Well the plug-in hybrids are portable storage. At any given time a huge amount of that portable battery power would be connected to the grid. The cars are charged off peak and used on-peak, more or less. The technology would not necessarily require more power plants or transmission. They would simply soak up the excess capacity off peak - AKA load balancing. It's a shamelssly easy thing to pull off with existing infrastructure.
If these EEStor batteries can do what the company says, then everyone will want their new car to be a plug-in hybrid. Notice I didn't will people to buy the ecological new thing... they will want to buy it. Why? Efficiency, performance, comfort...
Really good batteries are all that is missing for electric cars.
Decoys are a reasonably effective strategy but it comes at a significant cost.
1. Even decoys require launchers and lift vehicles (rockets). The decoys need everything that the armed ICBM needs, absent a warhead. Otherwise the difference in flight characteristics will be obvious and the decoys can be ignored.
2. Proportionate response. If we see twenty missiles coming at us from North Korea we will respond proportionately with twenty missiles. This happens as soon as a launch is confirmed, before THAAD has intercepted any missiles and before the fraction of decoys - if any - is known. Since we do not know any of this information, our proportionate response will assume that all their missiles are armed, so all of ours will be armed. While we lose a city, the DPRK is obliterated.
The projectile spends almost no time in the barrel and simple accelerometers could detect and compensate for ship roll. It's not an issue. M1 tanks can shoot accurately while doing 30mph over rough terrain. That's a lot harder than shooting from a large ship. Every been on a cruise ship? Those things don't move much.
I think the real study used relative home size to avoid the inflation issue.
The question was more like: Would you rather live in a 1000 sqrft home while all your neighbors had an 850 sqrft home or live in an 1100 sqrft house and neighbors have 2000 sqrft?
Most people took the smaller house that was bigger than their neighbors.
Wall Street is actively hiring right now. The head guys at those firms would like nothing better than to hire more qualified people more cheaply! That labor competition would improve results for shareholders just like it would for any other company.
The problem is that there are very few qualified people and the difference between excellent and OK is the difference between huge profits and taking losses. The value of Goldman Sachs alone increased by about 70% or $40 billion last year and anyone can buy shares (though some can buy more than others). Most of the value created by the firm was passed along to shareholders, not employees.
Would you suggest that GS is better off hiring idiots for less money? Somehow this whole "hire really smart people and pay them well" seems to work for them. Note that the firm is substantially owned by current and former senior management - it's not like they aren't motivated to maximize (their own) shareholder value.
99.99% of the people upset about these Wall Street bonuses couldn't even get an interview and don't own shares in the company. Why does Herbert think he has the standing to complain?
The "secret" is to create the low voltage by pulse width modulating (or just pulsing) a much higher one. The device just needs a capacitor to smooth out the pulses. Have 120V DC and need 12V DC? Just pulse with a 10% duty cycle. Anyhow - that was my idea - it seems too simple for me to be the only one to have thought it.
Positive pressure is MUCH easier to deal with than negative (vacuum) pressure. Negative pressure means that small molecules like H2 are always leaking out of the pressure vessel. Subs are also surrounded by water, which is pretty useful all by itself. It's a ready source of O2, away from CO2 scrubbing.
It's also an awesome heat sink, something that is pretty critical for a nuclear powered habitat. Remember that a submarine is really powered by a heat engine that relies on a temperature differential. The hot side is generated from nuclear decay. The cold side?That steam running through the turbines needs a condenser, and that condesner needs to dump it's heat somehwere. I don't think moon dust is that great for heat conduction and heat radiators (into space) are bulky, heavy and venerable.
The M16 and 5.56mm round was based around the concept of throwing a lot of lead at or near a target. Marksmanship was deemphasized in favor of supress and manuever.
A true rifleman with an M14 doesn't need that much ammunition because he identifies a target, aims, hits and with the larger bullet, kills.
The AK47 is not the most accurate weapon and it is also designed for full auto suppressive fire. But it packs a slow and heavy 7.62mm round which is much more lethal. 5.56mm is very close to a.22cal round that is familiar to your weekend shooter. The M16 delivers it at high velocity but that doesn't matter much with a non lethal, through and through to an extremity. The same hit with a 7.62mm is more likely to bounce around, shred tissue, and/or open an artery.
The Iraqi Security Force won't touch the M16 in favor of the widely available AK.
Braille can be spoofed pretty easily and impedes machine based sorting and stacking. I would suggest a notching scheme on the side of the bills with a different orientation for each denomination.
