The markers on the road today are slightly sunk into the roadway, and the section that sticks up above the level of the road surface is re-enforced by a high strength (e.g. steel?) 'ramp', which absorbs the impact of car tires, and will generally guide snow-plows over them. Remember, snowplows have to contend with manhole covers, small discontinuities in the road surface and random trips a few feet off the side of the road: the plow will 'tip and release' when it hits a ground obstacle. If they didn't you would lose the plow... or carve the shit out of the roads, or both.
English during boost, metric in orbit and beyond. Thats the standard for the poor bastards in aerospace. It may or may not have anything to do with a certain object lesson slamming into Mars a few years back...
In order to cool something using 'waves' (e.g. radio energy) you would have to have two beams interfering and creating a 'trough' of the almost perfect size to hinder molecular movement: the molecule falls into the trough, and in order to escape has to expend energy. If you use microwaves, the problem would be that any 'stray' beams would impart EXTRA energy into the mix. Beyond that, I couldn't tell ya much:~) Oh! Except that said method is essentially how the latest record for closest temp to absolute zero was made -- lasers interferring with individual atoms. Sweet stuff.
Having recently graduated with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering, I am quite familiar with the progress we have made in the last 50 years. I am also well versed in economics; perhaps you would care to explain to the general public how Boeing (commercial side) is going to make any money by competing head-to-head against Airbus on price? (key point, Airbus gets zero and low-interest government loans, Boeing doesn't). The sonic cruiser was killed by simple investor caution combined with lack of information, not economics. And Boeing's new proposal has no significant selling point over the alternatives offered by Airbus.
Furthermore, the technology in question DOES NOT EXIST, in that it has never been built or flown. There is some general knowledge to the effect: we could probably build a large transpoort aircraft that would either save an insane amount of fuel on any given flight, or shave 10% to 15% off of travel time, or maybe even both. Certainly not more, and we haven't spent the money to prove even the smaller numbers. Why? Not because of economics, rather because the military has not needed a supersonic troop carrier and could care even less about 3 hours out of 20.
The steam ship was not developed because it was economical. It wasn't. It was hardly faster, and often times was slower, than moving by sail over long distance. It was, however, significantly more capable of movement in battle situations, not relying on the whim of the winds. The infrastructure required to support steam was also incredible: the first ships couldn't make a transatlantic journey without resupply, thus supply depots had to be created and stocked at various locations, and equally expensive, defended in times of war. This is reference to use of steam as a method of transport; river travel is a different, but related, story. The point stands regardless.
It wasn't fun discoursing with you; your arguments lack of structure and depth was compounded by your ad hominem attack. I suggest reading up on the state of present aircraft technology if you wish to contribute to future discussions in a more positive manner. The AIAA releases a number of highly informative articles a month, and a good city library should carry the journals. Or your closest university with an engineering library.
Your argument is my own; however you see such lack of progress in a positive light it would seem. How is it that going from sailing ship to jet airplane in 117 years justifies sitting on your ass for the next 57? Or should we start measuring from 1969, 35 years ago, when the 747 first flew, since that technology is not only in the air today, but still in production?
What is sad, to me at anyrate, is that we are easily capable of better, and have chosen not to apply our capabilities to either fuel efficiency increase or speed increase or both.
When humankind chooses not to better itself it is indeed a sad commentary on the present human condition.
Takes 2 hours to get through the bloody airport and into the plane anyway.
Besides, whats the best we can do commercially? Mach 2 or 3 in the 'near' term (15-30 years). Big deal. Given the cost/benifit ratio I'm going to wager that we will be doing sub-orbital before we have air-breathing mach-3 flight.
Why? The amount of development required to develop 'quiet' and 'fuel efficient' supersonic craft vs. the level of technology already in existance for boosted flight. Leave the atmosphere and sound isn't an issue, and saves a lot of fuel as well; although spending an hour weightless is bound to upset a few tummies.
Either way, I am desperate to see some faster travel. 8 hours to Chicago from London 57 years after breaking the sound barrier and 35 years after landing on the moon is a sad commentary on the human condition at present.
You fucking dumb ass. Even if it WASN'T radioactive to start with, by the time it crashes into the earth, hundreds of years hence, it WOULD be. Seeing as it is politly orbiting directly through the Van Allen belts a few times a day and getting smacked by high energy electrons. Amoungst other things. Hell, small drops of dense liquid would probably be an awesome He3 collection system.
