Actually, we have small subsidies for 'electric' and done all wrong.
The current BS should be dropped and instead changed to be:
1) if a car is a parallel hybrid, or is a general purpose electric that gets less than 100 MPC (as rated by EPA), then they should only get 2.5-5K. The reason is that these will want to be charged during the daytime. That will increase our demand on power plants and grid.
2) if a car is serial hybrid or nat gas, or gets 100-150 MPC, then they should get 7.5-10K.
3) if a car gets over 150 MPC, then they should get 10-15K. THe reason is that they will charge at nighttimes, 98% of the time. As such, they will only use extra power and grid during the offtime, which will allow electric companies to move to smooth demand better (i.e., they can buy nukes, or batteries, etc).
As to the tax, the roads are not being paid for properly. They are falling apart rapidly all over the nation. By raising the price of oil base fuel SLOWLY, it gives ppl time to move off oil based and go to electric or nat gas. That will drop demand for the oil based, which will drop the price of gas/diesel. Simple economics. BTW, adding large amounts of taxes are total shocks to the economy. By adding it slowly like this, it allows ppl to make changes.
And as to the grid and power supply, numerous studies have shown that they are JUST fine, based on a couple of assumptions. The biggest assumption is that more than 80% of the vehicles charge at nighttime. As long as they do that, we are just fine. That is also why hybrids and low MPC vehicles are disasters to us. They will actually raise the costs to us.
Finally, BN is moving their diesel to LNG. If our commercial vehicles move to Nat Gas as well, it will allow us to walk away from imported oil. That will see fuel prices drop fast.
Well, gee. It should be obvious that the man KNOWS a great deal more than you do. Have you noticed the fact that nearly all those that want to go to the moon, or push the SLS, are those that are NOT rocket scientists, or even work in the field? In spite of the logic that has been argued over and over, you and others ignore it.
BUT, the good news for you is that Bigelow wants to go and more importantly, many nations want to go there, preferably before China. As such, NASA, along with other nations and private space, are going to go to the moon around 2020. And no doubt, SpaceX will be a part of it because they will be the cheapest choice. BUT, they are not going to front the money for it. Their money is focused on Mars.
BTW, this is no different than BA. BA is focused on the moon, BUT, BA units WILL be going to mars. But BA is not going to fund it.
Why did so many ppl move to America? Why did ppl move to Australia? Many of them DIED enroute and living in these places as well.
BUT, they enjoyed their lives and a number of them left quite the legacy.
That is why we desperately need to go back to the old immigration policy. It used to be that if you had skills that we wanted, you were welcome. Now, it is about nation (mexico gets 50% of all visas) and if you have family here. That is the WRONG way to do things.
Oh, I bring that up everytime somebody says that term and applies it to a black man only. There are also plenty of brown skin there from India, pakistan, etc who have since moved to America. i.e. they are also African-American.
Personally, I am tired of it all. We are just Americans here.
Robert, That is all going to change in 2015. We have solar city on our house. I was gripping about the use of Chinese panels, and several of the engineers indicated that Solar City has been waiting for Solar to get cheap enough so that they can bring it in-house along with a large amount of automation.
BTW, when we buy our tesla (waiting to see the model X, and will then decide which), it will be integrated with the solar system so that if we lose electricity, then during the daytime, we will have 2-3 circuits on it, as well as charging the Tesla, and then at nighttime, it will borrow from the car. Pretty cool.
You will also like that SOlar City is going to expand beyond solar. They are going into energy, including geo-thermal.
In fact, I talked to one of their engineers about how to modify fracking to make it useful for geo-thermal. Basically, the standard approach is vertical down to the same levels within the reservoir, turn horizontal, frack and then pump it in. BUT, if you do not do a LARGE frack, and add one more line that goes down deeper (below the reservoir), frack that one hard, and then use that to force the oil/gas into the upper piping, you can use this once the well is dry, for geo-thermal. And the nice approach is that the collectors are not fracked hard, so it will not force other elements into the aquifers.
Regardless, one thing about Musk, that man is damn exciting.
