We have records going back through geological time. Those will show evidence of a much warmer Earth. That alone is not what bothers me about this global warming scam, its what the government wants to do about it.
Pick a government of your choice and I can much more likely than not show you how that government is scamming it's citizens based on the threat of global warming. I say this because for most every government the solution that they see for global warming is more government. I say we need LESS government.
I've been reading about global warming and the proposed solutions for it for a very long time now. If we are to assume that global warming is happening, that global warming is bad, and that human activity is to blame then I see only one solution that will reverse this trend and not destroy the economy.
That answer is nuclear power. Any other solution is a scam, a means to redistribute dollars from my pocket to those of campaign donors through taxation and subsidy.
Electric cars, ethanol, windmills, solar panels, cap & trade, or whatever else the government has taxed and spent before is nothing compared to what a fleet of new nuclear reactors could do. I keep hearing politicians talk about an "all the above" strategy to combat human caused carbon in the air but they don't really mean that because none of them consider nuclear power as part of the "above" options. Any plan to reduce human caused carbon output that does not include nuclear power is not a serious plan. I guess that alone is what makes me think global warming is a scam, the powers that be don't seem all too concerned about actually solving the problem. If they were concerned then we would not see them flying in airplanes or living in big houses. If they only practiced what they preached then I could be convinced of the hazards that global warming might bring.
Why did you end your quote of me in the middle of the sentence like that? I stated that it may be impossible to create a reactor that cannot meltdown if one defines a meltdown so narrowly that any failure could be considered a meltdown.
I am quite aware that reactor designs exist that are walk away safe and will not meltdown in a "China Syndrome" style. However, if someone classifies an overheat and scram of the safeties a "meltdown" then it just might be impossible to build a reactor incapable of melting down.
Speaking of the impossible I believe that fusion may forever remain an impossibility. I believe this because I've seen the math on how to sustain a fusion reaction and it appears to me that a fusion reactor that outputs more power than what is put in to maintain fusion would have to be too large to be practical. I saw a video of a talk on polywell fusors and the man that described the design pointed out, and forgive me if my math isn't quite right as I'm going from memory, that the power input required grows by the square of the reactor size but the power out grows by the cube. Judging by the size of the largest fusor they built, the power input required, and the estimate of the power out, I made a mildly educated guess on the size required to achieve net output.
I estimate that a fusion reactor would only produce net power out if it was something like 100 meters in height, width, and depth. It is quite possible such a device could be theoretically built with materials we have today but I find it difficult to believe that anyone would bother when fission is so much easier to do. This also assumes a spherical reactor, a toroid would have to be much larger.
I believe I know why we have not yet seen LFTR based power plants built and operated. I believe it is because the federal government has convinced itself, and the state governments, that it alone has the authority to regulate anything nuclear. This is false, the federal government only has the authority that the states grant it. We also have state governments so scared of their own shadow that they would not dare defy a federal ban, except when it comes to smoking weed for some reason. This same federal government is bogged down in its own regulations that it cannot construct a testing and licensing model for any nuclear reactor that deviates from the solid fuel and water cooled designs we've had for the last fifty years.
This Jurassic government will only allow LFTR once some other nation starts building LFTRs first. While this stupid as a dinosaur government can't figure out how to license a LFTR it can be shamed into making it happen. We've seen this before many times, the federal government will do what is right once all other options have been exhausted.
Is it dangerous because it is so hot? The salts in a molten salt reactor would top out at about 850C. It certainly will not exceed 1450C because at that point the fuel salt would boil and the metal containment would melt. But we deal with things much hotter all the time. Refining iron and aluminum requires temperatures of 1000C and above. Making concrete requires similar temperatures. This can't be the problem.
Is it because the chemicals are so toxic? Gasses like HF is certainly something that needs to be handled with great care but again we do this all the time. HF gas is used in oil refining, silicon electronics manufacture, and more. There's other nasty chemicals in the fuel processing loop but none so volatile as HF. We can manage this.
Is it because we have a combination of volatile chemicals, high temperatures, and radioactive materials combined? I'm not sure how that matters since the safety requirements for one tends to apply to the others.
This is also assuming that the reactor would need to have this processing on site, which is false. There are designs that have this processing, but it is not required for an operable reactor. Terrestrial Energy has a reactor design that needs no on site processing. It will need periodic "fill ups" to make up for consumed fuel every year or three but after twenty years the still sealed reactor vessel would be moved off site to a reprocessing plant, where the material can be handled at much lower temperatures and with much less radioactivity.
I'll add on to this by asking some very basic questions on the safety of other power sources. What is the increased chances of cancer for handling the radioactive dust from a COAL powered plant? What of other threats to health like industrial accidents, particulate matter in the lungs, and so forth? Some of those balance out with nuclear given that the steam turbines and such are effectively identical between coal and nuclear.
What of wind and solar? What are the chances of dying from falling from a windmill pylon or a rooftop solar installation? Again some hazards like electrocution balance out because nuclear, solar, and wind all produce electricity. These hazards do need to be counted though since while the hazards exist in both the threat level may not be identical.
I suspect that hydro power is exceedingly safe but when it fails I'd expect massive loss of life. Entire communities can be washed away.
Let's speculate on the increased cancer risks to nuclear power because that is scary. Never mind that you'd be just as dead if you fell off a roof.
What I find very interesting is all the discussion about the safety of nuclear power because one failed in a one in 500 year tsunami while at that same time a hydro power dam failed and killed dozens, perhaps hundreds of people.
Also, how many people in total were washed out to sea and drowned because of the tsunami? Somewhere around 5000 as I recall. Are people rebuilding their homes within that washed out area? I hope not. Forget the nuclear reactor, look at the hydro dams and the threat another wave like that would pose.
