Force said it has identified several parameters in the GPS IIR-20 (M)'s navigation message that can be corrected to bring the satellite into compliance with current GPS Performance Standards"
In other words, a small workaround is needed, but the satellite will be just fine. If you only knew how often this happened in engineering.
"The degraded signals are accurate only to about 20 feet, versus about two feet for typical GPS signals, the article stated."
Sure, this should have been picked up in testing, but it's not like testing something like this is easy. The accuracy needed to detect something of this magnitude is pretty staggering.
Then only persons with nothing to lose will dare to criticize. That is bad
public policy, and the reason that various countries have "whistleblower" laws.
There's a different between going to a regulatory agency to blow the whistle, and publicly posting under a psudonym and trying to obscure the identity of yourself and others. In the first case, you are protected by law, and are directly solving the problem. In the case of a blog, you're only anonymous until someone unravels the information you made public yourself. If it wasn't the newspaper, it could have been anyone else. If he wanted to take advantage of privacy laws, he should have followed proper channels, instead of blogging it.
Granted they could throw gobs of money at some scientists but I still doubt they could assemble an equivalent knowledgable workforce as Space-X simply because anyone with rocket expertise could find a great job in many other countries, without having to worry about the oppressive NK regime.
Thing is, their current strategy will be to throw money at multiple test launches. By preventing them from getting advanced rocketry knowledge, they will need to learn by doing. This means more failed rockets, more wasted time, and more material costs. This will work against their limited monetary resources, as well as give the international community more time to actually decide to do something about it.
Your quotes around security reasons are probably unwarranted. The research in question could probably also be used to create ICBMs. At least that's the only reason that would seem justified.
ICBMs, spy satellites, and anti-satellite weapons will all have similar launch systems, exactly what we use to get humans into space. Filtering down, the individual propulsion techniques could be used in nearly any missile or rocket, as well as adapted for general explosives. Not something we'd want falling into the hands of a rogue state, especially one with nuclear capabilities. Imagine if North Korea's missile launch hadn't been a failure; that's why we don't want this kind of information getting out.
While he did not find significant indications of fraud
QED. The null hypothesis was not rejected, therefore your study determined nothing. Speculation is not science.
The study didn't prove anything, but it certainly suggested that the data was worth a closer look. This is an issue that can't be proven with statistics, but the suspicions it raises can start a bigger investigation that can prove or disprove any election tampering.
Slashdot Mirror
If the solar panels are 80% efficient in space, you can make them 80% efficient on Earth. No matter what, you've still really only made a 4x improvement over an ideal array on Earth. Now realize that the conversion to/from microwave energy is at best only 80% efficient. So now you're down to 3.2x the efficiency.
You misunderstand, and I misspoke. It's not the panels that are more efficient, but the total system. A better way to put it is imagine the sun was 4x stronger and was high in the sky 23 hours every day. With the same panel in space, you get 16x the energy per day. After an 80% efficient microwave transmission, that comes to about 13x the power for the same number of panels.
You bring up good points about the economics of it all, I merely wanted to point out that from a physics and engineering standpoint it's a sound idea.
honestly, I haven't seen any features yet that I really consider an upgrade over XP, so perhaps someone could enlighten me about why I would even consider buying an upgrade?
Windows are stored as vector graphics in video memory under Vista and 7. Previously, they were stored as bitmaps that needed to be redrawn every frame. This enables things like viewing a thumbnail of a window from the taskbar (including video) and windows still drawing their last good state when the process locks (unlike XP and before, where the window will be plain white). It's similar to the OS X system.
There are security upgrades as well, but this reason is good enough for me.
How is explaining my favorite feature of a new operating system to someone who asked about the features a troll? In fact, how can pointing out good qualities be a troll at all?
Snow Leopard is going to be sold for $30 [...]
...If you already have 10.5.
And there was roughly the same pricing structure for every incremental release. Upgrading from Vista to Vista SP1 to Vista SP2 to 7 should still be cheaper than from OS X to 10.2 to 10.2 to 10.3 to 10.4 to 10.5.
honestly, I haven't seen any features yet that I really consider an upgrade over XP, so perhaps someone could enlighten me about why I would even consider buying an upgrade?
Windows are stored as vector graphics in video memory under Vista and 7. Previously, they were stored as bitmaps that needed to be redrawn every frame. This enables things like viewing a thumbnail of a window from the taskbar (including video) and windows still drawing their last good state when the process locks (unlike XP and before, where the window will be plain white). It's similar to the OS X system.
There are security upgrades as well, but this reason is good enough for me.
If wifi,bluetooth and am/fm waves are so similar, there must be plenty of energy floating around us. Why can't we just recover that energy? Power your laptop from your WiFi signal. Heck, with all the radio stations transmitting around us we should be able to pluck a few dozen frequencies and power the radio itself.
