Of course not, but moving electricity towards nuclear, hydro, geothermal, wind frees up natural gas for heating. And in some places nuclear is used directly for district heating (Baltic countries near Russia).
No, the FUD is all yours. All yours. Nuclear power have killed in its entire lifetime a fraction of what coal kills every year. In the meantime, plenty of Africa and Asian poor areas are without clean water, lighting to prevent basic illnesses the developed world is free of since WWII. I bet you never lived near poverty to understand how important cheap, reliable electricity is to the world. Unless you reject climate change we need lots of nuclear, now. Sure we can do nuclear better, but the one we have is plenty good enough.
> Also, the impact was minimized BECAUSE THEY EVACUATED THE SITE. Bullshit. The actual radiation levels never got bad enough. It was an overblow precaution. The real Mr D stated this perfectly. The real disaster was not nuclear, it was the tsunami and the earthquake. But Japan is sort of used to that. They have thick skin to rebuild. Coal kills, every day, almost a thousand people per day die from Black Lung disease, Lung Cancer, coal mining accidents, coal explosions, coal transportation accidents. That's a result of coals very low energy density, in order to make coal cost effective they care very little about the life of those in the coal supply chain and those that live near a coal power station. In the meantime, there are 400 operational nuclear power stations in the world, people aren't getting cancers or dying from nuclear. Besides the meltdown was perfectly preventable. Are you going to shutdown all coal in the world to make coal as healthy as nuclear ? The anti nuclear gangs that travel around the world doing protests to shutdown nuclear aren't locals, they are eco terrorists firmly bent on shutting down nuclear which ends up increasing coal and natural gas consumption (expensive and adds to climate change). It really helps if you watch Pandora's promise, you could perhaps learn the facts. Unless of course you believe in going back to a pre industrial world (and kill 90% of the population along the way, since we don't have enough room to grow food the old fashioned way for more than about a billion people. We need clean reliable energy. Solar and Wind are still many decades away from MAYBE getting the job done. We need nuclear right now. Lots of nuclear.
You are sooooo wrong, it's not even worth trying to detail how wrong you are. You just made a generic Khan academy is crap generalization without a single fact to make your point. By no means Khan academy is 100% ready. Watching a 10 minute video about Khan academy will show you the exercise generator, with the integrated teacher tools that allow teachers to analyze which students have learned the subject perfectly (and could be assigned to help others), those who need some help (which could come from the ace students), and the students that are struggling with the topic and need teacher direct help.
Khan academy is by no means 100% done. They don't have thousands of professionals. AFAIK all videos are done by Sal himself. But it's good enough it has been adopted as primary teaching materials for some USA School districts. It's not a bunch of videos. This statement of yours just shows you have no interest in even trying to learn about it, you just make up your own FUD to try to prevent others from learning about it.
Education is the only solution. Nuclear is already too expensive. I'm not ignoring your point, I'm just stating perception is a result of ignorance. The nuclear waste "problem" isn't a problem. It's also a perception issue. The issue is getting countries to reprocess their waste, which reduce their weight and volume by 95% (and creates MOX fuel from separated plutonium). By 2020 Plutonium+Thorium fuel will be fully certified and ready to go, and reprocessing will make even more sense, and by 2025 U233+Thorium fuel will also be certified, which will enable us to start migrating from the Uranium fuel to Thorium fuel, which enables indefinite nuclear fuel reprocessing (take fission products, add thorium), fission products are just one ton per GW-year of electricity (stable in 300 years), while today without reprocessing 35 tons of waste is being produced (with some plutonium in the mix that has 77000 yr half life).