Thr RISK, dickweed, is from being hit by a fucking drop of NaK at seven kilometers per second. Or more. As the ARTICLE iterated a number of times. But of course, you decide to focus on the nuclear aspect. Get a clue. Stop spreading FUD.
The first amounts to a redesign of the aerodynamics, which leads to a redesign of the structure, which leads to more weight which leads to a redesign of the engine, which leads to a redesign of the structure, and more weight, which leads to interesting new aerodynamic loading which leads..........
There are no cheap fixes in aerospace. Period. An instable engine system (note SYSTEM) is the WORST thing that could happen, as that is the major selling point.
The owner gave a speech at Purdue which I was able to attend. Pissed off a bunch of professors with some flippant comments regarding the simplicity of what he is doing... but hey, its his money. And I kind of agreed with him.... as long as my money isn't involved:~)
Not inaccurate at all. The Earth, the object and Sol are all REQUIRED elements to create the orbit that the object is in. Personally, I find these to be most incredibly interesting orbits. Not that I can calculate them or anything, without cheating (using other peoples software). So much for my degree in Astronautical Engineering I guess;~)
Re:Previous attempt to avoid contamination
on
Melting Europa
·
· Score: 1
Of course the Europa probe will be decontaminated silly! I mean, NOTHING can live withing 20 feet of anything that is, was, or ever will be radioactive, right?
Screw that. If I'm going to fsck something up, I'm going to do it right: ASM for me baby.
Actually, I really do write in ASM -- a few breeds, but mostly for the Motorola 68HC12. Have you ever actually looked at all the CRAP that C dumps down when you compile to ASM? Its bloody *PAINFUL* people! Even with a sweet compiler (which I don't get to use now that I have graduated and don't play in the university labs). Real men^H^H^H programmers write in ASM, then call their routines from C (or whatever). Or at least for real-time control systems.
You must be the cocky bastard who wrote the code for my local ATM machine --- the one that had the Invalid Page Fault on the screen the last time I went to use it (and I mean THE LAST time!). Remember boys and girls: your account balance is NOT stored at an invalid memory address:~) (hmmmm... So, what would it take to cause a int underflow on an ATM machine? Think it'd work?)
For reference, I write code in Java and ASM. Java rocks, although memory optimization can be a bit hairy when you have to do it (and you will... yes, yes, you will...), but it is lightyears better than debugging poorly documented ASM. If you think muses are hard to keep around, you should SEE all the documentation fairy carcasses around here -- floors just thick with 'em.
>Follow all directions given by the doctor and pharmacy exactly (that includes dosage schedules).
>Take ALL of the antibiotics prescribed, even if you feel better >Never save leftover antibiotics for later use >Never take anyone elses prescription
Actually, the above are about nothing, WRT drug resistance. Sure, while it is better to follow them (at least the first two) than not, those are absolutly NOT the reason that there are run-away microbes. All else being perfect, sure, not finishing a round of drugs will have negative effects. But it is an itty bitty fraction compared to societies other drug ills.
The number ONE problem is the fact that we let corporate farms rape us by using antibiotics for non-health related issues. Something like NINTY PERCENT of all antibiotics produced in the US are fed to animals. 70% of production for non-health reasons.
The number two reason is that doctors are not trained to tell patients to stfu, and keep handing out antibiotics for crap like the flu, even when they know damned good and well it won't do a bit of good -- and that doing so may well DELAY the patient getting better. Sorry, I refuse to blame the patient for asking for drugs -- the average patient doesn't spend years in school studying to be a doctor.
Re: the rest, yeah, spot on. Just about everyone carries some staph around with them. Got a pet? You've got staph!
The difference in our numbers lies in communication, as well as a sad mistake on my part. That 0.1% should have been 0.4% (from 1%*0.40 (~40% of spectrum is used in photosynthesis):~) The 0.1% is solar energy into plant matter. Quoting the paragraph that matters from the original reference (link):
PETS {photosynthetic electron transport system} is driven by two photochemical reactions that take place in membrane-bound photosystem I (PSI) and PSII Chl-protein complexes. Under natural conditions, Chl concentration in photosynthetic membranes is high enough to result in near total absorption of all incident photosynthetically active photons between 400 and 700 nm. Under normal weather conditions, these photons represent about 44.5 % of the total incident radiation. If PSI and PSII operate at the maximal quantum efficiency of 1, the maximum possible overall photosynthetic energy conversion efficiency would amount to about 12% (Lien and San Pietro, 1975)). Yet the average net photosynthetic productivity in conventional agriculture is in the range of 2-8 tons of dry organic matter per acre per year. This corresponds to a photosynthetic conversion efficiency of about 0.1-0.4% of the total incident radiation. Therefore the discrepancy between the maximal theoretical efficiency of 12% and observed efficiencies, range from 3000-12000%. This discrepancy is due to rate limiting extrinsic factors, and to intrinsic limitations of PETS.