One thing I predicted and saw that came to pass was that people would be talking about all the radiation and the threat it posed to the health of the people in the area for about two months. Why two months? Because that is how long it would take for the radiation in the area to return to background levels.
IMHO, nuclear power is unsafe only because we stopped building new reactors. Had we kept building more year after year we'd be seeing improvements in safety in every new one built and the old and unsafe reactors could have been shutdown. Instead we operate nuclear reactors well beyond their intended lifespan. If we shut them all down now then we'd see either electricity prices spike or we'd have a real environmental disaster as we build more coal and natural gas.
So we predict one dead from a nuclear power failure when dozens died in a hydro dam failed. While it is certainly preferable that no one died we should do what we can to minimize death. You can call a slow painful death from cancer a terrible way to die but would you rather be buried under several feet of mud and suffocate?
A perhaps unrelated question, if medical techs get 100 mSv per year for operating X-ray machines and doing bone scans then how does that compare to the exposure of a TSA agent operating a RapeScan machine?
Employees who work at a nuclear reactor during and immediately after a meltdown should get their healthcare and compensation for life, no questions asked
Wait, I have a question. Would these people still get free healthcare and compensation if they CAUSED the meltdown? What if they didn't cause it but were merely negligent in preventing the meltdown? What if they were an employee working on site but in a building far from the reactor and had no increase in exposure and did nothing to assist in the recovery effort except something trivial, like emptying the wastebaskets from the offices?
Here's a better question. Why don't we build nuclear power plants that simply cannot meltdown? Perhaps this is impossible based on differing opinions on what is considered a meltdown. We do know how to build safe nuclear power plants but the Department of Energy has been sitting on their hands in allowing people to construct demonstration plants so that their safety can be proven. Instead the DOE does study after study, spending all kinds of money on engineers to look at drawings and simulations, expecting to see a design too safe to fail.
There are probably a dozen companies in the USA, and at least that many more world wide, with nuclear reactor designs that would be much safer than the plants we have now but no one is permitted to actually prove they can work with a real and honest working prototype. Build some prototypes big enough to prove the concept but small enough to contain, put in double safety systems, and turn them on. Test them, abuse them, make them fail. After we've seen how they can fail we can build systems to contain the radiation threat. Simulations are worthless unless you have real world data for comparison. This is why we build cars in CAD and then once built we launch a few of them into a wall to see how they crumple up.
I had someone tell me, who at least claimed to be an engineer, that we should not build any new nuclear reactors until we prove they are safe. I asked, how do you prove anything until one is built? Which I guess is the point, he did not want to see any nuclear reactors built. Which is also what I believe the DOE is doing. No one in the DOE wants to sign off on a nuclear reactor since if anything goes wrong then they will be blamed for it. In the mean time we are burning coal at an incredible rate.
If you think nuclear power is dangerous then compare it to anything else on a megawatt-hour produced to deaths metric and you tell me who is killing more people, is it the nuclear power industry or the DOE for keeping more nuclear power from us?
I say that anyone that claims we truly cannot speak freely in the USA because we could be punished for defamation has a very skewed view on what it means to be free. If that were the case then court trials could be very interesting since no one taking an oath to tell the truth could actually be punished for knowingly telling a lie.
Think about what that would mean to your freedom if someone could falsely accuse you of a crime and not face punishment for it?
I think where you are failing to grasp this concept is that there are two different definitions of speech here. Speaking may mean that words are coming out of your mouth but that is not the same definition of speaking used in law. I seem to recall that Penn and Teller did an episode of their show on freedom of speech, perhaps you could look it up. I'd take the time to link to it but I doubt you'd bother to click anyway.
Yes, it can be done on the "trashcan" Mac Pros. It will take a PCIe breakout box, or whatever you call them, and put the USB and video cards in there. Since Thunderbolt and USB network adapters are common there is no need for a box to have a network interface dedicated to the VM.
You can run Windows, Linux, and MacOSX simultaneously on a Mac Pro and have all the OSes running on a proper hypervisor. All you need is VMWare ESXi. VMWare supports a number of Apple computers for running ESXi and supports running MacOSX in a virtual environment. Use the PCI passthrough feature to mate each machine to it's own USB and video cards and you have your three headed computer like you describe.
Granted getting the three video cards would require an older tower Mac Pro, or a PCIe breakout box on a Thunderbolt port, but it can be done and done legally.
After years, decades perhaps, of people calling Apple computers "toys" we have someone complaining that Apple no longer makes a "toy" computer.
I remember in college someone telling me that while Macs were good for graphics they sucked for doing "real" math. This was at a time before 3D accelerator cards existed. I pointed out to him that graphics to a computer was nothing more than a series of mathematical computations, so I asked him how exactly a computer capable of such a feat of performing such complex computations was incapable of performing "real" math? He was struck silent.
Now I have someone telling me that while high end Macs might be good number crunchers they suck at graphics. Okay then, but what makes the Windows computers so good at graphics? It's not the OS. It's not the processor. The difference is the GPU, which is available as an add-on.
It took me a matter of minutes to find that people have been adding GPUs to Macs on a Thunderbolt port for years. I happened to click on a link that showed me that this same feat has been done on Windows computers as well. Running Windows on an Apple is a trivial feat so therefore I can only assume that Apple computers are fully capable of functioning with Oculus Rift hardware to those willing to go through the minor inconvenience of installing Windows on their computer and purchasing what is likely to be a video card that they'd have to buy anyway if they bought a computer that had Windows installed out of the box.
Sounds to me that the guy doesn't want to bother servicing Apple owners out of laziness more than anything.
Perhaps I missed something important here. I'm not much of a gamer and I don't follow the changes in hardware like I used to, my current job doesn't require me to recommend hardware purchases like previous jobs did.
