Wishful thinking.
For one thing, autonomous cars can still have accidents - mechanical failure, a deer jumping onto the road, a rock fall - anything, really. So they need a safe distance between them, because stopping is not instantaneous, especially not with passengers who are fragile and can't handle 100G.
A "safe" distance between cars is defined by the reaction time of the driver, not the speed they are traveling. Nobody expects a driver to come to a complete stop in the distance available between two vehicles, just that they react quickly enough to not rear-end the vehicle in front. For autonomous cars traveling in a "pack" mode, the difference between the first car starting to brake and the last car also braking is going to be measured in small fractions of a second. Computer driven cars can also communicate how hard they are braking so they won't catch up to each other. So the vehicles can travel much closer together.
And that brings us over to problem #2: Passengers do not handle acceleration as well as drivers do. People are uncomfortable when being passengers in a car that accelerates and decelerates aggressively, even if they feel no such discomfort when driving themselves. This means that overall, the amount of time to get up to speed will go up, not down, as the number of single-person human-driven cars go down.
As of right now, all indications are that self driving cars will drive slower than human drivers, as well as accelerating and braking slower. All in the name of safety and comfort.
I agree that passengers want a gentle ride, however what time frame are you thinking about when you say "As of right now"? Six months? Six years? If you remove the need to sit upright and view the road ahead, there's no reason we can't lay down in seats that swivel with acceleration. If the seats can rotate so that the perceived acceleration is always "down", then you won't even spill your coffee under rapid acceleration. Time will tell and I'm looking forward to seeing what evolves.
More miles driven/ridden? Sure. However, those miles done by the 65+ crowd is probably not going to be during rush hour. Also, a lot of the longer trips are going to be done at night. Personally I'm looking forward to getting into the car in the evening, going to sleep and waking up at my vacation destination in the morning. As others have mentioned, self-driving only lanes will take care of most of the problem. That lane will be whipping along at 90+ with inches between each car.
I'm sure (or at least hope) they do have such a reserve fuel supply. Those reserves are meant for emergencies such as the supply plane crashing and not making it. Some bloke dropping in uninvited does not qualify as an emergency.
So the priorities for the available, limited amount of fuel are:
Reserves set aside for emergencies only
Planned science projects
Let's be nice guestures
So, if priority #2 has spoken for all of the available fuel above the reserve level, then the adventurer is crap outta luck.
If he wants to arrange his own fuel shipment, outside of the normal supply chain, more power to him. Just don't expect the base personnel to completely disrupt their lives and research to make his (saved) life easier.
It may well not be easy to sell him that fuel. It's a scientific outpost, with science's typical shoestring budgets. They have a limited supply of fuel on hand. Between their emergency reserve and research plans, it's probably all spoken for. Getting more fuel into the research base isn't like strolling down to the corner petrol station that gets daily deliveries. There are planned supply shipments and what's on hand may well be all that can be on hand for quite a while.
So here comes this bloke, trying to fly across the entire place on a whim, and he doesn't make it. Now he wants these scients to scrap some their research plans for the summer (it's summer down there now, prime time research season) after they've fought and scrambled for a place on the Antartic research team. For some it's their one and only shot at doing research in the Antartic.
Basically he's asking some of these scientists to give up their research dreams to salvage his pet plane. I doubt that makes them feel all warm and giving.
As they say in Tech Support, "A lack of planning on your part does not constitue an emergency on mine."
A militia is an armed civilian force that is not part of the standing army but available to help out as backup. The militia is also expected to supply their own weapons, so the NRA's shortening of the 2nd Amendment is correct.
The article mentions a "several thousand square foot office", assume $15/sf/year rent for 2000 sf. Say 4 T1's to send lots of email @ $1000/month. That's a "mere" $78,000 in rent/bandwidth. Throw in another $20k for a new computer or two every month and he's still going to net over $4m/year.
