Funny..... Tesla shares (as of today, the day after the IPO) are now at around $30 / share. Years? How about a day!
FYI, although Microsoft trades at $23/share, it has had numerous splits and dividend payouts since it went public. Most companies try to keep the price of their shares somewhere between $10 and $100 per share as it makes it easier for smaller investors to get into their company. If a stock is less than $10 you find that broker commissions tend to eat up more of the price and if the stock is over $100 there tends to be a drop off in the number of investors wanting to get in.
A significant exception is Berkshire Hathaway (current share price is $120,833.00 for class "A" shares), but that is incredibly unusual and sort of a badge of honor among its investors. You won't typically be investing an IRA or 401K fund into stocks of that nature.
Basically, comparing stock prices between one company vs. another is a joke and really not comparing the same thing. If you are comparing the "market cap" (how much money all of the shares outstanding represent in value), that is something to legitimately compare. That was not done in this case, however.
The problem with how this money was used around the same time as TARP is that the terms for its use were modified to permit other general automotive development instead of just for "alternative energy development". Tesla met the initial conditions for when the legislation was passed, not the watered down version that was eventually used to throw money at other car companies.
Yeah, that is an important distinction, and noting this program wasn't just a little bit before TARP but quite a bit before that happened.
For electric cars to take off out here, I suspect a new form of "car stop" would have to emerge, with charging stations in the parking area of restaurants where families could take their meal break from a long trip while the car charges for the 45-60 mins it requires...
This is already happening in California, with a number of hotels and restaurants which offer a "plug-in service" to customers who have electric vehicles. Based on a number of the blogs I've been reading, most 4 & 5 star hotels will generally be accommodating in terms of getting an extension cord or some sort of electrical power supply to an electric car to charge overnight. It makes business sense as it can be one more "amenity" that they can brag about on brochures and websites to try and lure in customers.
If you have an electric vehicle, it would be useful to do a web search at the moment to try and find where these hotels and restaurants are located at, or at the very least call ahead to see if the business will make the necessary arrangements, but it is something happening with the hospitality business. I would expect some campgrounds might eventually offer that sort of service too, and certainly any place that offers electrical power to RVs could be used to recharge an electric automobile as well. Places like that have been around for decades.
I've also seen some after-market designs for a solar battery "blanket" that you can roll out to recharge an electric vehicle, if for example you went camping to a remote place and let the vehicle recharge over the course of a few days. It wouldn't be useful for everyday driving, but it could do the trick if a remote destination was within the driving range to get there and you wanted to get some juice to get out of the place on the way back.
There are also some electrical storage technologies that suggest a doubling to as high as ten times the current energy storage levels. Assuming that the high end works out, it could be as much as a 3000 mile driving range for some of these vehicles on a single charge. That represents an incredible amount of energy that has to be stored, but that could certainly take you places if it works out. The only reason a 300 mile driving range is even possible is because of advancements in battery technology.... Tesla uses Lithium-ion batteries. In fact, they are the standard AA cells that most people use for most consumer electric devices, including laptops. Tesla just has a huge pile of the things wrapped up with some funky environmental monitoring (checking the temperature and conditions of the cells themselves) to keep them from melting down and taking the car with it.
It amazes me how capital intensive the automobile industry really is, and it shouldn't be too surprising that the company has been sinking a huge amount of cash into a major production line that will produce a vehicle with half the price and increased driving range from the Roadster. Yeah, the Model S doesn't have quite the same driving performance as a Roadster, but it still is going to be a sweet car.
The real interesting thing is going to watch the competition between the Volt, the Model S, and the Leaf... which are all going after the same group of automobile consumers. Tesla made the first move in this industry, but the rest of the companies aren't taking it lightly in terms of ignoring the situation. I'm sure that is one of the reasons why Toyota decided to back Tesla in terms of trying to push up the production schedule and form a "strategic partnership" with Tesla.
I thought that the order for Roadsters was extended and that the production line was going to continue as is for at least another year. You can still order a brand-new Roadster on-line with the official Tesla website, so it seems a bit premature to say that "they stopped making the Roadsters". Yes the announcement is to halt production some time next year, but that isn't quite yet past tense as in having production already stopped.
This article in Wired sort of spells out the near term future of the Roadster, which doesn't sound like they are having problems at least making some basic revenue from this model. With all of the money dumped into the Roadster, it would be a crying shame to discard the design, particularly if it continues to be a money maker. It should be noted that this article was written after the IPO prospectus and is more recent information.
Then again, due to the significant outsourcing of the Roadster design, the profit margins for the Roadster are not nearly as good as Elon Musk would like to have. With his experience on developing the Falcon 9 and with SpaceX in general, he has certainly become an evangelist for a vertically integrated company that keeps most of its production in-house if possible. It seems like that may be the motive, if any, for discontinuing the Roadster and moving on to a new design or at least a new iteration of the Roadster.
Part of the problem is that Elon Musk is required to maintain at least 60% ownership in Tesla for the duration of the loans that Tesla just took out for the production of the "Model S". If he gives half of that to his soon to be ex-wife, while she will certainly be a multi-millionaire, it would also mean the end of Tesla so far as putting a significant cash crunch on the company. The IPO helps, but it doesn't solve the problem.
Agreed though that Mr. Musk's personal financial troubles have little to do with the companies he is running. He isn't giving up either Tesla or SpaceX, so I guess Justine is going to end up with a bunch of shares in Solar City instead.
Frankly, I know too much about this guy's personal life as it is. Anything else is fit only for National Enquirer.
I would have liked to have seen all BP assets in the US nationalized until every single American, every single waitress at Denny's who's gonna lose tips because vacationers aren't coming to the Gulf because of the thick crude oozing up on the beaches, is made whole.
Why are you hell bent on confiscating wealth here? A great portion of the problem here is a massive screw up on the part of the Obama administration, where the White House simply sat on their behinds wondering what to do and staring at their own naval. There certainly were options to help cope with this from a technical standpoint that should have been resolved much earlier.
Rather than doing the blame game and filing lawsuits and other sorts of things that actually slows down the process of trying to fix the problem, Obama should have pulled together a bunch of "experts" on about the second or third day of the problem, asked what could be done to get the situation resolved, and then put the resources of the United States into action to get it resolved. Unfortunately that didn't happen and the lawsuits are flying around with an increase in government red tape instead of having somebody to cut through that bureaucracy and actually be in charge.
I blame Obama because the guy can't lead. He can't lead because he has no experience in leading and has never run an organization larger than his campaign staff or his senate office staff prior to becoming President. This is something that matters and is glaringly obvious at this time. This is the consequence of getting somebody who is all fluff and no substance. Yes, I do think a President Hillary Clinton would have done a much better job with this problem than Obama currently is doing, and certainly there are others with real leadership experience that could have done much better than Obama even within the Democratic party as well and kept most of the current political agenda going on. It isn't political philosophies I'm complaining about here, but rather the guy himself.