"So you are allowed to pass state secrets to Russia?" Presumably you were given access to those secrets based on the promise that you would not share them with Russia. If you break that promise then certain punishments can apply. Using centuries old contract law alone that puts you in a bad place for sharing state secrets.
"You are allowed to yell "Fire" in a crowded theater? " That is a call to act, not merely an expression of fact or opinion. If there is in fact a fire in a crowded theater then a person is free to express that fact. If there is not a fire then such an expression will induce panic and inevitably cause harm to others.
I can call you a lying dirty thief and that alone would not be breaking the law. It may be a lie but if I can explain that it is merely my opinion based on something I believe to be true then I'm not breaking any law. Now if I tell people to beat you up because you are a lying dirty thief then I've just incited people to act, possibly based on a lie, and I've now broken numerous laws, including accessory to assault or something similar.
"You are allowed to slander and libel anyone you want?" Of course not, but as above it I can show I believe it to be true then I've broken no law. If challenged on this opinion and shown it to be false then continuing to express that opinion would be illegal.
Slander, libel, inducing panic and such are not merely free expression, they are intended to cause harm and therefore not unlike swinging your fist at someone.
If I sell tin foil helmets to people telling them how it made me feel better knowing that martians were no longer listening to my thoughts then I could fall into a grey area in law. Is that fraud? Or is it free expression? A government agency might tell me I can't sell the aluminum helmets with that claim without also stating that I have not tested the helmet produces the effects I claim. They can't stop me from selling them if I merely say they look pretty. In either case the grey area disappears.
There are no limits on free speech. If you want to get into real grey areas of the First Amendment then I suggest using pornography in an example. That should get people talking.
On every product that contains tobacco or alcohol there is a label with a health warning from the US Surgeon General. On many products you will have other warnings that start with something like, "The State of California has determined..." In each case it is clear that these mandated symbols and texts come from a government agency.
What the FBI wants Apple to do is say something on their behalf but make it look like it was Apple that said it.
This sets a dangerous precedent. If I was given a crypto key signed by Super Mega Global Software when the matching key was also provided to the FBI then how can I trust any crypto? If the FBI wants to own a crypto key then that key should be labeled in a way to indicate that the FBI has access to that key.
If the FBI can force a company to be silent on the fact that they shared a key with them then that is a serious infringement on the right to speak freely, or to air a protest before the government.
These artillery pieces put Seoul in range from within North Korea, being approximately 55 km from the DMZ. The Seoul metro area has a population of approximately 24 million people, in a nation of approximately 52 million people. Many other large cities are also within range of North Korean artillery.
While people can certainly flee from the bombarded cities to the south and get out of range the cities themselves cannot move. That is why I claim that the inhabitants of these cities are likely to end up dead or homeless. The artillery does not have to strike a building to render it uninhabitable, fires are nearly inevitable to produce considerable damage to structures. Destruction to infrastructure like roads, bridges, water works, electricity production and distribution, and communications (TV, radio, telephone, etc.) would make large areas uninhabitable, undesirable, or merely inconvenient.
Doing a little poking around the internet I see that China has self propelled artillery with a range of 100km. If China shared this design with North Korea then Seoul and many parts of South Korea south of it is certainly in range of artillery well within North Korea.
I read a paper to this effect from an Air Force officer. I'm not sure what it was but I seem to recall it was something like a graduate school thesis. The paper basically laid out why it was best to just leave North Korea alone.
The paper spelled out the number of artillery pieces that they have, the number of conventional shells they have on hand to fire, the rate that they can fire, and the range that they are capable of reaching. These artillery pieces are placed in deep in mountain sides where they would be very difficult to destroy. NK does have some effective anti-aircraft capability so its not like anyone can just fly in to drop a bomb on them. Even though we may have a very accurate estimation of their artillery capability we don't know where all of them are.
The paper speculated that any attack on NK would result in a bombardment of any and all populated areas in SK. Since a large portion of the population lives within artillery range the result of such bombardment would be very deadly. In the time it would take to destroy those artillery pieces about 2/3rds of the SK population would be dead or homeless.
There are different laws that prevent law enforcement from gathering firearm purchase data. If you really want to see a legal shit storm then piss off the NRA for creating a de facto gun registry.
I expect that there is something very different from spending one year in space where Earth is always below you, looking so big and close that you'd feel like you can reach out and touch it, and being so far from Earth that if you held out your hand the tip of your thumb could block it from view. Scott Kelly knew that if anything went wrong, which was unlikely on a well tested craft like ISS, that he could hop in a capsule and parachute down to a soft landing on Earth. On a mission to Mars there is no such safety. That kind of stress would, IMHO, likely weigh heavily on most anyone.
I've seen people that will claim to simulate a Mars mission by putting a space capsule shaped cabin out in some desert, or in the Antarctic, and have the people act out like they are living on Mars. This would be like me sitting in my basement with a flight simulator on my PC and claim that I'm training to be a commercial jet pilot.
I'm sure there is some value in these experiments but this is a long way from a simulation to a mission to Mars. I'd think the best way to simulate a Mars mission is to go to the Moon.
NASA did some amazing things a long time ago but that NASA is dead.
The aircraft is moving faster than sound, not faster than light. Put up a perimeter of listening posts around where you'd expect the aircraft to attack and if/when a sonic boom is heard then counter measures can be planned.
For example, if you are defending your coasts from approaching supersonic aircraft then you can place your first layer of sonic boom detecting buoys at about 1500km out from the coast. A plane approaching at Mach 1 will still give you one hour of warning. Place some other buoys at intervals in between and you can detect speed, altitude, and direction and any changes in speed, altitude, and direction.
These same buoys can be listening in the water for surface and submerged threats, as well as other tasks military and otherwise, so it's not like these would be single purpose devices. This idea is not new, I recall seeing this as a plot element in a Cold War era movie which tells me that this has been at least theoretical for a long time.
