In the UK Ikea is charging ~$5600 for a basic solar package
$5600 won't get you shit. I ran their cost estimator for shits and giggles, on a random roof in a random average sized UK town, using generous assumptions (single story, etc). Based on the size of the roof, the calculator estimated they would be able to fit a maximum of 16 panels, at a cost of £5,499, which is about $7,200 USD as of today.
Those 16 panels at 270W each will produce a maximum of 4.3 kW at peak. The capacity factor for a solar system in the UK will be 9.7% according to the DECC. Which means that those panels will provide around 3,700 kWh per year. Given that the average UK household uses around 4,000 kWh per year, this system is still unlikely to meet all of the electrical needs of an average house over the course of a year, but at least it's close.
But wait, there's more!
The reason the UK has such low household electrical usage is because pretty much every household has access to natural gas, and they use a LOT of it. Average household gas usage works out to about 15,000 kWh per year. This dwarfs electrical usage. If you actually wanted to produce "an entire households power" like the original asshat claimed, you would therefore need a system which produces about 19,000 kWh annually. Given that our 3,700 kWh Ikea system costs $7,200 USD, it's safe to assume that a system that's 4 times as large would cost about three times as much. So you're looking at spending about $21,000 all in.
throw in battery storage it comes in at ~$9000.
Yes, if we throw in battery storage it becomes even more ridiculously overpriced. £9,780 for the system they offered me, which is $12,835 USD. Again, for a system that only provides about a quarter of an average households power requirements.
These prices will only fall and the panels will only become more efficient over the next couple of decades at least.
Wonderful. Maybe in another 20 years his claim will be true. Today it is not.
You don't have to pay for sunlight? No way! Thanks Dr Science!
Any more useless observations? Like "gas for my car is expensive, but I don't have to pay for wind!"? Or "airplanes have to pay for fuel, but if I throw myself off a building I don't have to pay for gravity!"?
I'm aware of that; I was keeping the math simple because it's a close enough approximation for my purposes, and it's still far better than anything that he has provided (that being nothing whatsoever).
Oh, I heard you. I just couldn't believe someone on Slashdot would be stupid enough to use "hurr durr look outside!" as evidence of an 80% global decline in insect species. That's more the kind of thing one would expect to read on a mommy blog.
I'll just assume you're pregnant and being hormonal.
You're a lying jackass. $4,000 will get you a system that powers a small shack with a dozen lightbulbs and a TV. Anything beyond that is pure fantasy. Minimum cost for me would be $20,000 and that's if I do most of the work myself. Subsidies would offset some of that, but far less than half. Even if subsidies were high enough to bring it down to $4,000 that wouldn't make it a $4,000 system; it would make it a $20,000 system which was paid for mostly by other people.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration the US currently generates 1.4 percent of it's energy from solar, Egypt is about to cover 4% of it's energy needs from solar in one fell swoop.
No, they're not. The capacity factor of solar electric is pretty shit. If we assume that the CF of this plant will equal the best place in the USA (Arizona) then the annual output will be about 19% of the rated output. This means a total of 2,995 gWh per year. Since Egypt currently produces about 170,000 gWh per year of electricity, this new plant will only equal about 1.7% of their total electrical production.
It will of course be an even lower fraction of total energy production.
Should have called bullshit on the original claim instead. The "40%" figure is based on a 2013 study looking at insect collections at a relatively small number of sites in Europe, most of which were either near or actually ON active farms. Trying to pretend that this is somehow indicative aof a global decline... that's just retarded.
Redundancy error correction I expect is used for some of that space.
Quick back of the envelope math says that the difference between the claimed capacity and his observed capacity means that you could have 140 copies of the data on that disc. That's some serious redundancy.
The scientists involved here said "5-10 years with proper funding", which is a science euphemism for "cover my next funding cycle and then we will see". If the technology is viable and there aren't any serious unexpected hurdles to overcome, expect it to be 20 years by the time it hits the market.
