I can't really see the reasoning behind this, it would be far easier, more efficient, quicker and cost effective to put panels along the roadsides, next to substations on the sides of buildings, on roofs, or practically anywhere but on roads. Until they can lay solar panels like they do pavement for virtually the same cost as pavement there really isn't much point when there are SOOOOOOO many other viable locations.
I don't think I've ever encountered a "charity" that didn't skim a fair amount of the money off of the top for someones personal enrichment. It should also be noted that there are apparently two "Anne Frank" charities, The "Anne Frank Foundation" and the "Anne Frank Fund" which have had their own little legal squabbles in the past over the "over-commercialization of Anne’s legacy".
Wow, the leg was the only hangup. They were probably so focused on solving what was assumed by everyone else to be impossible, actually landing a nearly empty rocket stage in a predetermined location, that someone failed to do some basic checks/engineering on the one item that everyone assumed would be no problem, some simple landing legs.
"You find two-stroke engines in poorer countries because they're cheap,"
No, you find two-stroke engines in applications where you need high power but extremely low weight. Their cheapness is simply a byproduct of their simplicity (hence, weight savings). There are plenty of applications where a 4-stroke engine simply wouldn't work because it would weigh too much (leaf blowers, chain saws, etc) or would be too bulky (mopeds, model airplanes, lawnmowers, etc). Sure their efficiency needs some work, or replacement if a viable alternative is created, but at the moment there are several applications where 4-stroke engines or battery power simply wouldn't work.
"publicly disclose vulnerability details only after GM confirms completed remedication of the vulnerability."
Ah, I think I see a significant portion of their objective here. Create a bug reporting system, leashed with a NDA so that you don't get to talk about the bug without their OK (which probably means never). And if anyone publicly discloses a bug without going through their little song and dance they claim "we have a bug reporting system that they should have used, their failure to go through "proper channels" is prima facie evidence they were acting improperly" when they sue. Haven't there been similar situations in the past, I believe I recall some security researchers finding a serious bug in some software and reporting it to the company, year(s) later it still wasn't fixed so they went public. A patch was released within a couple months, with the company screaming that the security researchers acted improperly by going public before they "were ready".
Of course we shouldn't go out of our way to prepare for incidents that don't even show as a rounding error in overall mortality statistics. On a global scale in the past 10 years only about 303 Americans have died due to any form of terrorism, in roughly that same time period 313 people in the US have been killed by lighting. You're literally more likely to die via lightning than terrorism. However there are nutjobs out there, there are also accidents, negligence & natural disasters, so the grid SHOULD be built to take punishment (both natural and man-made).
That would definitely be a good thing, but you don't even need to go that far. Every decently sized city/region should have their own co-generation power plant in addition to a decent amount of residential solar/wind generation. There would still be a national grid to handle electrical demand in the case of plant maintenance, extremely high demand, an accident or some kind of disaster. But in the case of something happening to the national grid each city/region could trip the fuses leading out of the city and run on their own. There is an example of this in my own area, during the last major blackout (2003 North East blackout) a village with their own power plant cut themselves off from the grid and powered the city on their own until the grid was restored. Waste heat from each facility could be used to heat nearby homes/businesses in the winter or provide heat for industrial applications.
"We were extremely concerned about the amount of publicly available information"
Then you're "concerned" about the wrong thing. Any idiot driving down the road can see "Oh, there's a huge substation with lots of power lines coming out of it, its probably important". "Hiding" it by removing its existence from public documentation doesn't do a thing to improve safety/security. Fixing the issue entails actually FIXING it, not hiding the fact that a problem exists. Build more backup substations, install more circuit breakers and improve power plants to endure unexpected spikes/drops in electrical usage coinciding with disasters both man-made and natural.
From what I've heard they've given up on second stage return with the Falcon 9/Heavy program. I would imagine it is technically possible but it probably decreased the effective payload too much to be viable. They've already pushed the height of the rocket to the max withing the current rocket diameter to get the (impressive) return to launch site capability. They do intend for full reusability when (hopefully) they build the Falcon X with its significantly more efficient Raptor engines.
I've never understood why someone would want an integrated "smart TV". Things become obsolete, app makers switch to a new os/hardware config. If you have your smart device integrated into the TV there is no way to replace a relatively cheap system in an expensive one. Whereas if you have a separate smart device and it no longer supports the apps you want, breaks, or is infected with a virus you simply buy a new one (often quite cheaply) hook it up and you're off and running. Also from what I've seen separate smart TV device manufactures often have more stable, well supported software since they are dealing with a limited number devices instead of dozens of TV models. My Amazon Fire/Chromecast devices have required a simple restart less than a dozen times since I bought them 2 years ago. Someone I know who owns a 4k smart TV has had to factory reset their TV at least 3 times due to software bugs in the last year alone. Buying a TV with integrated smart capabilities is like buying a house with a fridge/washer/dryer permanently cemented into a wall.