A big base also means a immobile base. The most considered plan for a space elevator has it anchored to a platform at sea. That allows it to move out of the way of storms and other localized issues.
That brings up an intersting idea though - your tower could float at sea. Every 100 meters of tower decreases the material constraints on the ribbon - though not by that much.
Personally I think a space elevator on earth is a bad idea. The material constraints are too close to the scientific limit of carbon nanotubes. We should build an orbital ferry with a tether that drops down to the edge of the atmosphere to grab more conventionally lifted payloads. This is sometimes called a sky hook.
The orbital ferry would have it's orbit recharged by also catching carefully timed high velocity dead mass. The recharging mass would come from earth (or moon) based accelerators. In a charged state the ferry has a highly elliptical orbit that still brings it in, very close to the earth. The discharged state is a simple LEO orbit.
I have had my plasma for 3 years and it hasn't lost a bit of picture. Plasmas have brightness to spare, so if the phosphors dim somewhat I'll just up the brightness. Right now the brightness is turned to 30% because they make the default a super bright "torch" setting so it stands out on show rooms. If 15,000 hours is the breakpoint for perceptible picture loss it is still only 20 cents per hour.
The flourescent bulb in an LCD wears out too and it is non-trivial to replace. I wonder if it is even a servicable part. Nothing lasts forever my friend.
I can't believe people still spew that bunk. Current plasma's are good for 60k+ hours (first gen was worse, maybe 15k?). Anyway 60k hous is 7 years of 24/7 viewing. Another way of looking at it is that a $3k plasma TV costs about $.05 per hour to watch.
This ring could fling mass up to a skyhook to recharge its orbit. Imagine a LEO skyhook that catches dozens of dead weight shots from this gun and uses that momentum to promote its orbit to a highly eccentric one. Then the satellite can exchange this orbit potential with a target at its low altitude point through a tether or skyhook style method. The target could be a large satellite in LEO or even a suborbital payload. Once the potential is transfered the target can have its orbit promoted to GEO or other significant altitude.
This method saves a lot of reaction mass in a heavy lifter because you can aim for a high alitutde but a suborbital trajectory. IE it's easier to shoot straight up than curve towards an orbital path at sufficient speed. For instance the X prize is all about sub-orbital. LEO is much harder and GEO is even harder still.
Re:Article close to pure crapola!
on
Two Tiny Gas Turbines
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Efficiency is often quoted as a % of Carnot efficiency, which is the efficiency limit for a pure heat engine and it's around 35%-40% depending on temperature. I think turbines are subject to a lower limit which happens to be around 90-95% below Carnot.
Anyway - who cares? Efficiency in small devices is MEANINGLESS. What matters is power and energy density by volume and weight. This has both in spades.
Batteries are incredibly efficient, but you need to generate the power to charge them somehow. They also (generally) have very poor power and energy density by weight and volume. Supercaps are great with power density and some press releases claim enormous increases in energy density but we haven't seen it yet.
These turbines are shrunken versions of proven technology. It seems very credible and promising. At small sizes and high RPM things like air bearings work BETTER. And those RPM records are for large rotating masses. These are tiny and easy to hold together. Translate 500k RPM into a linear m/s measure for a cm diameter turbine and you'll understand better. The edge doesn't even break the sound barrier (though it does approach it).
The recharge stations probably have the equivalent of 4-5 cars worth of super caps on hand to moderate their pull from the grid.
Given the energy and power density claims, I have to think this is a high voltage device. 110 volts is nothing - maybe 4kV? The glass and aluminum oxide materials mentioned are more in line with high voltage as well. Anyway, that would bring the amps in the charger down in a huge way.
I thought of the same issue. Transfering that much energy in 5 minutes sounded too fast. But transfering energy between HV caps can happen very quickly. You are using the inherent power density of caps for recharge. I guess the only issue is that if charging can happen so quickly than an unintended discharge (IE a short) could have the same 5MW power density. That is pretty scary!
BTW Their VC firm is legendary. That alone lends some credibility.
Brazil has the perfect climate for growing sugar cane. They have THREE growing seasons and plenty of water. The US will not duplicate their success exactly. Brazil also has significant petrolium reserves, which they ramped up, and relatively low energy demand.
How is a parent teaching their child at home different from a teacher in a regular school? Shouldn't both receive support? Don't they both accomplish the same thing IE producing a future tax paying worker? I guess what's missing is the fachist socialization.
