Agreed. I find it difficult to believe any parent, even one so opposed to technology as those in BSG, would toss such simple tools as pots, pans, wrenches, hammers, knives, etc. into the sun. Even such simple technology as radios, firearms, lights, refrigeration, and such would serve very useful in assuring survival. I could imagine them abandoning the prospect of returning to space travel but they have established that many of their craft are capable of landing on a planet. Land the craft and use them as shelter for as long as they prove suitable. Even the Galactica, as busted up as it was, could be salvaged for the material for building shelters and tools.
Perhaps they learned some kind of lesson that would make living out of spacecraft that are parked on the surface as counterproductive but I missed it in the "New Caprica" story arc.
While I don't agree with "shoot first" laws that some American states have implemented, it is not always the case that the first person to use violence is in the wrong.
There is no such thing as a "shoot first" law in the USA, that is just a term used by the gun control crowd to instill fear. There are laws that are called "stand your ground" laws or "castle doctrine". The "castle doctrine" states that one is not required to retreat from their home if someone should enter uninvited, also if someone enters uninvited it can be assumed that they intend harm and lethal force can be used without criminal penalties and provides protection from civil penalty. "Stand your ground" is an extension of the castle doctrine in that one that is in a place legally (generally home, business, or public space) may defend themselves against harm with lethal force without fear of legal or civil penalty.
These laws have been put in place since it became common for the families of dead criminals to sue the killers for damages. The "stand your ground" laws put an end to the attempts to profit from those defending themselves from their attackers.
People have the right to stand their ground and yes, use violence when they are in danger.
Then you obviously have no problem with those so called "shoot first" laws.
at 0 degrees F the efficiency is worse than electric resistive heat.
This is a matter of choosing the right working fluids and pressures. The freezer in my house happily removes heat from 0 degree F air.
I didn't say it wouldn't work just that it is inefficient. You are also comparing a freezer (a cooling element) to a heat pump (while working as a heating element). We do not have any technology to cool other than a heat pump, but we do have other technologies to heat. It is very difficult to make a heating element more efficient than resistive heat while also maintaining the portability required for an automobile.
Solar panels are quite expensive and I doubt it would provide sufficient power to dehumidify a car.
The idea is that it would work slowly, constantly.
That does not address the cost and I realize it would work constantly. While the dehumidifier is constantly trying to dry out the air in the car there is humid air seeping in. My point is that the dehumidifier is not likely to be powerful enough to keep up. A solar panel that would be small enough to fit on the car is unlikely to provide enough power to do much more than run a small fan.
Double paned windows would be impossible to defrost since the cold outer pane would never get warm enough to keep freezing rain from accumulating. That "waste" heat isn't exactly wasted.
You misunderstand. Yes, they would help insulate the car's interior from its exterior if necessary, but my suggestion was that it would be easier to heat them from the inside (the middle). This would let you defrost them faster and with less energy than a normal window.
Yes, I did misunderstand. I fail to see the advantage since that warm air you are pumping in between the two pieces of glass must go somewhere, presumably it would be vented into the cabin of the automobile. All you are doing is directing the air over the glass, which is exactly what is already done with current defrost vents in the dash board of every modern automobile.
Cooling is going to have to be by use of some kind of heat pump.
For cooling to near or below outside ambient temps, yes. For the initial cooling of a car that's been parked in the sun, a fanned vent or A/C economizer would be helpful.
Which can also be accomplished by opening the windows once you've entered the car and close them again once the A/C has had a chance to wind up to speed. Some cars already have the option to exchange the air constantly while it sits to keep the temperature from reaching extremes.
All the gadgets I suggest would of course only be practical if they can be cheap enough, small enough, and be of enough positive benefit. But some things that are being written off as impractical would be practical if they were cheaply mass-produced.
Perhaps, but I think for much of what you propose the laws of physics are against you.
Heating via heat pump - this can be 4x more efficient than resistive heat, and a heat pump designed to be operated in reverse can do your A/C too.
I have a heat pump on my house. It also operates in reverse to cool. I also have a natural gas furnace since when the temperature drops below 20 degrees F the heat pump efficiency drops too low to be economical. If I was to bypass that temperature lockout I could run it in colder temperatures but at 0 degrees F the efficiency is worse than electric resistive heat.
Continuous dehumidification - perhaps using power from a small solar panel to run a small dehumidifier which drains outside, or reheating some silica gel when the car is plugged into the grid (again, venting the moisture outside). Lowering the wet bulb temperature inside the car reduces the need to use heat to unfog windows.
Solar panels are quite expensive and I doubt it would provide sufficient power to dehumidify a car. A dehumidifier is just another heat pump, efficiency sucks if the temperature differential is against you. Even if it could be done cheaply and effectively too low of humidity is quite uncomfortable. When the relative humidity drops below about 30% there are problems with static electricity, cracked skin, and probably not too good on seals and adhesives in a car.
Double-paned windows - these would be bulkier and more expensive to produce, but you could quickly heat just the insides of them. They would also be much quieter.
Double paned windows would be impossible to defrost since the cold outer pane would never get warm enough to keep freezing rain from accumulating. That "waste" heat isn't exactly wasted. Ever see those new LED stop lights get covered with snow and ice? Ever see that happen with the old incandescent ones?
Heated seats - directly heat the passengers' cores instead of everything else in the car.
I'm too cheap to have heated seats in my car but my Dad is not. It's kind of nice since it warms up a cold car quickly but I usually end up with a hot ass and cold feet. The seats are going to be heated with inefficient, and inexpensive, resistive heating or with more expensive, and less effective, heat pumps.
In college I worked on the solar car project there, and I used to chat with an electric car group when I worked in Texas. When asked about heating the car their answer was something along the line of, "We're in Texas!" A more serious response was usually that resistive heat was used since it was light, easy, and cheap. The power used was a concern but the alternative was a very unsafe and uncomfortable ride. I just don't think there will be an effective alternative to resistive heat in an all electric car.
Cooling is going to have to be by use of some kind of heat pump. That will take considerable power compared to resistive heat but still minimal compared to the energy required to move the car. Even if you do not use the air conditioning to achieve more range it will be at the expense of an uncomfortable, and potentially unsafe, ride.
I guess that is a long way to say that if there was a cheaper and/or more effective way to address these issues then they would have been tried already on more traditional modes of transport.
My power outlet works just fine without a hydrogen tank in my house.
