I had a similar idea a while back. I was calculating how much energy it would take to send a ship to Mars if it accelerated at 1G the whole time. There are two sources of energy use: gravity and acceleration. The result is that you basically blow up two nuclear bombs during the trip for a 100 ton ship. Most (>99%) of that energy is wasted accelerating the ship and slowing it down. Gravity is a small fraction of that energy (could easily be overcome by a nuclear reactor). That energy from acceleration is so huge because the Newtonian energy-momentum relationship is e=p^2/2m. However, in solid-state quantum systems (like silicon), the energy-momentum relationship (effective mass) is arbitrary. Sometimes it's just a constant times a Newtonian parabola, even a negative one. Sometimes it's a cubic function, others, a sine wave. The function is determined by the number and arrangement of particles in the system. This can be predicted by using quantum mechanics simulators to solve the Schrödinger equation for the system. If you could come up with a system that made the effective mass small enough, you could send the ship to Mars with a small battery (green spaceship!). Once you get this system (or maybe even before) you could move on to the Dirac equation. Then quantum mechanics and general relativity could fight each other, maybe even cancel each other out, and you could have quantum-based FTL.
Oh, another fun little problem. You're in space. You've got a gun that fires small bullets at really really high velocities - the bullets make up a trivial percent of your mass but have a noticeable effect on your velocity. It's an electric gun and puts the same amount of energy into every bullet. You fire the gun ten times. Do you get the same acceleration every time?
Yep. I posted that article. It's basically a direct copy-and-paste from the department of energy (or was it DOT?) analysis, and plotted on a bar graph. It shows that gas transit is basically on par with average cars and even SUVs, and electric transit is on par with electric cars. The high costs of transit don't make it worth it to save that little bit of energy. Instead of spending some ungodly amount of money on trains that only a small, vocal minority want, spend it on another nuke plant.
No I think up above, MS = Cardassians. So I guess the borg are google. Before you are assimilated, please read the ads on our cubes so we can make 3 cents.
A cyclist will never kill an SUV driver, but I have had plenty of cyclists intentionally block me and slow me down. Personally, I think the less wheels on the vehicle, the more arrogant the passengers (unless it's a train or a plane). Oh, and BTW, I'm thankful every day that I was born in the USA.
And then you could realize how crappy mass transit is when we take away your car, crash the economy, waste a bunch of energy, and your transit fares make you go broke. Stop taking my money to pay for your energy wasting transit disasters, and I'll stop taking it back for my car.
Yeah - I would be willing to pay the extra fuel taxes just to shut people up, assuming the government cut the other taxes. Meanwhile, I'll bet that if we car drivers stopped paying for transit, we'd save a lot of money.
According to that report, the big killers are pickups, not SUVs as were previously ranted about. However, that report was published in 2003. Lots has changed. I'll acknowledge that SUVs were dangerous in the past, and may still be more dangerous today. And, for fun, I'll see what my SUV driving friends say when I tell em'. Some, I'm guessing, won't be happy. But IMHO, bikers are still bigger assholes than SUV drivers.
The problem for them is that there are a lot more of us car drivers, and we have a lot more cash. Oh, and many of them are hypocritical in the extreme. A drive through San Francisco or Berkeley revels not an array of bikers and hybrids, but a lot of poorly maintained SUVs and beat up old oil-burners. A trip through another city reveals a mixture of SUVs, sedans, luxury cars and hybrids, most well maintained.
SUVs are on average just as safe for their occupants as small cars - some are worse, some are better. You need to show us some evidence if you want me to believe that SUVs are dangerous to other cars - a NHTSA report or other document from a transportation safety admin.
Wiki says that song is about a future where cars are controlled by an authoritarian government. The car is seen in the song as a symbol of freedom and individuality.
First, the article is claiming that one of the reasons transit is losing because many trains have to run empty. Second, they are claiming that Asian trains are running 4x more efficient than our crappy trains, which puts them at slightly more efficient than our cars, but still beat by EV's and hybrids. Third, most of the Asian efficiency is because of motorcycles and e-bikes, not trains.
There is nothing to maintain. Just replace the oil periodically, and tires as they wear out.
We've pretty much debunked charliemopps11 post in terms of the prius-hummer comparison.
Your statements are exactly why you don't want an EV system, you want a plugin series hybrid system. Small ranges (50 miles) are good for high percentages of us to commute to work. What we need is a battery with enough energy density for such a vehicle that is cheap. We may already have it lead-acid, nicad, nife, etc. I want to study this problem in college.