I really didn't take into account plant to ethanol conversion: the process is rather efficient, as you said.
At this point I think we've exausted anything an amature discussion could bring to bear: If what you say in your first paragraph is correct (I only doubt it based on my exp. in ag. which is limited) then I agree: there is enough argument there for more real data. If I were the investing type, I'd be intrigued, but would by no means lay down any money yet:~)
I've made enough mistakes in my quick math to border on insulting, but its been a fun discussion -- I would love to see farmed ethanol work, I just don't expect to. Story of my life, I guess.
I stand by the statement that nobody will be specficially growing biomass for fuel conversion. You are completely correct, most energy we have used was from plant matter: heck, the average person is running at about 120W based completely on plant and animal sources (2500kCal/24hr). That is a LOT of energy. However, the average CAR uses something like 120kW (~162HP)
src
Thats a lot of bio-fuel per second. Lets have some fun:
If we assume that you have your numbers above (2.5% efficient conversion of an average of 400W/m^2) and we use the average car then that 10W per meter squared gives us a requirement of ???
With an average commute distance of about 10 miles (real is more like 13
ref)
. I'll assume that means that the average commuter burns about a gallon of gas per day, 5 days a week.
A gallon of gas has an energy content of about 118MJ (Ethanol has about 80MJ)
ref
So we need 5*5*118MJ ~= 2.95E9_J per week. In order to produce this in 7 days (allow production but not use during the weekend) we need to average
2.95E9_J/(7 days) ~= 4.88kW per car
which comes to a total area of
4880W/(10W/m^2) = 488m^2
This represents a patch of plant life about 25 meters on a side. Doesn't seem too bad, I suppose. The average family needs about a football field out on the ocean in order to drive to work everyday.
However, I am going to repeat that accounting in brief using the numbers I believe to be accurate: that is 0.1% efficient transformation of solar energy into ethanol (for why, read my the upper reaches of this thread).
So, 0.001*400W/m^2 = 0.4W/m^2. Lets call it 0.5, then my earlier calcs become 4880W*(2m^2/W) = 9760m^2
Which is a plot damned near 100m on a side. Now, what is the value of the fuel? Well, that would come to the profit to the seller of 5 gallons of fuel. Given that gas goes for about something like a dollar a gallon, wholesale, you are requiring some entity to manage a crap load of these floating plant boxes for
$5*10/7days = $7.14/day/km^2
So for less than 10 bucks per square kilometer per day! Or, with the 10W per meter squared figure: 25m*40 = 1km; 5$*40 = $200/km^2/7days
= $28.5 per day.
And I'd bet a lot that even MY number is about 10 times higher than is realistic. Hell, we haven't even factored in litigation: and I think we can be certain that if a company or government offered to cover a few million square km of ocean with plant boxes, there would be PLENTY of litigation.
Mmmmm. I'm not upset or anything, but my math assumed no such thing. However YOUR math assumes that that 8% efficiency gets translated into biomass, which it most certainly DOES NOT do. If you read the link I sited you will see that actual energy to biomass conversion is utter CRAP at less than 1/2% (yes, 0.5), on average. Which means that maybe sugar cane gets 0.8% or something. You still aren't going to get any significant amount of energy per day out of any plant.
If anyone really wants to figure out how viable 'growing your own energy' is, go figure out how many trees you need to plant, and when, to supply your own firewood in, say, northern Washington.
And you need to get a good grasp on the fundamentals of solar power before you start doing math on it seacane. 700W/m^2 is over 70% efficient solar to final energy conversion, which is obviously not possible with a plant that is only EIGHT percent efficient to start with. _AND_ you also completely neglected the fact that the plants are only 8% (or, as I said, 12%) efficient at converting the frequencies of light that are of use in photosynthesis ( 400 to 700 nm). Of course as I said that 8-12% is an ideal conversion rate.
