it's just a quick Fermi approximation. it's a useful way to get a quick estimate of something within an OM or so.

it's just an order of magnitude thing. Fermi approximation. converting the energy in from sunline to energy out in terms of a unit we use each day.

134 billion gallons. based on your math, it's 140,000 km^2 of bionic leaf to make the gasoline for USA.

134 billion gallons / (266,666 gallons per day per 100 square km (calculated above) * 365)

What else is 140,000 square km? new York state. so is north Carolina. so is iowa. it's a lot of room.

another perspective: it took millions of years of sunshine to grow plants to feed dinosaurs to be melted into oil and used today. it's really hard to replace that with a solution that runs in steady state, as in we produce enough for our annual consumption in one year. Maybe we need a dyson sphere...

The energy balance doesn't work out here. Max solar intensity is 1 kw / m^2, or 1 kj per square meter every second, or 3.6 MJ per square meter per hour. A gallon of gasoline is 120 MJ. So assuming 100% efficiency and 100% peak sunlight, it would take 30 hours to make a gallon of gas from one square meter of artificial leaf. Considering the average solar intensity is about 10% the max, and any process involving the sun is max 20% efficient, it starts to take a very long time to make one gallon of gas. Not even including the energy requirements of the leaf / enzyme process.

agreed. it's creepy to see two of them marching in unison. of course when you say "subjugating your descendants" what you mean is "subjugating you in 10 years."

the CEO once said he's getting so much action it should be called Boober.

yes they work for us, but in the contract between the federal govt and the citizens it says that foreign policy is done by the federal government.

would they be imperialist dogs? or maybe that lost puppy from the super bowl commercial.

it makes no sense. if the goal is to fly over NK, why do they want to launch from CA? And if the goal is trans-pacific, why do they want to cross NK as well? The whole thing is bizaare. That being said, I suppose if you release a weather balloon into the atmosphere and it blows across the pacific that's technically a drone, because once you released it the thing traveled to the destination under its own control.

yeah, at some point antagonizing the NK's veers into the ground of foreign policy, which is the exclusive province of the federal govt. This won't happen.

lol license to toke I like it. Re-driving under the influence, I have no problem and if somebody drives under the influence take their drivers license away for at least a year. And if they hit anything or heard anybody send them to jail.

Also sent guns to cartels sudeño.

Sorry to burst your tea party bubble, but freedom of speech only applies to government actions. Twitter is private property, and they'll censor your posts however they want to. Don't like it? Go make your own social medium.

everyone else is wrapped up in string but there's no strings on him!

+1 factual