There are things in my house that use energy sources other than electricity. I have a natural gas furnace and water heater. I've heard of the mixing of hydrogen gas with natural gas to stretch out the natural gas while avoiding the hydrogen embrittlement to metal pipes that comes with using pure hydrogen.
A electric car that I can just plug into the power outlet seems a lot more convenient to me then one into which I have to inject hydrogen.
Then there is the use of a hydrogen/methane mix in natural gas cars. Honda already has one on the market. The advantage there is that the range of the Honda is about 300 miles and costs about the same as the gasoline version. To get that kind of range on electricity requires the use of some very expensive batteries that contain toxic and volatile chemicals and take hours to recharge.
The big problem I see with hydrogen is that I just don't see how it would be more effective building a completly new infrastructure to ship hydrogen around, when we already have a perfectly fine infrastructure to move electricity around.
Oh, and there is already the infrastructure to pipe natural gas around.
Like you I tend to be very skeptical of news that claims to use hydrogen as a new energy source. What I am no longer skeptical about is the use of hydrogen as a means of energy storage and transmission. Right now most hydrogen is produced from natural gas. If we can figure out a cheap way to get hydrogen from water than we can use that to make ammonia (which can be used as a fuel or as a fertilizer), used to make hydrocarbon fuels (take a carbon rich item like coal, agricultural waste, or household waste and run it through the Fischer-Tropsch process), stored on site to be burned for peak energy demand, and mixed with natural gas to be used as fuel.
Nuclear power may not replace hydrocarbon fuels directly but hydrocarbon fuels can be produced from nuclear power. To make the hydrocarbons that are so convenient for things like making planes fly and boats tread water takes three things, hydrogen, carbon, and energy. Once you have a powerful baseload energy source like nuclear power the hydrogen and carbon can be squeezed out of abundant items like seawater and household garbage.
This is not new technology. Synthesizing hydrocarbon techniques have been around for about one hundred years.
Yes, we are addicted to coal and gasoline... just as I am addicted to food and water. We need energy to have a modern civilized society. I am not convinced that eliminating the use of coal and oil is such a great idea. That is because that cheap energy derived from coal and oil has brought about the lifestyle that we (in "western" society) enjoy and other nations tend to want to have.
Those of us with the luxury of nuclear technology, silicon refining capability, and computer controlled manufacturing can experiment with things like wind, solar, and nuclear sources of power. Those that are living in grass huts and have primitive (by our standards) metal working capability do not have the luxury to experiment. If they have coal and oil in the ground they are going to use it. Telling them that they cannot have internal combustion engines because of some distant threat of global warming, sea levels rising, and the terrific storms that tend to follow will fall on deaf ears. The global temperature rising by one degree and sea levels rising by one foot in the next decade does not compare to the next meal.
The unintended consequence of the efforts to save humanity through reducing CO2 induced global warming is that people will die because they do not have access to electricity, heat, transportation, and refrigeration.
I have a better idea than experimenting with geoengineering, deal with the climate change regardless of the cause. The reason I say that is not only because I am not convinced of human induced global warming but because even if we stop producing CO2 (outside of actually breathing) today the effects of that CO2 will be with us for a very long time.
Sea level rise could be because of increased insolation melting glaciers, or increased greenhouse gasses, or because the Earth's core is cooling (and therefore shrinking). The solution in my mind is the same, move inland.
The same with climatic temperature rise, adapt the crops grown in the area, get air conditioning if you don't already, etc.
If we want geoengineering to be successful we will need the cooperation of many nations. Some nations will not participate because of the cost. Some nations will not participate because they want global warming. (Take Canada or Russia for example, large areas of land could turn from frozen wastelands into fertile cropland.) Some may not participate because of the principle of national sovereignty, they don't want some outside influence telling them how to run their country.
I'm OK with reducing our use of coal and oil but not at the cost of reducing our standard of living. I was just hearing on the radio this week about how the coal waste is threatening municipal water supplies. (I don't recall where.) If we can move to solar, wind, and nuclear power then we will no longer have the threat to our water quality. Problem is determining the cost of moving to another energy source vs. dealing with the coal waste in a more responsible manner. It may make more sense to just dispose of the waste elsewhere.
Importing something on the order of one TRILLION dollars of oil per year is an economic disaster for the USA. Solutions to that problem include domestic sources of oil, electric transport (cars and/or light rail), synthetic fuel (which would require another energy source such as nuclear), conservation and efficiency improvements, and probably more I cannot come up with right now.
(Corn ethanol and soybean diesel fuel is just trading one economic and environmental disaster for another.)
I agree that burning coal and oil have known negative effects. NOT burning coal and oil has known negative effects. In my mind the negative effects of burning the coal and oil is nothing compared to the negative effects of not burning coal and oil.
Nuclear power is safe, practical (as in we have the technology now), and cheap (if we can get past all the politics surrounding it). The hydrogen economy is coming but not how many imagine. As pointed out in the parent post hydrogen storage is a pain. Storage of pure hydrogen requires large heavy containers which makes transport by anything other than ships very expensive. It would be much cheaper and easier to use the hydrogen to produce ammonia or methane for transport than to try to liquefy it for transport excepting esoteric applications like spacecraft fuel.
I think that nuclear power as a primary energy source is practically inevitable. There is enough nuclear fuel on this planet to last humanity for one thousand years given current technology and energy usage rates. That time could be expanded until the sun consumes the atmosphere if we can figure out nuclear fusion and/or more efficient breeder fission reactors.
I see great things in wind power and energy storage technologies such as the battery project in TFA. I also see great problems with wind power, even with load balancing technologies like batteries, pumped hydroelectric, and flywheel storage. With a nice mix of wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear we can have cheap and safe energy.
As long as oil and natural gas is less than or on parity with its competition in either energy or money returned on investment (both of which are linked) we will continue to drill for more. I'm not generally opposed to drilling for oil but if the goal is to no longer drill for our liquid fuels then we need to find viable means to produce our fuels from things like wind and nuclear power. Luckily for us we already have the technology we just need to make it cheap. The best way (IMHO) to make liquid fuels cheap is by economies of scale. Build large nuclear power plants to crack hydrogen from water. Build large methane, ammonia, and synthetic fuel plants to use the hydrogen. Once we have the synthetic diesel fuel and gasoline (cheaper than we can get it out of the ground) we can stop importing it from countries that don't like us so much.
