Personally, I think that there may be issues with using Cuba as a success story - for one thing I doubt that their truly urban areas are as urban as cities such as NYC, Chicago, Berlin, etc... Also, they're located much closer to the tropics, with the attendant longer growing season.
Please note that I took many of the numbers from earlier posters. Farm: Effective Acres: 100 Bushels/acre/year: 180 $per bushel: 5 Transport: $0.10 Land Cost per Acre: $4,500 Gross Income: $90,000 Transport Costs: $1,800 Net: $88,200 Capital Cost @10%: $45,000 Remainder: $45,000 Capital Cost @5%: $22,500 Remainder: $67,500
Multistory building greenhouse: Effective Acres: 100 Bushels/acre/year: 540 $per bushel: $10 (organic/fresh/local: Double value price premium) Transport: $0.05 (It's local, but still has to be moved) Land Cost per Acre: $1,000,000 Gross Income: $540,000 Transport Costs: $2,700 Net: $537,300 Capital Cost @10%: $10,000,000 Remainder: $-9,460,000 Capital Cost @5%: $5,000,000 Remainder: $-4,460,000
I played around with the numbers a bit, it doesn't make sense until the price per effective acre(at triple production per acre and double the price!) drops to $100k(at the 5% discount). This is without factoring increased hand labor(it's the city, labor's expensive), increased equipment costs*, power, whatever. Substantially increase transport costs or increase the 'fresh local produce' premium even more. Maybe open a greengrocer advertising *fresh* produce, and fold the cost of the greenhouse into the store's expenses. Farmers tend to get paid the barest fraction for their produce anyways.
These numbers could be improved if somebody happens to know the average construction cost per square foot of highrise in NYC, as well as more information on typical farm operating costs. We can pretend that they manage to get a deal with the city/state/feds so that subsidies equal taxes.
*Personally, I tend to think that this wouldn't actually be that bad, you could do a lot with some specialized equipment, like an electric tractor powered by a heavy duty extension cord on a boom near the ceiling. Or even a tow line where you can attach various parts to.
It would indeed still have to be transported, but it'd be well within range of electric vehicles, or even an ultra-high efficiency electric rail system. Distribute it out to building/block level greengrocer stores so people can pick up ultra-fresh product on the way home from work, for example. Or even just ride the elevator down to the store to get stuff for dinner.
The problem I see with this is that they've actually done studies for greenhouses and hydroponics and found the energy requirements higher for the 'local grow' solution than shipping from south america to the USA.
Still, with the increasing prices of liquid hydrocarbons and increases in heating/lighting efficiency, the equations may have changed, especially if we get creative and do something like use heatpumps to transfer heat from the office/living areas(which for buildings of sufficient size ALWAYS need cooling) to the greenhouse areas. Use a computerized climate control system so the system knows when to dump heat into the greenhouses, when to dump it outside because the greenhouse is hot enough, when to use supplimental heat to the greenhouse, when to cool the warehouse. I picture two sets of heatpumps for this system, combined with a switching system for radiator reuse. As it's all reversable, you'd also be able to heat the work/home area if necessary.
Work area -> Greenhouse radiators Work area -> outside Greenhouse radiators -> outside
Re:Emphasis on the light, please.
on
Vertical Farming
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Be careful here, I wouldn't bother spending too much on the alternator. From what I understand they're actually not very efficient, especially at the rotation rates a wind turbine will produce without enough gearing to seriously cut into efficiency.
My take is that its launch costs would have more than halved per launch if it could have achieved the 40 launches per year rate that they originally wanted for the vehicle.
The problem with the space shuttle is that they attempted to reach a bit too far; they wanted the shuttle to be everything. A dedicated people mover would have been able to match the shuttle's capacity and still cost an order of magnitude less, a dedicated set of cargo lifters would have the same effect. The end result is that the shuttle is like an SUV: Capable of many things, but ultimately more expensive and less safe than the alternatives.
The people mover could be a winged design, but they should go back and do it using updated materials. We've come quite a way material-science wise than when the shuttle was produced.
