Haha, my concept as a child was to have a buoyant container on wheels in a tube full of water that would rise up, roll down a ramp on the other side, and re-enter the tube through an airlock on the bottom.

Wish my dad had taken the time to tell me why it wouldn't work rather than just saying "perpetual motion is impossible".

Or, rather than all of physics being wrong, maybe they have an erroneous measurement setup.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't investigate anomalous measurements. But at this stage you shouldn't be writing fluff pieces with page after page of how much your new technology will change spaceflight. You should be publishing a paper with a name like "Measurement of anomalous thrust in a microwave apparatus operated in a hard vacuum" and trying to avoid the media insomuch as possible - and when you need to talk with them, trying to explain "we don't know what's going on... we have some theories but they're controversial... we need to do more testing." etc.

The modest carbon tax in British Columbia has cut emissions in that province by 16% while emissions grew in the rest of Canada by 3% (a rate that likely would have grown higher still if Ontario and Quebec weren't also working to reduce emissions). A carbon tax, by itself, might not reach a 50% reduction, but it could spur changes in consumer behavior. For instance, now that gas prices have fallen again, sales of SUVs are increasing again after declining during our last period of high prices. That's probably a missed opportunity to reduce emissions.

Without a carbon tax, the United States is aiming at (and currently looks like it will hit) a target of 20% below 2005 levels. If a carbon tax had been added to the policy, the United States might have been able to hit 40% below 2005 levels, which is not that far from 50%.

Frankly, I doubt you understand politics. Despite your claims the parties are different entities although with very similar goals (power and control). In some areas, the policies of the parties are indistinguishable because they are appealing to same people for funding and trying to get same people to vote for them. Both parties need a majority of votes to win so they are by necessity fighting over the same people in the American center.

Frankly, in the current American system, large differences are not sustainable because if the difference loses votes, it will be abandoned and if it gains votes it will be copied or mirrored by the other party. The American system, whether by design or by accident, generates nearly identical parties.

It's not that the parties are the same organization, because they clearly are not, it's that the American political system is so poorly designed that serving the people brings few benefits when compared to playing internal politics for advantages and begging money from sponsors to fund election campagins.

That has not been my experience. For example, here is my system's output on April 25th (which was a cloudy day), and here is the output on April 26th (which was a sunny day). The cloudy-day output was about 10% of the the sunny-day output.

This game changer has already occurred in many places. There are many locations where you can get a home solar array installed without paying any money for it, because the installing company is willing to pay for the equipment and installation in return for selling you the generated power. This is appealing to consumers because they get a significant reduction in their monthly power bill, they don't have to pay anything, and they don't have to take on the risk of not getting the expected return on their investment.

The fact that solar companies are willing to take the financial risk on the customer's behalf indicates that the risk/reward ratio of home solar installations is already low enough to be economically viable, and it will only improve over time.

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.

I doubt it. It's too easy NOT to be.

Just realize that you are NOT smarter than the people reporting to you. You just happened to get stuck in that management slot.

Next, learn that just because you've been TALKING since you were 2 does not mean that you are a master at COMMUNICATION. Take classes. Read books. LEARN to communicate.

Now you can give rapid feedback to your people. Instead of the once-a-year-review aim for the every-2-weeks-review. That way you will remember all the reasons why the main project was delayed. Remember your new communication skills.

Finally, decide whether you're going to fuck your people in order to make other managers look good or whether you're going to help your people get the skills to move up and onward.

Small prop driven aircraft, ALREADY.

The market was almost nonexistent about five years ago but it's growing quite fast. Don't underestimate what the major and ongoing advances in motors, controllers, and batteries will bring in the future. There's many radically new technologies in the works to partially or completely electrify aircraft transportation, far beyond just electrically driven propellers.

I'd have trouble being whisked around town dangling from a drone under my command without also being in a superhero costume.

Seriously, in our modern age, how else would a superhero get around? A fast car? Pish.

The system is actually not that big. The batteries are small because, despite the weight of the plane, the distances traveled are very short; and electric motors pack a lot of power into a small package. Having it all built into the plane reduces ground delays, ground staff, and additional ground hardware. It's a "pushback and go" system, the pilot can move the instant he gets clearance to, he doesn't have to wait for anyone else. It's estimated to save about 2 minutes over using tugs, which may not sound like a much, but each flight at the gate represents about $100k worth of revenue, so squeezing an extra flight in every couple days is a lot of money.

Ultimately they want to turn it into a fully automated airport traffic flow, where each plane moves from the runway to the gate and vice versa in a fully automated, optimized manner.

Maybe I should have clipped the quote shorter, to make my meaning clearer. I was making an observation that every organization tries to claim power because it's human nature to seek power. Virtually everyone is part of "those who want to consolidate power in their own hands". While people seek power for different reasons, some good, some bad, there are very few people who want to be powerless.

So by my reading of Dredd's claims that makes all organizations the same. I have to admit that does make for a very simple world view, which is perfect for those with very simple minds.

"Fast" is not an issue. Electric motors have a much better power to weight ratio than combustion motors, and li-ion batteries have no trouble feeding it. The reason things like solar impulse fly slowly is to reduce air resistance and thus minimize their power consumption needs.

Batteries have advanced tremendously in the past several decades and show no signs of slowing down. The transition of air travel will be more difficult and longer in the making than that of ground travel, mind you.

Before ICBMs became a reality, nuclear-powered planes were significantly researched. Probably the craziest was Project Pluto, whose concept was to have an open to the air nuclear core inside a ramjet housing, acting as the heat source instead of combusting fuel. The unmanned craft was designed to be able to fly around for months at a time holding numerous atomic bombs. When given orders to attack it would have bombed Soviet cities... then with its cargo spent, continued the rest of its lifespan flying low over Soviet territory damaging everything its path with sonic booms and the radioactive plume spewing out the back. Then when finally shot down or out of power, it'd crash as a dirty bomb in Soviet territory.

The engine was actually tested on a railcar, but there were way too many concerns about the craft, and the advancement of ICBMs just seemed a better route. Among the many concerns was that the US didn't want the Soviets to feel that they had to develop a similar such craft as a countermeasure.