Assuming concrete is reasonably environmentally friendly this would be a pretty clean solution.
Concrete has a massive carbon footprint. The calcination of lime releases a lot of CO2, on top of the fossil fuels used in manufacture and transport.
The assumption is that CO2 output is a bad thing. I believe that CO2 is a very minor greenhouse gas (compared to water vapor) but a very large contributor to plant life. More CO2 means more plants, healthier plants, more productive plants, and plants growing in places that they may not grow if CO2 is not as abundant. I believe that CO2 cannot be considered a "pollutant" unless it reaches levels dangerous to animal life (which is somewhere around 0.5%), up to that point it is very beneficial to our lives since it is beneficial to plant life. Right now the atmosphere contains less than.04% CO2. We would have to increase the CO2 concentration by ten times before it becomes a hazard. Considering that plant life feeds on CO2, and do so in increasing quantity as its concentration increases, I believe that we can produce as much CO2 as we want with no adverse affect on the environment.
(You should have noticed by now that I placed the condition "I believe" on my statements above. I know many disagree with me. I have read and heard many facts and opinions on both sides of the CO2 as a pollutant argument and I have been convinced of my stance. If you don't believe as I do then you are going to have to produce some very concrete and convincing arguments to change my mind.)
Goes to show that if you need your papers in order to do something then only the criminals will have their papers in order. I hear this all the time, "But how do we know if a terrorist is getting on the plane unless we ask for identification?" Answer is, you don't because: (A) Terrorists tend to get fake ID, (B) If they don't get fake ID it's because they know that since this is their first time committing a crime they will not be on any list, and (C) Most times it does not matter who's ID they use because for most terrorists this will be their last time committing a crime.
(For those of you not-so-quick types, the ID of the offender is irrelevant because it is a suicide mission. Last time I checked successful suicide murderers do not become repeat offenders.)
The alternative to the diesel fuel we pump out of the ground is diesel fuel we make using nuclear power to synthesize. There are people doing research in, essentially, squeezing diesel fuel out of the air. The CO2 and water we produced burning those fossil fuels is now airborne, given enough power we can squeeze that back out of the air. There are working experiments that do that using solar power. Problem is that solar power is too dilute and unreliable to make such a process feasible except in a last ditch all else has failed effort. We have enough fissile material on Earth to last the human race possibly millions of years. If we figure out nuclear fusion power we will have enough power until the sun evaporates our atmosphere.
Here's the problem with synthetic fuels, it doesn't hurt. No one has to change a thing in the cars they drive or the filling stations they visit. There are too sides to this "save the planet" mentality. There are the anti-industry socialist dreamers, and the power mongers that exploit them to get rich and famous.
Nuclear power is probably the safest, cleanest, lowest carbon footprint power source we have. The waste problem is only a problem because we made it one. It's the fear and politics of nuclear proliferation that can be addressed easily with proper security of the fuel. Any by-product that is fissile goes back into the reactor. Any non-fissile byproduct has such a short half-life and small quantity that it could be handled easily by throwing it in a salt mine for a hundred years. Given that we build bridges and dams to last that long I don't see how we can't build a hole in the ground to last that long. Assuming we don't find some kind of industrial use for the waste first.
We have the technology to have a modern society and not destroy the environment. In fact most of the technology is at least 50 years old. Nuclear fission, hydroelectric dams, solar thermal, photovoltaic panels, and windmills in the right mix can provide the electricity we need. Take that electricity and synthesize hydrocarbons for vehicle fuel. Throw in a pinch of some old fashioned renewable bio-fuel (AKA wood, ethanol, etc.) and we are done.
The densest and safest means we have to store hydrogen is by attaching it to a carbon atom. We may have our "hydrogen economy" in the future but, IMHO, it will look surprisingly like our "petroleum economy".
"is that why you're always misplacing your keys and finding the phone in the fridge?"
Thanks! I was just looking for the phone to call my parents about Thanksgiving dinner. Now, what was their phone number again? I can't seem to find the phone book. OH, gotta go. I warmed up the oven for supper but for some reason I see smoke coming from the kitchen.
Re-read the second amendment, it says the MILITIA is to be regulated. The right of the PEOPLE to bear arms shall NOT BE INFRINGED.
Once the keeping of arms is regulated then it becomes difficult or impossible to create a militia. That was the tactic used in colonial times and brought our second amendment into being. By regulating arms the government can regulate the ability of a state, county, or individual from defending themselves from others. The government can also regulate militias into oblivion.
You also need to educate yourself on the federal definition of a militia. There is the "organized militia" which includes the National Guard and the various state defense forces, the "unorganized militia" which includes every able bodied male from age 17 to 45 years, and the "reserve militia" which includes just about everyone else. So, yes, the militia does include a random person with a gun.
Think about it for a bit, how do you propose a state raise a militia against an oppressive federal government if the federal government has forbade the keeping of arms unless you are employed by said federal government? Even if you think an oppressive federal government is impossible given free elections and so on how about foreign invaders? I've heard the Mexican Army likes to hop over our border on occasion and hassle locals but the federal government has banned possession of weapons effective against the armor they tend to carry.
I'm not sure what to think of this law as it is based on INTENT. If I understand the law correctly I can post, publish, and otherwise disseminate the production of nuclear explosives, armored vehicles, battleship deck guns, nerve gas just so long as my intent is not to tell people how to break the law. So, I'll just put at the top of every page "How to Defend the USA Against Foreign Aggressors."
Not good enough? How about my instructions to building explosives large and small headed with, "Explosive Construction: Stump Removal to Granite Mining"?
Still not good enough? How about, "Military History: American Weapons Used from Civil War to World War II"? Of course my lesson would include drawings of sufficient detail for the reconstruction of such weapons by any competent machinist.
Would my proposed lessons in national defense, heavy industry, or history fall outside of the law? My intent was quite clear, make people better informed, safer, and more productive members of society. I question the intent of the law since we already have laws against violence and inciting violence. If the law is enforced to the letter then we have nothing to fear, right?
I don't want the GOVERNMENT taking x-rays of my luggage without a warrant. If the airlines want to make sure I don't have 1 ounce too much of toothpaste then they can search my bags and x-ray all they want. Just so happens that if the airlines choose to treat passengers like criminals I may choose another airline.
If the AIRLINES are so concerned about the security of their aircraft then the AIRLINES should be providing the security for those aircraft.
I've wondered many times why federal agents are policing private property.