I think that it's that some people assoiciate 'fun' with winning - so therefore they must win, even if they have to cheat and/or spend extra money for every advantage they can get.
First, I'll say that I'm NOT normally a online player. I've played Eve, WoW, and a few others.
Personally, I'd love to see a MMORPG that allowed property ownership and customization. I used to play MUDs, and had one where I was building a castle*. Other people could visit said castle. I'd also like to see one where player's actions have long term effects in the game itself, less of this I do quest X, clearing out an area, then 10 minutes later they've re-popped.
Make the PC's conquer new areas, and when I say conquer, I mean it. Epic battles against hordes of enemies, and if they don't do well enough, they could loose territory.
Have auto-repoping stuff for the low levels, or some areas, sure, but allow characters to make a difference.
*That had non-eulicidian geography, but what the hey, I was a mage...
We've been getting lots of questions lately surrounding the new Apple iPhone from people wondering if there will be GPS in the iPhone. The one word answer is no, there will not be GPS in the iPhone. No, you won't be able to connect a Bluetooth GPS receiver to it. And finally, No, you won't be able to install (fill in the blank) type of GPS software. But.... that is only the short of the story.
From reading the rest of the article, the iPhone looks less and less like a good deal. Frankly speaking, it makes Apple and Steve Jobs look like asses the way responses always seem to be 'NO'.
Basically, it sounds like many cellphones don't have the computing power necessary(or aren't set up for it) to do GPS calculations, so it transmits the information to a server that does the calcs for it. So off the verizon network - no server to do the GPS calcs, no GPS coordinates.
If you were not on Verizon's network, you had no navigation available (not even GPS coordinates or heading).
That reminds me, I seem to have some collection that many 'GPS' cellphone systems aren't actually GPS, they get most of their location information from the local cellphone towers via a sort of pseudo-GPS.
That would indeed fail to meet my standards for a system; if I have to use GPS I'm likely to be out of cellphone signal range.
That's what the speedometer and odometer are for. If I'm hiking; landmarks do well.
Now, I did list it as a feature because I think that it'd be neat and maybe occasionally useful, but I'm not willing to give up other features just for it.
fishthegeek was likely refering to the fact that a dedicated GPS navigation device, such as TomTom* is going to be a better performer for any serious navigation devices than the system stuck in a multirole system such as a phone. It's getting to the point it might eventually not be much of a hit, but the dedicated device is still likely to be far easier to work with in it's intended role.
What I care about is reception range/quality and battery life. I actually prefer a larger phone, as long as it'll fit in a pocket. Note: I shove paperback books in that pocket all the time. The reception range is on the list because I live a long ways from the nearest cell tower. The battery become second because as a result my phone ends up having to use full power much of the time.
Followups would be durability, then various features like bluetooth, GPS and MP3 playing. I know how to use a map, and do so, so I normally know where I am, and already have a dedicated mp3 player.
A nice big brick phone with a sensitive receiver, powerfull transmitter, huge battery with bluetooth would almost be my ideal phone. That way I can use my nice headset and stick the monster on my belt or passanger seat of my car.
Yes, our computational devices are now built into just about every system we create. However, they're essentially nothing more than fancy manipulations of electricity; They do nothing to change the physics required for space travel; They help in the discovery and creation of new alloys, but they don't change the melting point of iron and titanium. Sure, we've discovered better alloys, but they could have been discovered without computers, and even then, the limits are still there.
Computing technology is amazing and has help to raise the common man far above where he was even 40 years ago. But it's computing/control technology, information technology. It's not an amazing new uber-material or power source.
I can't predict a new breakthrough discovery. It's just that given how fast physical technologies move, I don't see us sending a manned mission outside the solar system in the next 100 years. A electric power guy from a hundred years ago would be able to understand 90% of our power generation today. Windmills, dams, and coal all work via steam pressure and a turbine. For that matter, plants opened in the 1940s are still creating power today.
He'd definitly be impressed byt the physical commodities; but if he's a reasonably educated man who understands he's seeing the future, he'd be able to see the usage of many things.
