Yes, you can get goopy green biologic stuff in the fuel cell eating the Jet fuel. The worry isn't loss of fuel, it's contamination of the fuel system causing blockage/flameout. It's one of the reasons we sump/filter fuel before every flight.
Yeah, even as I was writing that, my little voice was telling me something was wrong:-)
The estimator I used (which takes geographic location into account) mentions 4.28 kWh/m2/day which is where I got my original number. I see that it also mentions 158 sq-ft as the roof area needed. I think that's the entire roof of my house 3 layers deep;-)
I agree that the lease makes it harder to compare to other cars. Honda only offers lease of the FIT EV at this time, but I also liked it because it was a risk reducer for me - worries about battery life etc. I have used the air conditioning and it makes a surprisingly small impact on milage - I saw a loss of less than 1 mile/kWh. The heater on the other hand really uses a LOT of battery. I'm going to be interested to see what happens when it gets really cold here in the winter.
The 90 minute charging time is to re-charge after my 10 kWh commute. If I was to run the battery flat, it's more like 3 hours. I've only done that twice in 6 months of driving... I think the 20 minute charging time is with a special DC charger. I think they charge at 400+ volts (Honda doesn't have this, but I think the new Nissan Leaf does). Mine uses a modified dryer outlet for 220 volt charging. Charging at 110 volts is not practical. It takes all night to charge at 110 volts. It's definitely an emergency thing (Honda supplies a 110 volt charging cable that is carried in the cargo area, but if you had to use it I think you would plug in and come back for the car the next day!)
I have no doubt that purchase price for an electric is higher than that of a gas car, although one could probably make a case that the Tesla is comparably priced to similar luxury vehicles. Certainly if I could buy a Honda FIT EV it would cost substantially more than the gas version. TCO I'm not so sure about. There is the savings in fuel which isn't huge but adds up over the years. The maintenance is probably unknown, but looking at the systems of the FIT, there's a LOT less to maintain than in an ICE car. I think chances are good that maintenance will be substantially less (certainly you'll save on brakes - probably never replace them for the life of the car!).
Tax break - Honda took the $7,500 tax break, not me (because it's a lease):-(
Where do you live and how long is your commute? You sound like you don't think you could rely on an EV car...
I think Honda is being very conservative because of the bad press it would generate if people were ending up at the side of the road with no charge left. Interestingly, if you *do* run out of charge they'll send a flatbed truck to come get you. My guess is that if you do that more than once or twice they cancel the lease!
As for efficiency, I think one of us made a math error. I got: Diesel #2/ US gallon: 146,300 kJ converted to Imperial Gallons = 175,560 kJ/gal imp. If you get 60 mpg, 175,560kJ / 60 = 2,926 kJ/mile == 4,681 kJ/km == 1.3 kWh/km (http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/wholefarm/pdf/c6-87.pdf pdf alert) Simpler way to look at it:
Diesel US gallon = 138700 BTU * 1.2 (imp gal) = 166440 BTU = 48 kWh. 60miles / 48kWh = 1.25 miles / kWh So, based on that even the Tesla @ 3.5 is twice as efficient as the diesel and the FIT is up to 5 times as efficient.
6.5 is an optimal milage, 4.5 is a pretty typical number with passengers and/or cargo. Air conditioning doesn't seem to cost that much in milage, heating does - I expect my winter numbers to be lower. Interestingly, I get better milage when I hit traffic jams! (lower speeds, thus lower air drag).
Actually, in another post I did a calculation on PV - it looks like here in Boston (not the solar capital of the world) it would take about 4 square meters of PV to generate enough electricity for my daily commute).
Yes, thank god for the clean/safe petrochemical industry. Their 100% safety record and 0 spill record makes me proud every time I fill up at the gas station. That crap about the Exxon Valdez and the Gulf of Mexico spill was just a bunch of crap made up by hippies who hate America.
Respectfully, although you say you are all for electric cars, you then go on to imply that there is a long way to go before they can be practical. I'd say there is a short way for them to be practical for a large (but not 100%) of the populace.
I'll relate my experience of the last 6 months of leasing a Honda FIT EV:
I drive about a 50 mile round trip commute daily. The Honda gets between 4 and 6.5 miles/kWh on that commute - it'll be worse in the winter, but most days I get home having used about 10 kWh for the commute (thats under 1/2 a charge - I forgot to recharge one night and was able to do the commute the next day and still make it home with 10-15 miles of range left). It takes about 90 minutes after I plug in to recharge to 100% charged. Future charger technology will no doubt shorten that, but I've never had to take the gas car because the electric car hasn't finished charging. I think I pay about 0.18 / kWh for electricity here in Massachusetts, so it costs me about $2.00 for the commute versus about $5 for my Subaru (which is a much less efficient car, so I don't want to imply that's apples for apples).