OSC being a real player? Not even close. They own NO ip related to launching. And even in sats, they are only SO-SO.
To even think that they are a real player is a total joke.
Nope. He was born South African but he gave that up, since he really wanted to be an American.
He had Canadian, but I am not sure whether he gave that up.
Actually, Robber Barons of today would be GE, Comcast, IBM/MS, etc. NONE of them are good for America (or where they are moving to). And the Robber Barons of the past were Robber Barons because once they had monopolies, they threw their weight around and destroyed innovation. That, in no small part, lead to the great depression. Once sanity returned, they passed 3 important legislation:
1) regulate banks so that access to money was guaranteed, which CONgress destroyed.
2) disallow executives of public companies from owning stock in the company. That kept them from looking for short-term deals. This was killed by reagan, and is the at the core of offshoring important jobs.
3) disallowed monopolies since these destroyed innovative. Again, this was destroyed by reagan.
No, America is LOADED with forward thinkers. The problem is, that many of them step aside for MBA's to take over, who run for the SURE short-term dollar, rather than the LIKELY long-term dollars.
Yeah, since the neo-cons created tax benefits to send our manufacturing out of the nation, the MBA's have been doing that. Of course, those companies are being gutted by their host nations.
And you will note that SpaceX, Tesla, And Solar city have less than 10 MBA amongst the 3 companies. Does that tell you something?
IOW, these 3 companies will continue to exists for a LONG LONG time. Even now, Tesla is pulling battery manufacturing back to America and Solar City is getting ready to announce a NEW solar plant that will be heavily automated and cheaper costs than what China can produce.
First, quit thinking VASIMR. It will NEVER power ppl from one planet to another. The fact is, that it requires a lot of electricity and even with solar cells from 10 years out, or with nuke technology, the craft will be too heavy to carry ppl efficiently to another planet. Do note that VASIMR COULD work going towards the sun with solar, and it deliver cargo around as well.
Secondly, had you read the article, you would know that MCT is Mars Colonial Transport and supposedly will hold around 100 ppl. They will use raptor engines, though Musk is begging CONgress and Obama to restart NERVA.
Sadly, we have the neo-cons/tea* fighting against private space, and dems fighting against nuke engines. What a sad joke.
zero chance. Mars one is talking about putting individual dragons connecting together, on the surface. There is little chance of that really working for ppl and dealing with the constant radiation.
In addition, Mars one talks about sending 6 ppl at a time. SpaceX is doing 100 at a time.
What Mars one is, is a back-up plan IFF SpaceX fails. Otherwise, SpaceX will be on mars BEFORE Mars-one launches a mission with the robots (though they MIGHT be able to launch one or two exploratory missions.
The easiest way to reduce demand is to just tax fuel
Sorry no, there is no easy way to reduce demand of OIL. If you want to truly reduce demand of OIL you need to find a VIABLE alternative fuel, electricity and NG are not VIABLE alternative fuels
Why would you say that they are NOT viable?
Seems like Tesla has proven that electricity is viable for cars, Burlington northern is converting their diesel engines to LNG, and I noticed that my WM garbage truck is now LNG.
More importantly, businesses are screaming that NG is viable, and car owners are screaming for electric cars.
If you REALLY want to see the price of gas lowered, there is a simple way to do this.
Do a compromise on keystone, where it is approved, and then 2 limited time subsidies are created for electric cars, and the other for nat. gas commercial vehicles.
At the same time, raise federal road taxes on gas/diesel by.25/gal/ year for the next 4 years, and then convert it to a % of the price, with a minimum. Next, give the gas tax to the state in which it comes from, and the diesel tax is used by the federal DOT. Then work on our roads
By doing this, we will see the tar sands hit global market, raising our local prices. BUT, with the above limited time subsidies, it will move our new vehicles over to none-oil, which will drop demand for gas rather quickly, and then will allow diesel and gas to be around 2/gal.
Seriously, if they use 2 FHs to launch, they can send a red dragon and several orbital crafts on the first one, with a fully fueled tug on the second. Then send 2 orbiters along with the red dragon to land.