Pilots are required to holster and lock their Glock whenever they open the door to the cabin. Whoever thought that was a good idea needs to find a job that doesn't involve security. If you want to get into the flight deck just wait until one of the crew needs to take a piss. They will, as required by law, lock up their weapons and then unlock the door. At that point you rush in through the door. I'm sure the pilots will be able to unlock, draw, and fire their Glocks with impeccable accuracy while they are being strangled with their own shoelaces.
This policy was revealed when a pilot put a hole in the plane when locking up his weapon. You see the holster provided has this handy little hole through the trigger guard where one is to place the padlock to prevent its removal. In case you didn't know the trigger happens to be inside the trigger guard, with the padlock also in the trigger guard there is a non-zero chance the padlock could fire the weapon. Thankfully the pilot had the weapon pointed at away from any critical part of the plane's operation (like the co-pilot) when it fired and landed safely.
I think that having armed aircraft crews are a good idea. Problem is that the rules involved leave huge holes in the security of the plane. Unnecessary handling of their weapons puts the plane and crew (and therefore passengers) at risk. Locking up weapons when the door is opened is not only stupid but completely backwards. I would think that someone should have the gun drawn and ready when the door is opened as that is the point the crew is at greatest risk.
The cure for male baldness has been known for quite some time, perhaps millennia. The cure comes with side affects, though. It's been long known that testosterone causes male pattern baldness, remove the source of that hormone and you reduce the chances of baldness immensely. That's right gentlemen, eunuchs do not go bald.
"Citizens of New York who prefer not to carry an identifying RFID chip can still get an old-style license."
Wait a second here.. the RFID licenses are $30 more expensive than regular licenses, yet the residents have the option to get the cheaper RFID-free license? Who's going to choose to willingly pay more to be tracked more effectively?
Let me guess. The state isn't telling them that they can choose to get the cheaper older style of license? Brilliant!
Aero
I was wondering the same thing, why spend $30 for the new New York license when you can get the new credit card sized passport card from the DHS for $25? I mean if they are going to track you at least spend less money to let them do it.
On a more serious note... I thought the requirement for a passport to cross into Canada was quite unreasonable. The state issues identification to its citizens but the border patrol requires proof of citizenship along with ID to re-enter the USA. The assumption used to be that only citizens got IDs but when that assumption was proven false the DHS started to require a passport and offered the new passport card (vs. the ICAO standard book) to make it more convenient. I started to wonder why the states didn't put proof of citizenship on the state issued IDs. In most cases it's the state that determines if one is a citizen (since it is the state that issues birth certificates). How hard is it to put those two pieces of information on the same card? Apparently not hard at all, they just needed the proper motivation.
Now the question is, what motivated these border states to start to issue an ID that proves citizenship? Threat of RealID? Money? (Now they can collect the $25-$30 instead of the DHS.) Consumer demand?
Might the Russians decide to sabotage the ISS? How badly do they need us to keep the thing running? Sounds like they don't need us at all.
Here's a wacky idea so bear with me. Could the Russians "steal" the ISS? They have the capability to dock with the ISS but we will not (without their cooperation) between 2011 and 2014. That date of our being unable to reach the station may come sooner if Russia becomes even less "friendly" and the date we can reach the station might be pushed back because of technical difficulties, further budget diversions, etc.
What would they do with the ISS if given free reign over its operation for four years? What COULD they do with the ISS in four years? They could arm it. They could turn it into a spying platform. They could let it rot and fall into the ocean.
I'm sure someone is thinking, why would they arm it? What could they possibly shoot from orbit that they can't already shoot from the ground? If they start to militarize it as a platform for spying then it becomes a target. They might feel the need to put an anti missile defense system to keep the US Navy from putting a SM-3 in a coincident orbit.
That's all crazy talk. The Russians would never use ISS as a military platform, right?
But, to the extent that the public expects some measure of anonymity in a public library, it strikes me as a very bad PR decision.
I remember reading another article on how some librarian association or another was fighting tooth and nail about keeping records of what books were checked out by whom away from law enforcement without warrant. It baffled me why they were doing this until I realized they were fighting for their very existence. If goons with badges can go about asking for records of who reads what on a whim the police can effectively shutter a library by flooding it with requests for records. While the staff is running around to satisfy the whims of goons with badges nothing productive can be done and the people will never enter a library again for fear that yet another book was flagged as "bad" for public consumption and anyone reading it must be called in for questioning.
So, I agree, this is a very bad PR move. People expect to be able to read whatever they wish without some government agent looking over their shoulder.
I think I know why the military, specifically the Navy, is interested in rail guns. A nuclear powered ship is never short on electrical power. They are always short on storage. Take out the need to store gunpowder and you gain storage space. The reduced fire hazard is a major bonus.
Anything that wishes to compete with the rail gun must be able to run on electricity (or perhaps steam) to be compatible with the "electric navy" plan. Have selectable power/range. Also have size/weight/cost comparable with rail guns.
With that in mind I can see a variation on this idea can be desirable for the Navy. One possibility is to make the gun run off the same fuel as the engine for smaller, diesel powered, ships. (There are still plenty of these, BTW, and likely to stick around for a very long time.) To get a gun to fire off of fuel oil would require mixing with an oxidizer, a fire hazard that an electric weapon does not need.
Use of a weapon like this in a tank or self-propelled artillery may be an easy sell. Have the projectile with the oxidizer and primer attached and the fuel from the vehicle as propellant. That way the range/power can be adjusted by the amount of fuel added. One problem I see is that the military like to see a weapon fire even with massive failure of support equipment. Having a pump fail would render the weapon useless where a standard gunpowder weapon can be manhandled into position and fired with a spring loaded striker. No external power required.
I guess the short story is that even though it has many pros, it may not be enough to make it better than what they have or what rail guns, directed energy weapons, etc. can offer.
My parents live in east bumfuck, farmland while one of my brothers lives in south bumfuck, farmland and at both houses they have DSL. Satellite has been an option for a while now. Cell phone networks as well. Both are getting faster and cheaper as infrastructure is built up and competition sets in.
BPL is a dead end. With the interference it produces along with the expense it just doesn't make sense.
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Agreed. I find it difficult to believe any parent, even one so opposed to technology as those in BSG, would toss such simple tools as pots, pans, wrenches, hammers, knives, etc. into the sun. Even such simple technology as radios, firearms, lights, refrigeration, and such would serve very useful in assuring survival. I could imagine them abandoning the prospect of returning to space travel but they have established that many of their craft are capable of landing on a planet. Land the craft and use them as shelter for as long as they prove suitable. Even the Galactica, as busted up as it was, could be salvaged for the material for building shelters and tools.