Did anyone else notice the teacher's union rep explicitly mentioning socialization as a fundamental reason for public (and government controled) education? That just makes my skin crawl - that losers like that guy want to "mold" my children's character into an obedient citizen.
Anyway, the reason childless couples and seniors do not get a break on schooling related taxes is that todays children are tomorrow's tax-payers, especially the payroll taxes that fund social security and medicare.
You see we don't have anywhere close to enough resources for the current (boomer) generation to retire on. If the economy stalled and tax revenues slowed down, we'd be completely screwed. Educating kids is about keeping our ponzi scheme going where the young prepare to work, the middle aged earn taxable income and the old are cared for.
So school taxes are about developing a generation of earners to pay your social security and medicare benefits. It has nothing to do with a fee for service. So ask yourself if you want to grow old and get free healthcare. Yes? ok well you need to do your part to make new earners. Honestly childless couples should pay more because since they aren't doing the work of raising kids, only providing some modest financial support to help educate others.
Or you could just fly to a country that offered the new prosthetic - assuming you can pay. If I had a disabling amputation it would be a no brainer.
Many people have disability insurance anyhow. Take a lump sum settlement, buy a replacement part and pocket the difference. You do lose some essence in the bargain, though.
Chips are already so cheap that they contribute a negligible amount to the price of consumer goods. An AVR with the computing power of a 386 is now about $2. Most CPUs are only 5-15% of the cost of the PC. Would I buy more computers if they were slightly cheaper? No, but I might buy a slightly better one on the same frequency.
A more important question is if this process produce the useless (for chips) low quality silicon that the old methods did. The solar power industry is currently heavily constrained by the supply of that base material. Alternatively the new process might make production of silicon cheap enough that solar companies could manufacture their own Si.
I'd also be curious if this technology makes smaller fabs more cost effective. Does the whole thermal processing side of chip manufacturing dictate huge multi billion dollar fabs? HVAC normally scales well.
A better approach for space suits is to use direct mechanical compression instead of a man shaped bubble of pressurized air. Apparently the compression suits would work except that joints have proved difficult.
Slashdot Mirror
Well the plug-in hybrids are portable storage. At any given time a huge amount of that portable battery power would be connected to the grid. The cars are charged off peak and used on-peak, more or less. The technology would not necessarily require more power plants or transmission. They would simply soak up the excess capacity off peak - AKA load balancing. It's a shamelssly easy thing to pull off with existing infrastructure.
If these EEStor batteries can do what the company says, then everyone will want their new car to be a plug-in hybrid. Notice I didn't will people to buy the ecological new thing... they will want to buy it. Why? Efficiency, performance, comfort...
Really good batteries are all that is missing for electric cars.
Decoys are a reasonably effective strategy but it comes at a significant cost.
1. Even decoys require launchers and lift vehicles (rockets). The decoys need everything that the armed ICBM needs, absent a warhead. Otherwise the difference in flight characteristics will be obvious and the decoys can be ignored.
2. Proportionate response. If we see twenty missiles coming at us from North Korea we will respond proportionately with twenty missiles. This happens as soon as a launch is confirmed, before THAAD has intercepted any missiles and before the fraction of decoys - if any - is known. Since we do not know any of this information, our proportionate response will assume that all their missiles are armed, so all of ours will be armed. While we lose a city, the DPRK is obliterated.
The projectile spends almost no time in the barrel and simple accelerometers could detect and compensate for ship roll. It's not an issue. M1 tanks can shoot accurately while doing 30mph over rough terrain. That's a lot harder than shooting from a large ship. Every been on a cruise ship? Those things don't move much.
I think the real study used relative home size to avoid the inflation issue.
The question was more like: Would you rather live in a 1000 sqrft home while all your neighbors had an 850 sqrft home or live in an 1100 sqrft house and neighbors have 2000 sqrft?
Most people took the smaller house that was bigger than their neighbors.
I live in NYC and we have a low murder rate for a large city. Comparing Brazil to NYC will make Brazil look artificially worse.
Time to blow some Karma:
Wall Street is actively hiring right now. The head guys at those firms would like nothing better than to hire more qualified people more cheaply! That labor competition would improve results for shareholders just like it would for any other company.
The problem is that there are very few qualified people and the difference between excellent and OK is the difference between huge profits and taking losses. The value of Goldman Sachs alone increased by about 70% or $40 billion last year and anyone can buy shares (though some can buy more than others). Most of the value created by the firm was passed along to shareholders, not employees.