This is remarkably similar to the way I look at it.
Let's say that a caveman has abilities.1% of the theoretical limit. We, today, are at ~20%. There's only another 5 fold increase available to us over the (theoretical)20 fold increase from the middle ages. It's like a limit equation, the closer you get to 1 the more it takes to crawl up that little extra bit.
These figures are, of course, all WAGs. We can, in laboratory settings, create temperatures ranging from within a degree of absolute zero to hotter than the core of a sun.
The biggest explosion occured with the development of the scientific method, an organized method of learning. The attitude that 'yes, there's an explanation for this, if we can only find it'. Technology reaching the point where knowledge could be shared far more than could be dispursed by hand written books. 'Shoulders of Giants' type stuff. There are points I consider major milestones, but there were many markers in between, without which the milestone would never have been developed.
This assertion sounds like total hogwash to me, just on the face of it.
And your later comments reveal that you've misunderstood me completely. I DIDN'T say that we haven't progressed. We have advanced very far in some rather amazing ways. It's just many of the principles we've advanced on were already known even a hundred years ago, even if only in the coarsest sense.
Still, I haven't heard about any proposals huge power technology beyond fusion. Given the difficulty of fusion; even if a new Einstein or Hawking showed up tommorrow with a great new proposal it could be a hundred years before it's implimented as a practical technology.
With the way the human race is...let us kill ourselves out of existence
You first.
For instance...that idiot who opened that creationist museum is in the middle of a lawsuit concerning the organization he started in Australia for "creation science".
The very reason these nuts get so much attention is that they're so rare and seen as ridiculous by so many. I'm sure they'll die out, eventually. Besides, I think that it's actually good for society to have a few individuals that question just about anything. It makes sure that most falsehoods will be penetrated eventually.
Please remember, I said he'd understand them, not that he wouldn't be impressed.
I think we're blase not because our advances are meager but because our advances have been so frequent and mind-blowing that we've come to expect new tech that is twice as good as the old tech every few years.
And yet, our automobiles only get about double the milage of the first assembly line produced ones. Sure, they're far, far more reliable*, safer, get better milage for their size, emit less pollution. But they're still a car. Only now are we starting to see alternatives; some of which are resurgents which competed with the Model-T for a time.
Mostly what we've seen is the commonization of technology. Point to point radios, once the realm of military and the rich, reduced to the point that schools have to worry about kids using them.
I just don't see us sending a physical probe to another solar system in the next 50 years, much less a manned one in the next 100-150.
*I remember reading about times when a 300mile cross-country race would generally have half the competition fail to finish due to mechanical problems.
Would you thus downplay the advances we've made in the 5-6 centuries since then?
I'm not saying that he wouldn't be amazed like we would be if one of us was transported to the realm of the jetsons - flying cars, AI robots, etc...
What I was saying is that he'd be able to grasp much of what we can do - in some ways he'd be more dumbfounded than the caveman. He at least would have the concepts to understand what we're doing, and how difficult it is.
Still, physics is a hard master. There's little we can do today in the realm of spaceflight that couldn't have been done back in the 1960's. Yes, the 1960's version would be larger, more expensive, less safe, and less pleasant, but they could do it. Orbital trajectories can be done by hand if necessary.
I'll admit that I'm fairly pessimistic about the next 50-100 years. Like I said, everything's getting hard. You can only tweak so much. I figure commercial fusion power plants to be at least 50 years away.
I'm talking about primary sources - IE humans aren't actively transforming it into another form to get energy from it later. Sunlight is a primary source, so is nuclear, wind and wave. I'd even include hydrocarbons in there.
Conventional hydrogen though, we have to generate, putting far more power in than we get out. Same with antimatter, we can't just go somewhere and dig it up. If we want to fuel a spaceship with antimatter we have to create it ourselves - overall it's an energy sink, we get back less than we put in, just like a battery.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I think that there may be issues with using Cuba as a success story - for one thing I doubt that their truly urban areas are as urban as cities such as NYC, Chicago, Berlin, etc... Also, they're located much closer to the tropics, with the attendant longer growing season.