Perhaps they learned some kind of lesson that would make living out of spacecraft that are parked on the surface as counterproductive but I missed it in the "New Caprica" story arc.
While I don't agree with "shoot first" laws that some American states have implemented, it is not always the case that the first person to use violence is in the wrong.
There is no such thing as a "shoot first" law in the USA, that is just a term used by the gun control crowd to instill fear. There are laws that are called "stand your ground" laws or "castle doctrine". The "castle doctrine" states that one is not required to retreat from their home if someone should enter uninvited, also if someone enters uninvited it can be assumed that they intend harm and lethal force can be used without criminal penalties and provides protection from civil penalty. "Stand your ground" is an extension of the castle doctrine in that one that is in a place legally (generally home, business, or public space) may defend themselves against harm with lethal force without fear of legal or civil penalty.
These laws have been put in place since it became common for the families of dead criminals to sue the killers for damages. The "stand your ground" laws put an end to the attempts to profit from those defending themselves from their attackers.
People have the right to stand their ground and yes, use violence when they are in danger.
Then you obviously have no problem with those so called "shoot first" laws.
at 0 degrees F the efficiency is worse than electric resistive heat.
This is a matter of choosing the right working fluids and pressures. The freezer in my house happily removes heat from 0 degree F air.
I didn't say it wouldn't work just that it is inefficient. You are also comparing a freezer (a cooling element) to a heat pump (while working as a heating element). We do not have any technology to cool other than a heat pump, but we do have other technologies to heat. It is very difficult to make a heating element more efficient than resistive heat while also maintaining the portability required for an automobile.
Solar panels are quite expensive and I doubt it would provide sufficient power to dehumidify a car.
The idea is that it would work slowly, constantly.
That does not address the cost and I realize it would work constantly. While the dehumidifier is constantly trying to dry out the air in the car there is humid air seeping in. My point is that the dehumidifier is not likely to be powerful enough to keep up. A solar panel that would be small enough to fit on the car is unlikely to provide enough power to do much more than run a small fan.
Double paned windows would be impossible to defrost since the cold outer pane would never get warm enough to keep freezing rain from accumulating. That "waste" heat isn't exactly wasted.
You misunderstand. Yes, they would help insulate the car's interior from its exterior if necessary, but my suggestion was that it would be easier to heat them from the inside (the middle). This would let you defrost them faster and with less energy than a normal window.
Yes, I did misunderstand. I fail to see the advantage since that warm air you are pumping in between the two pieces of glass must go somewhere, presumably it would be vented into the cabin of the automobile. All you are doing is directing the air over the glass, which is exactly what is already done with current defrost vents in the dash board of every modern automobile.
Cooling is going to have to be by use of some kind of heat pump.
For cooling to near or below outside ambient temps, yes. For the initial cooling of a car that's been parked in the sun, a fanned vent or A/C economizer would be helpful.
Which can also be accomplished by opening the windows once you've entered the car and close them again once the A/C has had a chance to wind up to speed. Some cars already have the option to exchange the air constantly while it sits to keep the temperature from reaching extremes.
All the gadgets I suggest would of course only be practical if they can be cheap enough, small enough, and be of enough positive benefit. But some things that are being written off as impractical would be practical if they were cheaply mass-produced.
Perhaps, but I think for much of what you propose the laws of physics are against you.
Heating via heat pump - this can be 4x more efficient than resistive heat, and a heat pump designed to be operated in reverse can do your A/C too.
I have a heat pump on my house. It also operates in reverse to cool. I also have a natural gas furnace since when the temperature drops below 20 degrees F the heat pump efficiency drops too low to be economical. If I was to bypass that temperature lockout I could run it in colder temperatures but at 0 degrees F the efficiency is worse than electric resistive heat.
Continuous dehumidification - perhaps using power from a small solar panel to run a small dehumidifier which drains outside, or reheating some silica gel when the car is plugged into the grid (again, venting the moisture outside). Lowering the wet bulb temperature inside the car reduces the need to use heat to unfog windows.
Solar panels are quite expensive and I doubt it would provide sufficient power to dehumidify a car. A dehumidifier is just another heat pump, efficiency sucks if the temperature differential is against you. Even if it could be done cheaply and effectively too low of humidity is quite uncomfortable. When the relative humidity drops below about 30% there are problems with static electricity, cracked skin, and probably not too good on seals and adhesives in a car.
Double-paned windows - these would be bulkier and more expensive to produce, but you could quickly heat just the insides of them. They would also be much quieter.
Double paned windows would be impossible to defrost since the cold outer pane would never get warm enough to keep freezing rain from accumulating. That "waste" heat isn't exactly wasted. Ever see those new LED stop lights get covered with snow and ice? Ever see that happen with the old incandescent ones?
Heated seats - directly heat the passengers' cores instead of everything else in the car.
I'm too cheap to have heated seats in my car but my Dad is not. It's kind of nice since it warms up a cold car quickly but I usually end up with a hot ass and cold feet. The seats are going to be heated with inefficient, and inexpensive, resistive heating or with more expensive, and less effective, heat pumps.
In college I worked on the solar car project there, and I used to chat with an electric car group when I worked in Texas. When asked about heating the car their answer was something along the line of, "We're in Texas!" A more serious response was usually that resistive heat was used since it was light, easy, and cheap. The power used was a concern but the alternative was a very unsafe and uncomfortable ride. I just don't think there will be an effective alternative to resistive heat in an all electric car.
Cooling is going to have to be by use of some kind of heat pump. That will take considerable power compared to resistive heat but still minimal compared to the energy required to move the car. Even if you do not use the air conditioning to achieve more range it will be at the expense of an uncomfortable, and potentially unsafe, ride.
I guess that is a long way to say that if there was a cheaper and/or more effective way to address these issues then they would have been tried already on more traditional modes of transport.
My power outlet works just fine without a hydrogen tank in my house.
There are things in my house that use energy sources other than electricity. I have a natural gas furnace and water heater. I've heard of the mixing of hydrogen gas with natural gas to stretch out the natural gas while avoiding the hydrogen embrittlement to metal pipes that comes with using pure hydrogen.
