It'll be a cold day in hell when I let them... Ummm. Did you say Xbox? Oh. I don't have one of those. Never mind. -- This is how most of the general public will respond.
Well, yeah. I tried to keep it simple (only refer to the fusion reactor) and leave out the Star Trek physics (like the FTL acceleration of the exhaust plasma)
Impulse engines have fusion reactors at their core, or so I read. While VASIMR borrows technology from fusion research, You'd need to change the fuel used, change the shape of the magnetic confinement, and increase the energy input of a VASIMR engine many orders of magnitude, in order to reach that point. So, a totally new design...
Again thanks. I found the reference I missed last time. Nuclear plants of the PWR type run 34-36% carnot efficiency. So, in my example, the 900MWe plant is ~2500MWt. I hate it when I'm THAT wrong.
Because the plant is waaaay out in, what is basically, farm country. There wouldn't be enough of a heat load within a reasonable distance to make it worthwhile.
I suspected the numbers were way off; but, couldn't find the references I needed in the short period of time I looked. I pulled the numbers out of my head (which is usually bad) and I probably used the nameplate electrical output of another "nearby" plant. Hell, at a minimum I should have just calculated the carnot efficiency because I know approximately what the damn source and sink temperatures are for that plant. Thank you for the correction.
Not if it's properly regulated. You feed the same voltage as the existing lines. If your available power drops, then you supply less current and the original feed picks up the load. Only big concern I see is it would affect voltages where average line drop was calculated into the transformer choices.
Someone needs to mod you funny. Every toured a power plant site? Not the PR version of the tour, a real tour where you get a friend of a friend to take you around. They're not exactly the greenest industry in the world -- but they're necessary.
Most of the brown sites had some form of industry already using them. That means the infrastructure is already there, originally to support the industry that used the land in the first place.
Not really. In a typical power plant most of the heat comes from cooling the waste steam and turning it back into water, to be recycled back into the loop. In a gas turbine, the atmosphere has to be a sink for the exhaust heat. For example, locally we have a nuclear power plant which generates 800MWe per reactor, providing our regional base-load. The two reactors generate, as I recall, around 950MW-980MW thermal each. So, around 150MW of heat, per reactor, is dumped into the river. 85% efficiency, done on a large scale... (don't hold me to these numbers; I can't find a reference with the thermal spec right now -- but I believe that the numbers I've given are close.)
Actually, thermodynamics may not require it; but, larger installations tend to be more efficient (to a point). The losses on one of some system x tend to be smaller than the losses on 2 of x.
Those damn laws of thermodynamics should also tell you that you have to have a cold sink. If you build the plant too big, you won't be able to dump the heat into the environment fast enough (or meet regulatory requirements). So, at some point, you reach, by social and physical laws, a maximum size.
There a quite a few power plants built on rivers, using the rivers for cooling, that have to run at reduced output during the summer; because, there isn't enough cold water to dump the waste heat into.
I think they honestly expected a bigger flash. Something that could be seen by a 10" or 12" telescope. Instead, the smallest telescope I heard say "we saw the impact" was MMT, which has a 256" aperature.
If you're going to use standard wifi then there's no excuse not to use the available encryption; but, that only goes as far as the wireless router and depends on the consumer to correctly configure said router and all the devices on the network. Devices are typically shipped with the encryption turned off and entirely too many people either don't know how to or can't be bothered to set it up -- but that's not the fault of the device manufacturer.
If it's remotely accessable, you can password protect it; but, again, this requires the consumer to correctly configure the device(s). You can encrypt the connection (using ssh or similar) but you don't want it to be too hard to connect to (it's a toy).
If you're going to stream AV wirelessly and you want end users to hack it (which they do -- it's a toy), then the stream has to be unencrypted; or, if encrypted, either use a publicly available key or make it easily crackable (keep the honest honest).
Let's not forget, these examples are toys which the manufacturer wants to be easily used, made by companies actively cultivating hacker/modder communities. I think the researchers may have picked poor examples for their study.
Slashdot Mirror
Trolls aren't very bright
As soon as we find a habitable exoplanet, we'll let you know.
It'll be a cold day in hell when I let them... Ummm. Did you say Xbox? Oh. I don't have one of those. Never mind. -- This is how most of the general public will respond.