Growing plants with the intent to use them as fuel is NOT economically viable. Not a chance in hell. Growing plants that have tones of wastematter (Corn, cane, tobacco, trees (fruit, nut, paper), etc etc) is done already. And currently we have a bitch of a time getting rid of said material. Read up on Staley's plants in Lafayette IN if you want to hear some fun complaints about the waste products of sugar (corn based) production.
We will use ethanol, all over the place. But Nuke, and gods willing one day maybe even real (Earth based) fusion will be where the real power comes from. Although I wouldn't be suprised if we had beamed power from space before fusion: each are about as unlikely.
How much corn does it take to generate 335 kilo-joules of energy? How long does it take for that corn to grow? I'm willing to bet that miles of traditional solar panels will still produce more power over the same amount of time. But who wants to give up hundreds of thousands of acres of land for solar power generation?
The max theoretical energy conversion by plants using chlorophyll is only about 12%. [src: http://w3.aces.uiuc.edu/NRES/LPPBP/PathW.html] This does NOT include the losses incurred by converting the resulting plant matter to booze!
So, yeah, solar panels are by far more efficient. But still suck. By "335kJ" I assume you mean '335 kJ/sec' or 335kW, and that would require 335m^2*(1/0.20) = 1,675 square meters of solar panel. The numbers are so big I am questioning the simple math.
The most disgusting thing is that I am going to disagree with you on the fuel cells from Ethanol sucking (well, you didn't say as much, but...): why? Because you don't use prime plant stock to create it. Ethanol can be made from much of the crap stock that is not worth the bother of bailing and / or packaging. Or the crap that goes bad. As long as there is some sugar left to distill (I mean, hell):...
And most importantly, nuke won't happen fast enough to clean our air before I die. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of a bunch of smaller nuke plants. Not portable... I have my limits. But hell, the biggest sin in the transportation world is that nobody is building even CRUISE ships with nuclear engines. wtf?
Not to certain, but I just started reading into some VoIP...'stuff'. Implication so far is that the bandwidth you mentioned would be more than sufficient for FAR more than 5 lines. More like 10 or 15 -- voice uses something like 38kb/s Sooo, maybe you are getting screwed? Just a happy thought:~) I'm sure someone will tell me how much shit I am full of if such is the case.
This limit is set by the total fuel load they can carry at launch
Correct; however do not forget the batteries. The public has seen a few "satellite refueling" concepts tossed about, but nobody mentions that NiCd batteries only last about 10 years, even with completely optimal charging systems. NiMH have only recently become an option -- I'd love to hear a date, but a about few years now.
Sooo, the question arises: how do you crack open a craft which was not designed to have batteries replaced, de-solder the batteries and then solder in new ones?
Hell, BMW won't even desolder the f*ing NiCd batteries on their '90's era 525 models which powers all the gauges. Replace the whole board they do. But I'm not bitter.
10 years. Maybe. And they have 5 times the population to draw from. They have stolen or bought as much modern tech as they could get their paws on, and are very much competitors. Both in space economically.
Re:Permanent base on moon
on
The Future of NASA
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The cost of getting to the moon is exponentionally larger (mathmatically, not figurativly) than getting into orbit.
The equation of interest is:
(Final Mass)/(initial Mass) = exp(deltaV/(Isp*g));
where g = 9.8 m/s,
deltaV into 200nm orbit ~ 7.2km/s
deltaV to moon ~ 14km/s (ballpark, I'm half drunk right now and don't want to look it up)
Typical ISP = 325 (avg -- better at boost, worse at altitude. System issues --- vacuum Isp is usually better than at pressure, but storing LH2/LOX is a b&^@#$)
The moon would not have allowed for larger living space. Contrawise: The lunar regolith would conduct heat away like a bastard. Two weeks of night would rape you WRT your heating bill, and two weeks of day would rape you A/C wise. And digging a f*ing hole would take equipment you would have to haul there. (read: 'you're screwed either way you look at it')
Finally:
a.) how the hell are you going to stock MORE oxygen on a base that is, price wise, a hundred thousand times farther away?
b.) Are you 12? IT TAKES THREE DAYS TO GET TO THE MOON. And that is AFTER you launch!!
