Part of the premise to the problem is that you know it will work. If you'd rather, you can look at the scenario of a doctor with several dying patients who need transplants deciding to kill one of his other patients to save the lives of all of the others. It's a question of where the boundaries to sacrificing one to save multiple becomes troubling to people. Knowing how to define these boundaries are critical to being able to program acceptable "morality" in robots.

... to even understand why we consider certain judgements to be moral or immoral, I'm not sure how we're supposed to convey that to robots.

The classic example would be the Trolley Problem: there's an out of control trolley racing toward four strangers on a track. You're too far away to warn them, but you're close to a diversion switch - you'd save the four people, but the one stranger standing on the diversion track would die instead. Would you do it, sacrifice the one to save the four?

Most people say "yes", that that's the moral decision.

Okay, so you're not next to the switch, you're on a bridge over the track. You still have no way to warn the people on the track. But there's a very fat man standing on the bridge next to you, and if you pushed him off to his death on the track below, it'd stop the trolley. Do you do it?

Most people say "no", and even most of those who say yes seem to struggle with it.

Understanding just what the difference between these two scenarios is that flips the perceived morality has long been debated, with all sorts of variants for the problem proposed to try to elucidate it, for example, a circular track where the fat man is going to get hit either way but doesn't know it, situations where you know negative things about the fat man, and so forth. And it's no small issue that any "intelligent robots" in our midst get morality right! Most of us would want the robot to throw the switch, but not start pushing people off bridges for the greater good. You don't want a robot doctor deciding to kill and cut up a patient who in the course of a checkup discovers that the patient has organs that could save the lives of several of his other patients, sacrificing one to save several, for example.

At least, most people wouldn't want that!

Again, it's simply not. You keep acting like cost per kW is irrelevant. This is absolutely not the case. You're the one trying to hand wave away the power input and output demands of stabilizing a renewables grid. According to your logic, people would never use li-ion for grid storage. Except that they actually do. In new projects it's more common than PbA for the large (greater-than-datacenter) scale (PbA still dominates at the datacenter scale, and probably will for some time to come)

I would say that you have obviously never worked with lithium batteries. Tesla does not use large format cells. It uses 18650-format cells. One never messes with individual cells, the bricks are designed to allow multiple concurrent failures without significant degradation in performance. And saying that something is "yet to be seen" does in no way shape or form mean "using defunct packs is bull", and it's beyond me how you could read that into that statement. Furthermore, it's also funny how you read that section but entirely missed the lines before it:

Considerable interest has been generated in the last 2 to 3 years for applying lithium-ion batteries for a variety of energy storage and grid stabilization (stationary) applications. Prototype systems have been installed. Megawatt scale systems typically include thousands of cells housed in shipping container-sized structures that can be situated on power utility locations. These systems usually include integrated fire suppression in their installations. Smaller systems have also been planned and are being delivered for evaluation purposes, particularly for use with renewable energy sources.

Gee, I thought nobody would want to use li-ion for grid backup? ;)

Tesla packs highly resistant to "failing internally". Each brick is made of dozens of cells wired in parallel. It's irrelevant if a handful of cells totally die.

The li-ion charge retention curve is usually an exponential decay. The lower the capacity of the cell gets, the slower further degradation goes. Now, in many electronic devices, it doesn't seem this way because the device is designed for a particular operational voltage range, and when the pack gets below that voltage it's totally useless. But a large-scale system engineered to use old packs and thus designed for greater voltage flexibility is not bound by this constraint.

False. Cost per kWh can be everything or it can be utterly irrelevant, depending on the needs of the backup system. The facts that matter are the particular mix of cost per kWh AND cost per kW needed by the system. Many if not most li-ion batteries have a higher ratio of W to Wh than PbA. Hence saying that "li-ion batteries are expensive" and using a price per Wh as the basis is erroneous.

Furthermore, costs for large backups are not as simple as multiplying the cost of building things out of X number of small cells. Economies of scale come into play, shipping and housing issues come into play, heating and efficiency come more into play, environmental permitting factors come more into play, hazards come more into play, and all sorts of other factors. Many people worry about fire risks from li-ion, for example (although that's not the case with all li-ion types). But in large quantities, PbA batteries become an explosion hazard, as in some circumstances they can outgas hydrogen. Large PbA battery backups have ended in explosion before.

Again, ((Whoosh!!!))

In case you're curious, that's the sound of the point flying right over your head.

"one of the least" != "no military component". You're absolutely correct that "There was no such thing as a non-militarized city in Japan at the time". Hiroshima had been a city that refugees had been fleeing to. It is simply true that for its size it was one of the least militarized cities in Japan at that time.

In something that's rather sickening, and one *hopes* was accidental but suspects that it wasn't, the US had been leafletting Japan in the weeks leading up to the atomic bombings, warning them to evacuate "Otaru, Akita, Hachinohe, Fukushima, Urawa, Takayama, Iwakuni, Tottori, Imabari, Yawata, Miyakonojo, and Saga" There was no mention of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Anyone who listened to the US leaflets walked into the bomb zone.

Byrnes (claimed source of your quote) was an atomic bomb radical within the government. He wanted to threaten to bomb the Russians to get better success in the postwar negotiations too. But if you search for your quote online you'll find only half a dozen hits. It appears to be an urban legend. Claims that "The US leadership also feared the planned invasion of Japan by the Soviet Union" are somewhat true. The US had been trying for a long time to get the Soviet Union involved, but started having misgivings. Various people were concerned to varying degrees about the potential of Soviet involvement.

You're free to disagree with the US military's own postwar analysis of the Japan situation (the Strategic Bombing Survey). But that would be what most people would call "revisionist history".

