Actually, the Skylon group predicted that the X--33 wouldn't work. They said that the X-33 was too tail heavy. And fixing it would mess up the payload fraction. And they were right.
It's difficult to get your head around just how far ahead these guys have been for about 20 years.
The ultimate reason is that they built a computer model of launch vehicles, which they fiddled with until they got a plausible vehicle. Then they did a back-back comparison with a pure-rocket vehicle, and found that there was no big advantage. Then they fiddled around more, and out popped Skylon, and then they found it *seriously* beats pure-rocket vehicles; it's not even close.
Skylon is looking at costs starting around $500/kg and then going lower. SpaceX won't be able to get down to that.
Actually, their team are were built from battle hardened rocket engineers, who had put stuff into orbit before.
I've looked at their design, been to lectures by them and asked questions. If it works, I will be absolutely gobsmacked if it isn't cheaper than SpaceX.
No, the correct order is to call security first, so the EMTs will get there ASAP, then if you have ANY reason to think it's an emergency, call 911, just in case security have held off on doing that; 911 can easily sort out multiple calls from one location.
Brownouts aren't likely; but grids of all and any design do sometimes brown or black out.
Up to about 20-30% wind/solar, brownouts are largely a non issue- the backup power already built into the network is enough to fill in the extra power.
Going forward, as the existing generating plant wears out, much of the coal plant on many networks is being converted to gas, which has a lower carbon footprint, and is somewhat more flexible, the plant is otherwise mostly paid-off, and hence cheap. It's still wearing out, but it will run less because the wind and solar will fill in, but the grid will have to run on even gas less and less because of climate change.
Past about 2017, brownouts are looking like they will gradually become non issues, because grid-level storage is looking like it will become ridiculously cheap, and because more and more solar and wind will be coming on line; they are both growing exponentially, and are likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
I see no major role for nuclear power, and the amount of power generated from nuclear will reduce over time. This is a combination of its inherent relatively high cost, the fact that people don't trust it, its reliance on (mostly fresh) water, and the long lead times that new reactors require.
Wind and solar are far from ineffective. They're growing exponentially, year on year, and costs are coming down rapidly, they're already far below nuclear power's costs in many places.
Nuclear... isn't effective. It's expensive, inflexible, and *dangerous* technology.
Sure, few people usually die from nuclear accidents like meltdowns... but only because people leave, in large numbers. Saying it's not dangerous is like saying fire isn't dangerous if you leave immediately, and don't let it burn you, and then you won't be hurt. Like, duh. And even then economic disruption is *immense*.
The planning procedures for nuclear are long and drawn out- but for good reasons. Fukushima is what happens when they're not long enough. If they had done the leg work correctly, there wouldn't have been any meltdown. Meltdowns happen when people fuck up. Humans fucking up is not going stop any time soon. And Fukushima wasn't the worst case accident; it didn't dump fallout over Tokyo, that would have been enormously worse. Try to imagine.
Organic flow batteries are coming out in 2017. They're looking to be seriously cheap storage (less than a penny average cost per kilowatt hour). If that works as well as it looks it will, nuclear power should be virtually dead, more agile, widely distributed, economically safer, renewables will eat its lunch.
Yeah, but, for example, if you're rich enough, you've just bought a parking space for the day, right next to the entrance, and you could pay for it out of your lunch money.
Yes, so in the Culture, it wasn't about having money, it was just about asking the Minds to do what you want.
Want a diamond, big as your fist? The Mind will do it for you if it has the resources; or schedule to make it for you later when it has collected them.
Want to make a big cable car system, no problem; it will make it for you. etc.
But obviously some things you might ask for the Mind it couldn't do for ethical or resource issues; and then the Mind would presumably not do it.
Charging money doesn't always work. If you've paid money for something it becomes 'yours', and you 'deserve' it. You 'own' the charging point.
For example in kindergarten they started fining parents for picking up their children late. Although it was intended as a penalty, the parents started leaving their children more; after all, why not, they'd paid for it.