Re:It ALREADY is military!
on
The Future of NASA
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
1.) Yes
2.)
a.) No, the autopilot is far more advanced than the human in the loop (if they ever GET in the loop). As it stands the only reason that the autopilot doesn't engage the landing gear is because the pilots objected to being thrown so far outside the control loop.
b.) The shuttle is designed to pull ~3Gs coming in. Much more and you are dead already. 3Gs is nothing.
c.) If your idea of a fighter plane is something that moves really fast, then sure, its like a fighter. I tend to think 'agile' when the term 'fighter' pops up though.
3.) The moon missions were partly to show that capitalism was better, partly to bankrupt the USSR. We really didn't start the true bankruptcy efforts until Regan. There is no reason to attempt to bankrupt (or even show-up) the Chinese: They will become a threat to our way of life based on population(read 'GDP') alone.
But yeah, NASA and the military have always had some 'behind the scenes' action going on. Possibly some that is even truly covert, but it is public knowledge that the shuttle has taken up sats.
Slashdot Mirror
The markers on the road today are slightly sunk into the roadway, and the section that sticks up above the level of the road surface is re-enforced by a high strength (e.g. steel?) 'ramp', which absorbs the impact of car tires, and will generally guide snow-plows over them. Remember, snowplows have to contend with manhole covers, small discontinuities in the road surface and random trips a few feet off the side of the road: the plow will 'tip and release' when it hits a ground obstacle. If they didn't you would lose the plow... or carve the shit out of the roads, or both.
Y'all may think he's jokin' but he ain't.
:~)
English during boost, metric in orbit and beyond. Thats the standard for the poor bastards in aerospace. It may or may not have anything to do with a certain object lesson slamming into Mars a few years back...
In order to cool something using 'waves' (e.g. radio energy) you would have to have two beams interfering and creating a 'trough' of the almost perfect size to hinder molecular movement: the molecule falls into the trough, and in order to escape has to expend energy. If you use microwaves, the problem would be that any 'stray' beams would impart EXTRA energy into the mix. Beyond that, I couldn't tell ya much :~) Oh! Except that said method is essentially how the latest record for closest temp to absolute zero was made -- lasers interferring with individual atoms. Sweet stuff.
You probably just sold more of those than every advert they ever put out.....
Having recently graduated with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering, I am quite familiar with the progress we have made in the last 50 years. I am also well versed in economics; perhaps you would care to explain to the general public how Boeing (commercial side) is going to make any money by competing head-to-head against Airbus on price? (key point, Airbus gets zero and low-interest government loans, Boeing doesn't). The sonic cruiser was killed by simple investor caution combined with lack of information, not economics. And Boeing's new proposal has no significant selling point over the alternatives offered by Airbus.
Furthermore, the technology in question DOES NOT EXIST, in that it has never been built or flown. There is some general knowledge to the effect: we could probably build a large transpoort aircraft that would either save an insane amount of fuel on any given flight, or shave 10% to 15% off of travel time, or maybe even both. Certainly not more, and we haven't spent the money to prove even the smaller numbers. Why? Not because of economics, rather because the military has not needed a supersonic troop carrier and could care even less about 3 hours out of 20.
The steam ship was not developed because it was economical. It wasn't. It was hardly faster, and often times was slower, than moving by sail over long distance. It was, however, significantly more capable of movement in battle situations, not relying on the whim of the winds. The infrastructure required to support steam was also incredible: the first ships couldn't make a transatlantic journey without resupply, thus supply depots had to be created and stocked at various locations, and equally expensive, defended in times of war. This is reference to use of steam as a method of transport; river travel is a different, but related, story. The point stands regardless.
It wasn't fun discoursing with you; your arguments lack of structure and depth was compounded by your ad hominem attack. I suggest reading up on the state of present aircraft technology if you wish to contribute to future discussions in a more positive manner. The AIAA releases a number of highly informative articles a month, and a good city library should carry the journals. Or your closest university with an engineering library.
Your argument is my own; however you see such lack of progress in a positive light it would seem. How is it that going from sailing ship to jet airplane in 117 years justifies sitting on your ass for the next 57? Or should we start measuring from 1969, 35 years ago, when the 747 first flew, since that technology is not only in the air today, but still in production?
What is sad, to me at anyrate, is that we are easily capable of better, and have chosen not to apply our capabilities to either fuel efficiency increase or speed increase or both.
When humankind chooses not to better itself it is indeed a sad commentary on the present human condition.
Takes 2 hours to get through the bloody airport and into the plane anyway.
Besides, whats the best we can do commercially? Mach 2 or 3 in the 'near' term (15-30 years). Big deal. Given the cost/benifit ratio I'm going to wager that we will be doing sub-orbital before we have air-breathing mach-3 flight.