If I have the math right, here in Massachusetts I could install about 4^2 meters of PV array and generate enough electricity to cover the commute. I based this on a solar system estimator at http://www.find-solar.org/index.php While you can make cases that it costs CO2 to produce the PV cells etc., as other people have mentioned you also pay CO2 costs to deliver gas to the station, but it's not unreasonable that a large percentage of drivers that own electric cars could produce enough electricity to power their vehicles for their daily drives.
As for costs, I lease the car from Honda for $275/month. I'm saving about $100/month on fuel although again that's comparing an efficient Honda to a STi Subaru play car (22 mpg) so it's not a perfect comparison. Still, in my case, my net cost is about $175/month or just over $2,000 per year to lease the car. So, not at all an extravagant car like the Tesla. I would say affordable by many people if not all (hard to beat a $12,000 gas Honda).
As for usage, I expected that I would drive the Honda on the daily commute but that a lot of weekend running around would require me to use the Subaru. The reality has surprised me: The Subaru has been used more like once per month. It turns out that most of the drives that I thought would require the gas car can be done if I plan on recharging at a public recharge station, which usually isn't that difficult.
The two comments I would say about range (anxiety) is that you have to plan your driving. (I'm a pilot, so it's a lot like planning my flight - you need to leave the house having a fairly good idea of where you'll be going that day, and if it's a longer than 100 mile day which charger you'll use to recharge). This isn't as bad as it sounds, because for a lot of us, our days don't change that radically. I can do the commute to work and still have about 70 extra miles available for appointments and errand running without having to recharge. If your daily commute is more like 100 miles, this probably won't work for you unless there is a recharging station at work. If not, a gas car is probably still for you.
The second comment is that fast driving really really kills range. At 55 I get about 4.4 miles per kWh which gives me about 100 miles of range. At speeds above 65 this starts to drop off quickly. At 85 mph I couldn't make it to work and back. The funny thing is that I tend to take back roads (and thus get around 6.5 miles per kWh giving me around 120 miles of range, and yet this only costs me an extra 10 minutes of commute because although sections of the highway are pretty fast, other sections are really slow because of traffic. Driving back roads I'm moving more slowly, but at a much more steady pace so it doesn't take that much longer to go at a speed that really conserves power. Also, it's a much more pleasant drive! That said,
I'd like to note that using the Tesla for milage figures is akin to using a SUV for gasoline milage figures - the Model S is a large heavy car. My Honda FIT EV gets about 25%- 80% better mileage / kWh. (I get between 4.5 and 6.5 miles per kWh versus the 3.5 you quoted for the Tesla [130+reserve on 19kWh battery] - I'd expect numbers to improve in the next few years as EV production by the large auto makers is still in it's infancy).
So, unless I'm making a dumb math error, you're off by almost a factor of three for my electric car (Honda FIT).
I get between 4.4 to 6.5 miles per kilowatt hour, which I think works out to about 140 Wh/km? Did I make a mistake, or is the chart you used measuring much larger cars?
Ok, here's another example: a few weeks ago I upgraded to Mountain Lion. As soon as I did, my HP DVI external monitor stopped working (it would go to sleep after a minute or so). Called Apple Support. Their take: it's the fault of the monitor (even though the guy admits that the fact it started exactly when I upgraded the OS was a pretty big coincidence). I point out that other developers I worked with have also been having problems with external monitors ever since Mountain Lion was installed, and that it's pretty likely that someone broke a driver. Apple: "sorry, nothing we can do".
So I get to go buy a new monitor because of Apple's mistake.
>>They were charged with conspiring to provide material support for use in preparation for a weapon of mass destruction. If convicted, they each face the possibility of up to 15 years in prison.
So, uh, what *exactly* is the definition of "WOMD"? 'cause if they're being charged with this I'm sure I must not understand what it is...
Wikipedia says:
>>A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans and/or cause great damage to man-made structures (e.g. buildings), natural structures (e.g. mountains), or the biosphere in general. The scope and application of the term has evolved and been disputed, often signifying more politically than technically. Coined in reference to aerial bombing with chemical explosives, it has come to distinguish large-scale weaponry of other technologies, such as chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear. This differentiates the term from more technical ones such as chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons (CBRN).
which doesn't sound like what they were intending to build...
I'm not an Airbus pilot, but my recollection is that there is an algorithm which compares how much stick deflection there is, and gives priority to the one moving more, and then if that's not clear gives priority to the captain's stick...