The fact that there was a coup attempt after the emperor tried to surrender just drives home how little effect the atomic bombings had. The War Cabinet had steadily been shifting more to the side of the doves but was split down the middle, three-three on whether to accept an unconditional surrender. The emperor had been working in secret to negotiate an unconditional surrender, including making preparations to send his son to offer it, but had been delayed by Potsdam. After the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, there was literally no change in the view of any of the members of the War Cabinet, it remained a three-three split. The hawks considered it just another entry in the list of horrors that Japan was experiencing. The Potsdam declaration had been made just two weeks earlier. There hadn't been an imperial conference since the Potsdam Declaration to discuss it. The Imperial Conference on the 9th-10th. It was at this conference that the emperor made clear that he had wanted to accept the Potsdam terms. But it is clearly documented that he already had by that time supported accepting the Potsdam terms, even before the bombing.

((Whoosh!!!))

Actually one seriously has to question how much Truman knew about what he was authorizing, and what was Groves and his ilk overstepping their bounds. Truman's diary has repeated mentions that he doesn't think it should be used against civilians, and people who he talked to at the time reported similar.

The weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop this terrible bomb on the old capital or the new [Kyoto or Tokyo].

He [Stimson] and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement [known as the Potsdam Proclamation] asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I'm sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance.

"I don't think we ought to use this thing [the A-Bomb] unless we absolutely have to. It is a terrible thing to order the use of something that (here he looked down at his desk, rather reflectively) that is so terribly destructive, destructive beyond anything we have ever had. You have got to understand that this isn't a military weapon. (I shall never forget this particular expression). It is used to wipe out women and children and unarmed people, and not for military uses."

The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians. But that attack is only a warning of things to come. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries and, unfortunately, thousands of civilian lives will be lost.

(Truman's first public statement after the bomb was dropped, said while the second bomb was being dropped on Nagasaki).

The next day, Truman receives the first reports and photographs related to the bombings, and the scale of what was done becomes clear.

"Truman said he had given orders to stop atomic bombing. He said the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible. He didn't like the idea of killing, as he said, 'all those kids'."

.

One really has to question what sort of information Truman was given and what exactly he thought he was authorizing. Hiroshima was anything *but* a military base. It was one of the least militarized cities in Japan, which is why it had been so little touched by conventional bombings. Its war industries were on the periphery and were little damaged by the explosion. Groves' targeting committee prioritized it precisely for the reason that it would visibly kill so many people and because it was largely untouched thusfar; the committee ruled out purely military targets (what Truman actually wanted) as they didn't consider them to be showy enough as demonstrations of the weapon's power.

Truman's underlings were mixed on the subject of the bomb as well. Bard (undersecretary of the navy), for example, was adimant that the US should not use the bomb on cities. He thought it not only morally abhorrent, but totally unnecessary, as he and many others felt Japan was already on the verge of surrender (the post war Strategic Bombing Survey would later back him up on this point).

But, it ended as it ended.

Nonsense. The US dropped the world's first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a military base . That was because they wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians.

That's not true. PbA is used in the small scale but there is no standard for the large scale. Among the largest battery backups out there today are the NiCd battery backup for Fairbanks, Duke Energy's lead-acid Notrees battery, and AES's li-ion Laurel Mountain battery. Vanadium-redox is fairly common. Sodium-sulfur has some use too. There is no single standard.

And it's simply not true that "power is useless for backup". Quite to the contrary, high power output battery backups are incredibly valuable for peaking. This is especially important with renewables like solar and wind whose output can change rapidly.

They're going to be constantly replacing LiOn packs on any appreciable sized system.

And why would they be doing that?

Let's say it all together now: "Li-ion != Cell phone batteries". Li-ion is a whole broad range of chemistries that follow a basic mechanism of action involving the intercalation of lithium ions on either side of a membrane. There are an incredibly wide range of anodes, cathodes, electrolytes, and membranes, and these offer widely varying performance in terms of power density, energy density, cost, cycle life, and shelf life. Cell phone and laptop batteries are li-ion batteries specifically engineered with design life deemphasized in favor of high energy density in order to keep their products small and light. They're not climate controlled and they're generally run at high depths of discharge. This is not what you do with all li-ion battery types. Where longevity is of concern, you more carefully control temperature, control charging more carefully, you have many cells in parallel that can allow for individual cell failures, you use a lower DoD, and you use a chemistry that sacrifices some energy density for greatly improved cycle life.

The exact same rules apply to NiMh. You can get NiMH with high energy density by sacrificing cycle life. A typical NiMh hybrid battery pack only achieves its lifespan by running at a tiny 20-40% DoD range.

And another thing: it's the 2010s. Where's my flying car?

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SpaceX Model M Details Revealed
Posted by timothy on 11:23 AM -- Wednesday June 14 2019
from the gotta-find-something-new-to-complain-about department.

Julian86 writes :

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), fresh off their merger this spring with Tesla Motors, has provided the first sneak-peak at the new hybrid electric/LOX/H2 SpaceX Model M. Boasting 800 miles of all-electric range and 3800 m/s delta-V, it is said to be capable of driving from Albuquerque to Los Angeles on a single charge and achieving Low-Earth-Orbit atop a moderate-sized flyback booster. The press conference was widely attended by the press but was briefly disrupted when former Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson had to be rushed to the hospital after repeatedly slamming his head into a brick wall in a desperate cry for attention.

Will you please stop with these mundane, low-hanging fruit goals and try something lofty and ambitious for once? It's always the same-old, same-old, doing-what-everyone-else is doing with you, isn't it?

Indeed, the raw materials for li-ion batteries are cheap, especially if it's a non-cobalt-based chemistry. It's all about optimizing mass production. Which is precisely what the gigafactory is all about.