I'd rather they charge for excess carry-ons personally, because it's those people who abuse the carry-on policy that slow down boarding the most, especially if there are multiple ones on a flight and they fill up all of the overhead bins (heaven forbid they use the spot under the seat). My guess is that they're trying to reduce the number of bags they handle so they can lay off some of the ground crews though.
It seems clear to me though, the only answer in the end is to raise ticket prices (some of which we've already seen). Maybe it will become economical to take the train again (it seems to me that increases in fuel costs should be much less of a concern on trains, which are far more fuel efficient per pound per mile).
Re:union problem?
on
Terminal Chaos
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Wasn't the decade after that the worst ever for Airline accidents in the US? The problem isn't that the Air Traffic Controllers are resistant to change because they're afraid of losing their job, it's that the FAA is pathologically risk averse. That's the primary reason it's taking so long for ADS-B to get deployed, because any change could mean a change which could mean danger. It's impossible in the FAA to change the brand of coffee you make without a 2 year investigation.
Re:The explanation is obvious
on
Terminal Chaos
·
· Score: 1
We already have it where it's cost effective (the Northeast corridor).
Re:The explanation is obvious
on
Terminal Chaos
·
· Score: 1
Interestingly enough, in the area of the US that is roughly as densely populated as Europe (the Northeast), we actually do have rail service (the Acella Express), however, the price of a ticket on that train frequently exceeds the price of a ticket on a low cost air carrier (the air carriers don't have to subsidize unprofitable routes all over the country the way Amtrak is forced to by Congress).
Otherwise, rail service in the US is a joke.
Re:If that was the case...
on
Terminal Chaos
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Why are bus and train routes on time more often than planes?
I see someone has never taken Amtrak or Grayhound ever. On Amtrak is is not unusual at all to be delayed 6 hours because some freight train has priority over you, and the Amtrak employees could care less except that when their shift ends they're out of there, no matter where you are.
Hmm, 6,000,000 bullets times $2,000 per launch puts you at a meager 12 Billion dollars for your terror weapon (which is still not likely to hit anything of value given that your accuracy is probably only good enough to maybe hit the right hemisphere without any guidance on an ICBM).
Seriously, 6 million bullets is a ridiculous scale for a terrorist organization. I am not at all convinced of the weapon viability of such a vehicle, especially once you consider how much exotic propellant (this project clearly requires something with more oomph than your Estes type D engine) you'll need and how puny the payload is. People cover only a tiny fraction of the land in the US, and any one (or a hundred, or a thousand) strike has a very low probability of hitting someone.
Math Time!
Land Area of the US: 9,161,923 Sq KM
"Footprint" of a Person, from a 45 degree angle: 1 Sq Meter (and I'm being generous here, but we are talking about Americans...)
Population of the US: 300,000,000
Approximate chance that a random strike in the US would hit a person: 300,000,000 in 9,161,923,000,000 or about 1 in 30,000.
30,000 launches at $2,000 per launch runs you 60 Million Dollars. Compared to the cost of buying a guy a guy and a plane ticket to the US, it's hard to see any terrorist organization taking this seriously as a weapons system. Sure it might be hard to detect the launch, but it's not going to be hard to figure out who's buying enough exotic rocket fuel/parts to launch 30,000 pico rockets.
You're basically building a solar sail, the problem is that Solar Sails Suck. You would blow your $2000 on electricity alone well before you moved anything any appreciable distance.
I wonder what the chances are of hitting anything of value with a system like that? My guess is that you'd put a lot of holes in the dirt and maybe, possibly, if you're lucky, injure/maim/kill some innocent bystander or damage some property.
Granted, that's good enough for the people who shoot mortars into Israel for example, but it's hardly practical as a weapon system. It's hard to fit a guidance system that works over the entire globe with person-scale accuracy in 20 grams.
That and buying enough capacitors to make a railgun impart a useful amount of work for $2000. Big caps aren't cheap, nor is metal that won't melt when subjected to that much current.
This challenge is clearly designed to put the object in Low Earth Orbit. Remember, to stay in orbit you have to be accelerated up to orbital speed, which takes energy, a lot of energy. I'm sure someone smarter could calculate the minimum thrust you'll need to win the challenge based on the mass of the payload and it's likely to be more than you're expecting.
Yeah, but try to build a gigantic gun for ~$2000 (I assume your satellite in this case is a cheap hunk of metal). The cost and size requirements on this challenge seem squarely aimed at the amateur rocketry crowd, and even then it's a pretty difficult challenge. My guess is that if it's won, it will be with some design employing those large model rocketry engines (not some Estes bottlerockets) and multiple stages.
The point is that the oil from the ground is not what is expensive right now. The cost of pumping and refining has not changed drastically in the past few years, it is just demand and speculators driving the prices up through the roof. It won't be until we're forced to start extracting oil from oil sands and shale oil that technologies like this will become cost competitive on the production front.