I would be much much more worried about a cosmic ray flipping a bit in on of the flight control computers.
Which is why this has been anticipated in the design of critical avionics - redundant microprocessors self checking each other on a regular basis in case one of them experiences such a fault. I think the Boeing 777 autopilot has 9 microprocessors (3 triple redundant multi-architecture processors).
Unfortunately when the ILS/VOR system was designed in the (1940s?) they didn't think about cell phone interference...
I'm a commercial helicopter pilot and engineer with avionics experience. I've heard of interference second hand over the years: we had one local pilot who couldn't talk to Lawrence Tower because the tower frequency at that time was a harmonic of the microprocessor in the GPS system he had on board. A pilot I fly with occasionally told me he had made a nice mount for his iPhone and it totally interfered with the tachometers in the helicopter he was flying. I was talking recently with a 757 crew and they were complaining about a passenger using a cell phone - they knew because it was bleeding over into their comm system.
If you saw how close to things an airplane gets flying an instrument approach you'd be worried about interference with the navigation radios. There is very very little room for error. I worry less about GPS because I think interference is likely to just knock the aircraft GPS receiver totally out and is very unlikely to give wrong navigational solutions. However, ILS/VOR systems worry me because they are just AM analog signals and it seems much more likely that interference could cause a wrong indication causing a pilot to (fatally) hit an obstacle on approach.
As for people getting upset when people don't listen to the crew members, I side with them. Ever had someone start pulling overhead luggage out of the bins while the aircraft is still taxiing? I have. Imagine some schmuck pulling a heavy bag out just as the plane jostles him and some unlikely fellow passenger gets injured. Would you really just sit there and let him do that? I wouldn't; I'd yell at him to sit down. Why should his fellow passengers be put at risk because of his impatience?
I think the same thing goes for electronic devices. If you really really need to use that phone, lobby FAA/FCC to allow it, but don't just ignore the crew because you don't personally think the risk is that big. It's not your decision to make! And if you decide to put the rest of us at risk by ignoring crew instructions, you shouldn't be surprised when someone gets upset with you!
You are not correct that AIRCRAFT need to stay 500 feet above the bridge. Helicopters (which are a kind of aircraft) have no specific minimum altitude limits. The pilot needs to be sure that his flight isn't going to endanger people or property on the ground.
I have done photography jobs in NYC that required very low altitude flying. I doubt I would be able to see and avoid an RC aircraft of this size. We generally can identify when a field is being used for RC flying (the people and their equipment has a generally identifiable signature). It's very very difficult to see the RC aircraft themselves because of their size, so a FPV RC aircraft being flown from a remote location is probably a collision hazard.
I'm not sure whether an RC aircraft of this size would go through a canopy or not. If the helicopter were at speed and you had a head on with an RC plane flying at 80 mph, I think there is a fair chance the RC plane could go through the bubble (it's just a piece of plastic, after all). I'm CERTAIN it would take out my tail rotor, and that could certainly lead to a fatal accident.
I guess I have the same worries about this sort of thing as I do about UAVs - the person on the ground is taking no personal risk at all, but is putting the helicopter crew and their passengers at risk for their lives. It's not a big worry right now because these things are pretty rare, but what should we do if it becomes commonplace?
Ok, so this is pretty cool because in the section where they are interviewing Jack Burness about the GT-40 version, he mentions me!
>>> Years later, a co-worker told Burness that the reason he got into programming was because he had played Moonlander as a teenager.
I had helped to video tape a symposium on stereochemistry at Wesleyan University, and the room that we put the video equipment away happened to have a GT-40 vector graphics system in it. Some students were playing Moonlander and I got to try a few times. It was so cool that I started sneaking into Wesleyan and stealing time on their PDP-10 computer system. I taught myself BASIC, then FORTRAN, and finally assembly language. Years later I worked at a startup and worked with Jack Burness programming a graphics coprocessor. "Help" included the time I accidentally wiped out the source to all the code he had been writing for months. Luckily he had it all inside Emacs and was able to write it back out to the disk! I almost tubed the company that day! Yikes!
My recollection is that Jack told me he wrote the entire Moonlander program over a weekend for our then-boss ex-DEC executive Lorin Gale. I was also told that Moonlander was used in a case against Nolan Bushnell, where he tried to patent the idea of video games (he invented "Pong"). The options were to wheel a (huge) PDP-1 into court to demonstrate Space War, or a little (portable) GT-40 running Moonlander. The GT-40 had the nice property that since it used core memory, you could load the program and start it up, unplug the computer from the wall, transport it elsewhere (like, to a courtroom) and plug it in and have it pick up from where it left off. I don't have first hand knowledge of this, but this is what I was told (possibly by Jack?).