"countries being targeted by Uber, which have great taxi services."
Then Uber should quickly wither and die in those areas without the need for heavy handed tactics (lawsuits, arrests, confiscations, destruction of private property, mass economic sabotage, etc). I'm guessing that Uber and other similar apps generally target areas where people are dissatisfied with the available services. Moving into a city/region where people are already satisfied with the services would be kind of like building an ice cream shop on the same block as another ice cream shop with better prices, quicker service and better ice cream, your shop is going to go belly up in pretty short order.
I wonder, is their retreat due to a genuine disinterest by the populations of those countries or simply by anti-competitive practices by those countries "established interests"/governments? It almost sounds like at least in UberPops case that the general public was happy to use the service but the taxi companies/drivers "dissatisfaction" resulted in blocking traffic, government lobbying, destroying Uber cars and attacking their drivers. No doubt that Uber is a company that is more than anything interested in profits, but why people are ascribing different motivations to various established taxi companies across the globe is beyond me. Let them all provide their service and allow the public to decide which deserves to survive.
Carbon-Carbon was used on the leading edges of the wings and the nose cone, the TILES were made of high purity silica. And while during normal operations they didn't actually have to survive being plunged into water it was apparently done to demonstrate their resilience.
Extract from http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/ "For example, an HRSI tile taken from a 2,300 F oven can be immersed in cold water without damage. Surface heat dissipates so quickly that an uncoated tile can be held by its edges with an ungloved hand seconds after removal from the oven while its interior still glows red."
Weren't one of the Space Shuttles primary thermal protections systems a ceramic (thermal tiles)? They had to survive being heated to thousands of degrees and then being plunged into cold water.
They should follow the procedure for some experimental aircraft (well, somewhat). Go ahead and keep the first recovered stage as a souvenir. The next one that comes down though should be torn apart down to its last bolt for testing on each and every component, including destructive tests like testing the shear force of bolts, the pressure limits of tanks, break points of struts, etc. If everything looks good and there is no unexpected wear and tear on the stage reuse the next one after intensive non-destructive inspections and tests. If everything goes off without a hitch tear that one down and do another round of intensive tests. As time goes on allow stages to fly more times and decrease inspections on components that aren't showing any wear and maintain detailed inspections of components that are. Eventually they'll figure out which parts (if any) need regular replacement/repair or redesign and which could fly a hundred times without issue. Given their flight schedule (am I hallucinating? 23 launches in 2016?) it shouldn't be an issue to sacrifice a few stages here and there to ensure that there isn't some component that is degrading more quickly than expected or some critical wiring bundle that is rubbing up against a bolt.
There are 29 states not in compliance and 12 more who have outright rejected it? That is pretty good evidence that there is something wrong with the law even for the most educationally challenged individual.
There's a big difference between "conserving our precious natural resources" and greenwashing. Low flow toilets are a pretty good example, I still have one of the first generation of them, the ones which require multiple flushes to get rid of a few squares of TP. Most of those LF toilets were dismal failures, using far more water than their standard counterparts. Most newer models have overcome those shortfalls but how many resources were wasted because of the idiotic push to force them into the market before they were ready.
Look towards the bottom of the page "If the Phantom 2 and its controller are disconnected during flight, the system’s failsafe protection will activate, automatically telling and if the signal is good enough, the Phantom 2 to return home and land automatically." A "drone" by its very definition has the capability to fly itself, if this thing went out of control simply because it lost connection to the remote control it was not a drone.
"a strong and unforeseen interference on the operating frequency"
Then from what I understand it wasn't a drone but a simple remote controlled aircraft, and not a very good one at that. Even the DJ Phantom drones from what I've heard are rigged with safety fallback so that when the signal from the remote is lost they will us GPS to return to their liftoff point.
The rocket uses up virtually all of its fuel getting the second stage up to speed and altitude, after ejecting that payload it returns to the launch site on a comparatively insignificant amount of fuel. And at least for the Falcon 9 a crew will never ride the first stage back to the pad, they continue on to orbit on the second stage. I highly doubt that SpaceX will even reuse a first stage to launch "precious cargo" (people, expensive satellites, etc) for the foreseeable future. I imagine their intent is to use newly built stages to launch such cargo, and then reuse the first stage launching cheaper satellites for a discount (new first stage ~$50 million launch, reused first stage ~$30 million launch).