Please note that I took many of the numbers from earlier posters.
Farm:
Effective Acres: 100
Bushels/acre/year: 180
$per bushel: 5
Transport: $0.10
Land Cost per Acre: $4,500
Gross Income: $90,000
Transport Costs: $1,800
Net: $88,200
Capital Cost @10%: $45,000
Remainder: $45,000
Capital Cost @5%: $22,500
Remainder: $67,500
Multistory building greenhouse:
Effective Acres: 100
Bushels/acre/year: 540
$per bushel: $10 (organic/fresh/local: Double value price premium)
Transport: $0.05 (It's local, but still has to be moved)
Land Cost per Acre: $1,000,000
Gross Income: $540,000
Transport Costs: $2,700
Net: $537,300
Capital Cost @10%: $10,000,000
Remainder: $-9,460,000
Capital Cost @5%: $5,000,000
Remainder: $-4,460,000
I played around with the numbers a bit, it doesn't make sense until the price per effective acre(at triple production per acre and double the price!) drops to $100k(at the 5% discount). This is without factoring increased hand labor(it's the city, labor's expensive), increased equipment costs*, power, whatever. Substantially increase transport costs or increase the 'fresh local produce' premium even more. Maybe open a greengrocer advertising *fresh* produce, and fold the cost of the greenhouse into the store's expenses. Farmers tend to get paid the barest fraction for their produce anyways.
These numbers could be improved if somebody happens to know the average construction cost per square foot of highrise in NYC, as well as more information on typical farm operating costs. We can pretend that they manage to get a deal with the city/state/feds so that subsidies equal taxes.
*Personally, I tend to think that this wouldn't actually be that bad, you could do a lot with some specialized equipment, like an electric tractor powered by a heavy duty extension cord on a boom near the ceiling. Or even a tow line where you can attach various parts to.
It would indeed still have to be transported, but it'd be well within range of electric vehicles, or even an ultra-high efficiency electric rail system. Distribute it out to building/block level greengrocer stores so people can pick up ultra-fresh product on the way home from work, for example. Or even just ride the elevator down to the store to get stuff for dinner.
The problem I see with this is that they've actually done studies for greenhouses and hydroponics and found the energy requirements higher for the 'local grow' solution than shipping from south america to the USA.
Still, with the increasing prices of liquid hydrocarbons and increases in heating/lighting efficiency, the equations may have changed, especially if we get creative and do something like use heatpumps to transfer heat from the office/living areas(which for buildings of sufficient size ALWAYS need cooling) to the greenhouse areas. Use a computerized climate control system so the system knows when to dump heat into the greenhouses, when to dump it outside because the greenhouse is hot enough, when to use supplimental heat to the greenhouse, when to cool the warehouse. I picture two sets of heatpumps for this system, combined with a switching system for radiator reuse. As it's all reversable, you'd also be able to heat the work/home area if necessary.
Work area -> Greenhouse radiators
Work area -> outside
Greenhouse radiators -> outside
Be careful here, I wouldn't bother spending too much on the alternator. From what I understand they're actually not very efficient, especially at the rotation rates a wind turbine will produce without enough gearing to seriously cut into efficiency.
IE it's expecing 1k+ rpm minimum, and probably getting barely 100 rpm.
My take is that its launch costs would have more than halved per launch if it could have achieved the 40 launches per year rate that they originally wanted for the vehicle.
The problem with the space shuttle is that they attempted to reach a bit too far; they wanted the shuttle to be everything. A dedicated people mover would have been able to match the shuttle's capacity and still cost an order of magnitude less, a dedicated set of cargo lifters would have the same effect. The end result is that the shuttle is like an SUV: Capable of many things, but ultimately more expensive and less safe than the alternatives.
The people mover could be a winged design, but they should go back and do it using updated materials. We've come quite a way material-science wise than when the shuttle was produced.
