And fiber has even more bandwidth than copper.

Your point is correct about fixed links providing far more bandwidth that what can be provided by any kind of wireless link. The drone concept only make sense in places like the lightly populated areas of the US or similar countries where customers are too far apart to make wireline or fiber communications affordable. The low altitude with respect to satellites means that the link frequencies can be re-used more frequently.

I remember one of my brother's first issues (Apr? 1964) of Boy's Life having "Sunjammer" as the cover story. AC Clarke later expanded the story under the name "Wind from the Sun". FWIW, Boy's Life is one of the magazines digitized by Google Books and you can look up the issue in question.

Actually, you're the one who comes across as being ignorant.

Baseload generation is generation is considered to be the lowest incremental cost dispatchable power source. No form of generation has 100% up time, but a well run plant will have very little unscheduled down time. The variability of wind is a huge problem when wind generation becomes a significant portion of total generation at a give moment, requiring a large amount of spinning reserve to keep the grid stable.

FWIW, the limiting factor in power output of an AC generator is not conductor heating, rather it is the amount of power that can be generated without the generator pulling out of synchronism, especially under fault conditions.

What Edison invented was an incandescent light with a high enough resistance to make it possible to powered by a central station, along with the central station, a means of metering current, etc. Edison's work was mostly independent of Swan's.

While this book is not a Tesla biography, it does give a good picture of how Tesla fit in with the beginnings of the electric power industry. The book does give Tesla proper credit for the invention of poly-phase AC and the induction motor, but also points out that Stanley and Thomson were working on AC distribution before Tesla along with a lot of refinement on the induction motor being done by Benjamin Lamme.

It is the likes of Lamme and Steinmetz that are the unsung heroes of the electrical age.

When the Vatican decided to digitize their archives, they chose to store the mages in FITS format for pretty much the same reasons. One thing FITS doesn't address is preventing unauthorized access to the data.

In 1972, SAN to OAK was $24.50 on PSA with no restrictions. Equivalent fare on Southwest is ~$260, cheaper fares are available but come with restrictions.

Hmmm, "Get them out by Friday".

A bit OT, but I was surprised to learn that "Attack of the Giant Hogweed" was mostly based on fact.

Electorate, schmectorate, decisions like this are based on who provides the most campaign donations.

The proposed reactor design sounds a bit like the EBR-II at INEL, formerly the National reactor test site, with the design also referred to as the Integral Fast Reactor. This program got shut down in the 1990's, though stories have been told about people who were sent out to Idaho to shut it down came back as converts to the cause.

Not quite. Peak demand in California is between 6 to 7PM, peak solar production is approximately 12 noon. Peak load does not drop signficantly until well after sunset.

Decommissioning costs are still a lot less than it would cost to build the plant now. Letting the plant cool down for a few years makes the process simpler and safer, though the reactor vessel is going to be a challenge.

Something on the order of 97% of the atmosphere's mass is below 90,000'. 100km is an arbitrary value for the start of space, as the air at 100km is too thick to orbit and too thin to fly in (except dynamic soaring?). In imperial units, 100,000' seems to be the upper limit for flying and 100 miles is about the lower limit for orbiting.

The Perlan II sounds like it will handle like an unpowered U2 - where the planes ceiling will be defined by the "coffin corner" were the low speed stall (classic stall) approaches the high speed stall (Mach tuck from transonic airflow). Perhaps they will be using a more refined airfoil than the U2 to increase the Mach number for high speed stall.

IIRC, the pre-Perlan I sailplane altitude record of approx 47,000 feet was set sometime in the 1960's, surprising it took that long for someone to break that.

I first heard about use of series capacitors in an electric power systems class, 1H 1975, so they have been around for quite a while. It would seem to me that the caps should be able to withstand the DC potential set up by a Carrington event.

Any component for a high voltage transmission line is going to be gigantic. Google term "power transmission line series capacitors" should get you started.