You should ideally have a mix of different charger speeds; normal/medium/fast. The normal ones would just be 220v/13A or whatever, and should be cheaper to install. One or two higher power ones would be useful too.
At least morality is in the room though; with 'do the right thing', it might as well just be for the shareholder's wallets; and that's not morality, that's finance.
> The issue is that the pollution from these VW cars isn't that bad, it is perhaps better than the cars they replaced.
VW just manufactured 11 million of these fuckers. The cars they replaced would very probably have got taken off the road anyway, and they're not going to be better than the cars that would have been bought if VW hadn't fucking lied, the owners would have bought something else, something better.
That's 11 million cars that got manufactured, that should NEVER have been made.
Those are actually the estimates I've seen based on the proportion of NOx that can be ascribed to these particular diesels as a fraction of the total deaths due to NOx.
I mean, make no mistake, this is ultimately WHY this is such a big story. It's not just that they've lied to the EPA, no one really gives much of a fuck about that, it's that the EPA actually set these numbers to try to reduce (somewhat) the loss of life due to air pollution (mainly in LA); and that's why the EPA have the ability to levy such massive fines.
Most people don't realise that, for example, in the UK, ~30,000 people die from air pollution every year. Mostly asthma, heart disease, that kind of thing.
There used to be the visible smogs in London, when thousands died in just a few weeks, but while the visible smogs are gone... plenty of pollution is still there, you just can't see it. People don't die over a few weeks, somewhat less people die, but over the whole year.
And in case you're wondering, this isn't some weird conspiracy, this is just what the air quality researchers at bona fide universities and doctors say.
Because they took a while to find better chemicals to use.
This is basic research, they came up with an entirely new type of battery using organic molecules, but one of the chemicals was pretty toxic, but otherwise the battery was pretty good; and they've been fine-tuning it ever since, trying to get it even better.
It's not like there's a roadmap for this kind of thing, there's lots of complex trade-offs between cost, longevity, battery voltage, weight, volume etc. etc. and trillions of different battery chemistry combinations that they could investigate.
Incidentally, the cell isn't ideal even now, the cell voltage is quite low, like 0.7 volts or something, so you'd need quite a few cells in series to get up to a more useful voltage.
This would have been back in 2009, it's quite plausible that the people involved thought they were saving VW; and they may even have done, at the time, plenty of car manufacturers were going bankrupt and being bailed out back then.
The same car is used in France and the UK, both relatively small countries where diesel cars are popular, and both have significant vehicle pollution issues; this is going to go down like a lead balloon there.
If I was designing the test regime, I'd do exactly what the government does; but add a random real world driving spot test on top. Just pick a few cars from different manufacturers each year and drive them around with an emissions collector attached to the exhaust, and make sure the results were within reasonable agreement.
Nahhh. This looks very deliberate. There was a widely publicised not-meeting-emissions problem that went on for months and then suddenly there was no problem and they shipped. They haven't even bothered claiming it was accidental either.
At the moment, my back of the envelope calculation suggests that VW probably killed more people in the UK alone with this from air pollution in just the last year than died from GM's stupid switch over a far longer period. The thing is that in the UK diesel cars are really popular, and Golfs are fairly popular, but they pump out 10-40x more NOx than the other cars, which means that their NOx pollution will tend to dominate the overall numbers.
In the UK tens of thousands of people die each year die from air pollution related illnesses; and a large amount of that is NOx related... 8-(
I need to get firm numbers on each of those bits to confirm it, but it looks pretty worrying.
It may even be worse in France, diesels are super, super popular in France.
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Actually, the Skylon group predicted that the X--33 wouldn't work. They said that the X-33 was too tail heavy. And fixing it would mess up the payload fraction. And they were right.
It's difficult to get your head around just how far ahead these guys have been for about 20 years.
The ultimate reason is that they built a computer model of launch vehicles, which they fiddled with until they got a plausible vehicle. Then they did a back-back comparison with a pure-rocket vehicle, and found that there was no big advantage. Then they fiddled around more, and out popped Skylon, and then they found it *seriously* beats pure-rocket vehicles; it's not even close.
