Can be five years, can be just two. Depends a lot on how much you drive and where your grid gets your power. Regardless, I'd think concerns about a "bump" aren't really warranted, as we're still in the process of conversion. Ih the US were about 7% at the moment, with predictions of 9% EOY.

The curve should be ramping up, but the vehicles sold prior to this are already contributing their reductions, with the result that an ever increasing EV base will more than end up compensating for the annual increases.

As to burning H2, that's pretty inefficient, and there are quite a few pollution aspects to consider as unburnt H2 starts combining with N in the atmosphere to produce some nasty byproducts.

I may be wrong, but I think I heard somewhere that flamethrowers aren't classified as weapons in the US. Might be why it's legally easy to market Thermo.

They are not classified as a firearm...they are perfectly legal to own in the US.

... and simply mount an automatic rifle on the top. That after all is where this ultimately is all leading but no one dare say it.

Well, at least in the US, it is incredibly expensive to attain any full auto weapon (can't be manufactured after 1986 for any civilian possession)....and with that scarcity factor, you might be a bit apprehensive to modify or alter a collectors piece.

Then, you have to go through the lengthy federal background checks and licensing to possess a full auto weapon.

And frankly, IMHO...the ATF may see what you are doing with it and reclassify it as AOW (Any Other Weapon)....which I think (not sure) requires more paperwork, and/or might be denied as something a regular US citizen civilian can own...?

That last part I don't know about....but have my suspicions.

People keep seeming to think it is easy to own a full auto weapon (Machine gun)...it really is not.

An AR-15 is not a "machine gun"/Assault Weapon/full auto weapon.

It is merely a semi-auto rifle....it goes bang once each time you pull the trigger.

Security consulting in Abu Dhabi.

OOps...you're right.

There's no way I'd even go visit that part of the world for any length of time for any amount of money.

I value my life above all else.

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.

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.

Sadly it's being launched to near the equator, not the poles :( The geophysicists won out over the geochemists...

Freedom is great and neglectable, until you very suddenly don't have it.

History has not ended. The world order that makes life nice and comfy for you is not a given into the future.

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.

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Venus is hot, but it's not *that* hot... ;)

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.

They're trying to get everyone else to hold off on buying an EV until they have something worthwhile to sell.

It can in fact do so. Badly. Regardless, the Mirai doesn't fall into that category.