A electric car that I can just plug into the power outlet seems a lot more convenient to me then one into which I have to inject hydrogen.
Then there is the use of a hydrogen/methane mix in natural gas cars. Honda already has one on the market. The advantage there is that the range of the Honda is about 300 miles and costs about the same as the gasoline version. To get that kind of range on electricity requires the use of some very expensive batteries that contain toxic and volatile chemicals and take hours to recharge.
The big problem I see with hydrogen is that I just don't see how it would be more effective building a completly new infrastructure to ship hydrogen around, when we already have a perfectly fine infrastructure to move electricity around.
Oh, and there is already the infrastructure to pipe natural gas around.
Like you I tend to be very skeptical of news that claims to use hydrogen as a new energy source. What I am no longer skeptical about is the use of hydrogen as a means of energy storage and transmission. Right now most hydrogen is produced from natural gas. If we can figure out a cheap way to get hydrogen from water than we can use that to make ammonia (which can be used as a fuel or as a fertilizer), used to make hydrocarbon fuels (take a carbon rich item like coal, agricultural waste, or household waste and run it through the Fischer-Tropsch process), stored on site to be burned for peak energy demand, and mixed with natural gas to be used as fuel.
110 volts * 15 amps = 1650 watts.
5 volts * 1.5 amps = 7.5 watts.
Looks to me more like you need 220 USB ports.
No, you don't need more ports. You will have to wait about 3 years for your SUV to charge up though.
Nuclear power may not replace hydrocarbon fuels directly but hydrocarbon fuels can be produced from nuclear power. To make the hydrocarbons that are so convenient for things like making planes fly and boats tread water takes three things, hydrogen, carbon, and energy. Once you have a powerful baseload energy source like nuclear power the hydrogen and carbon can be squeezed out of abundant items like seawater and household garbage.
This is not new technology. Synthesizing hydrocarbon techniques have been around for about one hundred years.
Yes, we are addicted to coal and gasoline... just as I am addicted to food and water. We need energy to have a modern civilized society. I am not convinced that eliminating the use of coal and oil is such a great idea. That is because that cheap energy derived from coal and oil has brought about the lifestyle that we (in "western" society) enjoy and other nations tend to want to have.
Those of us with the luxury of nuclear technology, silicon refining capability, and computer controlled manufacturing can experiment with things like wind, solar, and nuclear sources of power. Those that are living in grass huts and have primitive (by our standards) metal working capability do not have the luxury to experiment. If they have coal and oil in the ground they are going to use it. Telling them that they cannot have internal combustion engines because of some distant threat of global warming, sea levels rising, and the terrific storms that tend to follow will fall on deaf ears. The global temperature rising by one degree and sea levels rising by one foot in the next decade does not compare to the next meal.
The unintended consequence of the efforts to save humanity through reducing CO2 induced global warming is that people will die because they do not have access to electricity, heat, transportation, and refrigeration.
I have a better idea than experimenting with geoengineering, deal with the climate change regardless of the cause. The reason I say that is not only because I am not convinced of human induced global warming but because even if we stop producing CO2 (outside of actually breathing) today the effects of that CO2 will be with us for a very long time.
Sea level rise could be because of increased insolation melting glaciers, or increased greenhouse gasses, or because the Earth's core is cooling (and therefore shrinking). The solution in my mind is the same, move inland.
The same with climatic temperature rise, adapt the crops grown in the area, get air conditioning if you don't already, etc.
If we want geoengineering to be successful we will need the cooperation of many nations. Some nations will not participate because of the cost. Some nations will not participate because they want global warming. (Take Canada or Russia for example, large areas of land could turn from frozen wastelands into fertile cropland.) Some may not participate because of the principle of national sovereignty, they don't want some outside influence telling them how to run their country.
I'm OK with reducing our use of coal and oil but not at the cost of reducing our standard of living. I was just hearing on the radio this week about how the coal waste is threatening municipal water supplies. (I don't recall where.) If we can move to solar, wind, and nuclear power then we will no longer have the threat to our water quality. Problem is determining the cost of moving to another energy source vs. dealing with the coal waste in a more responsible manner. It may make more sense to just dispose of the waste elsewhere.
Importing something on the order of one TRILLION dollars of oil per year is an economic disaster for the USA. Solutions to that problem include domestic sources of oil, electric transport (cars and/or light rail), synthetic fuel (which would require another energy source such as nuclear), conservation and efficiency improvements, and probably more I cannot come up with right now.
(Corn ethanol and soybean diesel fuel is just trading one economic and environmental disaster for another.)
I agree that burning coal and oil have known negative effects. NOT burning coal and oil has known negative effects. In my mind the negative effects of burning the coal and oil is nothing compared to the negative effects of not burning coal and oil.
1) A white family of nine people get on a plane.
Well, I tossed an exception right there. White family of nine . . . that's actually really funny!
That describes my family you insensitive clod!
I second that sentiment.
Nuclear power is safe, practical (as in we have the technology now), and cheap (if we can get past all the politics surrounding it). The hydrogen economy is coming but not how many imagine. As pointed out in the parent post hydrogen storage is a pain. Storage of pure hydrogen requires large heavy containers which makes transport by anything other than ships very expensive. It would be much cheaper and easier to use the hydrogen to produce ammonia or methane for transport than to try to liquefy it for transport excepting esoteric applications like spacecraft fuel.
I think that nuclear power as a primary energy source is practically inevitable. There is enough nuclear fuel on this planet to last humanity for one thousand years given current technology and energy usage rates. That time could be expanded until the sun consumes the atmosphere if we can figure out nuclear fusion and/or more efficient breeder fission reactors.
I see great things in wind power and energy storage technologies such as the battery project in TFA. I also see great problems with wind power, even with load balancing technologies like batteries, pumped hydroelectric, and flywheel storage. With a nice mix of wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear we can have cheap and safe energy.
As long as oil and natural gas is less than or on parity with its competition in either energy or money returned on investment (both of which are linked) we will continue to drill for more. I'm not generally opposed to drilling for oil but if the goal is to no longer drill for our liquid fuels then we need to find viable means to produce our fuels from things like wind and nuclear power. Luckily for us we already have the technology we just need to make it cheap. The best way (IMHO) to make liquid fuels cheap is by economies of scale. Build large nuclear power plants to crack hydrogen from water. Build large methane, ammonia, and synthetic fuel plants to use the hydrogen. Once we have the synthetic diesel fuel and gasoline (cheaper than we can get it out of the ground) we can stop importing it from countries that don't like us so much.