Skylon is looking at costs starting around $500/kg and then going lower. SpaceX won't be able to get down to that.
Actually, their team are were built from battle hardened rocket engineers, who had put stuff into orbit before.
I've looked at their design, been to lectures by them and asked questions. If it works, I will be absolutely gobsmacked if it isn't cheaper than SpaceX.
No, the correct order is to call security first, so the EMTs will get there ASAP, then if you have ANY reason to think it's an emergency, call 911, just in case security have held off on doing that; 911 can easily sort out multiple calls from one location.
Brownouts aren't likely; but grids of all and any design do sometimes brown or black out.
Up to about 20-30% wind/solar, brownouts are largely a non issue- the backup power already built into the network is enough to fill in the extra power.
Going forward, as the existing generating plant wears out, much of the coal plant on many networks is being converted to gas, which has a lower carbon footprint, and is somewhat more flexible, the plant is otherwise mostly paid-off, and hence cheap. It's still wearing out, but it will run less because the wind and solar will fill in, but the grid will have to run on even gas less and less because of climate change.
Past about 2017, brownouts are looking like they will gradually become non issues, because grid-level storage is looking like it will become ridiculously cheap, and because more and more solar and wind will be coming on line; they are both growing exponentially, and are likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
I see no major role for nuclear power, and the amount of power generated from nuclear will reduce over time. This is a combination of its inherent relatively high cost, the fact that people don't trust it, its reliance on (mostly fresh) water, and the long lead times that new reactors require.
Wind and solar are far from ineffective. They're growing exponentially, year on year, and costs are coming down rapidly, they're already far below nuclear power's costs in many places.
Nuclear... isn't effective. It's expensive, inflexible, and *dangerous* technology.
Sure, few people usually die from nuclear accidents like meltdowns... but only because people leave, in large numbers. Saying it's not dangerous is like saying fire isn't dangerous if you leave immediately, and don't let it burn you, and then you won't be hurt. Like, duh. And even then economic disruption is *immense*.
The planning procedures for nuclear are long and drawn out- but for good reasons. Fukushima is what happens when they're not long enough. If they had done the leg work correctly, there wouldn't have been any meltdown. Meltdowns happen when people fuck up. Humans fucking up is not going stop any time soon. And Fukushima wasn't the worst case accident; it didn't dump fallout over Tokyo, that would have been enormously worse. Try to imagine.
Organic flow batteries are coming out in 2017. They're looking to be seriously cheap storage (less than a penny average cost per kilowatt hour). If that works as well as it looks it will, nuclear power should be virtually dead, more agile, widely distributed, economically safer, renewables will eat its lunch.
Yeah, but, for example, if you're rich enough, you've just bought a parking space for the day, right next to the entrance, and you could pay for it out of your lunch money.
Yes, so in the Culture, it wasn't about having money, it was just about asking the Minds to do what you want.
Want a diamond, big as your fist? The Mind will do it for you if it has the resources; or schedule to make it for you later when it has collected them.
Want to make a big cable car system, no problem; it will make it for you. etc.
But obviously some things you might ask for the Mind it couldn't do for ethical or resource issues; and then the Mind would presumably not do it.
Charging money doesn't always work. If you've paid money for something it becomes 'yours', and you 'deserve' it. You 'own' the charging point.
For example in kindergarten they started fining parents for picking up their children late. Although it was intended as a penalty, the parents started leaving their children more; after all, why not, they'd paid for it.
You should ideally have a mix of different charger speeds; normal/medium/fast. The normal ones would just be 220v/13A or whatever, and should be cheaper to install. One or two higher power ones would be useful too.
We don't live in a binary world.
If we did, you would be right though.
But we don't.
They are NOT the same thing.
With do the right thing, you're supposed to seek out 'goodness', but with 'don't be evil' you're supposed to avoid badness.
Although avoiding badness sounds weak, it's more in compatible with western values; western societies have a list of things you're not supposed to do.