You're being a troll or you just don't know anything about this. The current Falcon 9 is more powerful than the original specifications of Falcon Heavy.
No, me pointing out that you're just making shit up is not "trolling". You clearly have no clue what you're talking about. Either provide a reference for this insane claim, or fuck off.
This is because of improvements in the rocket and a stretch in its height.
Those improvements were all done back in 2011-2013, when they went from Version 1 to the Version 1.1. In the intervening upgrades from 1.1 to 1.2 (aka "full thrust) to Blocks 3, 4, and 5, there has been no change to it's "stretch". Meanwhile the first FH didn't fly until 2018.
If the original design of the FH was based on the earliest 1.0 model of the F9, it still would have been able to lift more than a modern F9. The early F9 had a maximum payload to LEO of 10 tonnes. The current version has a max to LEO of 22.8 tonnes (expendable). The FH, based on the current variant, has a Max to LEO of 63.8 tonnes (expendable).
Some quick math says that the FH based on the current F9 can lift about 2.8 times as much as a current F9. Applying that to the original F9 means that an FH based on the original F9 should have been able to lift 28 tonnes to LEO. This is still 5-6 tonnes more than the current F9 can do. So, again, if you're going to keep insisting that the current F9 can lift more than the original FH was designed to lift, you are going to have to provide some citation, or some math. Repeating yourself over and over again while linking to sources which contradict you doesn't really get you anywhere.
All of the missions previously scheduled for Falcon Heavy were transferred to Falcon 9 because of this.
Kind of. The actual reason they were transferred was because the FH wasn't ready yet. However, the fact that the F9 was upgraded to lift heavier loads meant that most of the missions which couldn't be flown on the original F9 could be flown on the V1.1 variants.
The FH didn't fly at all until earlier this year. It does, however, have 3 missions lined up in the near future, so your insinuation that it's being phased out is just absurd. They will doubtless continue booking many more, though the FH will always be in less demand than the F9 since very few missions require that much payload capacity.
And people tell me not to feed trolls, so that's all I'm saying.
I wish more people would tell you to stop making shit up, instead. Then you wouldn't be in the insane position of trying to claim that SpaceX magically doubled their maximum launch capacity between Block 4 and Block 5.
There have been several power increments since the original Falcon 9, so yes, it's about twice as powerful. It is also more powerful than the original specifications for FH, which is why there aren't more missions for FH.
Now I know you're on crack. The FH is 3 F9 cores strapped together. I don't care what kind of "power increments" you're making, 1 core isn't going to be more powerful than 3. That would require a whole new engine design and a switch to a different kind of fuel entirely.
Please find me any reference anywhere which suggests that the FH was originally specified to lift less than 23 tonnes to LEO. No, you can't cite your imagination.
And I see that they are quoting the GTO missions in expendable and non-expendable mode, but they aren't quoting the LEO missions that way - and they used to.
They're not quoting missions at all; they're quoting maximum capabilities of the rocket, and then giving a price per launch based on the less capable reusable mode. Why? Because they don't want to keep destroying rockets any more. With the block 4 they actually wanted to get rid of them. With block 5 they want to fly them reusable as much as possible. If you have a bunch of extra cash lying around you can still email them and ask for an expendable launch, but there's no reason for them to put the price on the page.
Also, they have learned a lot about landing the rocket and may be more confident now that they can do it on less fuel.
Even if that were true it doesn't help you much. The figures for reusable vs expendable lift capacity have always been 22 and 13. That means that they are keeping back, at most, 9 tonnes of fuel to make the landing. Even if they magically reduced that by 50%, it would still only result in 17 tonnes to LEO. And there is absolutely no way they cut it down that much; a more believable 10% fuel reduction would only increase the payload by 1 tonne or less.
So, until they actually quote block 5 missions differently, I'm going to assume that yes, there was a really big change between block 4 and 5, and they really are quoting that weight for a recovery mission.