Anyway, cool program and Jack is a really cool guy and great programmer!
I've been losing confidence in NASA manned missions for years. NASA (manned) is an organization without a worthwhile achievable goal. They need more money than the budget allows to do revolutionary work like Mercury through Apollo was. So, they cast about to and fro trying to think of something they can do within their budget. That's seems backwards. If they could commit to a worthwhile project (like, colonize [not visit] Mars) they might be able to get their budget increased to what it would take to achieve that goal. It would take the political will for the country to sign up for long term funding of the project, and an innovative not-business-as-usual approach by NASA.
As it is, seeing $100,000,000,000 blown for what seems like little return, or more likely seeing them playing a brinkmanship game for funding (give us more money or we'll be forced to burn up the space station you just built for $100B), that just makes me want to shut them down. Gut the manned space part of the agency, and give the remaining money to robotic exploration programs that will have a scientific return for the money.
Apollo ended up being a dead end (although I don't think NASA thought it would be). The shuttle and the ISS have turned out to be dead ends. NASA either needs to find a legitimate, achievable goal for manned flight, or give it up. I don't mind supporting science with my tax dollar, but I resent supporting white elephant projects which only benefit Boeing & gang, and a bunch of career bureaucrats.
Like other people are saying: digital has film beat for low light work. I did a project which I first tried to shoot on film. Couldn't do it - available film wasn't sensitive enough. The Nikon D3 allowed me to take these:
http://photos.copters.com/p404438907
For non-commercial use, the only scheduled maintenance is the annual inspection.
Aircraft rental is expensive for a few reasons. The machines you would rent are typically more complex than the ones I was describing. Insurance is a huge expense that an individual can forgo but a company renting typically can not. Also, if you are making a business out of renting aircraft, you are probably at a slightly larger airport than an individual might be at, so there are probably more expenses than an individual might incur. Finally, if you are renting the aircraft out, you need to perform 100 hour inspections that a private owner is not required to do.
My friend who owned a couple Cessna airplanes over the years probably broke even or even came out ahead. The aircraft probably appreciated by just about what maintenance and tiedown cost him over the years. Aircraft hold their value in a way that automobiles do not, making them fairly inexpensive to own if you can afford the initial purchase price.
The price of fuel may be about to change that, however.
In the posting I responded to you said: "Why is it the government's responsibility to make air travel safe?". You said safe not secure.
Also, you mention that you understand why the government originally put money into aviation (because no single company could do the capital investment) but I think that is misleading. When it comes to safety versus profits, the free market does not appear to move towards safety. Look at the automobile industry: if it wasn't for Ralph Nader, the auto industry appears to have had no pressure to increase safety. And, he didn't give them a lot of bad press and force the industry to innovate safety features (which could have arguably been called free market); he got laws passed forcing them to make changes to promote safety (government control).
Another example would be workplace safety (which to a large degree have been gutted by recent administrations). Look at safety in the coal mines of the 19th and 20th century, or factory work at the turn of the 20th century and you can see examples of how capitalism and the market does not seem to generate pressure towards safety for individuals.
There are lots of safety issues related to aviation (for instance, crew duty/rest times) that almost certainly would not have happened if it wasn't for government regulation of the airline industry. So, I stand by my statement that the NTSB/CAA/FAA was to a large degree the reason why the safety of the airline industry is so good.
It's certainly more than an auto (which can be close to zero) but the annual maintenance costs need not be large. Aviation mechanics are extremely underpaid, they often make less than if they were working at a car dealership. So, with a small simple airplane an annual inspection may only cost a few hundred dollars. In addition, to further reduce the cost many owners do an "owner assisted" annual where they help with the inspection. This may be as little as opening all the inspection ports so the mechanic doesn't need to take the time to do it, to actually doing most of the work and just have the IA mechanic sign off on the work.
The key is that I'm talking about extremely simple aircraft. If you start talking about something complicated like a Bonanza, yeah, the annual is going to cost you thousands. But a small Luscombe or Cub or equivalent can be pretty low cost.
You can buy an older two seat aircraft for about $20,000. If you bought the airplane first and paid for lessons, you could probably get the price to get your license down under $4,000.
It's probably pretty difficult to get 15 nm/gallon, probably more like 10-13. You can almost certainly find an older plane that will burn autogas, so you can keep the gas prices down to the merely ridiculous prices we are paying at the gas pumps, rather than the >$6/gallon some places are charging for 100LL fuel.