Yes, fuel taxes doubling or shrinking, or fuel prices shifting 10-20% WILL have a major impact on the trucking industry.
What it will NOT do, is impact the regular cargo that they haul. The reason is that shipping around America is a relatively small % of the price of goods.
The rails lines are broken up all over the nation. As such, if you want to go coast to coast, you will pay multiple companies to access the rail. It becomes EXPENSIVE. Then through in the fact that the train companies are ran poorly. Very poorly.
Actually, we need to increase both gas and diesel taxes. The problem is, that the federal taxes have not increased since the 80's, and the states can not do it (esp. diesel) because the neighboring state will have cheaper fuel and the truckers will simply bypass buying ANY fuel in that expensive state.
What is needed is for your gutless CONgress to pass HONEST gas/diesel tax increase. Ideally, it should increase by.25/ gal / year. for the next 4 years. Likewise, the gas tax should go to the state coffers in which it came from, while the diesel goes to the federals. If any state cuts their fuel taxes to be cheaper than a neighbor, then the gas money is cut to them, and the federal diesel spending in their state is cut as well as well by that amount. IOW, prevent wars between the states.
Finally, all of that needs to go into INFRASTRUCTURE. No more of this diverting to general funds garbage.
You know, there is a bit of a mess unfolding in Ukraine. There are pro-russian and pro-european factions and the russians are obviously supporting the former -- with a completely illegal show of force.
That is not accurate. There is a pro-Russia faction and a pro-Ukraine faction. The later are those that have lived there not only all of their lives, but their relatives before them. The former are Russians that the USSR put into place to control the local population, but these ppl stayed AFTER the break-up of the USSR.
So, what you really have, are Russians vs. Ukrainians.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, we have small subsidies for 'electric' and done all wrong.
The current BS should be dropped and instead changed to be:
1) if a car is a parallel hybrid, or is a general purpose electric that gets less than 100 MPC (as rated by EPA), then they should only get 2.5-5K. The reason is that these will want to be charged during the daytime. That will increase our demand on power plants and grid.
2) if a car is serial hybrid or nat gas, or gets 100-150 MPC, then they should get 7.5-10K.
3) if a car gets over 150 MPC, then they should get 10-15K. THe reason is that they will charge at nighttimes, 98% of the time. As such, they will only use extra power and grid during the offtime, which will allow electric companies to move to smooth demand better (i.e., they can buy nukes, or batteries, etc).
As to the tax, the roads are not being paid for properly. They are falling apart rapidly all over the nation. By raising the price of oil base fuel SLOWLY, it gives ppl time to move off oil based and go to electric or nat gas. That will drop demand for the oil based, which will drop the price of gas/diesel. Simple economics. BTW, adding large amounts of taxes are total shocks to the economy. By adding it slowly like this, it allows ppl to make changes.
And as to the grid and power supply, numerous studies have shown that they are JUST fine, based on a couple of assumptions. The biggest assumption is that more than 80% of the vehicles charge at nighttime. As long as they do that, we are just fine. That is also why hybrids and low MPC vehicles are disasters to us. They will actually raise the costs to us.
Finally, BN is moving their diesel to LNG. If our commercial vehicles move to Nat Gas as well, it will allow us to walk away from imported oil. That will see fuel prices drop fast.
Well, gee. It should be obvious that the man KNOWS a great deal more than you do. Have you noticed the fact that nearly all those that want to go to the moon, or push the SLS, are those that are NOT rocket scientists, or even work in the field? In spite of the logic that has been argued over and over, you and others ignore it.
BUT, the good news for you is that Bigelow wants to go and more importantly, many nations want to go there, preferably before China. As such, NASA, along with other nations and private space, are going to go to the moon around 2020. And no doubt, SpaceX will be a part of it because they will be the cheapest choice. BUT, they are not going to front the money for it. Their money is focused on Mars.
BTW, this is no different than BA. BA is focused on the moon, BUT, BA units WILL be going to mars. But BA is not going to fund it.
Why did so many ppl move to America? Why did ppl move to Australia? Many of them DIED enroute and living in these places as well.