Certainly there is no excuse for screwing over the rest of the oil companies merely because one of them is having a really bad day. BP certainly should be responsible for damages on things they had direct control over, and legitimately they are paying claims on damages they have caused. Money has been going to some people already and there is much more that can be done and will be done too. They certainly aren't getting a free pass here.
As for petroleum, there are many uses for the stuff besides taking a match (or a spark plug) and setting it on fire. I agree that eventually the practice of using petroleum as a energy storage medium has got to eventually end for most uses, but it is going to take some time. The "alternative energy sources" is really trying to find some way to store the rather substantial quantities of energy in some fashion that can be used when needed, and at high enough energy rates that you can do useful stuff with that energy. It should be noted that more energy is expended (usually in the form of electrical energy) for the processing and refining of petroleum than is every extracted out of the refined gasoline when it is burned... even if the energy from the gasoline is used at 100% efficiency. It really is just a storage medium.
For myself, I like the idea of algae farms for generating petroleum... sustainable and permits a petroleum production industry. It may take some genetic engineering to get it to work out effectively, but it is a step in the right direction that doesn't require humanity to return to the stone age. There are also some very interesting electrical storage technologies that are promising and may be substantially better than the current Lithium-ion battery technology in terms of energy storage density as well. If those come to market, electrical vehicles capable of traveling 1000+ miles on a single charge may be possible.
Do you think that six months of wait on 1/100th of the Gulf wells will destroy the economy?
Absolutely! Suggesting that this is 1/100th of the wells is sort of a fallacy here anyway. This is about exploration of new wells and dealing with the whole supply chain, employment base, and everybody involved with the development of these wells from engineers, geologists, welders, drillers, pilots (both airborne as well as sea), steel fabricators, and much more. The number of people being put out of work as a result of this number in the thousands, possibly in the 10's of thousands. This is also going to have secondary impacts that will adversely impact service industries like grocery stores, doctor's offices, and government tax receipts. These are primary base industry jobs that support the entire local economy where they are located at so the impact is going to be huge.
Also.... don't go complaining about dependency on foreign oil or higher prices at the gas pump as a result of this too, which will impact quite literally everything in the entire U.S. economy and the world economy as a whole. The only way you won't feel the impact of this is if you aren't connected to the global economy in any way.
This is also something that makes no sense from a technical standpoint either, as there are different companies that are operating under different policies, standards, and even engineering design teams who built the equipment. If you can show that a specific design flaw or engineering philosophy is to blame here, I might possibly justify a short (a couple week) moratorium for shutting down an entire industry but that isn't what is at fault. It isn't unusual for a specific kind of aircraft to be grounded until the fault is fixed, to give an example in another industry. But to shut down an entire industry simply shouldn't happen. The closest example of something like this is the grounding of all aircraft after the 9/11 attacks... but then again there was a universal threat that was associated with all aircraft that was plainly obvious and the stoppage was for a relatively short period of time. It certainly wasn't six months.
You might want to check again with the Germans to see how well that went. German engineers are pretty good at building rockets, but American politicians killed off (economically) an entire generation of German rocket developers that is only beginning to recover. It is a real pity too as this was a rather ambitious program that could have made a huge difference.
The requirement for a HS Diploma didn't really happen until about the time of the Gulf War, where previously there genuinely was no education requirement. As far as I know, military service in lieu of prison time (for first time felons still in their younger 20's) isn't an option any more either... although it used to be.
I'd agree that the situation for lower enlisted ranks has improved considerably and the military certainly recognizes that these are citizens in uniform rather than a life form barely better than a slave. At least congressmen recognize this fact and that is reflected with the pay + benefits. Congress recognizes that parents & grandparents of military service personnel represent significant constituents, and (fortunately/unfortunately) many of them even have served in the military knowing what it at least used to be like while in the service.
One of the things that is keeping pay up at the moment is the volunteer service, where there is no desire at all to bring back the draft... which could in theory bring in the numbers needed to sustain recruiting numbers, but at the same time that is neither popular in the halls of Congress nor in the Pentagon. About the only people advocating the draft are those who have a political axe to grind and have no thought about what that would do any of the branches of the military, and especially the Army (where the draft would most likely be used in first).
The guy was making $45,000/year with no education and very little experience. Not too shabby for someone in their early 20s.
The minimum education requirement to get into any branch of the U.S. military is now at least a High School Diploma or a GED and able to pass minimum literacy fluency. I wouldn't call that somebody with no education. College graduates are actually quite common among enlisted ranks as well and for some specialties in the military (even for enlisted positions) are actually required to have that kind of college level education.
In addition, the training programs that somebody in especially the U.S. Marine Corps goes through is by far and away tougher than any kind of vocational/technical school... at least a minimum of a full year's worth of intense training that is at least the equivalent of an Associate's Degree in terms of "classroom" hours and time spent learning the trade. And that is just as an infantryman learning how to use a gun.
As for experience, yeah I'll agree that experience is optional in the military. But it isn't a bed of roses and for somebody being lazy they certainly won't cut it in the military if they think it is an easy way to earn a quick buck. In terms of pay, a typical enlisted rank makes less than minimum wage considering the hours they work... even if you ignore overtime pay or other sorts of "extras" that are required by civilian employers for often the same job.
I've never met one, but most Mob hitmen are likely much more honourable than U.S. soldiers who shoot first--and indiscriminately--and ask questions later. Killing is never acceptable, but at least a mob hitman has a single target which he or she takes out without involving innocent people. Soldiers pretend to care about that, but in reality, they always put their own lives ahead of anyone else, and almost never do they have to stand trial for their "mistakes."
This comment is justifiably labeled as flamebait, but I'll take the bait too.
First of all, U.S. soldiers don't just shoot first and indiscriminately. If they did, they would be court-marshaled and having to spend time in a federal prison even if they tried and didn't hit anybody. But more to the point you are missing the point of an army in the first place:
Their job is to kill people and break things. They can do that very efficiently and will follow orders to do those things if called upon to make that effort. Killing civilians? Absolutely! If those civilians are in the way, causing problems and keeping them from performing their duties, those civilians can and should be killed... or at least frightened enough that they will run away at the mere sight of these soldiers. If you are a civilian in a war zone, you had damn well better get the hell out of Dodge and do your best to gather your family and what few possessions you care to save if those kind of guys come around.
If you paint a line on the ground (build a fence, etc.) and give orders to a soldiers to not cross that line or to shoot anything beyond that line, they will obey those kind of orders too. They are not undisciplined rabble but they do have a job to perform.
War is an ugly thing, and all kinds of atrocities happen in war. Even efforts to make war "civilized" (aka the Geneva Convention) are mostly an exercise in futility. It is for that reason war should not be something started for casual or minor things but it should be considered seriously and a sober discussion of unleashing that monster. That sort of serious discussion should happen among those who would provoke a military response as well.
I will also state here very plain that an American soldier is by far and away more honorable than a soldier in almost any other army. I dare any reasonable comparison be made that is based on any real facts rather than something made up or comparing the best of one army vs. the worst of the U.S. Army.