If you want to fly a more modern, fancy airplane, then yes, the prices you quote are reasonable. Just be glad you don't fly what I fly: small piston helicopters go for $200-$500/hr and the larger helicopter I fly goes for over $1,000/hr!
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She's one of my very unfavorite people as well. Glad I'm not the only one who thinks this way.
Yes, you can get goopy green biologic stuff in the fuel cell eating the Jet fuel. The worry isn't loss of fuel, it's contamination of the fuel system causing blockage/flameout. It's one of the reasons we sump/filter fuel before every flight.
Yeah, even as I was writing that, my little voice was telling me something was wrong :-)
The estimator I used (which takes geographic location into account) mentions 4.28 kWh/m2/day which is where I got my original number. I see that it also mentions 158 sq-ft as the roof area needed. I think that's the entire roof of my house 3 layers deep ;-)
I agree that the lease makes it harder to compare to other cars. Honda only offers lease of the FIT EV at this time, but I also liked it because it was a risk reducer for me - worries about battery life etc. I have used the air conditioning and it makes a surprisingly small impact on milage - I saw a loss of less than 1 mile /kWh. The heater on the other hand really uses a LOT of battery. I'm going to be interested to see what happens when it gets really cold here in the winter.
The 90 minute charging time is to re-charge after my 10 kWh commute. If I was to run the battery flat, it's more like 3 hours. I've only done that twice in 6 months of driving... I think the 20 minute charging time is with a special DC charger. I think they charge at 400+ volts (Honda doesn't have this, but I think the new Nissan Leaf does). Mine uses a modified dryer outlet for 220 volt charging. Charging at 110 volts is not practical. It takes all night to charge at 110 volts. It's definitely an emergency thing (Honda supplies a 110 volt charging cable that is carried in the cargo area, but if you had to use it I think you would plug in and come back for the car the next day!)
I have no doubt that purchase price for an electric is higher than that of a gas car, although one could probably make a case that the Tesla is comparably priced to similar luxury vehicles. Certainly if I could buy a Honda FIT EV it would cost substantially more than the gas version. TCO I'm not so sure about. There is the savings in fuel which isn't huge but adds up over the years. The maintenance is probably unknown, but looking at the systems of the FIT, there's a LOT less to maintain than in an ICE car. I think chances are good that maintenance will be substantially less (certainly you'll save on brakes - probably never replace them for the life of the car!).
Tax break - Honda took the $7,500 tax break, not me (because it's a lease) :-(
Where do you live and how long is your commute? You sound like you don't think you could rely on an EV car...
I think Honda is being very conservative because of the bad press it would generate if people were ending up at the side of the road with no charge left. Interestingly, if you *do* run out of charge they'll send a flatbed truck to come get you. My guess is that if you do that more than once or twice they cancel the lease!
As for efficiency, I think one of us made a math error. I got:
Diesel #2/ US gallon: 146,300 kJ converted to Imperial Gallons = 175,560 kJ/gal imp.
If you get 60 mpg, 175,560kJ / 60 = 2,926 kJ/mile == 4,681 kJ/km == 1.3 kWh/km
(http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/wholefarm/pdf/c6-87.pdf pdf alert)
Simpler way to look at it:
Diesel US gallon = 138700 BTU * 1.2 (imp gal) = 166440 BTU = 48 kWh. 60miles / 48kWh = 1.25 miles / kWh
So, based on that even the Tesla @ 3.5 is twice as efficient as the diesel and the FIT is up to 5 times as efficient.
Did I miss something?
6.5 is an optimal milage, 4.5 is a pretty typical number with passengers and/or cargo. Air conditioning doesn't seem to cost that much in milage, heating does - I expect my winter numbers to be lower. Interestingly, I get better milage when I hit traffic jams! (lower speeds, thus lower air drag).
Actually, in another post I did a calculation on PV - it looks like here in Boston (not the solar capital of the world) it would take about 4 square meters of PV to generate enough electricity for my daily commute).
Yes, thank god for the clean/safe petrochemical industry. Their 100% safety record and 0 spill record makes me proud every time I fill up at the gas station. That crap about the Exxon Valdez and the Gulf of Mexico spill was just a bunch of crap made up by hippies who hate America.
Respectfully, although you say you are all for electric cars, you then go on to imply that there is a long way to go before they can be practical. I'd say there is a short way for them to be practical for a large (but not 100%) of the populace.