How efficient are these antennas again?
The stray microwave radiation is of a much lower average power. In addition, it is spread across a much larger spectrum, making it difficult to grab all the energy at once.
This plant will send a higher power, focused beam of a single frequency, making it highly efficient. Nokia is working on a system like you describe, though it only gets about 10mW of power currently.
So imagine if the sun was 4x more powerful, and the solar panels were 80% efficient, rather than 20%.
And yes, I am an Electrical Engineer.
The issue is that the best cells in the world are still in the high 30% range... And yes, I do build satellites for a living, and will certainly not invest my money in this company.
Many ground based photovoltaic cells are not operating at this maximum efficiency. Regardless, microwave power efficiency will always be greater than solar. I only intended the efficiency numbers as a rough estimate.
As a satellite designer you should also recognize that it's the solar power density in space, rather than panel efficiency, that make solar so useful in space. The panels receive more energy from the sun, regardless of how efficiently they convert this energy to electricity. In space, it's about 1300W/m^2, at the equator it's about 1000W/m^2 at noon on a sunny day.
If we want another thumbnail calculation, a square meter solar panel in space gets 1300W 22.7hours a day, making an average power of 1230W. For a panel at the equator on a sunny day, assuming it gets full sun 12 hours a day, its power is only 500W on average. Any practical application (not at the equator, cloudy days, additional shade, etc) will reduce this number farther.
Obviously, the power is more efficient per unit area, both of ground and solar panel. If the costs of the satellite are low enough (to be determined), the beamed energy plant will be much more efficient.
This orbiting solar plant would have to be in a geosynchronous orbit to beam the energy to the antenna. It could not beam power 24/7.
You are correct, this was a slight overstatement.
However, the ammount of time where the satellite is in darkness is significantly less than when a ground based solar panel is in darkness. As well, when not in darkness, the solar energy density is very close to its average maximum, which is significantly more than even the noon-time maxiumum for a ground-based solar. In other words, a solar panel on earth generates less energy at 7PM than at noon (due to light passing through additional atmosphere, and even less if the panel is not aimed), but a satellite produces nearly the same amount of power whenever it is in sunlight.
The earth will occlude the sun for about 20 degrees of its 360 degree rotation at geostationary orbit. So the system will not be in sun for 1 hour, 20 minutes each day. Not 24 hour power (more like 22.7 hour), but still much better than solar. A pumped storage or other facility would still allow nighttime off-peak energy to be used during this "dark" time, or during peak hours.
Somethings seems wrong with this reasoning.
First, a "few times" noon sunlight power, I think would be pretty brutal. To take you literally, it would be like standing in the sun at noon where the sun is say three times brighter than it is. I'm not a physicist, so feel free to tell me why a three times more power sun at noon wouldn't be a problem for me.
Sunlight has two components that make it uncomfortable or dangerous. First is the infrared, which is the heat energy. Second is the Ultraviolet, which can damage skin cells. Because the energy is not in infrared or UV radiation, you will experience neither of these effects. If you're worried about microwave radiation, remember that this includes the frequencies that make up the WiFi, Bluetooth, and AM/FM radio waves that pass through your body all the time.
Secondly, Doesn't a "few times" noon sunlight power mean that your getting only a "few times" what you'd be getting from the sun by itself, which isn't all that much. Doesn't sound like your going to deliver the concentrations of power that cities need.
So, I'm inclined not to put too much stake in what you said.
Converting electrical power to and from microwave radiation is an order of magnitude more efficient than solar. Also remember that the solar panels placed in space have a large surface area than the antenna, receive more solar energy per area (due to not having losses due to the ozone layer, etc), and can beam power 24/7. So imagine if the sun was 4x more powerful, and the solar panels were 80% efficient, rather than 20%. Using these (thumbnail estimate) numbers, that makes microwave 16x more efficient per unit area than solar. It becomes even more efficient when you take into account that the sun is not as bright at other times of the day (such as 8AM, or 11PM).
And yes, I am an Electrical Engineer.
But so can the smart good guys. More (and possibly better) penetration testing and verification also means that there are fewer exploitable holes. Sounds like a win-win, both from the standpoint of security and privacy.
I mean that it's possible to cite a source and yet still plagiarise. for example:
When you identify a source, you do it for each section quoted. And if you don't, then you haven't identified the source. (Hognoxious) would be plagiarism, because I did not identify as a direct quote. However:
"When you identify a source, you do it for each section quoted. And if you don't, then you haven't identified the source." (Hognoxious) is the proper way to direct quote. Alternatively, I could rephrase what you said and cite you as the source. However, direct text passages must always be identified as a quote.
Using Wikipedia entries as if they were your own is completely unacceptable in all contexts.
Using any text from a source verbatim without identifying it as a direct quote is still plagiarism, whether or not the source is identified.