When Germany's energy costs drop to French levels we can discuss if nuclear power is too expensive. Sure, there are strong evidence China manipulate the books, but if they complete their first EPR on schedule, why can't Finland ? And if China completes the reactor on schedule, could the delays explain the overruns ? The reality is building a nuclear reactor is a 100 yr plan. A new nuclear reactor must last 60 yrs bare minimum, should last 80, and might go even over that. The issue with nuclear being too expensive in reality is the result of a world that has been brainwashed that nuclear is dangerous, deadly, waste of money. The numbers contradict that. And France isn't the only heavy nuclear country with electricity much cheaper than Germany. The hard data is that Germany should be shutting down coal instead of nuclear. It won't be able to meet pollution targets France is already at, and other countries with lots of hydro already are at too (like my Brazil). PS: Not a fan of water cooled nuclear power. They are a kludge, but a mature kludge that works. There are dozens of ways of doing nuclear, we end up with the US Navy way, cause they had the money to make it happen. Some of the anti nuclear criticism is fair if you admit it probably has to bearing on other types of nuclear reactors.
Ever heard of the Khan academy ? It's entirely the opposite of a remediation tool. You're probably a teacher that feels your job is threathened by tools like the Khan academy. We must strive for excellence in education for kids of all economical and cultural levels, otherwise China and South Korea will take over the world (they don't kid about education).
Just because the NY Times says something it doesn't mean its true. They have published lies against Tesla Motors which have been methodically proven to be wrong. But the most important step toward better K12 education is adoption of the Khan Academy system which strives towards A grades for all STEM classes, don't allow a student to leave a topic until it fully mastered it. And you can't do the Khan system without a computer with a browser and good video playback capabilities, it doesn't need to be an iPad, it could be pretty much any decent tablet, laptop, ultrabook or desktop computer. Sure the computer is just a tool that needs to be properly used.
Damn right. People should watch Cool It (2010) by Bjørn Lomborg. There are many cheaper solutions to prevent climate change than Luddite energy conservation, solar+wind+biomass+geothermal only future. Heck those people have trouble even with big hydro power (insane). The reality is those defending a nuclear free future have an complete agenda 99% of the population would never approve, they hide they full agenda behind climate change. Building more nuclear power in the world is the only certain way to fully prevent climate change without making electricity too expensive. Germany energiewende is far more expensive than Olkiluoto with all of its cost overruns: http://thebreakthrough.org/ind... And BTW Olkiluoto absurd costs might indicate Areva's EPR design is too expensive, but we should way 2 more years when the first EPR installation in China enters operation. Yep, China has been building all of those reactors the anti nukes swear are too expensive on budget and on schedule, since Green Peace can't sue the to stop and lobby politicians to throw similar potholes in the way of nuclear projects.
We weren't lucky. Scenarios equal to Chernobyl are impossible to conjure with any Gen III nuclear reactor, and pretty impossible with Gen II reactors with safety updates post TMI. You really need to study up on nuclear reactor construction, safety characteristics instead of accepting anti nuclear propaganda created by Green Peace, Dr Hellen Caldicott and gang, they are only interested in facts if they go their way (maybe you are too). All existing western nuclear designs couldn't meltdown like Chernobyl. Heck even Chernobyl reactor couldn't meltdown unless they disabled its own safety systems on purpose (like they did), and even then if Chernobyl had a standard secondary containment barrier like every western reactor allowed to operate in North America or Western Europe at the same time, all you would have is a TMI like scenario, worst case, that is next to zero radioactive release to the environment, strictly high nuclear decomissioning costs. Standard secondary containment adopted two decades prior to Chernobyl = about 2 meters of steel reinforced concrete structure. It's so strong it could barely crack if subjected to a 9/11 type attack, the reactor inside would not be destroyed. Chernobyl containment had less than 20% the strength of standard containment required by US NRC at the time. That's when the US NRC safety standards started going totally out of wack. Existing US NRC safety standards right before Chernobyl were more than enough to have prevented such an accident, yet public perception forced them to go nuts on regulatory overload, facts be damned. Fukushima was also the result of a nuclear operator that ignore existing US NRC safety standards, there was no need to change standards, all that was needed was the Japanese Nuclear regulatory agency enforce them.
The first thing should be you properly study the subject before opining. There is way to much improperly informed people talking like they know what they are talking about. Site selection is about building new nuclear reactors. Both AP1000, ESBWR and a few other nuclear designs are able to safely survive total loss of power (no generators, no electricity supply from the grid, reactor shutdown) without any risk of meltdown. Most anti nuclear people have been brainwashed with incorrect information about nuclear. The really sad fact is most nuclear regulatory authorities don't care about scientific/engineering nuclear facts either, they are hellbent on making nuclear absolutelly economically inviable, by adopting an unjustified nuclear safety standards, 99.9% based on addressing paranoid missinformed popular opinion.