Don't forget, according to the article, the business provides housing as well(apparently not an unusual thing in China).
I think that it's that some people assoiciate 'fun' with winning - so therefore they must win, even if they have to cheat and/or spend extra money for every advantage they can get.
First, I'll say that I'm NOT normally a online player. I've played Eve, WoW, and a few others.
Personally, I'd love to see a MMORPG that allowed property ownership and customization. I used to play MUDs, and had one where I was building a castle*. Other people could visit said castle. I'd also like to see one where player's actions have long term effects in the game itself, less of this I do quest X, clearing out an area, then 10 minutes later they've re-popped.
Make the PC's conquer new areas, and when I say conquer, I mean it. Epic battles against hordes of enemies, and if they don't do well enough, they could loose territory.
Have auto-repoping stuff for the low levels, or some areas, sure, but allow characters to make a difference.
*That had non-eulicidian geography, but what the hey, I was a mage...
from the article:
From reading the rest of the article, the iPhone looks less and less like a good deal. Frankly speaking, it makes Apple and Steve Jobs look like asses the way responses always seem to be 'NO'.
Aha!
Basically, it sounds like many cellphones don't have the computing power necessary(or aren't set up for it) to do GPS calculations, so it transmits the information to a server that does the calcs for it. So off the verizon network - no server to do the GPS calcs, no GPS coordinates.
If you were not on Verizon's network, you had no navigation available (not even GPS coordinates or heading).
That reminds me, I seem to have some collection that many 'GPS' cellphone systems aren't actually GPS, they get most of their location information from the local cellphone towers via a sort of pseudo-GPS.
That would indeed fail to meet my standards for a system; if I have to use GPS I'm likely to be out of cellphone signal range.
That's what the speedometer and odometer are for. If I'm hiking; landmarks do well.
Now, I did list it as a feature because I think that it'd be neat and maybe occasionally useful, but I'm not willing to give up other features just for it.
More than likely.
fishthegeek was likely refering to the fact that a dedicated GPS navigation device, such as TomTom* is going to be a better performer for any serious navigation devices than the system stuck in a multirole system such as a phone. It's getting to the point it might eventually not be much of a hit, but the dedicated device is still likely to be far easier to work with in it's intended role.
*I hate that name.
Slimness is all consumers care about?
Another oddball consumer here-
What I care about is reception range/quality and battery life. I actually prefer a larger phone, as long as it'll fit in a pocket. Note: I shove paperback books in that pocket all the time. The reception range is on the list because I live a long ways from the nearest cell tower. The battery become second because as a result my phone ends up having to use full power much of the time.
Followups would be durability, then various features like bluetooth, GPS and MP3 playing. I know how to use a map, and do so, so I normally know where I am, and already have a dedicated mp3 player.
A nice big brick phone with a sensitive receiver, powerfull transmitter, huge battery with bluetooth would almost be my ideal phone. That way I can use my nice headset and stick the monster on my belt or passanger seat of my car.
Yes, our computational devices are now built into just about every system we create. However, they're essentially nothing more than fancy manipulations of electricity; They do nothing to change the physics required for space travel; They help in the discovery and creation of new alloys, but they don't change the melting point of iron and titanium. Sure, we've discovered better alloys, but they could have been discovered without computers, and even then, the limits are still there.
Computing technology is amazing and has help to raise the common man far above where he was even 40 years ago. But it's computing/control technology, information technology. It's not an amazing new uber-material or power source.
I can't predict a new breakthrough discovery. It's just that given how fast physical technologies move, I don't see us sending a manned mission outside the solar system in the next 100 years. A electric power guy from a hundred years ago would be able to understand 90% of our power generation today. Windmills, dams, and coal all work via steam pressure and a turbine. For that matter, plants opened in the 1940s are still creating power today.
We're probably one of a large number of planets listed under the "No intelligent life" category.
Those would be the ones targeted for colonization. Naw... We're listed as a 'Aborigine Protected Zone'.
I'd really rather avoid that, personally. It might help push some technologies ahead, but the cost is rather extreme...