Why? The amount of development required to develop 'quiet' and 'fuel efficient' supersonic craft vs. the level of technology already in existance for boosted flight. Leave the atmosphere and sound isn't an issue, and saves a lot of fuel as well; although spending an hour weightless is bound to upset a few tummies.
Either way, I am desperate to see some faster travel. 8 hours to Chicago from London 57 years after breaking the sound barrier and 35 years after landing on the moon is a sad commentary on the human condition at present.
You fucking dumb ass. Even if it WASN'T radioactive to start with, by the time it crashes into the earth, hundreds of years hence, it WOULD be. Seeing as it is politly orbiting directly through the Van Allen belts a few times a day and getting smacked by high energy electrons. Amoungst other things. Hell, small drops of dense liquid would probably be an awesome He3 collection system.
Thr RISK, dickweed, is from being hit by a fucking drop of NaK at seven kilometers per second. Or more. As the ARTICLE iterated a number of times. But of course, you decide to focus on the nuclear aspect. Get a clue. Stop spreading FUD.
The first amounts to a redesign of the aerodynamics, which leads to a redesign of the structure, which leads to more weight which leads to a redesign of the engine, which leads to a redesign of the structure, and more weight, which leads to interesting new aerodynamic loading which leads..........
:~)
There are no cheap fixes in aerospace. Period. An instable engine system (note SYSTEM) is the WORST thing that could happen, as that is the major selling point.
The owner gave a speech at Purdue which I was able to attend. Pissed off a bunch of professors with some flippant comments regarding the simplicity of what he is doing... but hey, its his money. And I kind of agreed with him.... as long as my money isn't involved
Not inaccurate at all. The Earth, the object and Sol are all REQUIRED elements to create the orbit that the object is in. Personally, I find these to be most incredibly interesting orbits. Not that I can calculate them or anything, without cheating (using other peoples software). So much for my degree in Astronautical Engineering I guess ;~)
/ second_moon_991029.html. Sounds like the same class of orbit.
For fun and enlightenment, check out the nice space.com article on Cruithne http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem
Of course the Europa probe will be decontaminated silly! I mean, NOTHING can live withing 20 feet of anything that is, was, or ever will be radioactive, right?
-----------------
If it isn't Fe yet, it will be one day....
Screw that. If I'm going to fsck something up, I'm going to do it right: ASM for me baby.
:~) (hmmmm... So, what would it take to cause a int underflow on an ATM machine? Think it'd work?)
Actually, I really do write in ASM -- a few breeds, but mostly for the Motorola 68HC12. Have you ever actually looked at all the CRAP that C dumps down when you compile to ASM? Its bloody *PAINFUL* people! Even with a sweet compiler (which I don't get to use now that I have graduated and don't play in the university labs). Real men^H^H^H programmers write in ASM, then call their routines from C (or whatever). Or at least for real-time control systems.
You must be the cocky bastard who wrote the code for my local ATM machine --- the one that had the Invalid Page Fault on the screen the last time I went to use it (and I mean THE LAST time!). Remember boys and girls: your account balance is NOT stored at an invalid memory address
For reference, I write code in Java and ASM. Java rocks, although memory optimization can be a bit hairy when you have to do it (and you will... yes, yes, you will...), but it is lightyears better than debugging poorly documented ASM. If you think muses are hard to keep around, you should SEE all the documentation fairy carcasses around here -- floors just thick with 'em.
Actually, the above are about nothing, WRT drug resistance. Sure, while it is better to follow them (at least the first two) than not, those are absolutly NOT the reason that there are run-away microbes. All else being perfect, sure, not finishing a round of drugs will have negative effects. But it is an itty bitty fraction compared to societies other drug ills.
The number ONE problem is the fact that we let corporate farms rape us by using antibiotics for non-health related issues. Something like NINTY PERCENT of all antibiotics produced in the US are fed to animals. 70% of production for non-health reasons.
The number two reason is that doctors are not trained to tell patients to stfu, and keep handing out antibiotics for crap like the flu, even when they know damned good and well it won't do a bit of good -- and that doing so may well DELAY the patient getting better. Sorry, I refuse to blame the patient for asking for drugs -- the average patient doesn't spend years in school studying to be a doctor.
Re: the rest, yeah, spot on. Just about everyone carries some staph around with them. Got a pet? You've got staph!