Because so far Elon Musk and SpaceX has given us no reason to think they aren't honest. Show me an example of SpaceX getting a govt contract and failing to deliver, or getting a contract where SpaceX benefits from higher costs (Cost+ contracts). Those that can't see SpaceX ethical behavior has been good, really don't know anything about SpaceX.
The safety systems are protected by a meter of concrete. Even an RPG / small mortar couldn't scratch that thick a skin. It's not by chance that so far no real terrorists tried to attack / hijack a nuclear plant. It's not 1% as good a terrorist target as the anti nuclear paranoids state.
There were two goals far more important than actually recovering the first stage:
1 - Having the stage navigate to the landing pad. It would have been a major failure if the rocket landed 2 miles away and were fished out of the water.
2 - Not destroying the landing barge (its worth far more than the first stage, and it would take a few months to prepare another one). Additionally, in less than 24 hrs SpaceX already knows what went wrong, have a fix for it, and intends to try again on the next launch (about 3 weeks from now, end of scheduled for January). So, calling it a failure is like saying this glass is 10% empty ! SpaceX has already managed to have the rocket hover for a second or two meters from water, but back then there were no precision in where the rocket was aiming to splash. The difference is many changes were made to the rocket to steer it. SpaceX might have a dozen shots at trying this in 2015 alone.
Tesla is 100% limited by Li Ion supply. Until the Giga factory is ready, Tesla can't divert Li Ion cells from high profit model S even to slightly lower profit model X. The Gen III vehicle will be done, but it will take another 3-5 years. I actually hope Tesla Model S + Model X demand will be so high the Gen III car will have to wait cause the initial giga factory output will be tied with Model S + Model X production. The most important goal Tesla must achieve isn't the Gen III car, but actually fully disrupting the Model S competition. Once BMW and Mercedes start having financial trouble cause people are buying a Tesla instead, we'll start having auto analysts realizing the electric car will take over. Realize the BWM i3 is still a compliance car. BMW is still not serious about making a Tesla competitor. It seems like no company in the planet is even trying to compete with Tesla. Its entirely possible Tesla will achieve 200 thousand Model S + Model X per year, at those scales Tesla might be able to drop the price a little bit due to higher economies of scale, further increasing demand. That won't make the MS/MX get to US$ 40k, but it might make the cheapest MS/MX get bellow US$ 60k with incentives, still sounds expensive, but over 10 years a driver might save the full cost of the car if driven a half a million miles + residual resale value of the car.
Every single fuel cell car is still an underpowered, unsexy car. In the meantime Tesla is showing its cars can rival half a millon buck cars at less than 1/3 the price. What Toyota will never conceed is that its fuel cell cars where never truly intended to replace gasoline cars. They are compliance cars, made strictly to comply with emissions regulations to offset the lowest mpg cars on Toyota's product line. In the meantime Tesla is producing cars people actually want to buy, because its a high end car with all of its sex appeal !
The Concorde used a lot of fuel because it was based on a very outdated engine and it was a very heavy design. It was a design done before the 70s oil crisis, when fuel costs wasn't much of an issue. If you just replaced the mobile nose with cameras for landing + used F22 jet engines (must use an after burning jet engine, one that is capable of supersonic air intake), just that would reduce fuel consumption by a huge margin (as much as 2/3s). People's time cost money. That doesn't apply to your average turism traveller, but I'd say over half of airline customers are willing to pay US$ 100/hr saved in travel time. That's US$ 2000 for a really long (London-Sydney, NYC-Hong Kong) trips. BTW, the sabre powered airliner isn't quite sub orbital. It's a 80-90k feet airliner. Sub orbital is about 3x higher (above 100km or 300k ft altitude). Its still flying, just flying on thinner air. Finally, the Sabre engine concept is also the only proposed airliner design that burns hydrogen instead of Jet fuel. Hydrogen made from natural gas still emits CO2 (on the ground, can be sequestered) but hydrogen could also be made by high temperature nuclear or hydrolysis directly from water. If the concept succeeds it might end up being mandatory for long haul flights due to the pollution argument alone.