Frankly if someone offered me $4m/year to send out tons of spam, I'd have a hard time saying 'no'.
The assumption that he's actually pulling in 6,000 order/month all of the time is the weakest assumption in this chain, but still, even a month or two of that volumn and he's earning more than most of us.
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Wishful thinking. For one thing, autonomous cars can still have accidents - mechanical failure, a deer jumping onto the road, a rock fall - anything, really. So they need a safe distance between them, because stopping is not instantaneous, especially not with passengers who are fragile and can't handle 100G.
A "safe" distance between cars is defined by the reaction time of the driver, not the speed they are traveling. Nobody expects a driver to come to a complete stop in the distance available between two vehicles, just that they react quickly enough to not rear-end the vehicle in front. For autonomous cars traveling in a "pack" mode, the difference between the first car starting to brake and the last car also braking is going to be measured in small fractions of a second. Computer driven cars can also communicate how hard they are braking so they won't catch up to each other. So the vehicles can travel much closer together.
And that brings us over to problem #2: Passengers do not handle acceleration as well as drivers do. People are uncomfortable when being passengers in a car that accelerates and decelerates aggressively, even if they feel no such discomfort when driving themselves. This means that overall, the amount of time to get up to speed will go up, not down, as the number of single-person human-driven cars go down.
As of right now, all indications are that self driving cars will drive slower than human drivers, as well as accelerating and braking slower. All in the name of safety and comfort.
I agree that passengers want a gentle ride, however what time frame are you thinking about when you say "As of right now"? Six months? Six years? If you remove the need to sit upright and view the road ahead, there's no reason we can't lay down in seats that swivel with acceleration. If the seats can rotate so that the perceived acceleration is always "down", then you won't even spill your coffee under rapid acceleration. Time will tell and I'm looking forward to seeing what evolves.
More miles driven/ridden? Sure. However, those miles done by the 65+ crowd is probably not going to be during rush hour. Also, a lot of the longer trips are going to be done at night. Personally I'm looking forward to getting into the car in the evening, going to sleep and waking up at my vacation destination in the morning. As others have mentioned, self-driving only lanes will take care of most of the problem. That lane will be whipping along at 90+ with inches between each car.
So the priorities for the available, limited amount of fuel are:
So, if priority #2 has spoken for all of the available fuel above the reserve level, then the adventurer is crap outta luck.
If he wants to arrange his own fuel shipment, outside of the normal supply chain, more power to him. Just don't expect the base personnel to completely disrupt their lives and research to make his (saved) life easier.
So here comes this bloke, trying to fly across the entire place on a whim, and he doesn't make it. Now he wants these scients to scrap some their research plans for the summer (it's summer down there now, prime time research season) after they've fought and scrambled for a place on the Antartic research team. For some it's their one and only shot at doing research in the Antartic.
Basically he's asking some of these scientists to give up their research dreams to salvage his pet plane. I doubt that makes them feel all warm and giving.
As they say in Tech Support, "A lack of planning on your part does not constitue an emergency on mine."
A militia is an armed civilian force that is not part of the standing army but available to help out as backup. The militia is also expected to supply their own weapons, so the NRA's shortening of the 2nd Amendment is correct.
Cost: $5/bottle + $10 affiliate fee + $3 shipping, that leaves a per bottle profit of $32/bottle.
6000 order/month, 2 bottles/order, $32 profit/bottle = $4,608,000 gross.
The article mentions a "several thousand square foot office", assume $15/sf/year rent for 2000 sf. Say 4 T1's to send lots of email @ $1000/month. That's a "mere" $78,000 in rent/bandwidth. Throw in another $20k for a new computer or two every month and he's still going to net over $4m/year.
Frankly if someone offered me $4m/year to send out tons of spam, I'd have a hard time saying 'no'.
The assumption that he's actually pulling in 6,000 order/month all of the time is the weakest assumption in this chain, but still, even a month or two of that volumn and he's earning more than most of us.