BUT, they enjoyed their lives and a number of them left quite the legacy.
That is why we desperately need to go back to the old immigration policy. It used to be that if you had skills that we wanted, you were welcome. Now, it is about nation (mexico gets 50% of all visas) and if you have family here. That is the WRONG way to do things.
Oh, I bring that up everytime somebody says that term and applies it to a black man only. There are also plenty of brown skin there from India, pakistan, etc who have since moved to America. i.e. they are also African-American.
Personally, I am tired of it all. We are just Americans here.
Robert, That is all going to change in 2015. We have solar city on our house. I was gripping about the use of Chinese panels, and several of the engineers indicated that Solar City has been waiting for Solar to get cheap enough so that they can bring it in-house along with a large amount of automation.
BTW, when we buy our tesla (waiting to see the model X, and will then decide which), it will be integrated with the solar system so that if we lose electricity, then during the daytime, we will have 2-3 circuits on it, as well as charging the Tesla, and then at nighttime, it will borrow from the car. Pretty cool.
You will also like that SOlar City is going to expand beyond solar. They are going into energy, including geo-thermal.
In fact, I talked to one of their engineers about how to modify fracking to make it useful for geo-thermal. Basically, the standard approach is vertical down to the same levels within the reservoir, turn horizontal, frack and then pump it in. BUT, if you do not do a LARGE frack, and add one more line that goes down deeper (below the reservoir), frack that one hard, and then use that to force the oil/gas into the upper piping, you can use this once the well is dry, for geo-thermal. And the nice approach is that the collectors are not fracked hard, so it will not force other elements into the aquifers.
Regardless, one thing about Musk, that man is damn exciting.
OSC being a real player? Not even close. They own NO ip related to launching. And even in sats, they are only SO-SO.
To even think that they are a real player is a total joke.
Nope. He was born South African but he gave that up, since he really wanted to be an American.
He had Canadian, but I am not sure whether he gave that up.
Actually, Robber Barons of today would be GE, Comcast, IBM/MS, etc. NONE of them are good for America (or where they are moving to). And the Robber Barons of the past were Robber Barons because once they had monopolies, they threw their weight around and destroyed innovation. That, in no small part, lead to the great depression. Once sanity returned, they passed 3 important legislation:
1) regulate banks so that access to money was guaranteed, which CONgress destroyed.
2) disallow executives of public companies from owning stock in the company. That kept them from looking for short-term deals. This was killed by reagan, and is the at the core of offshoring important jobs.
3) disallowed monopolies since these destroyed innovative. Again, this was destroyed by reagan.
All 3 of these things need to be restored.
No, America is LOADED with forward thinkers. The problem is, that many of them step aside for MBA's to take over, who run for the SURE short-term dollar, rather than the LIKELY long-term dollars.
Yeah, since the neo-cons created tax benefits to send our manufacturing out of the nation, the MBA's have been doing that. Of course, those companies are being gutted by their host nations.
And you will note that SpaceX, Tesla, And Solar city have less than 10 MBA amongst the 3 companies. Does that tell you something?
IOW, these 3 companies will continue to exists for a LONG LONG time. Even now, Tesla is pulling battery manufacturing back to America and Solar City is getting ready to announce a NEW solar plant that will be heavily automated and cheaper costs than what China can produce.
First, quit thinking VASIMR. It will NEVER power ppl from one planet to another. The fact is, that it requires a lot of electricity and even with solar cells from 10 years out, or with nuke technology, the craft will be too heavy to carry ppl efficiently to another planet. Do note that VASIMR COULD work going towards the sun with solar, and it deliver cargo around as well.
Secondly, had you read the article, you would know that MCT is Mars Colonial Transport and supposedly will hold around 100 ppl. They will use raptor engines, though Musk is begging CONgress and Obama to restart NERVA.
Sadly, we have the neo-cons/tea* fighting against private space, and dems fighting against nuke engines. What a sad joke.
zero chance. Mars one is talking about putting individual dragons connecting together, on the surface. There is little chance of that really working for ppl and dealing with the constant radiation.