If you want to make space access more practical you need to recover your craft somehow. Imagine if we shipped cargo from warehouse to store in trucks & trailers that disintegrated after their trip, a can of beans alone would probably cost a hundred dollars. This is the method SpaceX is using, probably has its issues but so does every method. If you're interested in parachute recovery ULA is supposedly going to be trying that in the "near" future with a system they've named Vulcan.
Hopefully it will be one of many such successful launches and recoveries in the year(s) to come, It'll be nice to get some video of day landings as well as while I'm sure a night launch/landing is great for those actually witnessing it on the ground you can't really see much on video. I'm also curious as to how closely to center it landed on its pad, would it have been successful if they had gone for a ocean platform landing or did a larger pad make all the difference.
Super-capacitors are already extremely reliable and affordable, the problem is they can't really store a whole lot of power at present. They are used in some trucking applications in tandem with standard lead acid batteries. Some also have a minor issue with self discharging, but if their capacity could be brought up to battery levels and that self discharge limited they would likely have a major impact on the battery market. They virtually don't degrade (1 million charge/discharge cycles without degradation have been shown), they can charge very quickly and they are very simple (which should make them cheap).
And that final disposal is probably a few decades off for a vast majority of batteries. Teslas powerwall and industrial system plans to make use of the batteries long after the 8+ years the battery is warrantied for in vehicles.
For those applications cost per kWh is a far more important factor than density/weight. Who cares if a residential battery is the size of a small car, in most situations you can just bury it in the back yard. Density and weight do of course become major factors in mobile device & EV applications but even here cost is quite important. It doesn't matter if an EV battery is developed that has the same energy density and weight as petroleum fuels, if it costs $30k per battery it is next to useless for the general public. For those two applications I'd rather have a battery cell the size of a 5 gallon bucket that can store 1 kWh for a hundred bucks instead of a cell the size of a 16oz bottle that can store the same amount of energy but cost $500.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't really see the reasoning behind this, it would be far easier, more efficient, quicker and cost effective to put panels along the roadsides, next to substations on the sides of buildings, on roofs, or practically anywhere but on roads. Until they can lay solar panels like they do pavement for virtually the same cost as pavement there really isn't much point when there are SOOOOOOO many other viable locations.
"which gives all proceeds to charity"
I don't think I've ever encountered a "charity" that didn't skim a fair amount of the money off of the top for someones personal enrichment. It should also be noted that there are apparently two "Anne Frank" charities, The "Anne Frank Foundation" and the "Anne Frank Fund" which have had their own little legal squabbles in the past over the "over-commercialization of Anne’s legacy".
http://nonprofitquarterly.org/...
Wow, the leg was the only hangup. They were probably so focused on solving what was assumed by everyone else to be impossible, actually landing a nearly empty rocket stage in a predetermined location, that someone failed to do some basic checks/engineering on the one item that everyone assumed would be no problem, some simple landing legs.
"You find two-stroke engines in poorer countries because they're cheap,"
No, you find two-stroke engines in applications where you need high power but extremely low weight. Their cheapness is simply a byproduct of their simplicity (hence, weight savings). There are plenty of applications where a 4-stroke engine simply wouldn't work because it would weigh too much (leaf blowers, chain saws, etc) or would be too bulky (mopeds, model airplanes, lawnmowers, etc). Sure their efficiency needs some work, or replacement if a viable alternative is created, but at the moment there are several applications where 4-stroke engines or battery power simply wouldn't work.
"publicly disclose vulnerability details only after GM confirms completed remedication of the vulnerability."
Ah, I think I see a significant portion of their objective here. Create a bug reporting system, leashed with a NDA so that you don't get to talk about the bug without their OK (which probably means never). And if anyone publicly discloses a bug without going through their little song and dance they claim "we have a bug reporting system that they should have used, their failure to go through "proper channels" is prima facie evidence they were acting improperly" when they sue. Haven't there been similar situations in the past, I believe I recall some security researchers finding a serious bug in some software and reporting it to the company, year(s) later it still wasn't fixed so they went public. A patch was released within a couple months, with the company screaming that the security researchers acted improperly by going public before they "were ready".