Cheers,
I really didn't take into account plant to ethanol conversion: the process is rather efficient, as you said.
At this point I think we've exausted anything an amature discussion could bring to bear: If what you say in your first paragraph is correct (I only doubt it based on my exp. in ag. which is limited) then I agree: there is enough argument there for more real data. If I were the investing type, I'd be intrigued, but would by no means lay down any money yet
I've made enough mistakes in my quick math to border on insulting, but its been a fun discussion -- I would love to see farmed ethanol work, I just don't expect to. Story of my life, I guess.
cheers,
That you know that about vasopressin scares me somewhat. FWIW, I was _joking_
So when will I be able to spike a drink with this stuff?
Yup. Sounds like crack to me. ;~)
I stand by the statement that nobody will be specficially growing biomass for fuel conversion. You are completely correct, most energy we have used was from plant matter: heck, the average person is running at about 120W based completely on plant and animal sources (2500kCal/24hr). That is a LOT of energy. However, the average CAR uses something like 120kW (~162HP) src Thats a lot of bio-fuel per second.
Lets have some fun:
If we assume that you have your numbers above (2.5% efficient conversion of an average of 400W/m^2) and we use the average car then that 10W per meter squared gives us a requirement of ???
With an average commute distance of about 10 miles (real is more like 13 ref) . I'll assume that means that the average commuter burns about a gallon of gas per day, 5 days a week.
A gallon of gas has an energy content of about 118MJ (Ethanol has about 80MJ) ref So we need
5*5*118MJ ~= 2.95E9_J per week.
In order to produce this in 7 days (allow production but not use during the weekend) we need to average
2.95E9_J/(7 days) ~= 4.88kW per car
which comes to a total area of
4880W/(10W/m^2) = 488m^2
This represents a patch of plant life about 25 meters on a side. Doesn't seem too bad, I suppose. The average family needs about a football field out on the ocean in order to drive to work everyday.
However, I am going to repeat that accounting in brief using the numbers I believe to be accurate: that is 0.1% efficient transformation of solar energy into ethanol (for why, read my the upper reaches of this thread).
So, 0.001*400W/m^2 = 0.4W/m^2. Lets call it 0.5, then my earlier calcs become
4880W*(2m^2/W) = 9760m^2
Which is a plot damned near 100m on a side. Now, what is the value of the fuel? Well, that would come to the profit to the seller of 5 gallons of fuel. Given that gas goes for about something like a dollar a gallon, wholesale, you are requiring some entity to manage a crap load of these floating plant boxes for
$5*10/7days = $7.14/day/km^2
So for less than 10 bucks per square kilometer per day! Or, with the 10W per meter squared figure:
25m*40 = 1km; 5$*40 = $200/km^2/7days
= $28.5 per day.
And I'd bet a lot that even MY number is about 10 times higher than is realistic. Hell, we haven't even factored in litigation: and I think we can be certain that if a company or government offered to cover a few million square km of ocean with plant boxes, there would be PLENTY of litigation.
Mmmmm. I'm not upset or anything, but my math assumed no such thing. However YOUR math assumes that that 8% efficiency gets translated into biomass, which it most certainly DOES NOT do. If you read the link I sited you will see that actual energy to biomass conversion is utter CRAP at less than 1/2% (yes, 0.5), on average. Which means that maybe sugar cane gets 0.8% or something. You still aren't going to get any significant amount of energy per day out of any plant.
If anyone really wants to figure out how viable 'growing your own energy' is, go figure out how many trees you need to plant, and when, to supply your own firewood in, say, northern Washington.
And you need to get a good grasp on the fundamentals of solar power before you start doing math on it seacane. 700W/m^2 is over 70% efficient solar to final energy conversion, which is obviously not possible with a plant that is only EIGHT percent efficient to start with. _AND_ you also completely neglected the fact that the plants are only 8% (or, as I said, 12%) efficient at converting the frequencies of light that are of use in photosynthesis ( 400 to 700 nm). Of course as I said that 8-12% is an ideal conversion rate.
Growing plants with the intent to use them as fuel is NOT economically viable. Not a chance in hell. Growing plants that have tones of wastematter (Corn, cane, tobacco, trees (fruit, nut, paper), etc etc) is done already. And currently we have a bitch of a time getting rid of said material. Read up on Staley's plants in Lafayette IN if you want to hear some fun complaints about the waste products of sugar (corn based) production.