In addition, Mars one talks about sending 6 ppl at a time. SpaceX is doing 100 at a time.
What Mars one is, is a back-up plan IFF SpaceX fails. Otherwise, SpaceX will be on mars BEFORE Mars-one launches a mission with the robots (though they MIGHT be able to launch one or two exploratory missions.
The easiest way to reduce demand is to just tax fuel
Sorry no, there is no easy way to reduce demand of OIL. If you want to truly reduce demand of OIL you need to find a VIABLE alternative fuel, electricity and NG are not VIABLE alternative fuels
Why would you say that they are NOT viable? Seems like Tesla has proven that electricity is viable for cars, Burlington northern is converting their diesel engines to LNG, and I noticed that my WM garbage truck is now LNG. More importantly, businesses are screaming that NG is viable, and car owners are screaming for electric cars.
If you REALLY want to see the price of gas lowered, there is a simple way to do this. .25/gal/ year for the next 4 years, and then convert it to a % of the price, with a minimum. Next, give the gas tax to the state in which it comes from, and the diesel tax is used by the federal DOT. Then work on our roads
Do a compromise on keystone, where it is approved, and then 2 limited time subsidies are created for electric cars, and the other for nat. gas commercial vehicles.
At the same time, raise federal road taxes on gas/diesel by
By doing this, we will see the tar sands hit global market, raising our local prices. BUT, with the above limited time subsidies, it will move our new vehicles over to none-oil, which will drop demand for gas rather quickly, and then will allow diesel and gas to be around 2/gal.
Easy to get past them. Simply tell them that oil was detected on Europe. They will fund it.
Seriously, if they use 2 FHs to launch, they can send a red dragon and several orbital crafts on the first one, with a fully fueled tug on the second. Then send 2 orbiters along with the red dragon to land.
Yes, fuel taxes doubling or shrinking, or fuel prices shifting 10-20% WILL have a major impact on the trucking industry.
What it will NOT do, is impact the regular cargo that they haul. The reason is that shipping around America is a relatively small % of the price of goods.
The rails lines are broken up all over the nation. As such, if you want to go coast to coast, you will pay multiple companies to access the rail. It becomes EXPENSIVE. Then through in the fact that the train companies are ran poorly. Very poorly.
The amount of fuel taxes could easily double and it will make nary an impact on the price.
Actually, we need to increase both gas and diesel taxes. The problem is, that the federal taxes have not increased since the 80's, and the states can not do it (esp. diesel) because the neighboring state will have cheaper fuel and the truckers will simply bypass buying ANY fuel in that expensive state.
.25/ gal / year. for the next 4 years. Likewise, the gas tax should go to the state coffers in which it came from, while the diesel goes to the federals. If any state cuts their fuel taxes to be cheaper than a neighbor, then the gas money is cut to them, and the federal diesel spending in their state is cut as well as well by that amount. IOW, prevent wars between the states.
What is needed is for your gutless CONgress to pass HONEST gas/diesel tax increase. Ideally, it should increase by
Finally, all of that needs to go into INFRASTRUCTURE. No more of this diverting to general funds garbage.
Nuts. I just had points early. I would have modded you down.
The real reason is that the Railroads in America are ran POORLY. Simple as that.
You know, there is a bit of a mess unfolding in Ukraine. There are pro-russian and pro-european factions and the russians are obviously supporting the former -- with a completely illegal show of force.
That is not accurate. There is a pro-Russia faction and a pro-Ukraine faction. The later are those that have lived there not only all of their lives, but their relatives before them. The former are Russians that the USSR put into place to control the local population, but these ppl stayed AFTER the break-up of the USSR.
So, what you really have, are Russians vs. Ukrainians.
totally agree. In fact, I had local connection just fine, but x-country would take about 3-5 calls to get through that day.
And software definately has advantage. BUT, IP packets are lowest priority on the networks.
Probably the ONLY real way is via ham radio. But, you have to have a license.
Colorado and Florida. But talking to others that owned VOIP and cell phones all said that they were not even getting through to local calls.