Gah, i just pissed away my mod-points this morning, otherwise you would have earned a +1 insightfull from me.
Contrary to what many americans seem to believe, nations like iraq, north korea and north vietnam were/are no serious threat (they cant even put the M in MAD if they chose to go to war with the US), and what little realistic threat they pose, is mostly due to the fact that the US cant keep out of other peoples business. If you pull enough strings that dont belong to you, you are bound to end up pissing people off...
Now i'm european, so i should be thankfull for liberating us from the germans in '45, but doing one thing right doesnt give you a free pass to go around and play shadow-puppet games around the world..
The war in Vietnam was a proxy war (for the most part) that was done as a way to fight World War III without it having to happen in Germany and France. If you think it would have been better to have been done in Germany, at this point I'd have to agree. Perhaps Europeans would be a little more understanding of the Cold War and its implications if that had happened on a more significant level.
As for Korea, it is important to remember that Korea is the main military invasion route between China and Japan. Just as Poland is stuck in between Germany and Russia or how Belgium was between Germany and France, Korea has played a similar role in eastern Asia military conflicts over the centuries, including during World War II as well. With America assuming responsibility for the defense of Japan, it became imperative for that concern to extend onto control of the Korean peninsula. China also became concerned that American control of that territory would adversely impact their national security, so they naturally fought back. North Korea could not, did not, and does not occupy the territory they technically occupy except as a buffer between China and Japan. It should be noted here that the war between North Korean and China vs. America and the "United Nations" armies is still not over but technically only a temporary cease fire.
As for Iraq... that is something which is more more debatable and it is certainly a valid point that Iraq was never a direct threat to America. Afghanistan, on the other hand, has been a major thorn in the side of America for some time and the role of the Taliban in stirring up trouble sort of gave justification for the U.S. military to go into that country. For myself, I would have rather than Afghanistan would have simply been captured and out right annexed as American territory in a blatant and forthright reprisal to the attacks of 9/11. A formal declaration of war should have been passed by the American congress for that action too, but that is irrelevant at this moment in time. Such an action would have made it much easier to get things accomplished in that part of the world, however.
Also, fun fact - did you know that without explicit Congressional approval, it is unconstitutional for the US to have a standing military in a time of peace? Kind of explains why ever since WWII the government has always had some bogus excuse for a perpetual war or "police action" of some sort.....
{{Citation Needed}}
While generally the United States Army in the 19th Century and until World War II was typically a small service (usually numbering about 20-50 thousand as a whole), there usually was at least somebody in the army at almost all times. The U.S. Navy, due to the fact that shipping concerns and access to the seas have been so crucial to commerce and industry in America, has almost always been a fairly robust service.
The only clause regarding the military that I can find in the constitution is the following:
Congress shall have the power to:
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
No where in that does it suggest that a standing army is unconstitutional. There is a limit (even during wartime) for appropriations going to the Army. On a practical basis no contract that goes to the Army can be longer than two year, or it must be explicitly renewed by Congress. The purpose of that provision was to keep the Army on a very short leash seeing as the Army is the one branch of military service that is most likely to stir up an insurrection and cause a coup d'etat. The history of South America since this provision was put into the Constitution has proven this to be true as well.
As a practical matter, the federal government was also quite lean and generally didn't have too many people on the federal payroll in general. By far and away the largest branch of the federal government except in times of war was the U.S. Postal Service... making it understandable why the Postmaster General was a secretary level position in the President's cabinet until the late 20th Century. As for why that has changed and the U.S. federal government has become this monster consuming a major portion of the GDP of America, I can give some good answers but goes beyond the point of this reply.
By definition of what you are talking about, that would be the Shenshou spacecraft. While it looks similar to a Soyuz spacecraft that was originally launched by the USSR, it really is a very different vehicle and represents a clean-sheet design. Certainly nothing in that vehicle came from RKK Energia. If you think that "crap" was a knock off from the Soviet era, you don't know what you are talking about. The similarity in the design is because it uses a similar mode of operation including ground-based landing and separable operations module that is left behind in space to reduce weight for re-entry.
FYI, while it didn't actually carry somebody on board, the Falcon 9 (with Dragon capsule) actually did get up into space and make it to orbit, and it is likely to beat out anything that will be done under a NASA cost-plus contract in terms of getting to orbit. More than just a speculation contract and a paper study, it is real hardware flying in space. Other than the Dragon there is nothing else which has even made it that far.
I could name dozens of other projects that were started that were supposed to fly people to space, and for that you certainly are justified in terms of ranting on and railing against NASA for trying to get somebody into space. The DC-X project did build a real flying vehicle, which is something in terms of technology that has now been taken over by Blue Origin with their "New Shepard" spacecraft. Even so, it would be arguable if Blue Origin will ever make it to space. Of course getting anything about that company and what they are doing is like reading tea leaves.
The complaint here should be more directed at the political process and a dependency on government contracts, where if the vehicle isn't finished before the next presidential administration comes into power, it will be terminated. The last vehicle to be built all of the way to completion was the Space Shuttle, and that was started under the Johnson administration. Yeah, the record for a NASA-sponsored spacecraft actually going to orbit with somebody on board is rather dismal.
"Manipulating the public" is a pretty harsh term for what is being done here, as I would call it "space advocacy". The one of the things that made what the Nazi's did in terms of propaganda that was "evil" is that they didn't allow dissenting opinions from being expressed. There is nothing to suggest Von Braun was supportive of squelching dissenting opinions, but he certainly knew how to use a soapbox in a representative democracy to express his point of view. He also seemed to be a very skillful politician and a rather proficient engineering manager (perhaps his best skill).
While I get the reference here, what seems to be your problem with Bigelow Aerospace? That the company seems to have taken over the U.S. Air Force's "Operation Blue Book", or that they don't seem credible in terms of building spacecraft?
Of anybody who is sending stuff into space, they are the only American company that has any recent experience in actually building and launching a spacecraft capable of supporting a manned spaceflight. SpaceX is working on the Dragon, but it has only one "test flight" and even that wasn't a functioning vehicle. Only Bigelow has actually put something into space to demonstrate real capabilities.
Yes, there is the Space Shuttle, but that is a 1970's design and that hardly counts as "recent" experience by a company that no longer exists (Rockwell International) on a vehicle that is being discontinued and deserved to be in a museum a couple decades ago.
The Skylab Rescue Mission used the Apollo capsule to seat at least five astronaut. Yes, it is cramped and would not be an ideal situation for a long-term mission, but it does work and the standard Apollo capsule could hold more than just the standard three astronauts.
More like designing to a standard set of interfaces between launcher and spacecraft, which is indeed good. Just as Boeing's capsule can launch on Falcon 9 as well as Atlas V and Delta IV, then presumably SpaceX's Dragon capsule could be launched on an Atlas or Delta as well as a Falcon.
These kind of standards are hard to come by, particularly when rocket manufacturers are slow to adapt to changing technologies as well. For example, the Falcon 9 is one of the first spaceflight vehicles designed from the ground up with TCP/IP as a major communications sub-system within the rocket itself. It would seem logical now but such a connection on most other rockets simply doesn't exist (RS-232 and variants is actually quite a bit more common).