Except Falcon Heavy reuses the Merlin 1D, Merlin 1D Vac, the basic first and second stage layout, and many other things from F9R. The Falcon Heavy is more similar in design to the F9R than F9R from the first version Falcon 9. That being said, you are right, FH is still a power point rocket.
Except the orbital rocket is useless for satellite launches. So it doesn't really count. If you instead focus only on rockets that are launch commercial GEO payloads, then the only american product is SpaceX. Every now and then ULA does a commercial GEO launch, but its a tiny volume. The really important factor is both ULA, Ariane and the Russians are old school space. SpaceX is silicon valley space, and so far, they model is making every competitor sweat. Like Elon Musk said in the first years of SpaceX, rockets have evolved little since the 70s. In a lot of ways SpaceX has evolved space affordability by leaps and bounds since the F9R rocket became fully operational and enabled SpaceX to launch (less than 4 ton) GEO satellites. If the Falcon Heavy achieves the same success as F9R, it will undercut every SpaceX competitor in price even without reusability, and with first stage reusability its game over for every rocket currently operational in the world. SpaceX will be able to offer prices at least 50% cheaper than any competitor (in most cases 70-80% cheaper).
Ohhh so stupid... There is NO enterprise without PROFIT. Communism doesn't work. Efficient people are greedy, regulated capitalism exploit greed to benefit the people. Without profit there's no capitalism. At the same time... Electricity distribution will continue, it will just use a different electricity flow profile, it will be more focused on transporting electricity between consumers instead of from large generating assets to consumers.
Clarification. In Brazil Solar+Wind is tiny today, but Solar+Wind should increase enough over the next 10 years that the total non CO2 emitting share of the grid (Brazil hydro + biomass + nuclear + solar + wind) should exceed 90%.
You probably mean in the USA. In my Brazil hydro + biomass + nuclear + solar + wind is 85% of our MWh generated. Solar+Wind is a tiny part of that but over the next 10 years we should increase that to 90% minimum. We're what German is hoping to be 20 years from now. Except we have NO plans to get rid of nuclear, in fact we're building our 3rd reactor with plans for at least another 4 new nuclear projects over the next 15 years. France is 90% nuclear + hydro + solar + wind. Except the dumbasses are looking to get rid of nuclear. Bad idea.
Wrong. Chernobyl was dangerous. Very dangerous in the first few weeks due to the most radioactive fission products still undergoing decay. Until they finished the Sarcophagus is was very dangerous still. A year after the Sarcophagus is was just dangerous. And we have to differentiate distance to the reactor. Radioactivity disperse under a inverse square law, so x of radioactivity 1 mile away = x/100 radioactivity 10 miles away. But ten years after the Sarcophagus was completed all of the very dangerous radiation has decayed. The real remaining risk is drinking / eating alpha emitters. The gamma/beta rays menace is pretty much gone at this point. 30 years later the longer lasting fission products have decayed by 50% 60 years later the longer lasting fission products have decayed by 75% The other part of the analysis is how much of the radioactive materials have been washed away underground and into rivers. The plutonium radioactive menace isn't significant as its just a few tens of KGs spread over many square Kms. Plutonium and uranium is far more dangerous due to its chemical toxicity than due to its radioactivity. But discussing those inconvenient facts aren't conductive to the main goal which is to severely bash nuclear power as inherently dangerous, while the world keeps burning the really dangerous coal, which kills even without an accident. My conclusion is quite simple, the american mainstream media isn't in love with renewables, they are being paid of by the coal industry, since they would be attacking coal every day if they truly cared for a clean environment. Chemical toxic materials have no half life, they stay dangerous forever. Solar panels incorporate lots of chemicals that will be toxic forever. The other 400 nuclear reactors in operation in the world show that nuclear power can be safe and is safe.
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Of course not, but moving electricity towards nuclear, hydro, geothermal, wind frees up natural gas for heating. And in some places nuclear is used directly for district heating (Baltic countries near Russia).