We will use ethanol, all over the place. But Nuke, and gods willing one day maybe even real (Earth based) fusion will be where the real power comes from. Although I wouldn't be suprised if we had beamed power from space before fusion: each are about as unlikely.
The max theoretical energy conversion by plants using chlorophyll is only about 12%. [src: http://w3.aces.uiuc.edu/NRES/LPPBP/PathW.html]
This does NOT include the losses incurred by converting the resulting plant matter to booze!
So, yeah, solar panels are by far more efficient. But still suck. By "335kJ" I assume you mean '335 kJ/sec' or 335kW, and that would require 335m^2*(1/0.20) = 1,675 square meters of solar panel. The numbers are so big I am questioning the simple math.
The most disgusting thing is that I am going to disagree with you on the fuel cells from Ethanol sucking (well, you didn't say as much, but...): why? Because you don't use prime plant stock to create it. Ethanol can be made from much of the crap stock that is not worth the bother of bailing and / or packaging. Or the crap that goes bad. As long as there is some sugar left to distill (I mean, hell):...
And most importantly, nuke won't happen fast enough to clean our air before I die. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of a bunch of smaller nuke plants. Not portable... I have my limits. But hell, the biggest sin in the transportation world is that nobody is building even CRUISE ships with nuclear engines. wtf?
Cheers
Not to certain, but I just started reading into some VoIP...'stuff'. Implication so far is that the bandwidth you mentioned would be more than sufficient for FAR more than 5 lines. More like 10 or 15 -- voice uses something like 38kb/s Sooo, maybe you are getting screwed? Just a happy thought :~) I'm sure someone will tell me how much shit I am full of if such is the case.
This limit is set by the total fuel load they can carry at launch
Correct; however do not forget the batteries. The public has seen a few "satellite refueling" concepts tossed about, but nobody mentions that NiCd batteries only last about 10 years, even with completely optimal charging systems. NiMH have only recently become an option -- I'd love to hear a date, but a about few years now.
Sooo, the question arises: how do you crack open a craft which was not designed to have batteries replaced, de-solder the batteries and then solder in new ones?
Hell, BMW won't even desolder the f*ing NiCd batteries on their '90's era 525 models which powers all the gauges. Replace the whole board they do. But I'm not bitter.
10 years. Maybe. And they have 5 times the population to draw from.
They have stolen or bought as much modern tech as they could get their paws on, and are very much competitors. Both in space economically.
The cost of getting to the moon is exponentionally larger (mathmatically, not figurativly) than getting into orbit. The equation of interest is: (Final Mass)/(initial Mass) = exp(deltaV/(Isp*g)); where g = 9.8 m/s, deltaV into 200nm orbit ~ 7.2km/s deltaV to moon ~ 14km/s (ballpark, I'm half drunk right now and don't want to look it up) Typical ISP = 325 (avg -- better at boost, worse at altitude. System issues --- vacuum Isp is usually better than at pressure, but storing LH2/LOX is a b&^@#$) The moon would not have allowed for larger living space. Contrawise: The lunar regolith would conduct heat away like a bastard. Two weeks of night would rape you WRT your heating bill, and two weeks of day would rape you A/C wise. And digging a f*ing hole would take equipment you would have to haul there. (read: 'you're screwed either way you look at it') Finally: a.) how the hell are you going to stock MORE oxygen on a base that is, price wise, a hundred thousand times farther away? b.) Are you 12? IT TAKES THREE DAYS TO GET TO THE MOON. And that is AFTER you launch!!
1.) Yes 2.) a.) No, the autopilot is far more advanced than the human in the loop (if they ever GET in the loop). As it stands the only reason that the autopilot doesn't engage the landing gear is because the pilots objected to being thrown so far outside the control loop. b.) The shuttle is designed to pull ~3Gs coming in. Much more and you are dead already. 3Gs is nothing. c.) If your idea of a fighter plane is something that moves really fast, then sure, its like a fighter. I tend to think 'agile' when the term 'fighter' pops up though. 3.) The moon missions were partly to show that capitalism was better, partly to bankrupt the USSR. We really didn't start the true bankruptcy efforts until Regan. There is no reason to attempt to bankrupt (or even show-up) the Chinese: They will become a threat to our way of life based on population(read 'GDP') alone. But yeah, NASA and the military have always had some 'behind the scenes' action going on. Possibly some that is even truly covert, but it is public knowledge that the shuttle has taken up sats.