One area that has had at least some effort in terms of standardization has been developing a launch faring for satellite launches. Still, even for something as simple as a way to mount a spacecraft on the top of a rocket, there is unfortunately quite a bit of variation for how that is done. Added on top of that is an issue of docking standards, something that the ISS has been useful for at least in terms of "forcing" some sort of international standard to be developed even though there is a separate Russian and American standard.
The largest problem with establishing a standard is to convince those involved that by sticking with the standard more can be accomplished instead of rolling your own specification. This is a problem for more than just spaceflight, but competing standards and specifications for spaceflight does add quite a bit to the cost and design of spacecraft. It is also something that government involvement can be used to not just establish but also mandate standards (in terms of requiring government purchased hardware to conform to specific standards).
Seriously, this is simply trying to be critical of somebody because of their success. More to the point, why is it a problem if an actual payload is on a test flight. This was done by NASA and others on early test flights... unless they had money to burn and were on a cost-plus contract where money was not an object.
In the case of SpaceX, the people buying the slots knew full well that the hardware was not considered "proven" or flight worthy when they signed up for a flight.
Besides, you really didn't answer the question here other than to give a snarky remark that proves you don't know the answer.
The physics of fusion reactors is quite well documented including several naturally occurring ones. ("natural" fission reactors have also been observed BTW.) The problem is how to create a fusion reactor that doesn't involved gravitational binding of the fusible materials.
Since one of the four major forces of nature has to be ignored due to scaling issues, the other three must be called upon and studied in order to get it to work, with the hope that a productive fusion reactor can be made containing plasmas within some sort of electro-magnetic field. The problem always is being able to sustain a reaction long enough that the energy from the reaction produces more energy than it takes to create the containment field. Every form of fusion research tries to deal with this issue in one way or another, including the "cold fusion" reactors that attempt to use atomic binding on a molecular level to create these electro-magnetic fields and Tokamak reactors that do this on a much larger scale.
The main problem with a Tokamak reactor is again a scaling issue, where the reactor is so incredibly huge that it can only be built with international cooperation for one that even in theory could be used for power production. One aspect that some "armchair physicists" tend to forget is that often a reactor design scales with a power function on the cost as well. Polywell reactors seem to have a "Big O" notation as applied to the cost of the reactor vs. its size with a slightly lower power function than the Tokamak... as documented by the original article spawning this thread. That meaningful research towards a study of the Polywell design can be done for less than $100k is something that certainly helps. It is too bad that more research universities aren't putting serious efforts into at least that design, given the costs involved.
As for being able to apply new physics to solving practical devices, where a lack of understanding of that physics would cause the device to fail or at least have inferior precision, one application I've known about is in regards to navigation. Yes, you can use Newton's equations for acceleration and motion to calculate both the current position and predictive future positions, but in order to get the accuracies needed for modern navigation it is imperative to use Einstein's equations to "tweak" the results of any navigation calculation. Modern GPS receivers simply wouldn't even be possible without applying relativity into the design, as would most celestial navigation across the Solar System. It is hard to conceive of an engineering design from the 18th century that would have required the precision of relativity, but it is something that has been beneficial in the 21st century. It makes navigation with accuracies of several miles using Newton's equations vs. precision of just a few feet using Einstein's equations. 18th century navigation was lucky if you hit the correct continent, much less actually getting with several hundred miles of the target destination.
After sinking your teeth into a fusor, perhaps you can try to tackle a Polywell fusion device as the next step. While a few dozen or more people have built fusors, the number who have gone after the Polywell devices is certainly quite a bit less.
Of course the tough part of the Polywell devices is the theoretical work that Robert Bussard did to come up with the idea and the raw research being done right now to get the concept working. Supposedly the eighth version of this reactor design has been built and demonstrated by now (with continuing work on the effort), but the research team has yet to report back on the results. If the design works out, the U.S. Navy is interested in potentially using the design for nuclear powered submarines and carriers (why this has naval funding) but it is also useful for pure atomic energy research as well.
As for a hobbyist using a neutron source..... that could get scary for other reasons as a reliable neutron source can be used to transmute heavy metals. While not something in an of itself nasty some kid might be able to get a reaction or two with some interesting metals to get some really fun radioactive isotopes.
OK... I see it now. The volume of information necessary for a full 3-D system with vertical parallax is something that would be impossible to work out with such a system. It still is a pretty good trick. The additional benefits to making true vertical parallax would be more than the benefit coming out of the effort.
Look at the video again..... The camera is not being tracked so far as changing the images being displayed based on the camera position, but rather that the camera is being moved (perhaps "tracked" was the wrong choice of verbage here) along the vertical axis. Yes, you can see from the video that the vertical parallax is definitely there.
This is not just a standard mirror but rather something that has polarized biases for reflection along the horizontal but not vertical axis. A really neat trick if you ask me.
While I would agree that there are simple remote vehicle that can perform "remote sensing" and do some minor manipulation, there does not yet exist anything that can do complex manufacturing... and certainly not something that could be replaced at much cheaper cost on the surface of the Moon simply by sending somebody up there to do whatever it is that needs to be done.
It is also a matter of economics, but it should be important to note that the remote vehicles you are mentioning also exist in environments that people simply can't get to at all, or at least not without great difficulty. The remote vehicles on the Moon that you mention here didn't really function for all that long, and in fact made mistakes that having a human on the Moon would have been easily resolved and dealt with.
There is also this little pesky thing that you have to deal with in terms of anything in space: the speed of light. Until you can find some way for superluminal communication it is going to be increasingly more difficult to get much of anything to be done as you get further from the Earth. Communications to the Moon is at least a full second of delay in one direction (2 seconds before you get any sort of response), and that means you have to be very slow to get anything accomplished and have a whole team involved in planning even the most minor and trivial tasks. Remote manipulation of robots is nothing at all like running a R/C automobile in your backyard... and even that is hardly an easy thing to operate with any sort of real precision.
I'll also point out that the program managers of the various NASA projects that actually use robots are on record to support manned space exploration, knowing full well the capabilities of remote manipulation on an intimate level and having no direct benefit to encouraging manned spaceflight. I will state here that a single astronaut (well trained) can perform more science and do a much better job simply by being there than would ever be possible by using remote vehicles. But that isn't all....
My objection was that you can't point to a single fabrication facility that is completely automated including performing maintenance that exists anywhere on this planet. Yes, I am aware of manufacturing facilities that a human never touches the product until after it gets into a retail setting.... but you can't possibly point to a lack of technicians or people who are intimately involved in keeping that facility in operation. Such factories don't exist, and I don't see how you can possibly get such a facility built remotely on the Moon without having at least some people up there helping with getting everything put together. There may be a role for remote vehicles operated on the Earth, but it won't be completely without human intervention. That is my main point.
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Funny..... Tesla shares (as of today, the day after the IPO) are now at around $30 / share. Years? How about a day!