I'll relate my experience of the last 6 months of leasing a Honda FIT EV:
I drive about a 50 mile round trip commute daily. The Honda gets between 4 and 6.5 miles/kWh on that commute - it'll be worse in the winter, but most days I get home having used about 10 kWh for the commute (thats under 1/2 a charge - I forgot to recharge one night and was able to do the commute the next day and still make it home with 10-15 miles of range left). It takes about 90 minutes after I plug in to recharge to 100% charged. Future charger technology will no doubt shorten that, but I've never had to take the gas car because the electric car hasn't finished charging. I think I pay about 0.18 / kWh for electricity here in Massachusetts, so it costs me about $2.00 for the commute versus about $5 for my Subaru (which is a much less efficient car, so I don't want to imply that's apples for apples).
If I have the math right, here in Massachusetts I could install about 4^2 meters of PV array and generate enough electricity to cover the commute. I based this on a solar system estimator at http://www.find-solar.org/index.php
While you can make cases that it costs CO2 to produce the PV cells etc., as other people have mentioned you also pay CO2 costs to deliver gas to the station, but it's not unreasonable that a large percentage of drivers that own electric cars could produce enough electricity to power their vehicles for their daily drives.
As for costs, I lease the car from Honda for $275/month. I'm saving about $100/month on fuel although again that's comparing an efficient Honda to a STi Subaru play car (22 mpg) so it's not a perfect comparison. Still, in my case, my net cost is about $175/month or just over $2,000 per year to lease the car. So, not at all an extravagant car like the Tesla. I would say affordable by many people if not all (hard to beat a $12,000 gas Honda).
As for usage, I expected that I would drive the Honda on the daily commute but that a lot of weekend running around would require me to use the Subaru. The reality has surprised me: The Subaru has been used more like once per month. It turns out that most of the drives that I thought would require the gas car can be done if I plan on recharging at a public recharge station, which usually isn't that difficult.
The two comments I would say about range (anxiety) is that you have to plan your driving. (I'm a pilot, so it's a lot like planning my flight - you need to leave the house having a fairly good idea of where you'll be going that day, and if it's a longer than 100 mile day which charger you'll use to recharge). This isn't as bad as it sounds, because for a lot of us, our days don't change that radically. I can do the commute to work and still have about 70 extra miles available for appointments and errand running without having to recharge. If your daily commute is more like 100 miles, this probably won't work for you unless there is a recharging station at work. If not, a gas car is probably still for you.
The second comment is that fast driving really really kills range. At 55 I get about 4.4 miles per kWh which gives me about 100 miles of range. At speeds above 65 this starts to drop off quickly. At 85 mph I couldn't make it to work and back. The funny thing is that I tend to take back roads (and thus get around 6.5 miles per kWh giving me around 120 miles of range, and yet this only costs me an extra 10 minutes of commute because although sections of the highway are pretty fast, other sections are really slow because of traffic. Driving back roads I'm moving more slowly, but at a much more steady pace so it doesn't take that much longer to go at a speed that really conserves power. Also, it's a much more pleasant drive! That said,
I'd like to note that using the Tesla for milage figures is akin to using a SUV for gasoline milage figures - the Model S is a large heavy car. My Honda FIT EV gets about 25%- 80% better mileage / kWh. (I get between 4.5 and 6.5 miles per kWh versus the 3.5 you quoted for the Tesla [130+reserve on 19kWh battery] - I'd expect numbers to improve in the next few years as EV production by the large auto makers is still in it's infancy).
So, unless I'm making a dumb math error, you're off by almost a factor of three for my electric car (Honda FIT).
I get between 4.4 to 6.5 miles per kilowatt hour, which I think works out to about 140 Wh/km? Did I make a mistake, or is the chart you used measuring much larger cars?
Ok, here's another example: a few weeks ago I upgraded to Mountain Lion. As soon as I did, my HP DVI external monitor stopped working (it would go to sleep after a minute or so). Called Apple Support. Their take: it's the fault of the monitor (even though the guy admits that the fact it started exactly when I upgraded the OS was a pretty big coincidence). I point out that other developers I worked with have also been having problems with external monitors ever since Mountain Lion was installed, and that it's pretty likely that someone broke a driver. Apple: "sorry, nothing we can do".
So I get to go buy a new monitor because of Apple's mistake.
>>They were charged with conspiring to provide material support for use in preparation for a weapon of mass destruction. If convicted, they each face the possibility of up to 15 years in prison.
So, uh, what *exactly* is the definition of "WOMD"? 'cause if they're being charged with this I'm sure I must not understand what it is...
Wikipedia says:
>>A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans and/or cause great damage to man-made structures (e.g. buildings), natural structures (e.g. mountains), or the biosphere in general. The scope and application of the term has evolved and been disputed, often signifying more politically than technically. Coined in reference to aerial bombing with chemical explosives, it has come to distinguish large-scale weaponry of other technologies, such as chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear. This differentiates the term from more technical ones such as chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons (CBRN).
which doesn't sound like what they were intending to build...