Of course we shouldn't go out of our way to prepare for incidents that don't even show as a rounding error in overall mortality statistics. On a global scale in the past 10 years only about 303 Americans have died due to any form of terrorism, in roughly that same time period 313 people in the US have been killed by lighting. You're literally more likely to die via lightning than terrorism. However there are nutjobs out there, there are also accidents, negligence & natural disasters, so the grid SHOULD be built to take punishment (both natural and man-made).
"completely decentralize our power"
That would definitely be a good thing, but you don't even need to go that far. Every decently sized city/region should have their own co-generation power plant in addition to a decent amount of residential solar/wind generation. There would still be a national grid to handle electrical demand in the case of plant maintenance, extremely high demand, an accident or some kind of disaster. But in the case of something happening to the national grid each city/region could trip the fuses leading out of the city and run on their own. There is an example of this in my own area, during the last major blackout (2003 North East blackout) a village with their own power plant cut themselves off from the grid and powered the city on their own until the grid was restored. Waste heat from each facility could be used to heat nearby homes/businesses in the winter or provide heat for industrial applications.
"We were extremely concerned about the amount of publicly available information"
Then you're "concerned" about the wrong thing. Any idiot driving down the road can see "Oh, there's a huge substation with lots of power lines coming out of it, its probably important". "Hiding" it by removing its existence from public documentation doesn't do a thing to improve safety/security. Fixing the issue entails actually FIXING it, not hiding the fact that a problem exists. Build more backup substations, install more circuit breakers and improve power plants to endure unexpected spikes/drops in electrical usage coinciding with disasters both man-made and natural.
From what I've heard they've given up on second stage return with the Falcon 9/Heavy program. I would imagine it is technically possible but it probably decreased the effective payload too much to be viable. They've already pushed the height of the rocket to the max withing the current rocket diameter to get the (impressive) return to launch site capability. They do intend for full reusability when (hopefully) they build the Falcon X with its significantly more efficient Raptor engines.
I've never understood why someone would want an integrated "smart TV". Things become obsolete, app makers switch to a new os/hardware config. If you have your smart device integrated into the TV there is no way to replace a relatively cheap system in an expensive one. Whereas if you have a separate smart device and it no longer supports the apps you want, breaks, or is infected with a virus you simply buy a new one (often quite cheaply) hook it up and you're off and running. Also from what I've seen separate smart TV device manufactures often have more stable, well supported software since they are dealing with a limited number devices instead of dozens of TV models. My Amazon Fire/Chromecast devices have required a simple restart less than a dozen times since I bought them 2 years ago. Someone I know who owns a 4k smart TV has had to factory reset their TV at least 3 times due to software bugs in the last year alone. Buying a TV with integrated smart capabilities is like buying a house with a fridge/washer/dryer permanently cemented into a wall.
"countries being targeted by Uber, which have great taxi services."
Then Uber should quickly wither and die in those areas without the need for heavy handed tactics (lawsuits, arrests, confiscations, destruction of private property, mass economic sabotage, etc). I'm guessing that Uber and other similar apps generally target areas where people are dissatisfied with the available services. Moving into a city/region where people are already satisfied with the services would be kind of like building an ice cream shop on the same block as another ice cream shop with better prices, quicker service and better ice cream, your shop is going to go belly up in pretty short order.
I wonder, is their retreat due to a genuine disinterest by the populations of those countries or simply by anti-competitive practices by those countries "established interests"/governments? It almost sounds like at least in UberPops case that the general public was happy to use the service but the taxi companies/drivers "dissatisfaction" resulted in blocking traffic, government lobbying, destroying Uber cars and attacking their drivers. No doubt that Uber is a company that is more than anything interested in profits, but why people are ascribing different motivations to various established taxi companies across the globe is beyond me. Let them all provide their service and allow the public to decide which deserves to survive.
http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/...
Carbon-Carbon was used on the leading edges of the wings and the nose cone, the TILES were made of high purity silica. And while during normal operations they didn't actually have to survive being plunged into water it was apparently done to demonstrate their resilience.
Extract from http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/
"For example, an HRSI tile taken from a 2,300 F oven can be immersed in cold water without damage. Surface heat dissipates so quickly that an uncoated tile can be held by its edges with an ungloved hand seconds after removal from the oven while its interior still glows red."
Weren't one of the Space Shuttles primary thermal protections systems a ceramic (thermal tiles)? They had to survive being heated to thousands of degrees and then being plunged into cold water.