FYI, although Microsoft trades at $23/share, it has had numerous splits and dividend payouts since it went public. Most companies try to keep the price of their shares somewhere between $10 and $100 per share as it makes it easier for smaller investors to get into their company. If a stock is less than $10 you find that broker commissions tend to eat up more of the price and if the stock is over $100 there tends to be a drop off in the number of investors wanting to get in.
A significant exception is Berkshire Hathaway (current share price is $120,833.00 for class "A" shares), but that is incredibly unusual and sort of a badge of honor among its investors. You won't typically be investing an IRA or 401K fund into stocks of that nature.
Basically, comparing stock prices between one company vs. another is a joke and really not comparing the same thing. If you are comparing the "market cap" (how much money all of the shares outstanding represent in value), that is something to legitimately compare. That was not done in this case, however.
The problem with how this money was used around the same time as TARP is that the terms for its use were modified to permit other general automotive development instead of just for "alternative energy development". Tesla met the initial conditions for when the legislation was passed, not the watered down version that was eventually used to throw money at other car companies.
Yeah, that is an important distinction, and noting this program wasn't just a little bit before TARP but quite a bit before that happened.
For electric cars to take off out here, I suspect a new form of "car stop" would have to emerge, with charging stations in the parking area of restaurants where families could take their meal break from a long trip while the car charges for the 45-60 mins it requires...
This is already happening in California, with a number of hotels and restaurants which offer a "plug-in service" to customers who have electric vehicles. Based on a number of the blogs I've been reading, most 4 & 5 star hotels will generally be accommodating in terms of getting an extension cord or some sort of electrical power supply to an electric car to charge overnight. It makes business sense as it can be one more "amenity" that they can brag about on brochures and websites to try and lure in customers.
If you have an electric vehicle, it would be useful to do a web search at the moment to try and find where these hotels and restaurants are located at, or at the very least call ahead to see if the business will make the necessary arrangements, but it is something happening with the hospitality business. I would expect some campgrounds might eventually offer that sort of service too, and certainly any place that offers electrical power to RVs could be used to recharge an electric automobile as well. Places like that have been around for decades.
I've also seen some after-market designs for a solar battery "blanket" that you can roll out to recharge an electric vehicle, if for example you went camping to a remote place and let the vehicle recharge over the course of a few days. It wouldn't be useful for everyday driving, but it could do the trick if a remote destination was within the driving range to get there and you wanted to get some juice to get out of the place on the way back.
There are also some electrical storage technologies that suggest a doubling to as high as ten times the current energy storage levels. Assuming that the high end works out, it could be as much as a 3000 mile driving range for some of these vehicles on a single charge. That represents an incredible amount of energy that has to be stored, but that could certainly take you places if it works out. The only reason a 300 mile driving range is even possible is because of advancements in battery technology.... Tesla uses Lithium-ion batteries. In fact, they are the standard AA cells that most people use for most consumer electric devices, including laptops. Tesla just has a huge pile of the things wrapped up with some funky environmental monitoring (checking the temperature and conditions of the cells themselves) to keep them from melting down and taking the car with it.
It amazes me how capital intensive the automobile industry really is, and it shouldn't be too surprising that the company has been sinking a huge amount of cash into a major production line that will produce a vehicle with half the price and increased driving range from the Roadster. Yeah, the Model S doesn't have quite the same driving performance as a Roadster, but it still is going to be a sweet car.
The real interesting thing is going to watch the competition between the Volt, the Model S, and the Leaf... which are all going after the same group of automobile consumers. Tesla made the first move in this industry, but the rest of the companies aren't taking it lightly in terms of ignoring the situation. I'm sure that is one of the reasons why Toyota decided to back Tesla in terms of trying to push up the production schedule and form a "strategic partnership" with Tesla.
I thought that the order for Roadsters was extended and that the production line was going to continue as is for at least another year. You can still order a brand-new Roadster on-line with the official Tesla website, so it seems a bit premature to say that "they stopped making the Roadsters". Yes the announcement is to halt production some time next year, but that isn't quite yet past tense as in having production already stopped.
This article in Wired sort of spells out the near term future of the Roadster, which doesn't sound like they are having problems at least making some basic revenue from this model. With all of the money dumped into the Roadster, it would be a crying shame to discard the design, particularly if it continues to be a money maker. It should be noted that this article was written after the IPO prospectus and is more recent information.
Then again, due to the significant outsourcing of the Roadster design, the profit margins for the Roadster are not nearly as good as Elon Musk would like to have. With his experience on developing the Falcon 9 and with SpaceX in general, he has certainly become an evangelist for a vertically integrated company that keeps most of its production in-house if possible. It seems like that may be the motive, if any, for discontinuing the Roadster and moving on to a new design or at least a new iteration of the Roadster.
Part of the problem is that Elon Musk is required to maintain at least 60% ownership in Tesla for the duration of the loans that Tesla just took out for the production of the "Model S". If he gives half of that to his soon to be ex-wife, while she will certainly be a multi-millionaire, it would also mean the end of Tesla so far as putting a significant cash crunch on the company. The IPO helps, but it doesn't solve the problem.
Agreed though that Mr. Musk's personal financial troubles have little to do with the companies he is running. He isn't giving up either Tesla or SpaceX, so I guess Justine is going to end up with a bunch of shares in Solar City instead.
Frankly, I know too much about this guy's personal life as it is. Anything else is fit only for National Enquirer.
I would have liked to have seen all BP assets in the US nationalized until every single American, every single waitress at Denny's who's gonna lose tips because vacationers aren't coming to the Gulf because of the thick crude oozing up on the beaches, is made whole.
Why are you hell bent on confiscating wealth here? A great portion of the problem here is a massive screw up on the part of the Obama administration, where the White House simply sat on their behinds wondering what to do and staring at their own naval. There certainly were options to help cope with this from a technical standpoint that should have been resolved much earlier.
Rather than doing the blame game and filing lawsuits and other sorts of things that actually slows down the process of trying to fix the problem, Obama should have pulled together a bunch of "experts" on about the second or third day of the problem, asked what could be done to get the situation resolved, and then put the resources of the United States into action to get it resolved. Unfortunately that didn't happen and the lawsuits are flying around with an increase in government red tape instead of having somebody to cut through that bureaucracy and actually be in charge.
I blame Obama because the guy can't lead. He can't lead because he has no experience in leading and has never run an organization larger than his campaign staff or his senate office staff prior to becoming President. This is something that matters and is glaringly obvious at this time. This is the consequence of getting somebody who is all fluff and no substance. Yes, I do think a President Hillary Clinton would have done a much better job with this problem than Obama currently is doing, and certainly there are others with real leadership experience that could have done much better than Obama even within the Democratic party as well and kept most of the current political agenda going on. It isn't political philosophies I'm complaining about here, but rather the guy himself.