To do the 'right' thing, is more of a totalitarian position.
At least morality is in the room though; with 'do the right thing', it might as well just be for the shareholder's wallets; and that's not morality, that's finance.
> The issue is that the pollution from these VW cars isn't that bad, it is perhaps better than the cars they replaced.
VW just manufactured 11 million of these fuckers. The cars they replaced would very probably have got taken off the road anyway, and they're not going to be better than the cars that would have been bought if VW hadn't fucking lied, the owners would have bought something else, something better.
That's 11 million cars that got manufactured, that should NEVER have been made.
No, not big news, CNN knows this stuff already.
Those are actually the estimates I've seen based on the proportion of NOx that can be ascribed to these particular diesels as a fraction of the total deaths due to NOx.
I mean, make no mistake, this is ultimately WHY this is such a big story. It's not just that they've lied to the EPA, no one really gives much of a fuck about that, it's that the EPA actually set these numbers to try to reduce (somewhat) the loss of life due to air pollution (mainly in LA); and that's why the EPA have the ability to levy such massive fines.
Most people don't realise that, for example, in the UK, ~30,000 people die from air pollution every year. Mostly asthma, heart disease, that kind of thing.
There used to be the visible smogs in London, when thousands died in just a few weeks, but while the visible smogs are gone... plenty of pollution is still there, you just can't see it. People don't die over a few weeks, somewhat less people die, but over the whole year.
And in case you're wondering, this isn't some weird conspiracy, this is just what the air quality researchers at bona fide universities and doctors say.
Because they took a while to find better chemicals to use.
This is basic research, they came up with an entirely new type of battery using organic molecules, but one of the chemicals was pretty toxic, but otherwise the battery was pretty good; and they've been fine-tuning it ever since, trying to get it even better.
It's not like there's a roadmap for this kind of thing, there's lots of complex trade-offs between cost, longevity, battery voltage, weight, volume etc. etc. and trillions of different battery chemistry combinations that they could investigate.
Incidentally, the cell isn't ideal even now, the cell voltage is quite low, like 0.7 volts or something, so you'd need quite a few cells in series to get up to a more useful voltage.
That company will have already killed several thousand people worldwide, and injured many thousands more. What kind of punishment would be suitable???
Serious question.
This would have been back in 2009, it's quite plausible that the people involved thought they were saving VW; and they may even have done, at the time, plenty of car manufacturers were going bankrupt and being bailed out back then.
The same car is used in France and the UK, both relatively small countries where diesel cars are popular, and both have significant vehicle pollution issues; this is going to go down like a lead balloon there.
Well, the researchers that spotted this also tested a BMW X5; that at least is in the clear, they found nothing out of the ordinary.
> Death is merely a side-effect,
Well that's all right then, carry on that man!
If I was designing the test regime, I'd do exactly what the government does; but add a random real world driving spot test on top. Just pick a few cars from different manufacturers each year and drive them around with an emissions collector attached to the exhaust, and make sure the results were within reasonable agreement.
Nahhh. This looks very deliberate. There was a widely publicised not-meeting-emissions problem that went on for months and then suddenly there was no problem and they shipped. They haven't even bothered claiming it was accidental either.
At the moment, my back of the envelope calculation suggests that VW probably killed more people in the UK alone with this from air pollution in just the last year than died from GM's stupid switch over a far longer period. The thing is that in the UK diesel cars are really popular, and Golfs are fairly popular, but they pump out 10-40x more NOx than the other cars, which means that their NOx pollution will tend to dominate the overall numbers.
In the UK tens of thousands of people die each year die from air pollution related illnesses; and a large amount of that is NOx related... 8-(
I need to get firm numbers on each of those bits to confirm it, but it looks pretty worrying.
It may even be worse in France, diesels are super, super popular in France.
The question was 'mpg'; in which case it's the UK's mpg, because they use the mile and have a gallon which is bigger.
Actually VW will have killed people with this.
Air pollution is actually a massive cause of death in the US, particularly in LA.