Regardless if the noise of the aircraft is from a sonic boom or not the desire to keep them quiet is always a matter of stealth. It's just that getting an aircraft that is both quiet and fast is really hard, and certainly worthy of some research by the government to develop better future military aircraft.
Also, we can turn this around. The more we know about how a supersonic aircraft with a suppressed sonic boom would sound then the better we can get at detecting them.
Of course my examples are corporate welfare, but people tend to view them as otherwise because it fits their view of what governments should do. My examples of corporate welfare are tolerated or encouraged because they meet some "greater good" for the nation. I can make the case that funding supersonic flight research also has a "greater good".
If supersonic flight research fails to meet the greater good requirement then I can argue that my examples from my previous post do as well. If someone wants to kill the ethanol subsidy sacred cow then I suggest we just line up all the sacred cows for slaughter. Let's get the government out of the "greater good" business and back to things like raising armies, building roads, running a postal service and so forth as spelled out in the US Constitution.
There's one thing that separates silent supersonic aircraft from things like light bulbs, electric cars, windmills, and ethanol. Silent supersonic aircraft has a direct military application. Don't you think that the USAF and USN would love to have a supersonic stealth fighter jet or bomber? I would bet that a number of nations operate listening posts that keep an ear out for a sonic boom to indicate military aircraft are approaching, since no commercial supersonic aircraft exist any more. We can make a supersonic jet that is nearly invisible to radar but we don't yet have a technology that will silence that sonic boom if the aircraft exceeds Mach 1.
There are different kinds of "corporate welfare" in existence. Some are within the powers delegated to the federal government, others are not. We can keep the supersonic aircraft research at NASA, where it will be open to the public, or we can move it to DARPA, where it will stay as a military secret for a very long time.
While I agree that there is a lower limit on the distance such an aircraft would make sense I do not agree that it must be so large. A flight from MSP to ORD is 1:20 according to Google Maps, that's not where a supersonic transport would be used.
What might get people to buy tickets is a SFO to NYC flight that takes 2 or 3 hours instead of 5 to 7. But it is more than just the time in the air that determines travel time. What really kills short hop flights and supersonic transport is the wait times at airports. TSA checkpoints, the rarity of flight choices, and how sensitive flight times are to weather and other circumstances makes travel by air lengthy, inconvenient, and therefore expensive.
I think we will see cheap and speedy air travel only when the federal government realizes that their are greater threats to our lives than religious nutjobs with suicidal tendencies. I should be able to drive to the airport and buy a ticket to Chicago on the spot for the next flight that leaves. I should not have to reserve a seat in advance, show a government issued ID, or take off my shoes. I can understand a need for some security, we don't want people bringing gas cans and live chickens on the plane. I'm not sure we should even need metal detectors since I see no need to take people's pocketknives and knitting needles. Pat downs and full body scanners don't make sense on matters of security regardless. Anyway, perhaps that is a rant for another time.
If I can get on a plane with such little hassle then I'd quite likely fly more often. If more people fly then the tickets will get cheaper, if tickets get cheaper then more people will fly. If tickets get cheaper then there is more "room" (economically speaking) for things like supersonic passenger aircraft.
Faster airplanes would be nice and I do believe that there is a market for them but the most effective way, IMHO, to shorten travel times by air is to improve the mechanics of the modern airport, not that of the modern airplane. If we can get that fixed then we might see supersonic flights make sense for not just transatlantic and transcontinental distances but also for interstate travel.
This process requires day light to function, therefore it's potential output is limited by the amount of time the sun shines. Not only is there night but also clouds.
I hate solar power, not just because it is so limited but because so many tree hugger types flock to it. The chemistry of this process is very interesting but if used to convert sunlight to hydrogen then I believe this is a waste of time. Solar power is a distraction from energy production schemes that actually work.
Let's take a look at the technology, it requires carbon nano-tubes laced with platinum. Can we think of a material that is even more expensive than that?
I like nuclear power, especially molten salt reactors. To build those it take low tech materials like Portland cement, nickel alloys, steel, graphite, and salts. The fuel is common thorium and uranium, not the rare U-235 but unenriched uranium. We can run a molten salt reactor day and night and build them to produce many megawatts and still be small enough to move by an over the road truck.
If they can use this high tech hydrogen production process and marry it to a nuclear reactor then we might have something. If we have to set it out in the sun and hope for good weather then I'm not interested.
With the tendency for government drones to think up "cute" acronyms I think they missed a great opportunity in naming this one. In only a few seconds I came up with a better name, the Silent Over-Flight Testing Jet...
the SOFT Jet.
Not a good idea? Reply with one better, this could be fun.
Refrigeration is only for the wealthy. Automobiles are only for the wealthy. Indoor plumbing is only for the wealthy. Computers are only for the wealthy. Going to college is only for the wealthy. Electric cars are only for the wealthy.
Ethanol subsidies are just corporate welfare. Windmill subsidies are just corporate welfare. Solar panel subsidies are just corporate welfare. Electric car subsidies are just corporate welfare. Government backed student loans are just corporate welfare. CFL subsidies are just corporate welfare.
Isn't it funny on how the definition of "wealthy" and "corporate welfare" changes depending on the who, when, and where? There's plenty of evidence that what is now a luxury that only the 1% could afford will eventually become affordable for the other 99%.
Oh, and let's pick on just the Republicans because the Democrats NEVER give free stuff to corporations.
If there is something to complain about with government spending then I can give much better examples than funding NASA to research high speed flight. Researching high speed flight is EXACTLY the kind of thing that NASA was created to do.
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We have records going back through geological time. Those will show evidence of a much warmer Earth. That alone is not what bothers me about this global warming scam, its what the government wants to do about it.