Look at the dude who INTENTIONALLY rammed his SUV(what a surprise, an asshole in an SUV, perish the thought!) into the cyclists in San Fransisco.
Look at all the stupid cyclists blocking me, slowing me down, showing of how cool they are while getting 36 MPG equivalent. I've met a lot more assholes riding bikes, driving golf carts and hybrids than assholes driving SUV's. Most SUV driving folk care about other people but just aren't as concerned about the environment as you are. Some of them are concerned about the environment, but don't want to sacrifice their SUV for the environment. Many of them would buy a PHEV SUV or other eco-SUV if it met their wants in a heartbeat. I know because I've asked them.
I'm thankful every day for not having being born in the Southern US.
Meanwhile bike riders have done nothing but tell me I need to cut my energy use by a few percent instead of going 100 percent non-fossil. I can tell from your sig that you just hate the USA (and maybe with good reason), but are just posting age-old anti-US quips over and over again. This is neither informative nor insightful. There are plenty of reasons to hate the USA, but our choices in transport aren't one of them, unless you hate Europe and Canada as well. Europe uses slightly more public transport, but they still run 85%+ of their miles in cars.
I like the way our cities are. I don't care they are "more about cars than people". I don't care about space, because the united states alone could hold 15 billion people at Los Angeles densities. I care about fossil fuel use. What this proves is that mass transit is not a workable solution in reducing fossil use. I'm sick and tired of all these "community" people whining about the "character of our cities". People need to realize that the public wants a car-based society, even if they don't say it. The character of the city should be based on what its public wants, which is what it gets.
Thanks for a kind response. Something rare from transit and "community" advocates. Funny, people who talk about community are the people I want to be around least.
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I had a similar idea a while back. I was calculating how much energy it would take to send a ship to Mars if it accelerated at 1G the whole time. There are two sources of energy use: gravity and acceleration. The result is that you basically blow up two nuclear bombs during the trip for a 100 ton ship. Most (>99%) of that energy is wasted accelerating the ship and slowing it down. Gravity is a small fraction of that energy (could easily be overcome by a nuclear reactor). That energy from acceleration is so huge because the Newtonian energy-momentum relationship is e=p^2/2m. However, in solid-state quantum systems (like silicon), the energy-momentum relationship (effective mass) is arbitrary. Sometimes it's just a constant times a Newtonian parabola, even a negative one. Sometimes it's a cubic function, others, a sine wave. The function is determined by the number and arrangement of particles in the system. This can be predicted by using quantum mechanics simulators to solve the Schrödinger equation for the system. If you could come up with a system that made the effective mass small enough, you could send the ship to Mars with a small battery (green spaceship!). Once you get this system (or maybe even before) you could move on to the Dirac equation. Then quantum mechanics and general relativity could fight each other, maybe even cancel each other out, and you could have quantum-based FTL.
Oh, another fun little problem. You're in space. You've got a gun that fires small bullets at really really high velocities - the bullets make up a trivial percent of your mass but have a noticeable effect on your velocity. It's an electric gun and puts the same amount of energy into every bullet. You fire the gun ten times. Do you get the same acceleration every time?
Yep. But we have the answer.
Yep. I posted that article. It's basically a direct copy-and-paste from the department of energy (or was it DOT?) analysis, and plotted on a bar graph. It shows that gas transit is basically on par with average cars and even SUVs, and electric transit is on par with electric cars. The high costs of transit don't make it worth it to save that little bit of energy. Instead of spending some ungodly amount of money on trains that only a small, vocal minority want, spend it on another nuke plant.
So it's no wonder liberals drive compacts, and conservatives drive pickups. ;)
No, liberals drive SUVs and complain about everyone else's SUVs. I'm not sure what libertarians drive - probably helicopters :-).
No I think up above, MS = Cardassians. So I guess the borg are google. Before you are assimilated, please read the ads on our cubes so we can make 3 cents.
And a train has LOTS of wheels.
Yeah, but unless it's a cargo train, chances are it's occupants are somewhat arrogant. BTW, your comment is an excellent addition to this thread.
Why hasn't there been a single nuclear powerplant in like the last 20 years in the US? The NRC.
A cyclist will never kill an SUV driver, but I have had plenty of cyclists intentionally block me and slow me down. Personally, I think the less wheels on the vehicle, the more arrogant the passengers (unless it's a train or a plane). Oh, and BTW, I'm thankful every day that I was born in the USA.