No, the FUD is all yours. All yours. Nuclear power have killed in its entire lifetime a fraction of what coal kills every year.
In the meantime, plenty of Africa and Asian poor areas are without clean water, lighting to prevent basic illnesses the developed world is free of since WWII.
I bet you never lived near poverty to understand how important cheap, reliable electricity is to the world. Unless you reject climate change we need lots of nuclear, now. Sure we can do nuclear better, but the one we have is plenty good enough.
> Also, the impact was minimized BECAUSE THEY EVACUATED THE SITE.
Bullshit. The actual radiation levels never got bad enough. It was an overblow precaution.
The real Mr D stated this perfectly. The real disaster was not nuclear, it was the tsunami and the earthquake. But Japan is sort of used to that. They have thick skin to rebuild.
Coal kills, every day, almost a thousand people per day die from Black Lung disease, Lung Cancer, coal mining accidents, coal explosions, coal transportation accidents. That's a result of coals very low energy density, in order to make coal cost effective they care very little about the life of those in the coal supply chain and those that live near a coal power station. In the meantime, there are 400 operational nuclear power stations in the world, people aren't getting cancers or dying from nuclear. Besides the meltdown was perfectly preventable. Are you going to shutdown all coal in the world to make coal as healthy as nuclear ? The anti nuclear gangs that travel around the world doing protests to shutdown nuclear aren't locals, they are eco terrorists firmly bent on shutting down nuclear which ends up increasing coal and natural gas consumption (expensive and adds to climate change).
It really helps if you watch Pandora's promise, you could perhaps learn the facts.
Unless of course you believe in going back to a pre industrial world (and kill 90% of the population along the way, since we don't have enough room to grow food the old fashioned way for more than about a billion people.
We need clean reliable energy. Solar and Wind are still many decades away from MAYBE getting the job done. We need nuclear right now. Lots of nuclear.
You are sooooo wrong, it's not even worth trying to detail how wrong you are.
You just made a generic Khan academy is crap generalization without a single fact to make your point.
By no means Khan academy is 100% ready.
Watching a 10 minute video about Khan academy will show you the exercise generator, with the integrated teacher tools that allow teachers to analyze which students have learned the subject perfectly (and could be assigned to help others), those who need some help (which could come from the ace students), and the students that are struggling with the topic and need teacher direct help.
Khan academy is by no means 100% done. They don't have thousands of professionals. AFAIK all videos are done by Sal himself. But it's good enough it has been adopted as primary teaching materials for some USA School districts.
It's not a bunch of videos. This statement of yours just shows you have no interest in even trying to learn about it, you just make up your own FUD to try to prevent others from learning about it.
Education is the only solution. Nuclear is already too expensive.
I'm not ignoring your point, I'm just stating perception is a result of ignorance.
The nuclear waste "problem" isn't a problem. It's also a perception issue. The issue is getting countries to reprocess their waste, which reduce their weight and volume by 95% (and creates MOX fuel from separated plutonium). By 2020 Plutonium+Thorium fuel will be fully certified and ready to go, and reprocessing will make even more sense, and by 2025 U233+Thorium fuel will also be certified, which will enable us to start migrating from the Uranium fuel to Thorium fuel, which enables indefinite nuclear fuel reprocessing (take fission products, add thorium), fission products are just one ton per GW-year of electricity (stable in 300 years), while today without reprocessing 35 tons of waste is being produced (with some plutonium in the mix that has 77000 yr half life).
When Germany's energy costs drop to French levels we can discuss if nuclear power is too expensive.
Sure, there are strong evidence China manipulate the books, but if they complete their first EPR on schedule, why can't Finland ? And if China completes the reactor on schedule, could the delays explain the overruns ?
The reality is building a nuclear reactor is a 100 yr plan. A new nuclear reactor must last 60 yrs bare minimum, should last 80, and might go even over that. The issue with nuclear being too expensive in reality is the result of a world that has been brainwashed that nuclear is dangerous, deadly, waste of money. The numbers contradict that.