There is a concept which saw some development in the '90's, which paralleled the VASIMR work: Gas Dynamic Mirror Fusion Propulsion
Well, yeah. I tried to keep it simple (only refer to the fusion reactor) and leave out the Star Trek physics (like the FTL acceleration of the exhaust plasma)
They usually discuss using it with solar arrays for near Earth use and with nuclear reactors on the order of 10-100MW for Mars and outer solar system.
Impulse engines have fusion reactors at their core, or so I read. While VASIMR borrows technology from fusion research, You'd need to change the fuel used, change the shape of the magnetic confinement, and increase the energy input of a VASIMR engine many orders of magnitude, in order to reach that point. So, a totally new design...
Again thanks. I found the reference I missed last time. Nuclear plants of the PWR type run 34-36% carnot efficiency. So, in my example, the 900MWe plant is ~2500MWt. I hate it when I'm THAT wrong.
Because the plant is waaaay out in, what is basically, farm country. There wouldn't be enough of a heat load within a reasonable distance to make it worthwhile.
I suspected the numbers were way off; but, couldn't find the references I needed in the short period of time I looked. I pulled the numbers out of my head (which is usually bad) and I probably used the nameplate electrical output of another "nearby" plant. Hell, at a minimum I should have just calculated the carnot efficiency because I know approximately what the damn source and sink temperatures are for that plant. Thank you for the correction.
Not if it's properly regulated. You feed the same voltage as the existing lines. If your available power drops, then you supply less current and the original feed picks up the load. Only big concern I see is it would affect voltages where average line drop was calculated into the transformer choices.
Someone needs to mod you funny. Every toured a power plant site? Not the PR version of the tour, a real tour where you get a friend of a friend to take you around. They're not exactly the greenest industry in the world -- but they're necessary.
Most of the brown sites had some form of industry already using them. That means the infrastructure is already there, originally to support the industry that used the land in the first place.
better use: pumped storage facility.
Some of these are sites they moved the waste to
Not really. In a typical power plant most of the heat comes from cooling the waste steam and turning it back into water, to be recycled back into the loop. In a gas turbine, the atmosphere has to be a sink for the exhaust heat. For example, locally we have a nuclear power plant which generates 800MWe per reactor, providing our regional base-load. The two reactors generate, as I recall, around 950MW-980MW thermal each. So, around 150MW of heat, per reactor, is dumped into the river. 85% efficiency, done on a large scale... (don't hold me to these numbers; I can't find a reference with the thermal spec right now -- but I believe that the numbers I've given are close.)
Well, they published it (albeit not in a scientific journal); so, let the peer review commence.
R22 is dry.
Actually, thermodynamics may not require it; but, larger installations tend to be more efficient (to a point). The losses on one of some system x tend to be smaller than the losses on 2 of x.
Those damn laws of thermodynamics should also tell you that you have to have a cold sink. If you build the plant too big, you won't be able to dump the heat into the environment fast enough (or meet regulatory requirements). So, at some point, you reach, by social and physical laws, a maximum size.
There a quite a few power plants built on rivers, using the rivers for cooling, that have to run at reduced output during the summer; because, there isn't enough cold water to dump the waste heat into.
I think they honestly expected a bigger flash. Something that could be seen by a 10" or 12" telescope. Instead, the smallest telescope I heard say "we saw the impact" was MMT, which has a 256" aperature.
If you're going to use standard wifi then there's no excuse not to use the available encryption; but, that only goes as far as the wireless router and depends on the consumer to correctly configure said router and all the devices on the network. Devices are typically shipped with the encryption turned off and entirely too many people either don't know how to or can't be bothered to set it up -- but that's not the fault of the device manufacturer.
If it's remotely accessable, you can password protect it; but, again, this requires the consumer to correctly configure the device(s). You can encrypt the connection (using ssh or similar) but you don't want it to be too hard to connect to (it's a toy).
If you're going to stream AV wirelessly and you want end users to hack it (which they do -- it's a toy), then the stream has to be unencrypted; or, if encrypted, either use a publicly available key or make it easily crackable (keep the honest honest).
Let's not forget, these examples are toys which the manufacturer wants to be easily used, made by companies actively cultivating hacker/modder communities. I think the researchers may have picked poor examples for their study.
Are not these examples of toys, where the companies are actively cultivating the hacking community -- so, they want them to be hacked / hackable ?
Yes, I know. The person I was replying to was suggesting traditional ion thrusters.
ion thrusters have a limited life expectancy due to electrode erosion.