Thanks!

Brian Webb isn't listing this on his Vandenberg AFB Launch Schedule yet. I think he's going to wait until someone official tells him a date.

With some optimism that might only be thousands of years rather than hundreds of Millions.

But it's only necessary for Earth to be uninhabitable for a short time to end the Human race. And that can happen due to man or nature, today. If people aren't somewhere else during that process, that's the end.

there's a need for things like this so family who lives far away can still make sure parents are OK.

Actually, in Asia, elderly parents usually live with their kids. That something like this is needed is more a sign of the rising number of dual income households where the elderly parents are left home alone during the day.

California (which has a high Asian immigrant population who didn't budget for nursing home expenses) tried to tackle this with Adult Day Health Care - basically day care for the elderly. Your parents live at home, you drop them off at the ADHC during the day while you and your spouse work, and you pick them up when you get off work. But the program got sharply curtailed during the recent budget cuts.

Show me the math for both ICE cars and Tesla, from well-head to road. Because generating electricity takes energy, and there are losses in the distribution system, and the charging systems are not 100% efficient either.

Sorry for the repost. This is probably a better place for this.

The 1100 BTU/mi figure is consistent with the efficiency of a ICE vehicle from crankshaft to wheels. It takes about 20-25 hp to push a ICE vehicle at 60 mph. So in an hour it will burn 53.7-67.1 MJ. Since it travels 60 miles in that hour, that works out to 0.89-1.12 MJ/mile. Or 848-1060 BTU/mile at highway speeds.

If you factor in other losses for the Tesla, add in a 40% efficient coal plant generating the electricity, 97% transmission efficiency over high-power electrical lines, and 75% charging efficiency and the Tesla actually uses 1100 / (.4*.97*.75) = 3780 BTU per vehicle mile. So it's actually not much different from an ICE from an energy consumption standpoint. (There are discharge losses too, but since the 1100 BTU/mi figure was apparently derived from a 85 kWh battery and 265 mile range, the discharge losses are already included.)

The vast majority of the reason an EV is cheaper to operate is because coal is so much cheaper than gasoline. Coal costs about $50 per ton. A ton of coal has approximately 24 GJ of energy. That's about 0.21 cents/MJ. Gasoline costs about $3/gallon, and has about 120 MJ/gallon, or 2.5 cents/MJ. For the same amount of energy, coal is an order of magnitude cheaper than gasoline, which gives the EV a huge advantage in terms of operating costs. This is not a bad thing - being able to transfer a cheaper but traditionally static energy source into use in a mobile application is an economic win. But don't confuse it for better efficiency.

Yes you could argue that we can make electricity from renewables. But the vast majority of the cost of renewables is in the initial production of the turbine or PV panels. Operating costs are nearly nil (limited to maintenance). So for a fair comparison you then need to incorporate production and transport costs. At which point renewables lose because on a per Joule delivered basis, even with coal plants being only 40% efficient, coal is still cheaper than wind and solar power. (Wind is only about twice the cost of coal, so cheaper than gasoline, but I suspect solar would be about the same cost as gasoline.) You need to incorporate cost of harm done by pollution for renewables to pull ahead. (And even then, only hydro, wind, and geothermal. PV solar still has a ways to go.)

Either compare flying a small plane to driving a car, or compare a huge bus to a plane.

No, you want to compare likely transportation alternatives. If you're going to go on vacation, a likely decision you'll face is whether to pay for airline tickets and fly, or pay for fuel (and possible rental) and drive. That makes the plane vs. car comparison completely valid. Same reason a car vs. bus comparison is valid for intra-city travel, even though you've defined them as being nothing like each other. In fact the bus vs. plane comparison is probably the least valid, since the vast majority of buses are used for intra-city mass transport, while the vast majority of planes are used for long-haul inter-city transport. So it's very rare (at least in a large country like the U.S.) for you to have to decide between taking the bus or taking the plane.

Incidentally, I'm not sure why this is news. These types of comparisons have been done before. Trains win. Then planes, then cars, then buses, then way at the bottom are taxis (which is why "services" like Uber are a bad idea - you want to minimize the number of taxis driving around).

Buses are rather interesting in that you'd think they'd score better than cars. But the fundamental problem you come across with mass transit buses is capacity vs convenience. You want to load each bus with as many people as possible to decrease its fuel consumption per passenger mile. But you also want to run the buses frequently so people aren't stuck waiting 45 minutes at a bus stop and instead decide to bum a ride from a friend or (worse yet) hail a cab. These conflicting demands mean you run the buses a lot more than would be ideal from an energy efficiency standpoint. Air travel avoids this problem by forcing people to adapt to the airline's schedule (other than a few shuttle services between well-traveled routes, and even those have mostly ceased service).