He'd definitly be impressed byt the physical commodities; but if he's a reasonably educated man who understands he's seeing the future, he'd be able to see the usage of many things.
This is remarkably similar to the way I look at it.
.1% of the theoretical limit. We, today, are at ~20%. There's only another 5 fold increase available to us over the (theoretical)20 fold increase from the middle ages. It's like a limit equation, the closer you get to 1 the more it takes to crawl up that little extra bit.
Let's say that a caveman has abilities
These figures are, of course, all WAGs. We can, in laboratory settings, create temperatures ranging from within a degree of absolute zero to hotter than the core of a sun.
The biggest explosion occured with the development of the scientific method, an organized method of learning. The attitude that 'yes, there's an explanation for this, if we can only find it'. Technology reaching the point where knowledge could be shared far more than could be dispursed by hand written books. 'Shoulders of Giants' type stuff. There are points I consider major milestones, but there were many markers in between, without which the milestone would never have been developed.
This assertion sounds like total hogwash to me, just on the face of it.
And your later comments reveal that you've misunderstood me completely. I DIDN'T say that we haven't progressed. We have advanced very far in some rather amazing ways. It's just many of the principles we've advanced on were already known even a hundred years ago, even if only in the coarsest sense.
Still, I haven't heard about any proposals huge power technology beyond fusion. Given the difficulty of fusion; even if a new Einstein or Hawking showed up tommorrow with a great new proposal it could be a hundred years before it's implimented as a practical technology.
With the way the human race is...let us kill ourselves out of existence
You first.
For instance...that idiot who opened that creationist museum is in the middle of a lawsuit concerning the organization he started in Australia for "creation science".
The very reason these nuts get so much attention is that they're so rare and seen as ridiculous by so many. I'm sure they'll die out, eventually. Besides, I think that it's actually good for society to have a few individuals that question just about anything. It makes sure that most falsehoods will be penetrated eventually.
Please remember, I said he'd understand them, not that he wouldn't be impressed.
I think we're blase not because our advances are meager but because our advances have been so frequent and mind-blowing that we've come to expect new tech that is twice as good as the old tech every few years.
And yet, our automobiles only get about double the milage of the first assembly line produced ones. Sure, they're far, far more reliable*, safer, get better milage for their size, emit less pollution. But they're still a car. Only now are we starting to see alternatives; some of which are resurgents which competed with the Model-T for a time.
Mostly what we've seen is the commonization of technology. Point to point radios, once the realm of military and the rich, reduced to the point that schools have to worry about kids using them.
I just don't see us sending a physical probe to another solar system in the next 50 years, much less a manned one in the next 100-150.
*I remember reading about times when a 300mile cross-country race would generally have half the competition fail to finish due to mechanical problems.
Would you thus downplay the advances we've made in the 5-6 centuries since then?
I'm not saying that he wouldn't be amazed like we would be if one of us was transported to the realm of the jetsons - flying cars, AI robots, etc...
What I was saying is that he'd be able to grasp much of what we can do - in some ways he'd be more dumbfounded than the caveman. He at least would have the concepts to understand what we're doing, and how difficult it is.
Still, physics is a hard master. There's little we can do today in the realm of spaceflight that couldn't have been done back in the 1960's. Yes, the 1960's version would be larger, more expensive, less safe, and less pleasant, but they could do it. Orbital trajectories can be done by hand if necessary.
I'll admit that I'm fairly pessimistic about the next 50-100 years. Like I said, everything's getting hard. You can only tweak so much. I figure commercial fusion power plants to be at least 50 years away.
I'm talking about primary sources - IE humans aren't actively transforming it into another form to get energy from it later. Sunlight is a primary source, so is nuclear, wind and wave. I'd even include hydrocarbons in there.
Conventional hydrogen though, we have to generate, putting far more power in than we get out. Same with antimatter, we can't just go somewhere and dig it up. If we want to fuel a spaceship with antimatter we have to create it ourselves - overall it's an energy sink, we get back less than we put in, just like a battery.