Next time you should replace 4999 of those hours with a simple BASH script.
The original files were not available. What shell do you use that compiles to paper?
I don't. The more we interfere here, the more likely it is that someone new is going to form a grudge against us.
Only if you help the wrong guys (i.e. those who lose)...
We helped Afghanistan against the Soviets, and they won. It didn't turn out so well when Osama Bin Laden then used a lot of the weapons and bunkers we gave them in his campaign against us.
Moral of the story: those we help will not always repay us with kindness.
Imagine the DOD budget being spent to enforce laws.
Imagine accidentally leaking classified operating parameters of our spy satellites in a (relatively) minor domestic case. And I doubt any prosecutor would want to rely on this kind of information. The defense could just claim that some classified parameters were needed to mount an effective defense, then the judge throws the evidence out when it's clear that they can't do that
Too much cost for too little payoff, even beyond the fundamental disagreement.
We paid for them.
"Classified" is too often abused, that includes things that perhaps should automatically belong to the General Public. Public funds used to pay for things that end up privately patented or copyrighted is also another form of stealing from the public.
Besides, if you have to hide it then you must be doing something wrong is a fairer assumption on a government then it is on a free person.
Are you arguing that the satellites that detect foreign missile launches and nuclear tests aren't actually related to national security, and their results should be publicly available to other nations?
More importantly, this is one of the few times that I have heard of unclassified data obtained by a classified program being distributed. Seems odd that there is a reliance or expectation for this data, considering it originates with a classified satellite system, let alone which is directly related to national security.
Of course, neither of these numbers gives a truly useful measure: how prevalent is Blu-ray movie watching? We have an upper bound (PS3s plus stand-alone players, about 15%) on viewers. We also have a count of Blu-Ray sales (1 in 6-months per American) and a comparison to DVD sales (about 1/6th). All three taken together show that the format is far from prevalent, but also not dead on the vine. If the buying rate is distributed to the install base, then the average Blu-ray household buys about one disk every month. Is this enough to sustain the format?
Because it's a direct quote "from the article".
I have this feeling they'd prefer just being able to hit the US or Europe with a warhead, rather than to be enriched by knowledge.
Tell that to my friend who just lost an entire web design project because he was storing it on a two year old flash drive which died.
How long would an HDD last being carried around in a pocket for 2 years?
"... which was launched in March". That is not "getting on a bit" - it says that replacements are not fully-functioning copies of the originals, which is worrying.
"The Air Force said it has identified several parameters in the GPS IIR-20 (M)'s navigation message that can be corrected to bring the satellite into compliance with current GPS Performance Standards"
In other words, a small workaround is needed, but the satellite will be just fine. If you only knew how often this happened in engineering.
"The degraded signals are accurate only to about 20 feet, versus about two feet for typical GPS signals, the article stated."
Sure, this should have been picked up in testing, but it's not like testing something like this is easy. The accuracy needed to detect something of this magnitude is pretty staggering.
Then only persons with nothing to lose will dare to criticize. That is bad public policy, and the reason that various countries have "whistleblower" laws.
There's a different between going to a regulatory agency to blow the whistle, and publicly posting under a psudonym and trying to obscure the identity of yourself and others. In the first case, you are protected by law, and are directly solving the problem. In the case of a blog, you're only anonymous until someone unravels the information you made public yourself. If it wasn't the newspaper, it could have been anyone else. If he wanted to take advantage of privacy laws, he should have followed proper channels, instead of blogging it.
Granted they could throw gobs of money at some scientists but I still doubt they could assemble an equivalent knowledgable workforce as Space-X simply because anyone with rocket expertise could find a great job in many other countries, without having to worry about the oppressive NK regime.
Thing is, their current strategy will be to throw money at multiple test launches. By preventing them from getting advanced rocketry knowledge, they will need to learn by doing. This means more failed rockets, more wasted time, and more material costs. This will work against their limited monetary resources, as well as give the international community more time to actually decide to do something about it.
Your quotes around security reasons are probably unwarranted. The research in question could probably also be used to create ICBMs. At least that's the only reason that would seem justified.
ICBMs, spy satellites, and anti-satellite weapons will all have similar launch systems, exactly what we use to get humans into space. Filtering down, the individual propulsion techniques could be used in nearly any missile or rocket, as well as adapted for general explosives. Not something we'd want falling into the hands of a rogue state, especially one with nuclear capabilities. Imagine if North Korea's missile launch hadn't been a failure; that's why we don't want this kind of information getting out.
While he did not find significant indications of fraud
QED. The null hypothesis was not rejected, therefore your study determined nothing. Speculation is not science.
The study didn't prove anything, but it certainly suggested that the data was worth a closer look. This is an issue that can't be proven with statistics, but the suspicions it raises can start a bigger investigation that can prove or disprove any election tampering.