And France isn't the only heavy nuclear country with electricity much cheaper than Germany. The hard data is that Germany should be shutting down coal instead of nuclear. It won't be able to meet pollution targets France is already at, and other countries with lots of hydro already are at too (like my Brazil).
PS: Not a fan of water cooled nuclear power. They are a kludge, but a mature kludge that works. There are dozens of ways of doing nuclear, we end up with the US Navy way, cause they had the money to make it happen. Some of the anti nuclear criticism is fair if you admit it probably has to bearing on other types of nuclear reactors.
Ever heard of the Khan academy ? It's entirely the opposite of a remediation tool. You're probably a teacher that feels your job is threathened by tools like the Khan academy. We must strive for excellence in education for kids of all economical and cultural levels, otherwise China and South Korea will take over the world (they don't kid about education).
Just because the NY Times says something it doesn't mean its true.
They have published lies against Tesla Motors which have been methodically proven to be wrong.
But the most important step toward better K12 education is adoption of the Khan Academy system which strives towards A grades for all STEM classes, don't allow a student to leave a topic until it fully mastered it. And you can't do the Khan system without a computer with a browser and good video playback capabilities, it doesn't need to be an iPad, it could be pretty much any decent tablet, laptop, ultrabook or desktop computer. Sure the computer is just a tool that needs to be properly used.
Damn right. People should watch Cool It (2010) by Bjørn Lomborg. There are many cheaper solutions to prevent climate change than Luddite energy conservation, solar+wind+biomass+geothermal only future. Heck those people have trouble even with big hydro power (insane).
The reality is those defending a nuclear free future have an complete agenda 99% of the population would never approve, they hide they full agenda behind climate change. Building more nuclear power in the world is the only certain way to fully prevent climate change without making electricity too expensive. Germany energiewende is far more expensive than Olkiluoto with all of its cost overruns:
http://thebreakthrough.org/ind...
And BTW Olkiluoto absurd costs might indicate Areva's EPR design is too expensive, but we should way 2 more years when the first EPR installation in China enters operation. Yep, China has been building all of those reactors the anti nukes swear are too expensive on budget and on schedule, since Green Peace can't sue the to stop and lobby politicians to throw similar potholes in the way of nuclear projects.
We weren't lucky. Scenarios equal to Chernobyl are impossible to conjure with any Gen III nuclear reactor, and pretty impossible with Gen II reactors with safety updates post TMI. You really need to study up on nuclear reactor construction, safety characteristics instead of accepting anti nuclear propaganda created by Green Peace, Dr Hellen Caldicott and gang, they are only interested in facts if they go their way (maybe you are too). All existing western nuclear designs couldn't meltdown like Chernobyl. Heck even Chernobyl reactor couldn't meltdown unless they disabled its own safety systems on purpose (like they did), and even then if Chernobyl had a standard secondary containment barrier like every western reactor allowed to operate in North America or Western Europe at the same time, all you would have is a TMI like scenario, worst case, that is next to zero radioactive release to the environment, strictly high nuclear decomissioning costs.
Standard secondary containment adopted two decades prior to Chernobyl = about 2 meters of steel reinforced concrete structure. It's so strong it could barely crack if subjected to a 9/11 type attack, the reactor inside would not be destroyed. Chernobyl containment had less than 20% the strength of standard containment required by US NRC at the time.
That's when the US NRC safety standards started going totally out of wack. Existing US NRC safety standards right before Chernobyl were more than enough to have prevented such an accident, yet public perception forced them to go nuts on regulatory overload, facts be damned.
Fukushima was also the result of a nuclear operator that ignore existing US NRC safety standards, there was no need to change standards, all that was needed was the Japanese Nuclear regulatory agency enforce them.
The first thing should be you properly study the subject before opining. There is way to much improperly informed people talking like they know what they are talking about. Site selection is about building new nuclear reactors. Both AP1000, ESBWR and a few other nuclear designs are able to safely survive total loss of power (no generators, no electricity supply from the grid, reactor shutdown) without any risk of meltdown.
Most anti nuclear people have been brainwashed with incorrect information about nuclear.