Paul
I'm not an Airbus pilot, but my recollection is that there is an algorithm which compares how much stick deflection there is, and gives priority to the one moving more, and then if that's not clear gives priority to the captain's stick...
Why do you think your Kindle or iPad can bring down the plane during take off or landing, but not while cruising?
Um, because during approach much smaller navigation errors could endanger the plane than during cruise?
Paul
You make a very good point regarding cosmic rays.
I would be much much more worried about a cosmic ray flipping a bit in on of the flight control computers.
Which is why this has been anticipated in the design of critical avionics - redundant microprocessors self checking each other on a regular basis in case one of them experiences such a fault. I think the Boeing 777 autopilot has 9 microprocessors (3 triple redundant multi-architecture processors).
Unfortunately when the ILS/VOR system was designed in the (1940s?) they didn't think about cell phone interference...
Paul
I'm a commercial helicopter pilot and engineer with avionics experience. I've heard of interference second hand over the years: we had one local pilot who couldn't talk to Lawrence Tower because the tower frequency at that time was a harmonic of the microprocessor in the GPS system he had on board. A pilot I fly with occasionally told me he had made a nice mount for his iPhone and it totally interfered with the tachometers in the helicopter he was flying. I was talking recently with a 757 crew and they were complaining about a passenger using a cell phone - they knew because it was bleeding over into their comm system.
If you saw how close to things an airplane gets flying an instrument approach you'd be worried about interference with the navigation radios. There is very very little room for error. I worry less about GPS because I think interference is likely to just knock the aircraft GPS receiver totally out and is very unlikely to give wrong navigational solutions. However, ILS/VOR systems worry me because they are just AM analog signals and it seems much more likely that interference could cause a wrong indication causing a pilot to (fatally) hit an obstacle on approach.
As for people getting upset when people don't listen to the crew members, I side with them. Ever had someone start pulling overhead luggage out of the bins while the aircraft is still taxiing? I have. Imagine some schmuck pulling a heavy bag out just as the plane jostles him and some unlikely fellow passenger gets injured. Would you really just sit there and let him do that? I wouldn't; I'd yell at him to sit down. Why should his fellow passengers be put at risk because of his impatience?
I think the same thing goes for electronic devices. If you really really need to use that phone, lobby FAA/FCC to allow it, but don't just ignore the crew because you don't personally think the risk is that big. It's not your decision to make! And if you decide to put the rest of us at risk by ignoring crew instructions, you shouldn't be surprised when someone gets upset with you!
You are not correct that AIRCRAFT need to stay 500 feet above the bridge. Helicopters (which are a kind of aircraft) have no specific minimum altitude limits. The pilot needs to be sure that his flight isn't going to endanger people or property on the ground.
I have done photography jobs in NYC that required very low altitude flying. I doubt I would be able to see and avoid an RC aircraft of this size. We generally can identify when a field is being used for RC flying (the people and their equipment has a generally identifiable signature). It's very very difficult to see the RC aircraft themselves because of their size, so a FPV RC aircraft being flown from a remote location is probably a collision hazard.
I'm not sure whether an RC aircraft of this size would go through a canopy or not. If the helicopter were at speed and you had a head on with an RC plane flying at 80 mph, I think there is a fair chance the RC plane could go through the bubble (it's just a piece of plastic, after all). I'm CERTAIN it would take out my tail rotor, and that could certainly lead to a fatal accident.
I guess I have the same worries about this sort of thing as I do about UAVs - the person on the ground is taking no personal risk at all, but is putting the helicopter crew and their passengers at risk for their lives. It's not a big worry right now because these things are pretty rare, but what should we do if it becomes commonplace?
Ok, so this is pretty cool because in the section where they are interviewing Jack Burness about the GT-40 version, he mentions me!
>>> Years later, a co-worker told Burness that the reason he got into programming was because he had played Moonlander as a teenager.
I had helped to video tape a symposium on stereochemistry at Wesleyan University, and the room that we put the video equipment away happened to have a GT-40 vector graphics system in it. Some students were playing Moonlander and I got to try a few times. It was so cool that I started sneaking into Wesleyan and stealing time on their PDP-10 computer system. I taught myself BASIC, then FORTRAN, and finally assembly language. Years later I worked at a startup and worked with Jack Burness programming a graphics coprocessor. "Help" included the time I accidentally wiped out the source to all the code he had been writing for months. Luckily he had it all inside Emacs and was able to write it back out to the disk! I almost tubed the company that day! Yikes!