Certainly there is no excuse for screwing over the rest of the oil companies merely because one of them is having a really bad day. BP certainly should be responsible for damages on things they had direct control over, and legitimately they are paying claims on damages they have caused. Money has been going to some people already and there is much more that can be done and will be done too. They certainly aren't getting a free pass here.
As for petroleum, there are many uses for the stuff besides taking a match (or a spark plug) and setting it on fire. I agree that eventually the practice of using petroleum as a energy storage medium has got to eventually end for most uses, but it is going to take some time. The "alternative energy sources" is really trying to find some way to store the rather substantial quantities of energy in some fashion that can be used when needed, and at high enough energy rates that you can do useful stuff with that energy. It should be noted that more energy is expended (usually in the form of electrical energy) for the processing and refining of petroleum than is every extracted out of the refined gasoline when it is burned... even if the energy from the gasoline is used at 100% efficiency. It really is just a storage medium.
For myself, I like the idea of algae farms for generating petroleum... sustainable and permits a petroleum production industry. It may take some genetic engineering to get it to work out effectively, but it is a step in the right direction that doesn't require humanity to return to the stone age. There are also some very interesting electrical storage technologies that are promising and may be substantially better than the current Lithium-ion battery technology in terms of energy storage density as well. If those come to market, electrical vehicles capable of traveling 1000+ miles on a single charge may be possible.
Do you think that six months of wait on 1/100th of the Gulf wells will destroy the economy?
Absolutely! Suggesting that this is 1/100th of the wells is sort of a fallacy here anyway. This is about exploration of new wells and dealing with the whole supply chain, employment base, and everybody involved with the development of these wells from engineers, geologists, welders, drillers, pilots (both airborne as well as sea), steel fabricators, and much more. The number of people being put out of work as a result of this number in the thousands, possibly in the 10's of thousands. This is also going to have secondary impacts that will adversely impact service industries like grocery stores, doctor's offices, and government tax receipts. These are primary base industry jobs that support the entire local economy where they are located at so the impact is going to be huge.
Also.... don't go complaining about dependency on foreign oil or higher prices at the gas pump as a result of this too, which will impact quite literally everything in the entire U.S. economy and the world economy as a whole. The only way you won't feel the impact of this is if you aren't connected to the global economy in any way.
This is also something that makes no sense from a technical standpoint either, as there are different companies that are operating under different policies, standards, and even engineering design teams who built the equipment. If you can show that a specific design flaw or engineering philosophy is to blame here, I might possibly justify a short (a couple week) moratorium for shutting down an entire industry but that isn't what is at fault. It isn't unusual for a specific kind of aircraft to be grounded until the fault is fixed, to give an example in another industry. But to shut down an entire industry simply shouldn't happen. The closest example of something like this is the grounding of all aircraft after the 9/11 attacks... but then again there was a universal threat that was associated with all aircraft that was plainly obvious and the stoppage was for a relatively short period of time. It certainly wasn't six months.
You might want to check again with the Germans to see how well that went. German engineers are pretty good at building rockets, but American politicians killed off (economically) an entire generation of German rocket developers that is only beginning to recover. It is a real pity too as this was a rather ambitious program that could have made a huge difference.
The requirement for a HS Diploma didn't really happen until about the time of the Gulf War, where previously there genuinely was no education requirement. As far as I know, military service in lieu of prison time (for first time felons still in their younger 20's) isn't an option any more either... although it used to be.
I'd agree that the situation for lower enlisted ranks has improved considerably and the military certainly recognizes that these are citizens in uniform rather than a life form barely better than a slave. At least congressmen recognize this fact and that is reflected with the pay + benefits. Congress recognizes that parents & grandparents of military service personnel represent significant constituents, and (fortunately/unfortunately) many of them even have served in the military knowing what it at least used to be like while in the service.
One of the things that is keeping pay up at the moment is the volunteer service, where there is no desire at all to bring back the draft... which could in theory bring in the numbers needed to sustain recruiting numbers, but at the same time that is neither popular in the halls of Congress nor in the Pentagon. About the only people advocating the draft are those who have a political axe to grind and have no thought about what that would do any of the branches of the military, and especially the Army (where the draft would most likely be used in first).
The guy was making $45,000/year with no education and very little experience. Not too shabby for someone in their early 20s.
The minimum education requirement to get into any branch of the U.S. military is now at least a High School Diploma or a GED and able to pass minimum literacy fluency. I wouldn't call that somebody with no education. College graduates are actually quite common among enlisted ranks as well and for some specialties in the military (even for enlisted positions) are actually required to have that kind of college level education.
In addition, the training programs that somebody in especially the U.S. Marine Corps goes through is by far and away tougher than any kind of vocational/technical school... at least a minimum of a full year's worth of intense training that is at least the equivalent of an Associate's Degree in terms of "classroom" hours and time spent learning the trade. And that is just as an infantryman learning how to use a gun.
As for experience, yeah I'll agree that experience is optional in the military. But it isn't a bed of roses and for somebody being lazy they certainly won't cut it in the military if they think it is an easy way to earn a quick buck. In terms of pay, a typical enlisted rank makes less than minimum wage considering the hours they work... even if you ignore overtime pay or other sorts of "extras" that are required by civilian employers for often the same job.
I've never met one, but most Mob hitmen are likely much more honourable than U.S. soldiers who shoot first--and indiscriminately--and ask questions later. Killing is never acceptable, but at least a mob hitman has a single target which he or she takes out without involving innocent people. Soldiers pretend to care about that, but in reality, they always put their own lives ahead of anyone else, and almost never do they have to stand trial for their "mistakes."
This comment is justifiably labeled as flamebait, but I'll take the bait too.
First of all, U.S. soldiers don't just shoot first and indiscriminately. If they did, they would be court-marshaled and having to spend time in a federal prison even if they tried and didn't hit anybody. But more to the point you are missing the point of an army in the first place:
Their job is to kill people and break things. They can do that very efficiently and will follow orders to do those things if called upon to make that effort. Killing civilians? Absolutely! If those civilians are in the way, causing problems and keeping them from performing their duties, those civilians can and should be killed... or at least frightened enough that they will run away at the mere sight of these soldiers. If you are a civilian in a war zone, you had damn well better get the hell out of Dodge and do your best to gather your family and what few possessions you care to save if those kind of guys come around.
If you paint a line on the ground (build a fence, etc.) and give orders to a soldiers to not cross that line or to shoot anything beyond that line, they will obey those kind of orders too. They are not undisciplined rabble but they do have a job to perform.
War is an ugly thing, and all kinds of atrocities happen in war. Even efforts to make war "civilized" (aka the Geneva Convention) are mostly an exercise in futility. It is for that reason war should not be something started for casual or minor things but it should be considered seriously and a sober discussion of unleashing that monster. That sort of serious discussion should happen among those who would provoke a military response as well.
I will also state here very plain that an American soldier is by far and away more honorable than a soldier in almost any other army. I dare any reasonable comparison be made that is based on any real facts rather than something made up or comparing the best of one army vs. the worst of the U.S. Army.
Gah, i just pissed away my mod-points this morning, otherwise you would have earned a +1 insightfull from me.