Pick a government of your choice and I can much more likely than not show you how that government is scamming it's citizens based on the threat of global warming. I say this because for most every government the solution that they see for global warming is more government. I say we need LESS government.
I've been reading about global warming and the proposed solutions for it for a very long time now. If we are to assume that global warming is happening, that global warming is bad, and that human activity is to blame then I see only one solution that will reverse this trend and not destroy the economy.
That answer is nuclear power. Any other solution is a scam, a means to redistribute dollars from my pocket to those of campaign donors through taxation and subsidy.
Electric cars, ethanol, windmills, solar panels, cap & trade, or whatever else the government has taxed and spent before is nothing compared to what a fleet of new nuclear reactors could do. I keep hearing politicians talk about an "all the above" strategy to combat human caused carbon in the air but they don't really mean that because none of them consider nuclear power as part of the "above" options. Any plan to reduce human caused carbon output that does not include nuclear power is not a serious plan. I guess that alone is what makes me think global warming is a scam, the powers that be don't seem all too concerned about actually solving the problem. If they were concerned then we would not see them flying in airplanes or living in big houses. If they only practiced what they preached then I could be convinced of the hazards that global warming might bring.
Why did you end your quote of me in the middle of the sentence like that? I stated that it may be impossible to create a reactor that cannot meltdown if one defines a meltdown so narrowly that any failure could be considered a meltdown.
I am quite aware that reactor designs exist that are walk away safe and will not meltdown in a "China Syndrome" style. However, if someone classifies an overheat and scram of the safeties a "meltdown" then it just might be impossible to build a reactor incapable of melting down.
Speaking of the impossible I believe that fusion may forever remain an impossibility. I believe this because I've seen the math on how to sustain a fusion reaction and it appears to me that a fusion reactor that outputs more power than what is put in to maintain fusion would have to be too large to be practical. I saw a video of a talk on polywell fusors and the man that described the design pointed out, and forgive me if my math isn't quite right as I'm going from memory, that the power input required grows by the square of the reactor size but the power out grows by the cube. Judging by the size of the largest fusor they built, the power input required, and the estimate of the power out, I made a mildly educated guess on the size required to achieve net output.
I estimate that a fusion reactor would only produce net power out if it was something like 100 meters in height, width, and depth. It is quite possible such a device could be theoretically built with materials we have today but I find it difficult to believe that anyone would bother when fission is so much easier to do. This also assumes a spherical reactor, a toroid would have to be much larger.
I believe I know why we have not yet seen LFTR based power plants built and operated. I believe it is because the federal government has convinced itself, and the state governments, that it alone has the authority to regulate anything nuclear. This is false, the federal government only has the authority that the states grant it. We also have state governments so scared of their own shadow that they would not dare defy a federal ban, except when it comes to smoking weed for some reason. This same federal government is bogged down in its own regulations that it cannot construct a testing and licensing model for any nuclear reactor that deviates from the solid fuel and water cooled designs we've had for the last fifty years.
This Jurassic government will only allow LFTR once some other nation starts building LFTRs first. While this stupid as a dinosaur government can't figure out how to license a LFTR it can be shamed into making it happen. We've seen this before many times, the federal government will do what is right once all other options have been exhausted.
Please explain these dangers, I am curious.
Is it dangerous because it is so hot? The salts in a molten salt reactor would top out at about 850C. It certainly will not exceed 1450C because at that point the fuel salt would boil and the metal containment would melt. But we deal with things much hotter all the time. Refining iron and aluminum requires temperatures of 1000C and above. Making concrete requires similar temperatures. This can't be the problem.
Is it because the chemicals are so toxic? Gasses like HF is certainly something that needs to be handled with great care but again we do this all the time. HF gas is used in oil refining, silicon electronics manufacture, and more. There's other nasty chemicals in the fuel processing loop but none so volatile as HF. We can manage this.
Is it because we have a combination of volatile chemicals, high temperatures, and radioactive materials combined? I'm not sure how that matters since the safety requirements for one tends to apply to the others.
This is also assuming that the reactor would need to have this processing on site, which is false. There are designs that have this processing, but it is not required for an operable reactor. Terrestrial Energy has a reactor design that needs no on site processing. It will need periodic "fill ups" to make up for consumed fuel every year or three but after twenty years the still sealed reactor vessel would be moved off site to a reprocessing plant, where the material can be handled at much lower temperatures and with much less radioactivity.
I'll add on to this by asking some very basic questions on the safety of other power sources. What is the increased chances of cancer for handling the radioactive dust from a COAL powered plant? What of other threats to health like industrial accidents, particulate matter in the lungs, and so forth? Some of those balance out with nuclear given that the steam turbines and such are effectively identical between coal and nuclear.
What of wind and solar? What are the chances of dying from falling from a windmill pylon or a rooftop solar installation? Again some hazards like electrocution balance out because nuclear, solar, and wind all produce electricity. These hazards do need to be counted though since while the hazards exist in both the threat level may not be identical.
I suspect that hydro power is exceedingly safe but when it fails I'd expect massive loss of life. Entire communities can be washed away.
Let's speculate on the increased cancer risks to nuclear power because that is scary. Never mind that you'd be just as dead if you fell off a roof.
What I find very interesting is all the discussion about the safety of nuclear power because one failed in a one in 500 year tsunami while at that same time a hydro power dam failed and killed dozens, perhaps hundreds of people.
Also, how many people in total were washed out to sea and drowned because of the tsunami? Somewhere around 5000 as I recall. Are people rebuilding their homes within that washed out area? I hope not. Forget the nuclear reactor, look at the hydro dams and the threat another wave like that would pose.
One thing I predicted and saw that came to pass was that people would be talking about all the radiation and the threat it posed to the health of the people in the area for about two months. Why two months? Because that is how long it would take for the radiation in the area to return to background levels.
