Well, that and the block chains... About the only thing holding up values is the cost of mining hardware.... Wait, is that possible?

BUT... BUT... It's not GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED!

Oh, wait... Might that actually end up being a problem too?

Don't I recall a bunch of folks up in arms at all the BitCoin exchanges "loosing" (I mean stealing) the depositor's funds.... There should be a law...

Oh no you don't.. It's not the year of bitcon until AFTER the year Linux takes over the desktop..

The government of Argentina doesn't have the resources to actually ENFORCE the laws they have now, what makes you think they could enforce a new one?

I'm pretty sure they have laws about converting out of the local currency into just about everything. In fact, they probably have some seriously tight currency exchange rules to keep the locals from ditching their currency and say floating into Dollars, Euros, Mexican Pecos, Oreo Cookies and poker chips, you name it. NOBODY wants to hold the local currency, at least not for long. BTC likely affords the locals a way to quickly convert to *something* other than the local script, and most likely they are willing to convert at many times the "official" exchange rate.

The government cannot pay it's debts now, so I'm sure that hiring a police force to catch and prosecute people breaking the currency trade rules doesn't rate very high on the priority list.

Yes sir, this is by far the best of the bad solutions we have sir.

EXACTLY... Argentina's currency is in SERIOUS trouble and has been in decline for a decade or more. It's where Greece is headed, and the whole EU if they don't disconnect from Greece or just outright forgive the bulk of their debt. The biggest problem they face is there is literally NOTHING they can do about the devaluation of their currency except abruptly stop nearly ALL government spending, but that would leave the country in anarchy, the government out of power and the country rife for being taken over by less than desirables. We are quite literally seeing them fall into the third world, where they once where a thriving industrial and agricultural power house.

BitCoin is just the latest symptom of the debt sickness that's killing them.

We cry for YOU Argentina.

Seems to me that an internal combustion engine and a prop is the same thing as what you describe, at least in results. Hydrocarbons and air in, spinning prop, water and CO2 out. Why bother with all the fuel cell mess and complexity, just use what already works, 110 Octane Low Lead Aviation Gasoline....

Do you know any aircraft mechanics?

It's not like you could just replace a ton of batteries with your standard ramp worker, baggage thrower. It's hard enough to get them to close the doors properly, now you want them replacing batteries? Yea, you might do this, but I'm thinking the logistics of what you suggest might be a problem for a "for profit" airline.

Actually, there are about 5 airplanes per parking space, especially for commercial aircraft.

On 9/11 I lived near Wichita KS's airport. They have about 4 gates, but we had over 20 large aircraft parked all over the place. The parking logistics where quite something to see, but it shows that we have a lot more commercial aircraft than gates to park them at.

For light aircraft, they stay parked more than not, so the parking space to aircraft ratio is nearly 1 to 1, with there being more parking than aircraft.

That's mean to you buddy.... Or is that median.... (smile)

Cessna 150's burn about 6-8 gal/hour depending on what you are doing. If you cruse at your most efficient RPM and lean the mixture, you can get about 80 MPH ground speed @ 7 gal/hour and carry 2 adults. This gets you about 11 MPG for the aircraft, or 22 Passenger miles/gal. (I may be wrong on my numbers but I'd be on the high side on fuel burn) Larger planes do better in the passenger mile and low wing aircraft with retractable gear which are more streamlined go faster on the same fuel burn and adding a constant speed prop and fuel injection gets you quite a bit more.

My point here is that aircraft are not that bad compared to say an SUV, mini-van or pickup truck in terms of fuel efficiency.

Oh sure it is... The issue is ENERGY density.

Aircraft are more efficient when the energy storage is lighter and smaller. Batteries are not lighter and smaller than liquid hydrocarbons that contains the same amount of energy. Not to mention that as you burn off liquid fuel, the aircraft weighs less and gets more efficient as a result.

So, until batteries get small enough and light enough to have the same range with the same payload, liquid hydrocarbons will be the fuel of choice. I don't think we will be at that point for a LONG time yet as we are currently pushing the limits of battery technology to do a car, where weight isn't a big deal, at least as big a deal as it is in airplanes.

Look, I'm not saying it's not *possible* only that it's not practical to do this. Sometimes it really just takes a human to actually be on site.

Effective tower controlling may be possible to do remotely in most situations, but the benefits of having a tower over just a radio is for the safety afforded by having a human verify that some pilot didn't make a mistake and taxi onto the active runway in IMC, or that pesky flock of migrating birds which are using that set of trees off to the right and left of the threshold of 23 are something to be watching out for. Then there is the deer that jumped the fence and is grazing between the taxiway and runway. Most of this is stuff that nobody can see remotely, but a guy in the tower cab could easily.

But the *real* question is if this being remote leads to better safety and is worth the major costs. A simple Unicom frequency works well for traffic avoidance, especially if you make it mandatory for pilots to announce their position and intentions. You could easily and cheaply add to that somebody on the other end who is keeping track of weather conditions and previously reported traffic but doesn't grant clearances or give out orders and add greatly to that safety. Beyond that you go to full blown tower, but I don't see all that much improvement in safety when you make that jump. I just don't think it's worth it.

I'm not sure I'd count Apollo 1 as a flight incident, there wasn't even fuel in the rest of the rocket. It was a training/simulation accident, more of a systems integration failure than a flight accident. So in my view Apollo only suffered ONE serious in flight failure and even though we nearly lost the crew, this failure only really cost the mission. As a system it's record is pretty darned good, considering how far out on the bleeding edge of technology it was in it's day.

It was the EARNINGS numbers that tanked the share price...

The tweet was just premature because most companies release earnings AFTER the market closes.

The drop in the share price would have happened after the earnings miss anyway, so it wasn't the tweet.