Sure, why not. You've successfully demonstrated that the difference between a Block 4 and Block 5 is a less than 10% thrust increase, and you've linked to a page which shows that the standard reusable launch to GTO provides only 66% of the maximum payload capacity of the rocket. But you're going to assume that the numbers for LEO are double that of Block 4 because magic.
While block 4 quoted a 22 tonne mission in expendable mode, block 5 does all missions in recoverable mode and quotes that same weight for a recoverable mission.
No, it doesn't; the page you linked to gives performance and capability data and simply doesn't differentiate between the two modes. If you had clicked on the "pricing" link you would have seen that the following page lists a "standard payment plan" at $62 million, limited to 5.5 mT to GTO. This is consistent with Block 4 figures; it's the maximum lift of the rocket in reusable mode.
Below that they list a maximum lift of 8.3 mT to GTO, which, again, is consistent with Block 4. But they don't give a price for the maximum.
Putting the two together, the rocket can lift 5.5 tonnes to GTO in reusable mode, and 8.3 tonnes in expendable. Extrapolating that down to LEO gives the same numbers I quoted earlier; 22 tonnes expendable, or 13 tonnes reusable.
There is a quote here of Musk on the engine difference: The most important part of Block 5 will be operating the engines at their full thrust capability, which is about 7 or 8% - almost 10% - more than what they currently run at. Note that "full thrust" has been used to refer to increases in thrust twice, with different figures each time.
Yes, an increase in thrust does have some impact on payload capacity, but it's not huge, and certainly a 10% increase in thrust isn't going to result in the 90% increase in capacity which you're suggesting.
So, block 5 is about twice the power of the original Falcon 9.
You just quoted the guy saying that it's "7 or 8% - almost 10%" more powerful, and now you're saying it's "twice as powerful". I think you're having a bit of a math fail.
This is largely meaningless. Most rocket failures happen in the early stages of a program, while the bugs are being worked out. And the Ariane 4 was a derivative of earlier rockets in the same family. So, all in all, being able to have a streak of 40 success isn't at all unexpected.
The overall success rate for the Ariane 4 has been 97.4%. The Soyuz-U has a very similar 97.3% success rate, while the Falcon 9 has a success rate of 96.6% thusfar. Now, the Falcon 9 has not have had enough launches for that rate to be particularly meaningful; it's quite possible that, after 500 launches, it will be significantly different. However, given that the majority of failures tend to occur early on, it seems likely that their rate will only get better in the future.
Either way, the reliability of the Ariane compared to the Falcon is not a significant factor at this point given that there's less than a 1% difference between them.
The amount of extra fuel needed is relatively low but, regardless, all of that is included in the launch price. If you want to put 13 tonnes or less into LEO, it will cost you about $60 million, which is comparable or less than every other launch option. The cost of the extra fuel needed is included in that price, and results in a lower payload capacity. If you want to use the rocket to it's full potential and put 22 tonnes into LEO, it will cost you significantly more than $60 million so that SpaceX can build a new rocket to replace the one they junked at your request.
Falcon 9 block 5 can lift 25 tons to LEO with recovery. Block 4 could only do that if expended.
Nonsense. Block 5 can do 22 tonnes in expendable mode, or about 13 tonnes with recovery.
No clue where you are getting your numbers, but the whole idea that block 4 can lift significantly more than block 5 is just wrong. The major improvements between block 4 and block 5 had to do with making the rockets more durable and easier to reuse; lift capacity was essentially unchanged.
Slashdot Mirror
So your argument is that Europe is more free because they let criminals off with a slap on the wrist, and they allow riots to happen.
Neato. I sure wish I lived there.
That's right; we need to leave influence over ele tions up to the corporations, like god intended!
In the UK Ikea is charging ~$5600 for a basic solar package
$5600 won't get you shit. I ran their cost estimator for shits and giggles, on a random roof in a random average sized UK town, using generous assumptions (single story, etc). Based on the size of the roof, the calculator estimated they would be able to fit a maximum of 16 panels, at a cost of £5,499, which is about $7,200 USD as of today.
