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Comment "Don't tase me bro!" (Score 1) 53

...will be translated into "The suspect was resisting arrest and the officer had no choice".

Each. And. Every. Time.

This is just going to be automated whitewashing. Because why would Axon antagonize their customers by making an impartial AI bot that transcribes the truth eh? They clearly have a conflict of interest here.

Comment Re:How much is really delayed maintenance? (Score 5, Interesting) 116

The grid is not made of copper. You thought it was? Copper is for home wiring, if that. Up to that point, it's alumium, bundled with steel on major lines for tensile strength. Does it look like copper to you?

As for the article: grid operators don't build out grids on a lark. They do it to sell power, because they make money selling power. If people want to buy more power because they want to charge an EV, then that's more money available for them. EVs are a boon to grid operators. They're almost an ideal load. Most charging done at night, steady loads, readily shiftable and curtailable with incentives, etc. Daytime / fast charging isn't, but that's a minority. And except in areas with a lot of hydro, most regions already have the ample nighttime generation capacity; it's just sitting idle, power potential unsold. In short, EVs can greatly improve their profitability. Which translates to any combiation of three things:

1) More profits
2) A better, more reliable grid
3) Lower rates

    * ... depending on the regulations and how competitive of an environment it is.

As for the above article: the study isn't wrong, it's just - beyond the above (huge) problem - it is based on stupid assumptions. Including that there's zero incentives made for people to load shift when their vehicles charge, zero battery buffering to shift loads, and zero change in the distribution of generation resources over the proposed timeframe. All three of these are dumb assumptions.

Also, presenting raw numbers always leads to misleading answers. Let me rephrase their numbers: the cost is $7 to $26 per person per year. The cost of 1 to 5 gallons of gas per year at California prices..

Comment waste of money and not our first high-speed rail (Score 1) 236

We have others that are considered high-speed rail, so this is NOT America's first.
But, like many others of Biden's wasted $, this is another project that should not be approved and hopefully, Trump (or next president since it will not be biden) will pull the $ from this. Why? Because this is by far the single best route to put in the world's first hyperloop. It is not just ppl that move from LA to LV. There is a ton of cargo that gets sent. Hyperloop needs to be done with cargo FIRST, and ran for 2-4 years before accepting it for manned travel. And having Cargo travel at 300-500 MPH between these, at costs cheaper than trucks, would be a big deal.

Comment Re:Starship (Score 1) 27

For SX to set up a base on the moon and mars, they will need 2 different types of landers: Cargo and Manned.
With manned, it is easy enough for ppl and supplies to be transferred from space-only to the lander. The question becomes, what about the cargo version?
So far, SX has shown a door on the side, but I believe that there is NO WAY that is going to work. The reason is that the cargo will be pulled out and then have to be stacked directly below the door. In addition, assuming that lunar and martian cargo systems never return to earth surface, then we need a way to move cargo from the starship leaving earth to the lander, or possibly something in-between.
With that in mind, about the only system that I can imagine would be to use the nose opening, docking nose to nose, and then having containers, moved from 1 system to the other. Finally, when landed, the nose is opened up again, and a crane on the inside is used to pull the container out and place it on the side. What is interesting is that the crane could be attached to the rocket via a track that runs on the inside so that it can rotate around the lander and drop off containers directly to the ground as opposed to being forced to stack them.

Now, as to starship:
1) trivial for it to reach orbit. It was not because they are not working on orbiting, but on all of the stuff in-between such as take-off, separation, fuel pump testing, re-entry and landing on a single spot.
2) It is highly likely that SX will launch a couple of starlinks sats on this next launch. If not, it will almost certainly be the one after that. IOW, they will start using it for Cargo. 3) Re-fueling in orbit is not a big deal. They tested this in the last launch, internally. In addition, liquid transfers have been done for a long time (water, lox, fuel for ISS and other modules). They will need to build a tanker and a fuel-depot, but tanker will likely happen this year.
4) manned rating for launches will take a number of launches. Of course, that is exactly what SX intends to do with starlink cargos. Even if landings are not working yet, they will continue to use this to put up their starlinks that can not go on F9 ( though possible on FH ). The interesting item is how to test the life support. I suspect that they will be putting up 1 or more of these as space station module. Each 1 has more volume than the entire ISS (and far more than China's space station). Just by putting up the first one as a regular starship, they can sort things out for the ECLSS as well as layout, etc. Ideally, they would build several of these with later ones have multiple docking ports. That would enable these to quickly replace the ISS, while others continue to add their units to these for testing of their modules/ECLSS.