IMHO, nuclear power is unsafe only because we stopped building new reactors. Had we kept building more year after year we'd be seeing improvements in safety in every new one built and the old and unsafe reactors could have been shutdown. Instead we operate nuclear reactors well beyond their intended lifespan. If we shut them all down now then we'd see either electricity prices spike or we'd have a real environmental disaster as we build more coal and natural gas.
So we predict one dead from a nuclear power failure when dozens died in a hydro dam failed. While it is certainly preferable that no one died we should do what we can to minimize death. You can call a slow painful death from cancer a terrible way to die but would you rather be buried under several feet of mud and suffocate?
A perhaps unrelated question, if medical techs get 100 mSv per year for operating X-ray machines and doing bone scans then how does that compare to the exposure of a TSA agent operating a RapeScan machine?
Employees who work at a nuclear reactor during and immediately after a meltdown should get their healthcare and compensation for life, no questions asked
Wait, I have a question. Would these people still get free healthcare and compensation if they CAUSED the meltdown? What if they didn't cause it but were merely negligent in preventing the meltdown? What if they were an employee working on site but in a building far from the reactor and had no increase in exposure and did nothing to assist in the recovery effort except something trivial, like emptying the wastebaskets from the offices?
Here's a better question. Why don't we build nuclear power plants that simply cannot meltdown? Perhaps this is impossible based on differing opinions on what is considered a meltdown. We do know how to build safe nuclear power plants but the Department of Energy has been sitting on their hands in allowing people to construct demonstration plants so that their safety can be proven. Instead the DOE does study after study, spending all kinds of money on engineers to look at drawings and simulations, expecting to see a design too safe to fail.
There are probably a dozen companies in the USA, and at least that many more world wide, with nuclear reactor designs that would be much safer than the plants we have now but no one is permitted to actually prove they can work with a real and honest working prototype. Build some prototypes big enough to prove the concept but small enough to contain, put in double safety systems, and turn them on. Test them, abuse them, make them fail. After we've seen how they can fail we can build systems to contain the radiation threat. Simulations are worthless unless you have real world data for comparison. This is why we build cars in CAD and then once built we launch a few of them into a wall to see how they crumple up.
I had someone tell me, who at least claimed to be an engineer, that we should not build any new nuclear reactors until we prove they are safe. I asked, how do you prove anything until one is built? Which I guess is the point, he did not want to see any nuclear reactors built. Which is also what I believe the DOE is doing. No one in the DOE wants to sign off on a nuclear reactor since if anything goes wrong then they will be blamed for it. In the mean time we are burning coal at an incredible rate.
If you think nuclear power is dangerous then compare it to anything else on a megawatt-hour produced to deaths metric and you tell me who is killing more people, is it the nuclear power industry or the DOE for keeping more nuclear power from us?
I say that anyone that claims we truly cannot speak freely in the USA because we could be punished for defamation has a very skewed view on what it means to be free. If that were the case then court trials could be very interesting since no one taking an oath to tell the truth could actually be punished for knowingly telling a lie.
Think about what that would mean to your freedom if someone could falsely accuse you of a crime and not face punishment for it?
I think where you are failing to grasp this concept is that there are two different definitions of speech here. Speaking may mean that words are coming out of your mouth but that is not the same definition of speaking used in law. I seem to recall that Penn and Teller did an episode of their show on freedom of speech, perhaps you could look it up. I'd take the time to link to it but I doubt you'd bother to click anyway.
Yes, it can be done on the "trashcan" Mac Pros. It will take a PCIe breakout box, or whatever you call them, and put the USB and video cards in there. Since Thunderbolt and USB network adapters are common there is no need for a box to have a network interface dedicated to the VM.
You can run Windows, Linux, and MacOSX simultaneously on a Mac Pro and have all the OSes running on a proper hypervisor. All you need is VMWare ESXi. VMWare supports a number of Apple computers for running ESXi and supports running MacOSX in a virtual environment. Use the PCI passthrough feature to mate each machine to it's own USB and video cards and you have your three headed computer like you describe.
Granted getting the three video cards would require an older tower Mac Pro, or a PCIe breakout box on a Thunderbolt port, but it can be done and done legally.
After years, decades perhaps, of people calling Apple computers "toys" we have someone complaining that Apple no longer makes a "toy" computer.
I remember in college someone telling me that while Macs were good for graphics they sucked for doing "real" math. This was at a time before 3D accelerator cards existed. I pointed out to him that graphics to a computer was nothing more than a series of mathematical computations, so I asked him how exactly a computer capable of such a feat of performing such complex computations was incapable of performing "real" math? He was struck silent.
Now I have someone telling me that while high end Macs might be good number crunchers they suck at graphics. Okay then, but what makes the Windows computers so good at graphics? It's not the OS. It's not the processor. The difference is the GPU, which is available as an add-on.
It took me a matter of minutes to find that people have been adding GPUs to Macs on a Thunderbolt port for years. I happened to click on a link that showed me that this same feat has been done on Windows computers as well. Running Windows on an Apple is a trivial feat so therefore I can only assume that Apple computers are fully capable of functioning with Oculus Rift hardware to those willing to go through the minor inconvenience of installing Windows on their computer and purchasing what is likely to be a video card that they'd have to buy anyway if they bought a computer that had Windows installed out of the box.
Sounds to me that the guy doesn't want to bother servicing Apple owners out of laziness more than anything.
Perhaps I missed something important here. I'm not much of a gamer and I don't follow the changes in hardware like I used to, my current job doesn't require me to recommend hardware purchases like previous jobs did.
"So you are allowed to pass state secrets to Russia?"
Presumably you were given access to those secrets based on the promise that you would not share them with Russia. If you break that promise then certain punishments can apply. Using centuries old contract law alone that puts you in a bad place for sharing state secrets.