Most companies are wary about trying to commercialize technologies like this because they were burned in the 80s when they finally got started with alternative production and then the bottom fell out of the oil market. There are still ghost towns in the southwest that resulted from the local oil company closing its doors.
Thomas has the easiest decision of all of the justices. He just does whatever Scalia does, no thought needed. I don't know what he's going to do when Scalia leaves the bench, although it would be amusing if he immediately stepped down right afterward.
The bench comments from the Supreme Court on this case pretty much expressly told the military that if they try that trick the SCOTUS will not stand for it. Their comments actually seemed a bit impatient and where clearly aimed at getting some real trials for the prisoners ASAP.
8TB is rapidly becoming "not that much stuff" these days. You can already buy 1TB HDDs, so we're just three doublings away from hitting the limit with a single drive (not to mention RAID arrays).
While I'm hoping for an Obama win, one thing watching this election cycle and the last two has taught me is that pundits and polling are no more accurate than random chance unless the question is obvious. It's way too early to be calling the election, there's a lot that can (and will) happen between now and voting day.
Sure, you have great legroom, but how about the people in your back seat? It's easy to get good legroom in front if you just push the seat all the way back, but that only works if you're carting around amputees.
My Wife's Jetta has this precise problem. She has long legs, so if she's in the driver's seat she has to push it all the way back. When this happens, people cannot sit behind her because there is just not enough legroom. Whenever we have 4 people in the car I have to drive because she can scoot the passenger seat forward and just have her knees up against the glove compartment. She can't even drive my Ranger, because the seat doesn't go back far enough (I bought it before we met).
25-30mpg isn't exactly great. I get that with a mix of about 75% city and 25% highway driving with my '93 Ford Ranger (a truck!). With 100% highway driving it's not hard to get it over 30mpg (up to 32mpg on long trips). I don't even drive particularly slow, although I am conscious about wasting fuel in the city (prefer to creep from light to light if I'm going to have to stop anyway instead of gunning it and then hitting the brakes 50' later, and I tend to speed down hills a bit to have more momentum on the uphill part afterward (instead of what everybody else seems to do here: brake all the way down then gun the engine on the uphills). The only other major thing I do is when I'm in stop and go traffic, I try to figure out the actual average speed of the traffic and just do that, building up a buffer during the "go" times and eating it up during the "stop" times. My goal is to make it through stop and go traffic without ever having to touch my brakes.
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I'd rather they charge for excess carry-ons personally, because it's those people who abuse the carry-on policy that slow down boarding the most, especially if there are multiple ones on a flight and they fill up all of the overhead bins (heaven forbid they use the spot under the seat). My guess is that they're trying to reduce the number of bags they handle so they can lay off some of the ground crews though.
It seems clear to me though, the only answer in the end is to raise ticket prices (some of which we've already seen). Maybe it will become economical to take the train again (it seems to me that increases in fuel costs should be much less of a concern on trains, which are far more fuel efficient per pound per mile).
Wasn't the decade after that the worst ever for Airline accidents in the US? The problem isn't that the Air Traffic Controllers are resistant to change because they're afraid of losing their job, it's that the FAA is pathologically risk averse. That's the primary reason it's taking so long for ADS-B to get deployed, because any change could mean a change which could mean danger. It's impossible in the FAA to change the brand of coffee you make without a 2 year investigation.
We already have it where it's cost effective (the Northeast corridor).
Interestingly enough, in the area of the US that is roughly as densely populated as Europe (the Northeast), we actually do have rail service (the Acella Express), however, the price of a ticket on that train frequently exceeds the price of a ticket on a low cost air carrier (the air carriers don't have to subsidize unprofitable routes all over the country the way Amtrak is forced to by Congress).
Otherwise, rail service in the US is a joke.
So are you saying that seals can't walk on land, or that they can't swim in the water?
And hopefully some Linux game/app will come out that can use it.
Bah "buy the guy a gun". I don't know how I missed that on the preview.
Hmm, 6,000,000 bullets times $2,000 per launch puts you at a meager 12 Billion dollars for your terror weapon (which is still not likely to hit anything of value given that your accuracy is probably only good enough to maybe hit the right hemisphere without any guidance on an ICBM).
Seriously, 6 million bullets is a ridiculous scale for a terrorist organization. I am not at all convinced of the weapon viability of such a vehicle, especially once you consider how much exotic propellant (this project clearly requires something with more oomph than your Estes type D engine) you'll need and how puny the payload is. People cover only a tiny fraction of the land in the US, and any one (or a hundred, or a thousand) strike has a very low probability of hitting someone.
Math Time!
Land Area of the US: 9,161,923 Sq KM
"Footprint" of a Person, from a 45 degree angle: 1 Sq Meter (and I'm being generous here, but we are talking about Americans...)