Would you suggest that GS is better off hiring idiots for less money? Somehow this whole "hire really smart people and pay them well" seems to work for them. Note that the firm is substantially owned by current and former senior management - it's not like they aren't motivated to maximize (their own) shareholder value.
99.99% of the people upset about these Wall Street bonuses couldn't even get an interview and don't own shares in the company. Why does Herbert think he has the standing to complain?
You are assuming that the SIM card is accessible and swapable. It may not be...
That's why you use mirrors or lenses to concentrate the light for expensive and efficient cells.
The "secret" is to create the low voltage by pulse width modulating (or just pulsing) a much higher one. The device just needs a capacitor to smooth out the pulses. Have 120V DC and need 12V DC? Just pulse with a 10% duty cycle. Anyhow - that was my idea - it seems too simple for me to be the only one to have thought it.
Positive pressure is MUCH easier to deal with than negative (vacuum) pressure. Negative pressure means that small molecules like H2 are always leaking out of the pressure vessel. Subs are also surrounded by water, which is pretty useful all by itself. It's a ready source of O2, away from CO2 scrubbing.
It's also an awesome heat sink, something that is pretty critical for a nuclear powered habitat. Remember that a submarine is really powered by a heat engine that relies on a temperature differential. The hot side is generated from nuclear decay. The cold side?That steam running through the turbines needs a condenser, and that condesner needs to dump it's heat somehwere. I don't think moon dust is that great for heat conduction and heat radiators (into space) are bulky, heavy and venerable.
The M16 and 5.56mm round was based around the concept of throwing a lot of lead at or near a target. Marksmanship was deemphasized in favor of supress and manuever.
.22cal round that is familiar to your weekend shooter. The M16 delivers it at high velocity but that doesn't matter much with a non lethal, through and through to an extremity. The same hit with a 7.62mm is more likely to bounce around, shred tissue, and/or open an artery.
A true rifleman with an M14 doesn't need that much ammunition because he identifies a target, aims, hits and with the larger bullet, kills.
The AK47 is not the most accurate weapon and it is also designed for full auto suppressive fire. But it packs a slow and heavy 7.62mm round which is much more lethal. 5.56mm is very close to a
The Iraqi Security Force won't touch the M16 in favor of the widely available AK.
Braille can be spoofed pretty easily and impedes machine based sorting and stacking. I would suggest a notching scheme on the side of the bills with a different orientation for each denomination.
A big base also means a immobile base. The most considered plan for a space elevator has it anchored to a platform at sea. That allows it to move out of the way of storms and other localized issues.
That brings up an intersting idea though - your tower could float at sea. Every 100 meters of tower decreases the material constraints on the ribbon - though not by that much.
Personally I think a space elevator on earth is a bad idea. The material constraints are too close to the scientific limit of carbon nanotubes. We should build an orbital ferry with a tether that drops down to the edge of the atmosphere to grab more conventionally lifted payloads. This is sometimes called a sky hook.
The orbital ferry would have it's orbit recharged by also catching carefully timed high velocity dead mass. The recharging mass would come from earth (or moon) based accelerators. In a charged state the ferry has a highly elliptical orbit that still brings it in, very close to the earth. The discharged state is a simple LEO orbit.
I have had my plasma for 3 years and it hasn't lost a bit of picture. Plasmas have brightness to spare, so if the phosphors dim somewhat I'll just up the brightness. Right now the brightness is turned to 30% because they make the default a super bright "torch" setting so it stands out on show rooms. If 15,000 hours is the breakpoint for perceptible picture loss it is still only 20 cents per hour.
The flourescent bulb in an LCD wears out too and it is non-trivial to replace. I wonder if it is even a servicable part. Nothing lasts forever my friend.
I can't believe people still spew that bunk. Current plasma's are good for 60k+ hours (first gen was worse, maybe 15k?). Anyway 60k hous is 7 years of 24/7 viewing. Another way of looking at it is that a $3k plasma TV costs about $.05 per hour to watch.
That's pretty much what I was going to say. 0% efficiency is bad but 10% would probably be good enough with hydrocarbons.
This ring could fling mass up to a skyhook to recharge its orbit. Imagine a LEO skyhook that catches dozens of dead weight shots from this gun and uses that momentum to promote its orbit to a highly eccentric one. Then the satellite can exchange this orbit potential with a target at its low altitude point through a tether or skyhook style method. The target could be a large satellite in LEO or even a suborbital payload. Once the potential is transfered the target can have its orbit promoted to GEO or other significant altitude.