"You are allowed to yell "Fire" in a crowded theater? "
That is a call to act, not merely an expression of fact or opinion. If there is in fact a fire in a crowded theater then a person is free to express that fact. If there is not a fire then such an expression will induce panic and inevitably cause harm to others.
I can call you a lying dirty thief and that alone would not be breaking the law. It may be a lie but if I can explain that it is merely my opinion based on something I believe to be true then I'm not breaking any law. Now if I tell people to beat you up because you are a lying dirty thief then I've just incited people to act, possibly based on a lie, and I've now broken numerous laws, including accessory to assault or something similar.
"You are allowed to slander and libel anyone you want?"
Of course not, but as above it I can show I believe it to be true then I've broken no law. If challenged on this opinion and shown it to be false then continuing to express that opinion would be illegal.
Slander, libel, inducing panic and such are not merely free expression, they are intended to cause harm and therefore not unlike swinging your fist at someone.
If I sell tin foil helmets to people telling them how it made me feel better knowing that martians were no longer listening to my thoughts then I could fall into a grey area in law. Is that fraud? Or is it free expression? A government agency might tell me I can't sell the aluminum helmets with that claim without also stating that I have not tested the helmet produces the effects I claim. They can't stop me from selling them if I merely say they look pretty. In either case the grey area disappears.
There are no limits on free speech. If you want to get into real grey areas of the First Amendment then I suggest using pornography in an example. That should get people talking.
On every product that contains tobacco or alcohol there is a label with a health warning from the US Surgeon General. On many products you will have other warnings that start with something like, "The State of California has determined..." In each case it is clear that these mandated symbols and texts come from a government agency.
What the FBI wants Apple to do is say something on their behalf but make it look like it was Apple that said it.
This sets a dangerous precedent. If I was given a crypto key signed by Super Mega Global Software when the matching key was also provided to the FBI then how can I trust any crypto? If the FBI wants to own a crypto key then that key should be labeled in a way to indicate that the FBI has access to that key.
If the FBI can force a company to be silent on the fact that they shared a key with them then that is a serious infringement on the right to speak freely, or to air a protest before the government.
North Korea has potentially thousands of heavy artillery capable of a range of 60km, such as the Koksan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
These artillery pieces put Seoul in range from within North Korea, being approximately 55 km from the DMZ. The Seoul metro area has a population of approximately 24 million people, in a nation of approximately 52 million people. Many other large cities are also within range of North Korean artillery.
While people can certainly flee from the bombarded cities to the south and get out of range the cities themselves cannot move. That is why I claim that the inhabitants of these cities are likely to end up dead or homeless. The artillery does not have to strike a building to render it uninhabitable, fires are nearly inevitable to produce considerable damage to structures. Destruction to infrastructure like roads, bridges, water works, electricity production and distribution, and communications (TV, radio, telephone, etc.) would make large areas uninhabitable, undesirable, or merely inconvenient.
Doing a little poking around the internet I see that China has self propelled artillery with a range of 100km. If China shared this design with North Korea then Seoul and many parts of South Korea south of it is certainly in range of artillery well within North Korea.
I read a paper to this effect from an Air Force officer. I'm not sure what it was but I seem to recall it was something like a graduate school thesis. The paper basically laid out why it was best to just leave North Korea alone.
The paper spelled out the number of artillery pieces that they have, the number of conventional shells they have on hand to fire, the rate that they can fire, and the range that they are capable of reaching. These artillery pieces are placed in deep in mountain sides where they would be very difficult to destroy. NK does have some effective anti-aircraft capability so its not like anyone can just fly in to drop a bomb on them. Even though we may have a very accurate estimation of their artillery capability we don't know where all of them are.
The paper speculated that any attack on NK would result in a bombardment of any and all populated areas in SK. Since a large portion of the population lives within artillery range the result of such bombardment would be very deadly. In the time it would take to destroy those artillery pieces about 2/3rds of the SK population would be dead or homeless.
There are different laws that prevent law enforcement from gathering firearm purchase data. If you really want to see a legal shit storm then piss off the NRA for creating a de facto gun registry.
That's good enough for me.
I expect that there is something very different from spending one year in space where Earth is always below you, looking so big and close that you'd feel like you can reach out and touch it, and being so far from Earth that if you held out your hand the tip of your thumb could block it from view. Scott Kelly knew that if anything went wrong, which was unlikely on a well tested craft like ISS, that he could hop in a capsule and parachute down to a soft landing on Earth. On a mission to Mars there is no such safety. That kind of stress would, IMHO, likely weigh heavily on most anyone.
I've seen people that will claim to simulate a Mars mission by putting a space capsule shaped cabin out in some desert, or in the Antarctic, and have the people act out like they are living on Mars. This would be like me sitting in my basement with a flight simulator on my PC and claim that I'm training to be a commercial jet pilot.
I'm sure there is some value in these experiments but this is a long way from a simulation to a mission to Mars. I'd think the best way to simulate a Mars mission is to go to the Moon.
NASA did some amazing things a long time ago but that NASA is dead.
If communication with the buoys is lost due to jamming of the signal, or destruction of the buoy, then that alone is indicative of a potential attack.
The aircraft is moving faster than sound, not faster than light. Put up a perimeter of listening posts around where you'd expect the aircraft to attack and if/when a sonic boom is heard then counter measures can be planned.
For example, if you are defending your coasts from approaching supersonic aircraft then you can place your first layer of sonic boom detecting buoys at about 1500km out from the coast. A plane approaching at Mach 1 will still give you one hour of warning. Place some other buoys at intervals in between and you can detect speed, altitude, and direction and any changes in speed, altitude, and direction.