Population of the US: 300,000,000
Approximate chance that a random strike in the US would hit a person: 300,000,000 in 9,161,923,000,000 or about 1 in 30,000.
30,000 launches at $2,000 per launch runs you 60 Million Dollars. Compared to the cost of buying a guy a guy and a plane ticket to the US, it's hard to see any terrorist organization taking this seriously as a weapons system. Sure it might be hard to detect the launch, but it's not going to be hard to figure out who's buying enough exotic rocket fuel/parts to launch 30,000 pico rockets.
You're basically building a solar sail, the problem is that Solar Sails Suck. You would blow your $2000 on electricity alone well before you moved anything any appreciable distance.
It would be hilarious if you actually achieved the goal of putting a uselessly small hunk of junk in space, but were one pound over on your budget.
I wonder what the chances are of hitting anything of value with a system like that? My guess is that you'd put a lot of holes in the dirt and maybe, possibly, if you're lucky, injure/maim/kill some innocent bystander or damage some property.
Granted, that's good enough for the people who shoot mortars into Israel for example, but it's hardly practical as a weapon system. It's hard to fit a guidance system that works over the entire globe with person-scale accuracy in 20 grams.
That and buying enough capacitors to make a railgun impart a useful amount of work for $2000. Big caps aren't cheap, nor is metal that won't melt when subjected to that much current.
This challenge is clearly designed to put the object in Low Earth Orbit. Remember, to stay in orbit you have to be accelerated up to orbital speed, which takes energy, a lot of energy. I'm sure someone smarter could calculate the minimum thrust you'll need to win the challenge based on the mass of the payload and it's likely to be more than you're expecting.
Yeah, but try to build a gigantic gun for ~$2000 (I assume your satellite in this case is a cheap hunk of metal). The cost and size requirements on this challenge seem squarely aimed at the amateur rocketry crowd, and even then it's a pretty difficult challenge. My guess is that if it's won, it will be with some design employing those large model rocketry engines (not some Estes bottlerockets) and multiple stages.
I wonder if the GPP wasn't including the height of the trackball in his measurement?
The point is that the oil from the ground is not what is expensive right now. The cost of pumping and refining has not changed drastically in the past few years, it is just demand and speculators driving the prices up through the roof. It won't be until we're forced to start extracting oil from oil sands and shale oil that technologies like this will become cost competitive on the production front.
Most companies are wary about trying to commercialize technologies like this because they were burned in the 80s when they finally got started with alternative production and then the bottom fell out of the oil market. There are still ghost towns in the southwest that resulted from the local oil company closing its doors.
Thomas has the easiest decision of all of the justices. He just does whatever Scalia does, no thought needed. I don't know what he's going to do when Scalia leaves the bench, although it would be amusing if he immediately stepped down right afterward.
The bench comments from the Supreme Court on this case pretty much expressly told the military that if they try that trick the SCOTUS will not stand for it. Their comments actually seemed a bit impatient and where clearly aimed at getting some real trials for the prisoners ASAP.
8TB is rapidly becoming "not that much stuff" these days. You can already buy 1TB HDDs, so we're just three doublings away from hitting the limit with a single drive (not to mention RAID arrays).
While I'm hoping for an Obama win, one thing watching this election cycle and the last two has taught me is that pundits and polling are no more accurate than random chance unless the question is obvious. It's way too early to be calling the election, there's a lot that can (and will) happen between now and voting day.
Hah, halfway through your list I thought "you're asking for a deathtrap".
That said, I doubt Chevy is designing the Volt with towing in mind. You might be out of luck.
Sure, you have great legroom, but how about the people in your back seat? It's easy to get good legroom in front if you just push the seat all the way back, but that only works if you're carting around amputees.
My Wife's Jetta has this precise problem. She has long legs, so if she's in the driver's seat she has to push it all the way back. When this happens, people cannot sit behind her because there is just not enough legroom. Whenever we have 4 people in the car I have to drive because she can scoot the passenger seat forward and just have her knees up against the glove compartment. She can't even drive my Ranger, because the seat doesn't go back far enough (I bought it before we met).
25-30mpg isn't exactly great. I get that with a mix of about 75% city and 25% highway driving with my '93 Ford Ranger (a truck!). With 100% highway driving it's not hard to get it over 30mpg (up to 32mpg on long trips). I don't even drive particularly slow, although I am conscious about wasting fuel in the city (prefer to creep from light to light if I'm going to have to stop anyway instead of gunning it and then hitting the brakes 50' later, and I tend to speed down hills a bit to have more momentum on the uphill part afterward (instead of what everybody else seems to do here: brake all the way down then gun the engine on the uphills). The only other major thing I do is when I'm in stop and go traffic, I try to figure out the actual average speed of the traffic and just do that, building up a buffer during the "go" times and eating it up during the "stop" times. My goal is to make it through stop and go traffic without ever having to touch my brakes.