Foundation was one of my favorite books growing up ; )
Anything by Asimov is good, and much is great, and most movies made from his writings suck; and as I noted in another post the best part of some of it is you can take it, rename it, and sell it as a real thing to people.
Chernobyl: a crazy design with a strongly positive void coefficient. No one else has ever made such designs, even before Chernobyl because it was always known to be dangerous.
When discussing Chernobyl, one must always keep in mind the proximate cause of the incident.
Specifically, the version of the NRC decided it needed to know how much energy they could extract from a meltdown in progress to deal with the meltdown. Perfectly reasonable notion - it makes a meltdown easier to deal with if you don't have to rely on dozen/hundreds of (relatively) small emergency generators for lights, pumps, etc.
So, they picked an out-of-the-way reactor, and pushed it as far toward a meltdown condition as they considered safe to do, and started measuring the energy output of the plant in that mode.
Unfortunately, they were wrong about how "far toward a meltdown" was "safe to do"....
So, the largest nuclear disaster in history happened because someone made a goof while trying a Real World (tm) SIMULATION of the largest nuclear disaster in history....
NO! In a democratic society, we should NEVER tolerate intolerance.
So, we should be intolerant of intolerance?
Look at the image at the top of the page. Do you see it? That's Mir's solar panels after about *10 years*. Hubble replaced its panels twice over a period of 13 years. Space absolutely sucks for solar panels.
The Hubble panels were replaced to provide more power, not because the panels were broken.
Note that since the last Hubble solar panel upgrade, Hubble has operated for longer than 12 years (13 so far). Currently, they're expecting the Hubble to be operational for another three years. At least.
So, with Hubble as a data point, and 2002-era solar panels, we're seeing an expected lifetime of 16+ years (there's no particular reason to believe Hubble is going to fail due to solar panel problems as opposed to other issues).
Note that 16 year lifetime for the solar panels would increase the numbers for the space-based system by 1/3. Still behind the ground-based system, but not by very much (~89%, comparing 2002-era solar panels in space to 2015-era panels on the ground). And that's a MINIMUM for the space-based system....
"To be or not to be", or, in it's C style syntax: "2b || !2b", is not a question at all. It is a tautology. It is true regardless of what semantic value you assign to 2b.
I gather you've never read the source material?
That particular soliloquy was Hamlet's musings on suicide as a solution to his problems....
I just took a look at that site, and while in general I agree with his conclusions, I am perplexed by some of the math that he uses.
I don't necessarily agree with his conclusions, but agree that some of his math is...perplexing.
For instance, he gives a ground-bases system a lifetime of 40 years, but a space-based system a lifetime of only 12 years. Off the top of my head, I can't see any particularly good reason why a space-based system should be shorter-lived than a ground-based system.
If, instead, he'd assumed a similar lifetime for the space-based system, his conclusions would have been the opposite, since he'd have increased the lifetime output of the space-based system by a factor of 10/3, moving the 40K+ to 130K+ (nearly twice the output of the ground based system).
Arguably, a space-based system will last less time than a ground-based system. On the other hand, arguably, a ground-based system endures more weather events that can break solar panels, so the reverse may be true as well...
As to the Tg, it is possible that it will have a better value for the space-based system, since it can be beamed down to a location near where the power will be used (thus reducing line losses). This is not mandatory however, so it's possible space-based Tg will be the same as anywhere else (no reason it should be worse exists, but better is certainly possible). Even with Tg the same as ground-based, space-based solar would come out considerably better than ground-based so long as you assumed essentially identical lifetimes for the systems.
So what? The theory does what it is supposed to do: explain the data.
A theory is supposed to make predictions that can be tested. Have any testable predictions been made that have since been proved true?
The cars are stock for the first season for cost reasons, for the second season there are several chassis builders and several power unit suppliers signed up, so there will be a better spread of performance amongst the pack.
Therein lies the great racing divide: vehicles that are essentially identical and thus, in theory, the driver is the difference versus real manufacturer's vehicles so the driver / car combination becomes more important. NASCAR, for example, uses the former model and thus a good driver combined with effective cheating is the route to success. Endurance racing tends to the latter along with having various classes so cars of equal capability race against each other.
When I left a job I had my lawyer review the non-compete.
Then I doubt it was working in a warehouse, was it?
No, but my point was that my comments were based on a real professional's opionion, not the usual
Safe until it kills millions when a plant blows up.
Unlike, say, coal, which kills millions under normal operations, right?
Or didn't you know that routine coal-mining fatalities are a couple of orders of magnitude more numerous than all fatalities associated with nuclear power? Hell, coal mining fatalities in the 20th century in the USA ALONE were comparable to the death-toll from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.
And then there's the rest of the world's coal mining casualties, plus secondary effects from the pollution.
And never mind that nuclear plants don't "blow up". Unless you fill them up with TNT and set it off, of course.
Nuclear is dead, I can't be bothered to argue about it. Ten years from now renewable energy will be a fraction of the cost of nuclear and will be the cheapest form of energy worldwide without any need for subsidy. 10 years from now if you suggest we use more nuclear energy, anybody who knows anything will frown at you like you're mad.
It's funny, but I remember hearing the same sort of comment back in the '70s during the energy crisis.
Oddly enough, it didn't seem to have worked out that way.
In case of thie flight, it would have helped if the captain had a code that would have opened the door regardless of it being locked from the inside. But then the copilot might have just killed him first, before diving the plane to the ground.
Unfortunately, while that would have possibly prevented this event it opens the door to other problems because now you always have an access path to the cockpit. The problem was not the door, but the ability of a pilot to cover up medical issues and keep flying along with a single failure point (1 pilot) in the cockpit.
Saliva causes cancer, but only if swallowed in small amounts over a long period of time. -- George Carlin