These same buoys can be listening in the water for surface and submerged threats, as well as other tasks military and otherwise, so it's not like these would be single purpose devices. This idea is not new, I recall seeing this as a plot element in a Cold War era movie which tells me that this has been at least theoretical for a long time.
Regardless if the noise of the aircraft is from a sonic boom or not the desire to keep them quiet is always a matter of stealth. It's just that getting an aircraft that is both quiet and fast is really hard, and certainly worthy of some research by the government to develop better future military aircraft.
Also, we can turn this around. The more we know about how a supersonic aircraft with a suppressed sonic boom would sound then the better we can get at detecting them.
Of course my examples are corporate welfare, but people tend to view them as otherwise because it fits their view of what governments should do. My examples of corporate welfare are tolerated or encouraged because they meet some "greater good" for the nation. I can make the case that funding supersonic flight research also has a "greater good".
If supersonic flight research fails to meet the greater good requirement then I can argue that my examples from my previous post do as well. If someone wants to kill the ethanol subsidy sacred cow then I suggest we just line up all the sacred cows for slaughter. Let's get the government out of the "greater good" business and back to things like raising armies, building roads, running a postal service and so forth as spelled out in the US Constitution.
There's one thing that separates silent supersonic aircraft from things like light bulbs, electric cars, windmills, and ethanol. Silent supersonic aircraft has a direct military application. Don't you think that the USAF and USN would love to have a supersonic stealth fighter jet or bomber? I would bet that a number of nations operate listening posts that keep an ear out for a sonic boom to indicate military aircraft are approaching, since no commercial supersonic aircraft exist any more. We can make a supersonic jet that is nearly invisible to radar but we don't yet have a technology that will silence that sonic boom if the aircraft exceeds Mach 1.
There are different kinds of "corporate welfare" in existence. Some are within the powers delegated to the federal government, others are not. We can keep the supersonic aircraft research at NASA, where it will be open to the public, or we can move it to DARPA, where it will stay as a military secret for a very long time.
While I agree that there is a lower limit on the distance such an aircraft would make sense I do not agree that it must be so large. A flight from MSP to ORD is 1:20 according to Google Maps, that's not where a supersonic transport would be used.
What might get people to buy tickets is a SFO to NYC flight that takes 2 or 3 hours instead of 5 to 7. But it is more than just the time in the air that determines travel time. What really kills short hop flights and supersonic transport is the wait times at airports. TSA checkpoints, the rarity of flight choices, and how sensitive flight times are to weather and other circumstances makes travel by air lengthy, inconvenient, and therefore expensive.
I think we will see cheap and speedy air travel only when the federal government realizes that their are greater threats to our lives than religious nutjobs with suicidal tendencies. I should be able to drive to the airport and buy a ticket to Chicago on the spot for the next flight that leaves. I should not have to reserve a seat in advance, show a government issued ID, or take off my shoes. I can understand a need for some security, we don't want people bringing gas cans and live chickens on the plane. I'm not sure we should even need metal detectors since I see no need to take people's pocketknives and knitting needles. Pat downs and full body scanners don't make sense on matters of security regardless. Anyway, perhaps that is a rant for another time.
If I can get on a plane with such little hassle then I'd quite likely fly more often. If more people fly then the tickets will get cheaper, if tickets get cheaper then more people will fly. If tickets get cheaper then there is more "room" (economically speaking) for things like supersonic passenger aircraft.
Faster airplanes would be nice and I do believe that there is a market for them but the most effective way, IMHO, to shorten travel times by air is to improve the mechanics of the modern airport, not that of the modern airplane. If we can get that fixed then we might see supersonic flights make sense for not just transatlantic and transcontinental distances but also for interstate travel.
This process requires day light to function, therefore it's potential output is limited by the amount of time the sun shines. Not only is there night but also clouds.
I hate solar power, not just because it is so limited but because so many tree hugger types flock to it. The chemistry of this process is very interesting but if used to convert sunlight to hydrogen then I believe this is a waste of time. Solar power is a distraction from energy production schemes that actually work.
Let's take a look at the technology, it requires carbon nano-tubes laced with platinum. Can we think of a material that is even more expensive than that?
I like nuclear power, especially molten salt reactors. To build those it take low tech materials like Portland cement, nickel alloys, steel, graphite, and salts. The fuel is common thorium and uranium, not the rare U-235 but unenriched uranium. We can run a molten salt reactor day and night and build them to produce many megawatts and still be small enough to move by an over the road truck.
If they can use this high tech hydrogen production process and marry it to a nuclear reactor then we might have something. If we have to set it out in the sun and hope for good weather then I'm not interested.
With the tendency for government drones to think up "cute" acronyms I think they missed a great opportunity in naming this one. In only a few seconds I came up with a better name, the Silent Over-Flight Testing Jet...
the SOFT Jet.
Not a good idea? Reply with one better, this could be fun.
Refrigeration is only for the wealthy. Automobiles are only for the wealthy. Indoor plumbing is only for the wealthy. Computers are only for the wealthy. Going to college is only for the wealthy. Electric cars are only for the wealthy.
Ethanol subsidies are just corporate welfare. Windmill subsidies are just corporate welfare. Solar panel subsidies are just corporate welfare. Electric car subsidies are just corporate welfare. Government backed student loans are just corporate welfare. CFL subsidies are just corporate welfare.
Isn't it funny on how the definition of "wealthy" and "corporate welfare" changes depending on the who, when, and where? There's plenty of evidence that what is now a luxury that only the 1% could afford will eventually become affordable for the other 99%.
Oh, and let's pick on just the Republicans because the Democrats NEVER give free stuff to corporations.
If there is something to complain about with government spending then I can give much better examples than funding NASA to research high speed flight. Researching high speed flight is EXACTLY the kind of thing that NASA was created to do.
Go soak your head.