The really sad fact is most nuclear regulatory authorities don't care about scientific/engineering nuclear facts either, they are hellbent on making nuclear absolutelly economically inviable, by adopting an unjustified nuclear safety standards, 99.9% based on addressing paranoid missinformed popular opinion.
Because so far Elon Musk and SpaceX has given us no reason to think they aren't honest. Show me an example of SpaceX getting a govt contract and failing to deliver, or getting a contract where SpaceX benefits from higher costs (Cost+ contracts).
Those that can't see SpaceX ethical behavior has been good, really don't know anything about SpaceX.
The safety systems are protected by a meter of concrete. Even an RPG / small mortar couldn't scratch that thick a skin.
It's not by chance that so far no real terrorists tried to attack / hijack a nuclear plant. It's not 1% as good a terrorist target as the anti nuclear paranoids state.
There were two goals far more important than actually recovering the first stage:
1 - Having the stage navigate to the landing pad. It would have been a major failure if the rocket landed 2 miles away and were fished out of the water.
2 - Not destroying the landing barge (its worth far more than the first stage, and it would take a few months to prepare another one).
Additionally, in less than 24 hrs SpaceX already knows what went wrong, have a fix for it, and intends to try again on the next launch (about 3 weeks from now, end of scheduled for January).
So, calling it a failure is like saying this glass is 10% empty !
SpaceX has already managed to have the rocket hover for a second or two meters from water, but back then there were no precision in where the rocket was aiming to splash. The difference is many changes were made to the rocket to steer it.
SpaceX might have a dozen shots at trying this in 2015 alone.
Tesla is 100% limited by Li Ion supply. Until the Giga factory is ready, Tesla can't divert Li Ion cells from high profit model S even to slightly lower profit model X.
The Gen III vehicle will be done, but it will take another 3-5 years.
I actually hope Tesla Model S + Model X demand will be so high the Gen III car will have to wait cause the initial giga factory output will be tied with Model S + Model X production. The most important goal Tesla must achieve isn't the Gen III car, but actually fully disrupting the Model S competition. Once BMW and Mercedes start having financial trouble cause people are buying a Tesla instead, we'll start having auto analysts realizing the electric car will take over.
Realize the BWM i3 is still a compliance car. BMW is still not serious about making a Tesla competitor. It seems like no company in the planet is even trying to compete with Tesla.
Its entirely possible Tesla will achieve 200 thousand Model S + Model X per year, at those scales Tesla might be able to drop the price a little bit due to higher economies of scale, further increasing demand. That won't make the MS/MX get to US$ 40k, but it might make the cheapest MS/MX get bellow US$ 60k with incentives, still sounds expensive, but over 10 years a driver might save the full cost of the car if driven a half a million miles + residual resale value of the car.
Every single fuel cell car is still an underpowered, unsexy car.
In the meantime Tesla is showing its cars can rival half a millon buck cars at less than 1/3 the price.
What Toyota will never conceed is that its fuel cell cars where never truly intended to replace gasoline cars. They are compliance cars, made strictly to comply with emissions regulations to offset the lowest mpg cars on Toyota's product line.
In the meantime Tesla is producing cars people actually want to buy, because its a high end car with all of its sex appeal !
The Concorde used a lot of fuel because it was based on a very outdated engine and it was a very heavy design. It was a design done before the 70s oil crisis, when fuel costs wasn't much of an issue. If you just replaced the mobile nose with cameras for landing + used F22 jet engines (must use an after burning jet engine, one that is capable of supersonic air intake), just that would reduce fuel consumption by a huge margin (as much as 2/3s).
People's time cost money. That doesn't apply to your average turism traveller, but I'd say over half of airline customers are willing to pay US$ 100/hr saved in travel time. That's US$ 2000 for a really long (London-Sydney, NYC-Hong Kong) trips.
BTW, the sabre powered airliner isn't quite sub orbital. It's a 80-90k feet airliner. Sub orbital is about 3x higher (above 100km or 300k ft altitude). Its still flying, just flying on thinner air.