Contrary to what many americans seem to believe, nations like iraq, north korea and north vietnam were/are no serious threat (they cant even put the M in MAD if they chose to go to war with the US), and what little realistic threat they pose, is mostly due to the fact that the US cant keep out of other peoples business. If you pull enough strings that dont belong to you, you are bound to end up pissing people off...
Now i'm european, so i should be thankfull for liberating us from the germans in '45, but doing one thing right doesnt give you a free pass to go around and play shadow-puppet games around the world..
The war in Vietnam was a proxy war (for the most part) that was done as a way to fight World War III without it having to happen in Germany and France. If you think it would have been better to have been done in Germany, at this point I'd have to agree. Perhaps Europeans would be a little more understanding of the Cold War and its implications if that had happened on a more significant level.
As for Korea, it is important to remember that Korea is the main military invasion route between China and Japan. Just as Poland is stuck in between Germany and Russia or how Belgium was between Germany and France, Korea has played a similar role in eastern Asia military conflicts over the centuries, including during World War II as well. With America assuming responsibility for the defense of Japan, it became imperative for that concern to extend onto control of the Korean peninsula. China also became concerned that American control of that territory would adversely impact their national security, so they naturally fought back. North Korea could not, did not, and does not occupy the territory they technically occupy except as a buffer between China and Japan. It should be noted here that the war between North Korean and China vs. America and the "United Nations" armies is still not over but technically only a temporary cease fire.
As for Iraq... that is something which is more more debatable and it is certainly a valid point that Iraq was never a direct threat to America. Afghanistan, on the other hand, has been a major thorn in the side of America for some time and the role of the Taliban in stirring up trouble sort of gave justification for the U.S. military to go into that country. For myself, I would have rather than Afghanistan would have simply been captured and out right annexed as American territory in a blatant and forthright reprisal to the attacks of 9/11. A formal declaration of war should have been passed by the American congress for that action too, but that is irrelevant at this moment in time. Such an action would have made it much easier to get things accomplished in that part of the world, however.
Also, fun fact - did you know that without explicit Congressional approval, it is unconstitutional for the US to have a standing military in a time of peace? Kind of explains why ever since WWII the government has always had some bogus excuse for a perpetual war or "police action" of some sort.....
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While generally the United States Army in the 19th Century and until World War II was typically a small service (usually numbering about 20-50 thousand as a whole), there usually was at least somebody in the army at almost all times. The U.S. Navy, due to the fact that shipping concerns and access to the seas have been so crucial to commerce and industry in America, has almost always been a fairly robust service.
The only clause regarding the military that I can find in the constitution is the following:
No where in that does it suggest that a standing army is unconstitutional. There is a limit (even during wartime) for appropriations going to the Army. On a practical basis no contract that goes to the Army can be longer than two year, or it must be explicitly renewed by Congress. The purpose of that provision was to keep the Army on a very short leash seeing as the Army is the one branch of military service that is most likely to stir up an insurrection and cause a coup d'etat. The history of South America since this provision was put into the Constitution has proven this to be true as well.
As a practical matter, the federal government was also quite lean and generally didn't have too many people on the federal payroll in general. By far and away the largest branch of the federal government except in times of war was the U.S. Postal Service... making it understandable why the Postmaster General was a secretary level position in the President's cabinet until the late 20th Century. As for why that has changed and the U.S. federal government has become this monster consuming a major portion of the GDP of America, I can give some good answers but goes beyond the point of this reply.
By definition of what you are talking about, that would be the Shenshou spacecraft. While it looks similar to a Soyuz spacecraft that was originally launched by the USSR, it really is a very different vehicle and represents a clean-sheet design. Certainly nothing in that vehicle came from RKK Energia. If you think that "crap" was a knock off from the Soviet era, you don't know what you are talking about. The similarity in the design is because it uses a similar mode of operation including ground-based landing and separable operations module that is left behind in space to reduce weight for re-entry.
FYI, while it didn't actually carry somebody on board, the Falcon 9 (with Dragon capsule) actually did get up into space and make it to orbit, and it is likely to beat out anything that will be done under a NASA cost-plus contract in terms of getting to orbit. More than just a speculation contract and a paper study, it is real hardware flying in space. Other than the Dragon there is nothing else which has even made it that far.
I could name dozens of other projects that were started that were supposed to fly people to space, and for that you certainly are justified in terms of ranting on and railing against NASA for trying to get somebody into space. The DC-X project did build a real flying vehicle, which is something in terms of technology that has now been taken over by Blue Origin with their "New Shepard" spacecraft. Even so, it would be arguable if Blue Origin will ever make it to space. Of course getting anything about that company and what they are doing is like reading tea leaves.
The complaint here should be more directed at the political process and a dependency on government contracts, where if the vehicle isn't finished before the next presidential administration comes into power, it will be terminated. The last vehicle to be built all of the way to completion was the Space Shuttle, and that was started under the Johnson administration. Yeah, the record for a NASA-sponsored spacecraft actually going to orbit with somebody on board is rather dismal.
Von Braun not only was skillful in terms of public relations, he teamed up with one of the best in America too: Walt Disney (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Von_Braun#Popular_concepts_for_a_human_presence_in_space)
"Manipulating the public" is a pretty harsh term for what is being done here, as I would call it "space advocacy". The one of the things that made what the Nazi's did in terms of propaganda that was "evil" is that they didn't allow dissenting opinions from being expressed. There is nothing to suggest Von Braun was supportive of squelching dissenting opinions, but he certainly knew how to use a soapbox in a representative democracy to express his point of view. He also seemed to be a very skillful politician and a rather proficient engineering manager (perhaps his best skill).
While I get the reference here, what seems to be your problem with Bigelow Aerospace? That the company seems to have taken over the U.S. Air Force's "Operation Blue Book", or that they don't seem credible in terms of building spacecraft?
Of anybody who is sending stuff into space, they are the only American company that has any recent experience in actually building and launching a spacecraft capable of supporting a manned spaceflight. SpaceX is working on the Dragon, but it has only one "test flight" and even that wasn't a functioning vehicle. Only Bigelow has actually put something into space to demonstrate real capabilities.
Yes, there is the Space Shuttle, but that is a 1970's design and that hardly counts as "recent" experience by a company that no longer exists (Rockwell International) on a vehicle that is being discontinued and deserved to be in a museum a couple decades ago.
The Skylab Rescue Mission used the Apollo capsule to seat at least five astronaut. Yes, it is cramped and would not be an ideal situation for a long-term mission, but it does work and the standard Apollo capsule could hold more than just the standard three astronauts.
More like designing to a standard set of interfaces between launcher and spacecraft, which is indeed good. Just as Boeing's capsule can launch on Falcon 9 as well as Atlas V and Delta IV, then presumably SpaceX's Dragon capsule could be launched on an Atlas or Delta as well as a Falcon.