Those 16 panels at 270W each will produce a maximum of 4.3 kW at peak. The capacity factor for a solar system in the UK will be 9.7% according to the DECC. Which means that those panels will provide around 3,700 kWh per year. Given that the average UK household uses around 4,000 kWh per year, this system is still unlikely to meet all of the electrical needs of an average house over the course of a year, but at least it's close.
But wait, there's more!
The reason the UK has such low household electrical usage is because pretty much every household has access to natural gas, and they use a LOT of it. Average household gas usage works out to about 15,000 kWh per year. This dwarfs electrical usage. If you actually wanted to produce "an entire households power" like the original asshat claimed, you would therefore need a system which produces about 19,000 kWh annually. Given that our 3,700 kWh Ikea system costs $7,200 USD, it's safe to assume that a system that's 4 times as large would cost about three times as much. So you're looking at spending about $21,000 all in.
throw in battery storage it comes in at ~$9000.
Yes, if we throw in battery storage it becomes even more ridiculously overpriced. £9,780 for the system they offered me, which is $12,835 USD. Again, for a system that only provides about a quarter of an average households power requirements.
These prices will only fall and the panels will only become more efficient over the next couple of decades at least.
Wonderful. Maybe in another 20 years his claim will be true. Today it is not.
You don't have to pay for sunlight? No way! Thanks Dr Science!
Any more useless observations? Like "gas for my car is expensive, but I don't have to pay for wind!"? Or "airplanes have to pay for fuel, but if I throw myself off a building I don't have to pay for gravity!"?
If you believe that solar is free, you're obviously a moron.
I'm aware of that; I was keeping the math simple because it's a close enough approximation for my purposes, and it's still far better than anything that he has provided (that being nothing whatsoever).
Oh, I heard you. I just couldn't believe someone on Slashdot would be stupid enough to use "hurr durr look outside!" as evidence of an 80% global decline in insect species. That's more the kind of thing one would expect to read on a mommy blog.
I'll just assume you're pregnant and being hormonal.
You're a lying jackass. $4,000 will get you a system that powers a small shack with a dozen lightbulbs and a TV. Anything beyond that is pure fantasy. Minimum cost for me would be $20,000 and that's if I do most of the work myself. Subsidies would offset some of that, but far less than half. Even if subsidies were high enough to bring it down to $4,000 that wouldn't make it a $4,000 system; it would make it a $20,000 system which was paid for mostly by other people.
And yet 1,7% is still more than the US.
Correct. And?
I know that up until today I had yet to hear a coherent argument from you on any topic whatsoever. And as of today, nothing has changed.
Thank you Dr Science for that helpful correction.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration the US currently generates 1.4 percent of it's energy from solar, Egypt is about to cover 4% of it's energy needs from solar in one fell swoop.
No, they're not. The capacity factor of solar electric is pretty shit. If we assume that the CF of this plant will equal the best place in the USA (Arizona) then the annual output will be about 19% of the rated output. This means a total of 2,995 gWh per year. Since Egypt currently produces about 170,000 gWh per year of electricity, this new plant will only equal about 1.7% of their total electrical production.
It will of course be an even lower fraction of total energy production.
Should have called bullshit on the original claim instead. The "40%" figure is based on a 2013 study looking at insect collections at a relatively small number of sites in Europe, most of which were either near or actually ON active farms. Trying to pretend that this is somehow indicative aof a global decline ... that's just retarded.
They're being hidden on a little-known search engine called google:
https://www.google.com/search?...
New rule: no drinking, driving, sex, or voting until 25.
Nobody will pay attention to the first three, but the last one will ensure democrats never get elected again so it sounds like a good idea to me ...
If the US passed treaties saying that PI is exactly 3, it still wouldn't make it so.
Redundancy error correction I expect is used for some of that space.