One factoid is interesting: it takes 4,211 BTUs per person mile to drive. This number will fall as we switch over to electric vehicles. For example, a Tesla Model S takes about 1,100 BTUs per vehicle mile.

No it doesn't. 1100 BTU (0.322 kWh) is the energy consumption from the battery to the wheels. You need to include the entire energy generation chain to get a fair comparison. Add in a 40% efficient coal plant generating the electricity, 97% transmission efficiency over high-power electrical lines, and 75% charging efficiency and the Tesla actually uses 1100 / (.4*.97*.75) = 3780 BTU per vehicle mile.

The vast majority of the reason an EV is cheaper to operate is because coal is so much cheaper than gasoline. Coal costs about $50 per ton. A ton of coal has approximately 24 GJ of energy. That's about 0.21 cents/MJ. Gasoline costs about $3/gallon, and has about 120 MJ/gallon, or 2.5 cents/MJ. For the same amount of energy, coal is an order of magnitude cheaper than gasoline, which gives the EV a huge advantage in terms of operating costs. This is not a bad thing - being able to transfer a cheaper but traditionally static energy source into use in a mobile application is an economic win. But don't confuse it for better efficiency.

Yes you could argue that we can make electricity from renewables. But the vast majority of the cost of renewables is in the initial production of the turbine or PV panels. Operating costs are nearly nil (limited to maintenance). So for a fair comparison you then need to incorporate production and transport costs. At which point renewables lose because on a per Joule delivered basis, even with coal plants being only 40% efficient, coal is still cheaper than wind and solar power. (Wind is only about twice the cost of coal, so cheaper than gasoline, but I suspect solar would be about the same cost as gasoline.)

Maybe they were afraid that small airports that do have controllers would start replacing those people with the remote setup. If those airports only get infrequent traffic, a couple of guys in a remote control tower can probaby handle dozens of them.

What surprises me is that the union actually has the clout to stop this.

Actually I was thinking nuclear power rather than magic.

I agree with the other commenter, there will be lots of people living in space if they can only get there. Mars is a good start.

"Propagandists" is the correct term. They aren't lying to themselves, they're lying to everyone else. They aggressively campaign to spread disinformation and bury facts, facts that they themselves know are correct. It's not clear whether they're performing extreme mental gymnastics to justify themselves, or they know they're liars and hypocrites who don't give a damn about reality, and would as happily sell any other snake oil, if it paid well.

The problem is the people who give these organizations air by listening to them and even funding them. The name "Heartland Institute" confirmed my suspicions that the Pope wasn't being treated to honest skepticism, he was only being attacked by propaganda organs.

Obviously I am missing something, then. Please fill me in on your better information sources. Email to bruce at perens dot com if you don't want to put them on Slashdot.

It's time to start planning another trip to Lompoc. The Motel 6 was sort of yukky last time. Maybe I'll try something else. There was an official visitor observation site that I found and got into last time, but that was for the Delta, and it was on Pad 4 if I remember correctly. This one is all the way on the other side of the base on Pad 7 or 8, isn't it? There are some farm roads that might be good observation sites if they are open.

The classic video of how employers can commit H1B fraud is at:

                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

What they describe is how to skirt the law, but still hire the less expensive H1B that an employer wants. to quote:

"Our goal, clearly, is not to find a qualified and interested US worker."

I'm afraid, son or daughter, that this is why some of us oldsters started learning the software that runs various robots about 25 years ago. I'm also afraid that your bet on that "geezer" card is making me raise the pot by about 10 years and call. Unless someone else wants to bid in this game?

The key when confronted by awareness of changing technology and workplace requirements is not to bemoan who will have the power. It's to join, or at least make sure you have the skills to work for, the powerful.

I am not confident that the world will remain a hospitable place for life until we are ready by your standard.

Getting the resources and people there is very close to being within our technical capability. The task ourselves, if we perform it, will take care of the remaining gaps.

Creating a self-sustaining colony outside of the Earth's environment is going to need a lot of work, but it is not work that can ever be achieved on this earth. We have to actually put people in space to achieve this. Our best experience so far is with submarines. Academic research has so far yielded only farcial frauds like Biosphere II.

Technically, making transceivers work when there are 30 of them in vehicles next to each other can get difficult. People wonder why you can buy a dual-band walkie talkie for $60 but the one in the police car costs much more. If it's well engineered, the one in the police car has some RF plumbing that isn't in the $60 walkie talkie.

You are exactly right. One thing though, it's "Ham" or even "ham". It's not an acronym. Thanks!