And then you could realize how crappy mass transit is when we take away your car, crash the economy, waste a bunch of energy, and your transit fares make you go broke. Stop taking my money to pay for your energy wasting transit disasters, and I'll stop taking it back for my car.
Yeah - I would be willing to pay the extra fuel taxes just to shut people up, assuming the government cut the other taxes. Meanwhile, I'll bet that if we car drivers stopped paying for transit, we'd save a lot of money.
You can make gasoline in a nuclear plant. The problem is that we aren't allowed to build nuclear powerplants.
According to that report, the big killers are pickups, not SUVs as were previously ranted about. However, that report was published in 2003. Lots has changed. I'll acknowledge that SUVs were dangerous in the past, and may still be more dangerous today. And, for fun, I'll see what my SUV driving friends say when I tell em'. Some, I'm guessing, won't be happy. But IMHO, bikers are still bigger assholes than SUV drivers.
The problem for them is that there are a lot more of us car drivers, and we have a lot more cash. Oh, and many of them are hypocritical in the extreme. A drive through San Francisco or Berkeley revels not an array of bikers and hybrids, but a lot of poorly maintained SUVs and beat up old oil-burners. A trip through another city reveals a mixture of SUVs, sedans, luxury cars and hybrids, most well maintained.
SUVs are on average just as safe for their occupants as small cars - some are worse, some are better. You need to show us some evidence if you want me to believe that SUVs are dangerous to other cars - a NHTSA report or other document from a transportation safety admin.
And that changes his argument how?
Wiki says that song is about a future where cars are controlled by an authoritarian government. The car is seen in the song as a symbol of freedom and individuality.
First, the article is claiming that one of the reasons transit is losing because many trains have to run empty. Second, they are claiming that Asian trains are running 4x more efficient than our crappy trains, which puts them at slightly more efficient than our cars, but still beat by EV's and hybrids. Third, most of the Asian efficiency is because of motorcycles and e-bikes, not trains.
Will just have to wait and see.
But it won't save any energy (or at least not much).
There is nothing to maintain. Just replace the oil periodically, and tires as they wear out.
We've pretty much debunked charliemopps11 post in terms of the prius-hummer comparison.
Your statements are exactly why you don't want an EV system, you want a plugin series hybrid system. Small ranges (50 miles) are good for high percentages of us to commute to work. What we need is a battery with enough energy density for such a vehicle that is cheap. We may already have it lead-acid, nicad, nife, etc. I want to study this problem in college.
Look at the dude who INTENTIONALLY rammed his SUV(what a surprise, an asshole in an SUV, perish the thought!) into the cyclists in San Fransisco.
Look at all the stupid cyclists blocking me, slowing me down, showing of how cool they are while getting 36 MPG equivalent. I've met a lot more assholes riding bikes, driving golf carts and hybrids than assholes driving SUV's. Most SUV driving folk care about other people but just aren't as concerned about the environment as you are. Some of them are concerned about the environment, but don't want to sacrifice their SUV for the environment. Many of them would buy a PHEV SUV or other eco-SUV if it met their wants in a heartbeat. I know because I've asked them.
I'm thankful every day for not having being born in the Southern US.
Meanwhile bike riders have done nothing but tell me I need to cut my energy use by a few percent instead of going 100 percent non-fossil. I can tell from your sig that you just hate the USA (and maybe with good reason), but are just posting age-old anti-US quips over and over again. This is neither informative nor insightful. There are plenty of reasons to hate the USA, but our choices in transport aren't one of them, unless you hate Europe and Canada as well. Europe uses slightly more public transport, but they still run 85%+ of their miles in cars.
Nope. I'll bet the grandparent post is wrong.
I like the way our cities are. I don't care they are "more about cars than people". I don't care about space, because the united states alone could hold 15 billion people at Los Angeles densities. I care about fossil fuel use. What this proves is that mass transit is not a workable solution in reducing fossil use. I'm sick and tired of all these "community" people whining about the "character of our cities". People need to realize that the public wants a car-based society, even if they don't say it. The character of the city should be based on what its public wants, which is what it gets.
I'm sure an electric Hummer would beat your Prius in MPG eqv's (I've simulated it). Have you done a lot of maintenance to your Prius?
Thanks for a kind response. Something rare from transit and "community" advocates. Funny, people who talk about community are the people I want to be around least.