And yes, of this could be done before 2026.
Of course, that leaves the lunar lander. I would have to guess that once SX is able to land booster and starship on earth, they will have no issues landing on either the moon/mars. The only real issue will be (re-)entry into mars. The atmosphere is thin, but it is still there.

Comment Re:Israel (Score 2) 118

Funny that to you, "Israel" and "Jews" are synonymous. As if all Jewish people unconditionally support all actions of the state of Israel, even those which are highly controversial within Israel itself.

This false synonymy creates an extremely harmful backlash. Stop doing it.

Comment Re:Titan or Bust! (Score 1) 70

Ukraine is not free

Give me a list of Ukrainian prime ministers since 2000, and compare it to a list of Russian presidents since 2000 . Thanks in advance.

Even before the conflict it was the poorest and most corrupt country in Europe

This is not even remotely true. Ukraine's Rule of Law Index in 2022 was 0,50; contrast with NATO members Turkey at 0,42 and Hungary at 0,52. And its scores were dragged down by the consequences of the war in Donbas.

with a military second in size in Europe only to Russia (hence the poverty)

Ukraine's percentage of GDP spent before the current invasion was 3,2%, and that was *with* the ongoing Donbas conflict . By contrast, the US, at peace, spends 3,45% of its GDP on the military. For some European contrasts:

Azerbaijan: 4,5%
Armenia: 4,3%
Russia: 4%
Greece: 3,7%

Before the 2014 Russian invasion, Ukraine's percentage of GDP spent on the military was 1,6%.

Comment Re:Terraforming on the same trip (Score 1) 70

ED: Just saw your second paragraph. But the things you speculate on are not exactly common on Titan, if they even exist on the surface at all (it's an icy crust ,not a rocky one). And either way, it'd be much easier with compounds other than methane.

And no, there doesn't seem to be meaningful amounts of nitrates in the atmosphere at least. You can see a list here. Nitrogen compounds are cyanide and nitrile compounds.

Comment Re:Terraforming on the same trip (Score 1) 70

Metabolized with what oxidizer?

It's just the opposite - methane on Titan is like nitrogen on Earth; it's things like acetylene and free hydrogen that are the potential energy sources, and to a lesser extent the more common (but less reactive) higher mass alkanes, etc.

The main problem is that LAWKI isn't even remotely compatible with existing in the cryogenic environment of Titan. There are a lot of interesting alternative chemistries, but they require basically redesigning life from scratch. We're simply not up to this task with our current technology.

Comment Re:Titan or Bust! (Score 1) 70

It's funny how we so strongly disagree further down in the comments, but I 100% agree with you here.

0,38g being largely fine for health is... I mean, if I had to bet, I'd put my money on it probably being true, but it's anything but guaranteed. There was a private project to test this, the Mars Gravity Biosatellite, but it ran out of funding; I'm not aware of any similar experiments that have been conducted. There've been a variety of attempts to simulate various gravity on Earth, such as having people lie on tilted beds or hanging them from cranes at an angle or whatnot, but they all have obvious weaknesses.

There's not just the question of adults who visit from Earth, but also children who grow up on 0,38g, and what impact that would have to their physiology.

Comment Re:Titan or Bust! (Score 1) 70

NASA is getting there

It most definitely is not. Are you being deliberately obtuse?

one can do for more than a few minutes before shit implodes and burns

You clearly didn't read anything I wrote, so why should I even bother responding? (A) Literally nobody was talking about settling the surface, and (B) It's been repeatedly pointed out that basically indefinite lifespans can be achieved for surface vehicles, as backed up by peer-reviewed research from NASA. And "christoban on Slashdot disagrees with peer-reviewed research from NASA" isn't exactly a compelling argument.

B) building floating cities, which would probably take another century of engineering and investment before we could do so reliably.

We were flying balloons on Venus almost 40 years before we flew a helicopter on Mars. We directly sampled Venus's atmosphere 4 years before we sampled Mars. We successfully landed and transmitted data either 1 or 6 years (depending on your definition) from the surface of Venus vs. Mars.

Your incredulity about levels of difficulty doesn't translate to actual levels of difficulty.

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