Assuming concrete is reasonably environmentally friendly this would be a pretty clean solution.
Concrete has a massive carbon footprint. The calcination of lime releases a lot of CO2, on top of the fossil fuels used in manufacture and transport.
The assumption is that CO2 output is a bad thing. I believe that CO2 is a very minor greenhouse gas (compared to water vapor) but a very large contributor to plant life. More CO2 means more plants, healthier plants, more productive plants, and plants growing in places that they may not grow if CO2 is not as abundant. I believe that CO2 cannot be considered a "pollutant" unless it reaches levels dangerous to animal life (which is somewhere around 0.5%), up to that point it is very beneficial to our lives since it is beneficial to plant life. Right now the atmosphere contains less than .04% CO2. We would have to increase the CO2 concentration by ten times before it becomes a hazard. Considering that plant life feeds on CO2, and do so in increasing quantity as its concentration increases, I believe that we can produce as much CO2 as we want with no adverse affect on the environment.
(You should have noticed by now that I placed the condition "I believe" on my statements above. I know many disagree with me. I have read and heard many facts and opinions on both sides of the CO2 as a pollutant argument and I have been convinced of my stance. If you don't believe as I do then you are going to have to produce some very concrete and convincing arguments to change my mind.)
Goes to show that if you need your papers in order to do something then only the criminals will have their papers in order. I hear this all the time, "But how do we know if a terrorist is getting on the plane unless we ask for identification?" Answer is, you don't because:
(A) Terrorists tend to get fake ID,
(B) If they don't get fake ID it's because they know that since this is their first time committing a crime they will not be on any list, and
(C) Most times it does not matter who's ID they use because for most terrorists this will be their last time committing a crime.
(For those of you not-so-quick types, the ID of the offender is irrelevant because it is a suicide mission. Last time I checked successful suicide murderers do not become repeat offenders.)
The alternative to the diesel fuel we pump out of the ground is diesel fuel we make using nuclear power to synthesize. There are people doing research in, essentially, squeezing diesel fuel out of the air. The CO2 and water we produced burning those fossil fuels is now airborne, given enough power we can squeeze that back out of the air. There are working experiments that do that using solar power. Problem is that solar power is too dilute and unreliable to make such a process feasible except in a last ditch all else has failed effort. We have enough fissile material on Earth to last the human race possibly millions of years. If we figure out nuclear fusion power we will have enough power until the sun evaporates our atmosphere.
Here's the problem with synthetic fuels, it doesn't hurt. No one has to change a thing in the cars they drive or the filling stations they visit. There are too sides to this "save the planet" mentality. There are the anti-industry socialist dreamers, and the power mongers that exploit them to get rich and famous.
Nuclear power is probably the safest, cleanest, lowest carbon footprint power source we have. The waste problem is only a problem because we made it one. It's the fear and politics of nuclear proliferation that can be addressed easily with proper security of the fuel. Any by-product that is fissile goes back into the reactor. Any non-fissile byproduct has such a short half-life and small quantity that it could be handled easily by throwing it in a salt mine for a hundred years. Given that we build bridges and dams to last that long I don't see how we can't build a hole in the ground to last that long. Assuming we don't find some kind of industrial use for the waste first.
We have the technology to have a modern society and not destroy the environment. In fact most of the technology is at least 50 years old. Nuclear fission, hydroelectric dams, solar thermal, photovoltaic panels, and windmills in the right mix can provide the electricity we need. Take that electricity and synthesize hydrocarbons for vehicle fuel. Throw in a pinch of some old fashioned renewable bio-fuel (AKA wood, ethanol, etc.) and we are done.
The densest and safest means we have to store hydrogen is by attaching it to a carbon atom. We may have our "hydrogen economy" in the future but, IMHO, it will look surprisingly like our "petroleum economy".
"is that why you're always misplacing your keys and finding the phone in the fridge?"
Thanks! I was just looking for the phone to call my parents about Thanksgiving dinner. Now, what was their phone number again? I can't seem to find the phone book. OH, gotta go. I warmed up the oven for supper but for some reason I see smoke coming from the kitchen.
Re-read the second amendment, it says the MILITIA is to be regulated. The right of the PEOPLE to bear arms shall NOT BE INFRINGED.
Once the keeping of arms is regulated then it becomes difficult or impossible to create a militia. That was the tactic used in colonial times and brought our second amendment into being. By regulating arms the government can regulate the ability of a state, county, or individual from defending themselves from others. The government can also regulate militias into oblivion.
You also need to educate yourself on the federal definition of a militia. There is the "organized militia" which includes the National Guard and the various state defense forces, the "unorganized militia" which includes every able bodied male from age 17 to 45 years, and the "reserve militia" which includes just about everyone else. So, yes, the militia does include a random person with a gun.
Think about it for a bit, how do you propose a state raise a militia against an oppressive federal government if the federal government has forbade the keeping of arms unless you are employed by said federal government? Even if you think an oppressive federal government is impossible given free elections and so on how about foreign invaders? I've heard the Mexican Army likes to hop over our border on occasion and hassle locals but the federal government has banned possession of weapons effective against the armor they tend to carry.
I'm not sure what to think of this law as it is based on INTENT. If I understand the law correctly I can post, publish, and otherwise disseminate the production of nuclear explosives, armored vehicles, battleship deck guns, nerve gas just so long as my intent is not to tell people how to break the law. So, I'll just put at the top of every page "How to Defend the USA Against Foreign Aggressors."
Not good enough? How about my instructions to building explosives large and small headed with, "Explosive Construction: Stump Removal to Granite Mining"?
Still not good enough? How about, "Military History: American Weapons Used from Civil War to World War II"? Of course my lesson would include drawings of sufficient detail for the reconstruction of such weapons by any competent machinist.
Would my proposed lessons in national defense, heavy industry, or history fall outside of the law? My intent was quite clear, make people better informed, safer, and more productive members of society. I question the intent of the law since we already have laws against violence and inciting violence. If the law is enforced to the letter then we have nothing to fear, right?
I don't want the GOVERNMENT taking x-rays of my luggage without a warrant. If the airlines want to make sure I don't have 1 ounce too much of toothpaste then they can search my bags and x-ray all they want. Just so happens that if the airlines choose to treat passengers like criminals I may choose another airline.