Quick back of the envelope math says that the difference between the claimed capacity and his observed capacity means that you could have 140 copies of the data on that disc. That's some serious redundancy.
20 years is a more likely timeline.
The scientists involved here said "5-10 years with proper funding", which is a science euphemism for "cover my next funding cycle and then we will see". If the technology is viable and there aren't any serious unexpected hurdles to overcome, expect it to be 20 years by the time it hits the market.
You're being a troll or you just don't know anything about this. The current Falcon 9 is more powerful than the original specifications of Falcon Heavy.
No, me pointing out that you're just making shit up is not "trolling". You clearly have no clue what you're talking about. Either provide a reference for this insane claim, or fuck off.
This is because of improvements in the rocket and a stretch in its height.
Those improvements were all done back in 2011-2013, when they went from Version 1 to the Version 1.1. In the intervening upgrades from 1.1 to 1.2 (aka "full thrust) to Blocks 3, 4, and 5, there has been no change to it's "stretch". Meanwhile the first FH didn't fly until 2018.
If the original design of the FH was based on the earliest 1.0 model of the F9, it still would have been able to lift more than a modern F9. The early F9 had a maximum payload to LEO of 10 tonnes. The current version has a max to LEO of 22.8 tonnes (expendable). The FH, based on the current variant, has a Max to LEO of 63.8 tonnes (expendable).
Some quick math says that the FH based on the current F9 can lift about 2.8 times as much as a current F9. Applying that to the original F9 means that an FH based on the original F9 should have been able to lift 28 tonnes to LEO. This is still 5-6 tonnes more than the current F9 can do. So, again, if you're going to keep insisting that the current F9 can lift more than the original FH was designed to lift, you are going to have to provide some citation, or some math. Repeating yourself over and over again while linking to sources which contradict you doesn't really get you anywhere.
All of the missions previously scheduled for Falcon Heavy were transferred to Falcon 9 because of this.
Kind of. The actual reason they were transferred was because the FH wasn't ready yet. However, the fact that the F9 was upgraded to lift heavier loads meant that most of the missions which couldn't be flown on the original F9 could be flown on the V1.1 variants.
The FH didn't fly at all until earlier this year. It does, however, have 3 missions lined up in the near future, so your insinuation that it's being phased out is just absurd. They will doubtless continue booking many more, though the FH will always be in less demand than the F9 since very few missions require that much payload capacity.
And people tell me not to feed trolls, so that's all I'm saying.
I wish more people would tell you to stop making shit up, instead. Then you wouldn't be in the insane position of trying to claim that SpaceX magically doubled their maximum launch capacity between Block 4 and Block 5.
There have been several power increments since the original Falcon 9, so yes, it's about twice as powerful. It is also more powerful than the original specifications for FH, which is why there aren't more missions for FH.
Now I know you're on crack. The FH is 3 F9 cores strapped together. I don't care what kind of "power increments" you're making, 1 core isn't going to be more powerful than 3. That would require a whole new engine design and a switch to a different kind of fuel entirely.
Please find me any reference anywhere which suggests that the FH was originally specified to lift less than 23 tonnes to LEO. No, you can't cite your imagination.
And I see that they are quoting the GTO missions in expendable and non-expendable mode, but they aren't quoting the LEO missions that way - and they used to.
They're not quoting missions at all; they're quoting maximum capabilities of the rocket, and then giving a price per launch based on the less capable reusable mode. Why? Because they don't want to keep destroying rockets any more. With the block 4 they actually wanted to get rid of them. With block 5 they want to fly them reusable as much as possible. If you have a bunch of extra cash lying around you can still email them and ask for an expendable launch, but there's no reason for them to put the price on the page.
Also, they have learned a lot about landing the rocket and may be more confident now that they can do it on less fuel.
Even if that were true it doesn't help you much. The figures for reusable vs expendable lift capacity have always been 22 and 13. That means that they are keeping back, at most, 9 tonnes of fuel to make the landing. Even if they magically reduced that by 50%, it would still only result in 17 tonnes to LEO. And there is absolutely no way they cut it down that much; a more believable 10% fuel reduction would only increase the payload by 1 tonne or less.