Finally, the Sabre engine concept is also the only proposed airliner design that burns hydrogen instead of Jet fuel. Hydrogen made from natural gas still emits CO2 (on the ground, can be sequestered) but hydrogen could also be made by high temperature nuclear or hydrolysis directly from water. If the concept succeeds it might end up being mandatory for long haul flights due to the pollution argument alone.
Except Falcon Heavy reuses the Merlin 1D, Merlin 1D Vac, the basic first and second stage layout, and many other things from F9R. The Falcon Heavy is more similar in design to the F9R than F9R from the first version Falcon 9.
That being said, you are right, FH is still a power point rocket.
Except the orbital rocket is useless for satellite launches. So it doesn't really count.
If you instead focus only on rockets that are launch commercial GEO payloads, then the only american product is SpaceX. Every now and then ULA does a commercial GEO launch, but its a tiny volume.
The really important factor is both ULA, Ariane and the Russians are old school space. SpaceX is silicon valley space, and so far, they model is making every competitor sweat. Like Elon Musk said in the first years of SpaceX, rockets have evolved little since the 70s. In a lot of ways SpaceX has evolved space affordability by leaps and bounds since the F9R rocket became fully operational and enabled SpaceX to launch (less than 4 ton) GEO satellites.
If the Falcon Heavy achieves the same success as F9R, it will undercut every SpaceX competitor in price even without reusability, and with first stage reusability its game over for every rocket currently operational in the world. SpaceX will be able to offer prices at least 50% cheaper than any competitor (in most cases 70-80% cheaper).
Ohhh so stupid... There is NO enterprise without PROFIT.
Communism doesn't work. Efficient people are greedy, regulated capitalism exploit greed to benefit the people. Without profit there's no capitalism.
At the same time... Electricity distribution will continue, it will just use a different electricity flow profile, it will be more focused on transporting electricity between consumers instead of from large generating assets to consumers.
Clarification. In Brazil Solar+Wind is tiny today, but Solar+Wind should increase enough over the next 10 years that the total non CO2 emitting share of the grid (Brazil hydro + biomass + nuclear + solar + wind) should exceed 90%.
And then there's Canada with hydro+nuclear+wind at 75%.
You probably mean in the USA. In my Brazil hydro + biomass + nuclear + solar + wind is 85% of our MWh generated. Solar+Wind is a tiny part of that but over the next 10 years we should increase that to 90% minimum. We're what German is hoping to be 20 years from now. Except we have NO plans to get rid of nuclear, in fact we're building our 3rd reactor with plans for at least another 4 new nuclear projects over the next 15 years.
France is 90% nuclear + hydro + solar + wind. Except the dumbasses are looking to get rid of nuclear. Bad idea.
Wrong. Chernobyl was dangerous. Very dangerous in the first few weeks due to the most radioactive fission products still undergoing decay. Until they finished the Sarcophagus is was very dangerous still. A year after the Sarcophagus is was just dangerous.
And we have to differentiate distance to the reactor. Radioactivity disperse under a inverse square law, so x of radioactivity 1 mile away = x/100 radioactivity 10 miles away.
But ten years after the Sarcophagus was completed all of the very dangerous radiation has decayed. The real remaining risk is drinking / eating alpha emitters. The gamma/beta rays menace is pretty much gone at this point.
30 years later the longer lasting fission products have decayed by 50%
60 years later the longer lasting fission products have decayed by 75%
The other part of the analysis is how much of the radioactive materials have been washed away underground and into rivers.
The plutonium radioactive menace isn't significant as its just a few tens of KGs spread over many square Kms.
Plutonium and uranium is far more dangerous due to its chemical toxicity than due to its radioactivity.
But discussing those inconvenient facts aren't conductive to the main goal which is to severely bash nuclear power as inherently dangerous, while the world keeps burning the really dangerous coal, which kills even without an accident.
My conclusion is quite simple, the american mainstream media isn't in love with renewables, they are being paid of by the coal industry, since they would be attacking coal every day if they truly cared for a clean environment.
Chemical toxic materials have no half life, they stay dangerous forever. Solar panels incorporate lots of chemicals that will be toxic forever.
The other 400 nuclear reactors in operation in the world show that nuclear power can be safe and is safe.