These kind of standards are hard to come by, particularly when rocket manufacturers are slow to adapt to changing technologies as well. For example, the Falcon 9 is one of the first spaceflight vehicles designed from the ground up with TCP/IP as a major communications sub-system within the rocket itself. It would seem logical now but such a connection on most other rockets simply doesn't exist (RS-232 and variants is actually quite a bit more common).
One area that has had at least some effort in terms of standardization has been developing a launch faring for satellite launches. Still, even for something as simple as a way to mount a spacecraft on the top of a rocket, there is unfortunately quite a bit of variation for how that is done. Added on top of that is an issue of docking standards, something that the ISS has been useful for at least in terms of "forcing" some sort of international standard to be developed even though there is a separate Russian and American standard.
The largest problem with establishing a standard is to convince those involved that by sticking with the standard more can be accomplished instead of rolling your own specification. This is a problem for more than just spaceflight, but competing standards and specifications for spaceflight does add quite a bit to the cost and design of spacecraft. It is also something that government involvement can be used to not just establish but also mandate standards (in terms of requiring government purchased hardware to conform to specific standards).
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Seriously, this is simply trying to be critical of somebody because of their success. More to the point, why is it a problem if an actual payload is on a test flight. This was done by NASA and others on early test flights... unless they had money to burn and were on a cost-plus contract where money was not an object.
In the case of SpaceX, the people buying the slots knew full well that the hardware was not considered "proven" or flight worthy when they signed up for a flight.
Besides, you really didn't answer the question here other than to give a snarky remark that proves you don't know the answer.
The physics of fusion reactors is quite well documented including several naturally occurring ones. ("natural" fission reactors have also been observed BTW.) The problem is how to create a fusion reactor that doesn't involved gravitational binding of the fusible materials.
Since one of the four major forces of nature has to be ignored due to scaling issues, the other three must be called upon and studied in order to get it to work, with the hope that a productive fusion reactor can be made containing plasmas within some sort of electro-magnetic field. The problem always is being able to sustain a reaction long enough that the energy from the reaction produces more energy than it takes to create the containment field. Every form of fusion research tries to deal with this issue in one way or another, including the "cold fusion" reactors that attempt to use atomic binding on a molecular level to create these electro-magnetic fields and Tokamak reactors that do this on a much larger scale.
The main problem with a Tokamak reactor is again a scaling issue, where the reactor is so incredibly huge that it can only be built with international cooperation for one that even in theory could be used for power production. One aspect that some "armchair physicists" tend to forget is that often a reactor design scales with a power function on the cost as well. Polywell reactors seem to have a "Big O" notation as applied to the cost of the reactor vs. its size with a slightly lower power function than the Tokamak... as documented by the original article spawning this thread. That meaningful research towards a study of the Polywell design can be done for less than $100k is something that certainly helps. It is too bad that more research universities aren't putting serious efforts into at least that design, given the costs involved.
As for being able to apply new physics to solving practical devices, where a lack of understanding of that physics would cause the device to fail or at least have inferior precision, one application I've known about is in regards to navigation. Yes, you can use Newton's equations for acceleration and motion to calculate both the current position and predictive future positions, but in order to get the accuracies needed for modern navigation it is imperative to use Einstein's equations to "tweak" the results of any navigation calculation. Modern GPS receivers simply wouldn't even be possible without applying relativity into the design, as would most celestial navigation across the Solar System. It is hard to conceive of an engineering design from the 18th century that would have required the precision of relativity, but it is something that has been beneficial in the 21st century. It makes navigation with accuracies of several miles using Newton's equations vs. precision of just a few feet using Einstein's equations. 18th century navigation was lucky if you hit the correct continent, much less actually getting with several hundred miles of the target destination.
After sinking your teeth into a fusor, perhaps you can try to tackle a Polywell fusion device as the next step. While a few dozen or more people have built fusors, the number who have gone after the Polywell devices is certainly quite a bit less.
Of course the tough part of the Polywell devices is the theoretical work that Robert Bussard did to come up with the idea and the raw research being done right now to get the concept working. Supposedly the eighth version of this reactor design has been built and demonstrated by now (with continuing work on the effort), but the research team has yet to report back on the results. If the design works out, the U.S. Navy is interested in potentially using the design for nuclear powered submarines and carriers (why this has naval funding) but it is also useful for pure atomic energy research as well.
As for a hobbyist using a neutron source..... that could get scary for other reasons as a reliable neutron source can be used to transmute heavy metals. While not something in an of itself nasty some kid might be able to get a reaction or two with some interesting metals to get some really fun radioactive isotopes.
OK... I see it now. The volume of information necessary for a full 3-D system with vertical parallax is something that would be impossible to work out with such a system. It still is a pretty good trick. The additional benefits to making true vertical parallax would be more than the benefit coming out of the effort.
Look at the video again..... The camera is not being tracked so far as changing the images being displayed based on the camera position, but rather that the camera is being moved (perhaps "tracked" was the wrong choice of verbage here) along the vertical axis. Yes, you can see from the video that the vertical parallax is definitely there.
This is not just a standard mirror but rather something that has polarized biases for reflection along the horizontal but not vertical axis. A really neat trick if you ask me.
While I would agree that there are simple remote vehicle that can perform "remote sensing" and do some minor manipulation, there does not yet exist anything that can do complex manufacturing... and certainly not something that could be replaced at much cheaper cost on the surface of the Moon simply by sending somebody up there to do whatever it is that needs to be done.
It is also a matter of economics, but it should be important to note that the remote vehicles you are mentioning also exist in environments that people simply can't get to at all, or at least not without great difficulty. The remote vehicles on the Moon that you mention here didn't really function for all that long, and in fact made mistakes that having a human on the Moon would have been easily resolved and dealt with.
There is also this little pesky thing that you have to deal with in terms of anything in space: the speed of light. Until you can find some way for superluminal communication it is going to be increasingly more difficult to get much of anything to be done as you get further from the Earth. Communications to the Moon is at least a full second of delay in one direction (2 seconds before you get any sort of response), and that means you have to be very slow to get anything accomplished and have a whole team involved in planning even the most minor and trivial tasks. Remote manipulation of robots is nothing at all like running a R/C automobile in your backyard... and even that is hardly an easy thing to operate with any sort of real precision.
I'll also point out that the program managers of the various NASA projects that actually use robots are on record to support manned space exploration, knowing full well the capabilities of remote manipulation on an intimate level and having no direct benefit to encouraging manned spaceflight. I will state here that a single astronaut (well trained) can perform more science and do a much better job simply by being there than would ever be possible by using remote vehicles. But that isn't all....
My objection was that you can't point to a single fabrication facility that is completely automated including performing maintenance that exists anywhere on this planet. Yes, I am aware of manufacturing facilities that a human never touches the product until after it gets into a retail setting.... but you can't possibly point to a lack of technicians or people who are intimately involved in keeping that facility in operation. Such factories don't exist, and I don't see how you can possibly get such a facility built remotely on the Moon without having at least some people up there helping with getting everything put together. There may be a role for remote vehicles operated on the Earth, but it won't be completely without human intervention. That is my main point.