This method saves a lot of reaction mass in a heavy lifter because you can aim for a high alitutde but a suborbital trajectory. IE it's easier to shoot straight up than curve towards an orbital path at sufficient speed. For instance the X prize is all about sub-orbital. LEO is much harder and GEO is even harder still.
Efficiency is often quoted as a % of Carnot efficiency, which is the efficiency limit for a pure heat engine and it's around 35%-40% depending on temperature. I think turbines are subject to a lower limit which happens to be around 90-95% below Carnot.
Anyway - who cares? Efficiency in small devices is MEANINGLESS. What matters is power and energy density by volume and weight. This has both in spades.
Batteries are incredibly efficient, but you need to generate the power to charge them somehow. They also (generally) have very poor power and energy density by weight and volume. Supercaps are great with power density and some press releases claim enormous increases in energy density but we haven't seen it yet.
These turbines are shrunken versions of proven technology. It seems very credible and promising. At small sizes and high RPM things like air bearings work BETTER. And those RPM records are for large rotating masses. These are tiny and easy to hold together. Translate 500k RPM into a linear m/s measure for a cm diameter turbine and you'll understand better. The edge doesn't even break the sound barrier (though it does approach it).
The recharge stations probably have the equivalent of 4-5 cars worth of super caps on hand to moderate their pull from the grid.
Given the energy and power density claims, I have to think this is a high voltage device. 110 volts is nothing - maybe 4kV? The glass and aluminum oxide materials mentioned are more in line with high voltage as well. Anyway, that would bring the amps in the charger down in a huge way.
I thought of the same issue. Transfering that much energy in 5 minutes sounded too fast. But transfering energy between HV caps can happen very quickly. You are using the inherent power density of caps for recharge. I guess the only issue is that if charging can happen so quickly than an unintended discharge (IE a short) could have the same 5MW power density. That is pretty scary!
BTW Their VC firm is legendary. That alone lends some credibility.
Brazil has the perfect climate for growing sugar cane. They have THREE growing seasons and plenty of water. The US will not duplicate their success exactly. Brazil also has significant petrolium reserves, which they ramped up, and relatively low energy demand.
How is a parent teaching their child at home different from a teacher in a regular school? Shouldn't both receive support? Don't they both accomplish the same thing IE producing a future tax paying worker? I guess what's missing is the fachist socialization.
Did anyone else notice the teacher's union rep explicitly mentioning socialization as a fundamental reason for public (and government controled) education? That just makes my skin crawl - that losers like that guy want to "mold" my children's character into an obedient citizen.
Anyway, the reason childless couples and seniors do not get a break on schooling related taxes is that todays children are tomorrow's tax-payers, especially the payroll taxes that fund social security and medicare.
You see we don't have anywhere close to enough resources for the current (boomer) generation to retire on. If the economy stalled and tax revenues slowed down, we'd be completely screwed. Educating kids is about keeping our ponzi scheme going where the young prepare to work, the middle aged earn taxable income and the old are cared for.
So school taxes are about developing a generation of earners to pay your social security and medicare benefits. It has nothing to do with a fee for service. So ask yourself if you want to grow old and get free healthcare. Yes? ok well you need to do your part to make new earners. Honestly childless couples should pay more because since they aren't doing the work of raising kids, only providing some modest financial support to help educate others.
Or you could just fly to a country that offered the new prosthetic - assuming you can pay. If I had a disabling amputation it would be a no brainer.
Many people have disability insurance anyhow. Take a lump sum settlement, buy a replacement part and pocket the difference. You do lose some essence in the bargain, though.
Chips are already so cheap that they contribute a negligible amount to the price of consumer goods. An AVR with the computing power of a 386 is now about $2. Most CPUs are only 5-15% of the cost of the PC. Would I buy more computers if they were slightly cheaper? No, but I might buy a slightly better one on the same frequency.
A more important question is if this process produce the useless (for chips) low quality silicon that the old methods did. The solar power industry is currently heavily constrained by the supply of that base material. Alternatively the new process might make production of silicon cheap enough that solar companies could manufacture their own Si.
I'd also be curious if this technology makes smaller fabs more cost effective. Does the whole thermal processing side of chip manufacturing dictate huge multi billion dollar fabs? HVAC normally scales well.
A better approach for space suits is to use direct mechanical compression instead of a man shaped bubble of pressurized air. Apparently the compression suits would work except that joints have proved difficult.
The NES version was seriously fun. Once you had some practice with the grapple gun you never missed being able to jump.