My recollection is that Jack told me he wrote the entire Moonlander program over a weekend for our then-boss ex-DEC executive Lorin Gale. I was also told that Moonlander was used in a case against Nolan Bushnell, where he tried to patent the idea of video games (he invented "Pong"). The options were to wheel a (huge) PDP-1 into court to demonstrate Space War, or a little (portable) GT-40 running Moonlander. The GT-40 had the nice property that since it used core memory, you could load the program and start it up, unplug the computer from the wall, transport it elsewhere (like, to a courtroom) and plug it in and have it pick up from where it left off. I don't have first hand knowledge of this, but this is what I was told (possibly by Jack?).
Anyway, cool program and Jack is a really cool guy and great programmer!
Paul Cantrell
I've been losing confidence in NASA manned missions for years. NASA (manned) is an organization without a worthwhile achievable goal. They need more money than the budget allows to do revolutionary work like Mercury through Apollo was. So, they cast about to and fro trying to think of something they can do within their budget. That's seems backwards. If they could commit to a worthwhile project (like, colonize [not visit] Mars) they might be able to get their budget increased to what it would take to achieve that goal. It would take the political will for the country to sign up for long term funding of the project, and an innovative not-business-as-usual approach by NASA.
As it is, seeing $100,000,000,000 blown for what seems like little return, or more likely seeing them playing a brinkmanship game for funding (give us more money or we'll be forced to burn up the space station you just built for $100B), that just makes me want to shut them down. Gut the manned space part of the agency, and give the remaining money to robotic exploration programs that will have a scientific return for the money.
Apollo ended up being a dead end (although I don't think NASA thought it would be). The shuttle and the ISS have turned out to be dead ends. NASA either needs to find a legitimate, achievable goal for manned flight, or give it up. I don't mind supporting science with my tax dollar, but I resent supporting white elephant projects which only benefit Boeing & gang, and a bunch of career bureaucrats.
Like other people are saying: digital has film beat for low light work. I did a project which I first tried to shoot on film. Couldn't do it - available film wasn't sensitive enough. The Nikon D3 allowed me to take these: http://photos.copters.com/p404438907
Aircraft rental is expensive for a few reasons. The machines you would rent are typically more complex than the ones I was describing. Insurance is a huge expense that an individual can forgo but a company renting typically can not. Also, if you are making a business out of renting aircraft, you are probably at a slightly larger airport than an individual might be at, so there are probably more expenses than an individual might incur. Finally, if you are renting the aircraft out, you need to perform 100 hour inspections that a private owner is not required to do.
My friend who owned a couple Cessna airplanes over the years probably broke even or even came out ahead. The aircraft probably appreciated by just about what maintenance and tiedown cost him over the years. Aircraft hold their value in a way that automobiles do not, making them fairly inexpensive to own if you can afford the initial purchase price.
The price of fuel may be about to change that, however.
Also, you mention that you understand why the government originally put money into aviation (because no single company could do the capital investment) but I think that is misleading. When it comes to safety versus profits, the free market does not appear to move towards safety. Look at the automobile industry: if it wasn't for Ralph Nader, the auto industry appears to have had no pressure to increase safety. And, he didn't give them a lot of bad press and force the industry to innovate safety features (which could have arguably been called free market); he got laws passed forcing them to make changes to promote safety (government control).
Another example would be workplace safety (which to a large degree have been gutted by recent administrations). Look at safety in the coal mines of the 19th and 20th century, or factory work at the turn of the 20th century and you can see examples of how capitalism and the market does not seem to generate pressure towards safety for individuals.
There are lots of safety issues related to aviation (for instance, crew duty/rest times) that almost certainly would not have happened if it wasn't for government regulation of the airline industry. So, I stand by my statement that the NTSB/CAA/FAA was to a large degree the reason why the safety of the airline industry is so good.
The key is that I'm talking about extremely simple aircraft. If you start talking about something complicated like a Bonanza, yeah, the annual is going to cost you thousands. But a small Luscombe or Cub or equivalent can be pretty low cost.
Tell that to China Air
It's probably pretty difficult to get 15 nm/gallon, probably more like 10-13. You can almost certainly find an older plane that will burn autogas, so you can keep the gas prices down to the merely ridiculous prices we are paying at the gas pumps, rather than the >$6/gallon some places are charging for 100LL fuel.
If you want to fly a more modern, fancy airplane, then yes, the prices you quote are reasonable. Just be glad you don't fly what I fly: small piston helicopters go for $200-$500/hr and the larger helicopter I fly goes for over $1,000/hr!