If the AIRLINES are so concerned about the security of their aircraft then the AIRLINES should be providing the security for those aircraft.
I've wondered many times why federal agents are policing private property.
Pilots are required to holster and lock their Glock whenever they open the door to the cabin. Whoever thought that was a good idea needs to find a job that doesn't involve security. If you want to get into the flight deck just wait until one of the crew needs to take a piss. They will, as required by law, lock up their weapons and then unlock the door. At that point you rush in through the door. I'm sure the pilots will be able to unlock, draw, and fire their Glocks with impeccable accuracy while they are being strangled with their own shoelaces.
This policy was revealed when a pilot put a hole in the plane when locking up his weapon. You see the holster provided has this handy little hole through the trigger guard where one is to place the padlock to prevent its removal. In case you didn't know the trigger happens to be inside the trigger guard, with the padlock also in the trigger guard there is a non-zero chance the padlock could fire the weapon. Thankfully the pilot had the weapon pointed at away from any critical part of the plane's operation (like the co-pilot) when it fired and landed safely.
I think that having armed aircraft crews are a good idea. Problem is that the rules involved leave huge holes in the security of the plane. Unnecessary handling of their weapons puts the plane and crew (and therefore passengers) at risk. Locking up weapons when the door is opened is not only stupid but completely backwards. I would think that someone should have the gun drawn and ready when the door is opened as that is the point the crew is at greatest risk.
The cure for male baldness has been known for quite some time, perhaps millennia. The cure comes with side affects, though. It's been long known that testosterone causes male pattern baldness, remove the source of that hormone and you reduce the chances of baldness immensely. That's right gentlemen, eunuchs do not go bald.
"Citizens of New York who prefer not to carry an identifying RFID chip can still get an old-style license."
Wait a second here.. the RFID licenses are $30 more expensive than regular licenses, yet the residents have the option to get the cheaper RFID-free license? Who's going to choose to willingly pay more to be tracked more effectively?
Let me guess. The state isn't telling them that they can choose to get the cheaper older style of license? Brilliant!
Aero
I was wondering the same thing, why spend $30 for the new New York license when you can get the new credit card sized passport card from the DHS for $25? I mean if they are going to track you at least spend less money to let them do it.
On a more serious note... I thought the requirement for a passport to cross into Canada was quite unreasonable. The state issues identification to its citizens but the border patrol requires proof of citizenship along with ID to re-enter the USA. The assumption used to be that only citizens got IDs but when that assumption was proven false the DHS started to require a passport and offered the new passport card (vs. the ICAO standard book) to make it more convenient. I started to wonder why the states didn't put proof of citizenship on the state issued IDs. In most cases it's the state that determines if one is a citizen (since it is the state that issues birth certificates). How hard is it to put those two pieces of information on the same card? Apparently not hard at all, they just needed the proper motivation.
Now the question is, what motivated these border states to start to issue an ID that proves citizenship? Threat of RealID? Money? (Now they can collect the $25-$30 instead of the DHS.) Consumer demand?
Might the Russians decide to sabotage the ISS? How badly do they need us to keep the thing running? Sounds like they don't need us at all.
Here's a wacky idea so bear with me. Could the Russians "steal" the ISS? They have the capability to dock with the ISS but we will not (without their cooperation) between 2011 and 2014. That date of our being unable to reach the station may come sooner if Russia becomes even less "friendly" and the date we can reach the station might be pushed back because of technical difficulties, further budget diversions, etc.
What would they do with the ISS if given free reign over its operation for four years? What COULD they do with the ISS in four years? They could arm it. They could turn it into a spying platform. They could let it rot and fall into the ocean.
I'm sure someone is thinking, why would they arm it? What could they possibly shoot from orbit that they can't already shoot from the ground? If they start to militarize it as a platform for spying then it becomes a target. They might feel the need to put an anti missile defense system to keep the US Navy from putting a SM-3 in a coincident orbit.
That's all crazy talk. The Russians would never use ISS as a military platform, right?
"For those in the US, two degrees kelvin is roughly a bazillgian degrees below zero."
A Brazilian? That's a lot!
But, to the extent that the public expects some measure of anonymity in a public library, it strikes me as a very bad PR decision.
I remember reading another article on how some librarian association or another was fighting tooth and nail about keeping records of what books were checked out by whom away from law enforcement without warrant. It baffled me why they were doing this until I realized they were fighting for their very existence. If goons with badges can go about asking for records of who reads what on a whim the police can effectively shutter a library by flooding it with requests for records. While the staff is running around to satisfy the whims of goons with badges nothing productive can be done and the people will never enter a library again for fear that yet another book was flagged as "bad" for public consumption and anyone reading it must be called in for questioning.
So, I agree, this is a very bad PR move. People expect to be able to read whatever they wish without some government agent looking over their shoulder.
I think I know why the military, specifically the Navy, is interested in rail guns. A nuclear powered ship is never short on electrical power. They are always short on storage. Take out the need to store gunpowder and you gain storage space. The reduced fire hazard is a major bonus.
Anything that wishes to compete with the rail gun must be able to run on electricity (or perhaps steam) to be compatible with the "electric navy" plan. Have selectable power/range. Also have size/weight/cost comparable with rail guns.
With that in mind I can see a variation on this idea can be desirable for the Navy. One possibility is to make the gun run off the same fuel as the engine for smaller, diesel powered, ships. (There are still plenty of these, BTW, and likely to stick around for a very long time.) To get a gun to fire off of fuel oil would require mixing with an oxidizer, a fire hazard that an electric weapon does not need.
Use of a weapon like this in a tank or self-propelled artillery may be an easy sell. Have the projectile with the oxidizer and primer attached and the fuel from the vehicle as propellant. That way the range/power can be adjusted by the amount of fuel added. One problem I see is that the military like to see a weapon fire even with massive failure of support equipment. Having a pump fail would render the weapon useless where a standard gunpowder weapon can be manhandled into position and fired with a spring loaded striker. No external power required.
I guess the short story is that even though it has many pros, it may not be enough to make it better than what they have or what rail guns, directed energy weapons, etc. can offer.
My parents live in east bumfuck, farmland while one of my brothers lives in south bumfuck, farmland and at both houses they have DSL. Satellite has been an option for a while now. Cell phone networks as well. Both are getting faster and cheaper as infrastructure is built up and competition sets in.
BPL is a dead end. With the interference it produces along with the expense it just doesn't make sense.