in a different state.

Or just put them in a safety deposit box at a local bank.

I think that you missed the OPs concern with redundancy.

Having your backup in the local bank is really going to suck if they've been flooded out by the same event that flooded you out. (Floods may be fluids other than water, such as lava and volcanic ash.)

I'd be much more wary of shipping them across US international borders, where they'd be liable to seizure. Possibly at state borders too. But in that case, taking them to Auntie Flo isn't going to be any protection either.

... signifying nothing.

Geothermal and hydrocarbon are not good bedfellows. Where you've got a high enough geothermal gradient for it to be a significant source of power, then you're going to be cooking your kerogens at depth shallow enough to have little prospect of encountering a trap, and they'll just sep out ot surface. Plus, you'd have a wider gas window and narrower oil window, and the oil is considerably the more valuable for export sales.

Could you use directly geothermally-generated steam as a steam-flood source all in the one well? You'd need to rig your surface water injector on the injection well to higher pressures than for conventional water or steam injection (higher pressures cost more and wear out faster) but the production wells wouldn't need significantly different completion. Slugging of your steam flow from the geothermal source into the flood injection leg of the well would be an issue - potentially a big issue.

What are the odds of the shape and size of your geothermal field being sufficiently close to power an outer ring of injection wells and efficiently steam-flood into the central few producers. It's not impossible, but it's also not terribly likely. Geothermal fields tending to be relatively large and disperses, but oil fields being sharply delineated by their original oil-water contacts (would you drill out in the water leg, except to provide pressure / waterflood support? Would you sign the AFE for subsidiary drilling centres, access roads etc for a 1/3 increase in well count (steam producer plus the regular injector - producer pair). You might make a case, but it's not going to be a high likelihood case.

> The more 3d printers are manufactured, the lower the cost and the more features (bang for the buck) that scaling out any product brings.

A 3D printer in a retail setting, where it's kept fairly busy, will use a few thousand dollars worth of filament and electricity every month. A retail location needs to charge the same amount again to cover labor costs (a $9.50 employee costs $20/hour with taxes, healthcare, workers comp, etc.) Then roughly the same amount again for rent of the floor space, signage, permits, roi, etc. So the store needs to sell about $10,000 in prints per month for the machine to earn it's keep.

Whether the printer cost $5000 or $3000 to purchase has very little impact on the final cost to the consumer.

> As with everything, economies of scale and increases in technology will bring the per-unit cost down

"Economies of scale" refers to the various reasons that it's cheaper to do something 10,000 times, assembly line fashion, rather than one piece at a time. In other words, the exact OPPOSITE of what's being talked about here.

It may be useful where , due to the inefficiency of handling an order for one 20 cent knob, the manufacturer doesn't sell parts directly to consumers. The knob that costs 20 cents at scale (on Alibaba) will cost $5 to print. Alibaba operates at scale, and though. 3D printing is for when you're willing to give up economy (pay more per unit) because you're NOT operating at scale.

Advancements in 3D printing technology and competition should reduce costs somewhat. However, costs have already fallen by an order of magnitude or more. It's likely that they cannot be reduced another order of magnitude. The one economy of scale available is keeping the printing machines busy to amortize their cost across many prints, but Shapeway's printers are already busy. Now we can only save shipping costs by having a local machine busy.

You know, I've noticed that even though there's a strong impulse to make smores, and preparations made, it always ends up with everybody drunk and just burning the marshmallows on the end of a stick, eating all the chocolate and then running around the campfire naked before tripping over a branch, passing out and waking up covered in ticks and mosquito bites.

I've been part of so many camping trips where there was every intention of making smores and it never seems to work out.

They also led to the rise of marshmallows, binge drinking and running around the fire naked.

God, I love camping.

They could be thinking of microwave energy. Of course that means they need a 10Km rectenna on the plane, which would be problematic to put it mildly. From their web site, there's no way to tell what they're thinking, or if they're thinking.

That's a valid point, of course. Perhaps I should have been more specific and said the concept of a long- endurance vehicle being nuclear powered has been proven, but keeping the nuclear power source aloft for years is another question.

Power for long-range airplanes is a tricky thing. More endurance requires more fuel, but that additional fuel is more weight, which increases fuel consumption. Many options would be counterproductive, weighing more than can be kept aloft by the energy they provide or store. I suspect that only nuclear fuel and a hot-air envelope can provide enough energy to keep themselves aloft for years.

My employer wants me to go to a conference in Vegas, DevLearn. Since it's something they want, they are paying.
I wanted to ho to a local conference on information security. Since it's something I wanted, I was willing to pay. My employer paid anyway because the bureaucracy says they should pay for one conference per year or whatever, but I have no problem paying for something I want to do for my own benefit.

If my employer wants me to fo it for their benefit, it's reasonable for them to pay for it.

I also decided to go back to school. I wanted to do that for myself, so I'm paying for it. My employer also gets some benefit, so they are paying part of it. Having an educated workforce paying more taxes helps the whole country, so the federal government is paying a small part via Pell grants. But mostly, it's something I want to do, for my own reasons, so I pay for it.

On their web site, I see a lot about what they wish they could do, and very little about how they'd manage to do it.
They say their HA series is designed to stay aloft for up to five years at "all latitudes". "All latitudes precludes the use of solar power since it's dark for six months at a time at far north and far south latitudes, and most of their pictures clearly show no solar panels. So are they hoping for a magic battery that will last five years but not weigh hundreds of pounds, or are they planning on nuclear power? Submarines that stay out for years use nuclear power, so that is a proven option.

Another option that's known to be somewhat workable at some latitudes is a hot air balloon, where the black balloon continually absorbs heat from the sun to keep the craft aloft. Their pictures show model planes, though, not balloons.

Do these guys have any idea how to solve the most fundamental physics problems in the way, or do they just have a wish and nothing else? Their web site doesn't seem to indicate they've thought about how to do it, just how to get people to hand over cash, with no actual plan published.

 

grand-master of hyperbole

I'm the Grandmaster Flash of hyperbole, yo.

What does God need with a Starship?

He wants to bang Uhura, same as everyone else.

Non-violence can be derived from any ethical position that views others as equal to yourself in all ways.

Yes, this. And not even in "all ways". All I need to do is see others as equal in the sense of existing to have an ethical position.

To treat others as I would like to be treated. The "Golden Rule" is not a Christian innovation. See, Uhl's "Enlightened Selfishness".

http://kantwesley.com/Kant/Sag...

Then again, kirk was fairly unambiguously Christian in at least a few episodes.

He believed in evolution and had a friend who was an alien. Not like US Christians, at least.