So, until they actually quote block 5 missions differently, I'm going to assume that yes, there was a really big change between block 4 and 5, and they really are quoting that weight for a recovery mission.
Sure, why not. You've successfully demonstrated that the difference between a Block 4 and Block 5 is a less than 10% thrust increase, and you've linked to a page which shows that the standard reusable launch to GTO provides only 66% of the maximum payload capacity of the rocket. But you're going to assume that the numbers for LEO are double that of Block 4 because magic.
Best of luck with that.
While block 4 quoted a 22 tonne mission in expendable mode, block 5 does all missions in recoverable mode and quotes that same weight for a recoverable mission.
No, it doesn't; the page you linked to gives performance and capability data and simply doesn't differentiate between the two modes. If you had clicked on the "pricing" link you would have seen that the following page lists a "standard payment plan" at $62 million, limited to 5.5 mT to GTO. This is consistent with Block 4 figures; it's the maximum lift of the rocket in reusable mode.
Below that they list a maximum lift of 8.3 mT to GTO, which, again, is consistent with Block 4. But they don't give a price for the maximum.
Putting the two together, the rocket can lift 5.5 tonnes to GTO in reusable mode, and 8.3 tonnes in expendable. Extrapolating that down to LEO gives the same numbers I quoted earlier; 22 tonnes expendable, or 13 tonnes reusable.
There is a quote here of Musk on the engine difference: The most important part of Block 5 will be operating the engines at their full thrust capability, which is about 7 or 8% - almost 10% - more than what they currently run at. Note that "full thrust" has been used to refer to increases in thrust twice, with different figures each time.
Yes, an increase in thrust does have some impact on payload capacity, but it's not huge, and certainly a 10% increase in thrust isn't going to result in the 90% increase in capacity which you're suggesting.
So, block 5 is about twice the power of the original Falcon 9.
You just quoted the guy saying that it's "7 or 8% - almost 10%" more powerful, and now you're saying it's "twice as powerful". I think you're having a bit of a math fail.
Yep, there's a reason why NASA is using Soyoz rockets for crewed launches.
Yep, that reason being "because they have no other option".
This is largely meaningless. Most rocket failures happen in the early stages of a program, while the bugs are being worked out. And the Ariane 4 was a derivative of earlier rockets in the same family. So, all in all, being able to have a streak of 40 success isn't at all unexpected.
The overall success rate for the Ariane 4 has been 97.4%. The Soyuz-U has a very similar 97.3% success rate, while the Falcon 9 has a success rate of 96.6% thusfar. Now, the Falcon 9 has not have had enough launches for that rate to be particularly meaningful; it's quite possible that, after 500 launches, it will be significantly different. However, given that the majority of failures tend to occur early on, it seems likely that their rate will only get better in the future.
Either way, the reliability of the Ariane compared to the Falcon is not a significant factor at this point given that there's less than a 1% difference between them.
The amount of extra fuel needed is relatively low but, regardless, all of that is included in the launch price. If you want to put 13 tonnes or less into LEO, it will cost you about $60 million, which is comparable or less than every other launch option. The cost of the extra fuel needed is included in that price, and results in a lower payload capacity.
If you want to use the rocket to it's full potential and put 22 tonnes into LEO, it will cost you significantly more than $60 million so that SpaceX can build a new rocket to replace the one they junked at your request.
Falcon 9 block 5 can lift 25 tons to LEO with recovery. Block 4 could only do that if expended.
Nonsense. Block 5 can do 22 tonnes in expendable mode, or about 13 tonnes with recovery.
No clue where you are getting your numbers, but the whole idea that block 4 can lift significantly more than block 5 is just wrong. The major improvements between block 4 and block 5 had to do with making the rockets more durable and easier to reuse; lift capacity was essentially unchanged.