They should follow the procedure for some experimental aircraft (well, somewhat). Go ahead and keep the first recovered stage as a souvenir. The next one that comes down though should be torn apart down to its last bolt for testing on each and every component, including destructive tests like testing the shear force of bolts, the pressure limits of tanks, break points of struts, etc. If everything looks good and there is no unexpected wear and tear on the stage reuse the next one after intensive non-destructive inspections and tests. If everything goes off without a hitch tear that one down and do another round of intensive tests. As time goes on allow stages to fly more times and decrease inspections on components that aren't showing any wear and maintain detailed inspections of components that are. Eventually they'll figure out which parts (if any) need regular replacement/repair or redesign and which could fly a hundred times without issue. Given their flight schedule (am I hallucinating? 23 launches in 2016?) it shouldn't be an issue to sacrifice a few stages here and there to ensure that there isn't some component that is degrading more quickly than expected or some critical wiring bundle that is rubbing up against a bolt.
There are 29 states not in compliance and 12 more who have outright rejected it? That is pretty good evidence that there is something wrong with the law even for the most educationally challenged individual.
There's a big difference between "conserving our precious natural resources" and greenwashing. Low flow toilets are a pretty good example, I still have one of the first generation of them, the ones which require multiple flushes to get rid of a few squares of TP. Most of those LF toilets were dismal failures, using far more water than their standard counterparts. Most newer models have overcome those shortfalls but how many resources were wasted because of the idiotic push to force them into the market before they were ready.
http://www.dji.com/product/pha...
Look towards the bottom of the page
"If the Phantom 2 and its controller are disconnected during flight, the system’s failsafe protection will activate, automatically telling and if the signal is good enough, the Phantom 2 to return home and land automatically."
A "drone" by its very definition has the capability to fly itself, if this thing went out of control simply because it lost connection to the remote control it was not a drone.
"a strong and unforeseen interference on the operating frequency"
Then from what I understand it wasn't a drone but a simple remote controlled aircraft, and not a very good one at that. Even the DJ Phantom drones from what I've heard are rigged with safety fallback so that when the signal from the remote is lost they will us GPS to return to their liftoff point.
"Landing a rocket full of fuel is dangerous"
The rocket uses up virtually all of its fuel getting the second stage up to speed and altitude, after ejecting that payload it returns to the launch site on a comparatively insignificant amount of fuel. And at least for the Falcon 9 a crew will never ride the first stage back to the pad, they continue on to orbit on the second stage. I highly doubt that SpaceX will even reuse a first stage to launch "precious cargo" (people, expensive satellites, etc) for the foreseeable future. I imagine their intent is to use newly built stages to launch such cargo, and then reuse the first stage launching cheaper satellites for a discount (new first stage ~$50 million launch, reused first stage ~$30 million launch).
If you want to make space access more practical you need to recover your craft somehow. Imagine if we shipped cargo from warehouse to store in trucks & trailers that disintegrated after their trip, a can of beans alone would probably cost a hundred dollars. This is the method SpaceX is using, probably has its issues but so does every method. If you're interested in parachute recovery ULA is supposedly going to be trying that in the "near" future with a system they've named Vulcan.
Hopefully it will be one of many such successful launches and recoveries in the year(s) to come, It'll be nice to get some video of day landings as well as while I'm sure a night launch/landing is great for those actually witnessing it on the ground you can't really see much on video. I'm also curious as to how closely to center it landed on its pad, would it have been successful if they had gone for a ocean platform landing or did a larger pad make all the difference.
Super-capacitors are already extremely reliable and affordable, the problem is they can't really store a whole lot of power at present. They are used in some trucking applications in tandem with standard lead acid batteries. Some also have a minor issue with self discharging, but if their capacity could be brought up to battery levels and that self discharge limited they would likely have a major impact on the battery market. They virtually don't degrade (1 million charge/discharge cycles without degradation have been shown), they can charge very quickly and they are very simple (which should make them cheap).
And that final disposal is probably a few decades off for a vast majority of batteries. Teslas powerwall and industrial system plans to make use of the batteries long after the 8+ years the battery is warrantied for in vehicles.
"household and grid storage"
For those applications cost per kWh is a far more important factor than density/weight. Who cares if a residential battery is the size of a small car, in most situations you can just bury it in the back yard. Density and weight do of course become major factors in mobile device & EV applications but even here cost is quite important. It doesn't matter if an EV battery is developed that has the same energy density and weight as petroleum fuels, if it costs $30k per battery it is next to useless for the general public. For those two applications I'd rather have a battery cell the size of a 5 gallon bucket that can store 1 kWh for a hundred bucks instead of a cell the size of a 16oz bottle that can store the same amount of energy but cost $500.