I pay close to $250/month for power (it just went up 47% in CT in the last 6 months for the same power usage). So if the 10kWh PowerWall costs me $3,500 (+inverter, grid tie-in, installation), then it pays for itself in ~18 months. That's a pretty easy sell from my perspective.

Adding $10k of solar panels to the system to go completely off the grid, just adds to that value, and to the resale price of my house if I choose to sell it within the next 10-20 years. As panel efficiencies improve, I can upgrade those panels, or add an additional PowerWall, and increase that independence.

Totally worth it, in my opinion.

Besides, many (most?) communities are now putting a quota on the number of solar installations, because of the pressure they put on the common utility/grid system (yes, they do -add- more pressure to the grid, contrary to common thought, especially at nighttime and when there is heavy, localized cloudcover), so if you wait, you may find yourself the only one on the block who can't add solar because it's prohibited. A PowerWall tied to the common utility can relieve some of that pressure, and increase the independence from a constant feed from the power company.

It's a radio transmitter in a can. It would take an even larger departure from known physics to make it go boom. We have a good deal of experience with radio transmitters in space.

OK, I will try to restate in my baby talk since I don't remember this correctly.

Given that you are accelerating, the appearance to you is that you are doing so linearly, and time dilation is happening to you. It could appear to you that you reach your destination in a very short time, much shorter than light would allow. To the outside observer, however, time passes at a different rate and you never achieve light speed.

I am having an equally hard time thinking of how Earth is more habitable than Mars while atomic bombs are going off or impactors are impacting. If you wait a while, sure it's more habitable than Mars. But for that moment, no.

To an outside observer. I don't think it's the same in the inertial frame.

Before we call this real, we need to put one on some object in orbit, leave it in continuous operation, and use it to raise the orbit by a measurable amount large enough that there would not be argument regarding where it came from. The Space Station would be just fine. It has power for experiments that is probably sufficient and it has a continuing problem of needing to raise its orbit.

And believe me, if this raises the orbit of the Space Station they aren't going to want to disconnect it after the experiment. We spend a tremendous amount of money to get additional Delta-V to that thing, and it comes down if we don't.

Thanks!

Brian Webb isn't listing this on his Vandenberg AFB Launch Schedule yet. I think he's going to wait until someone official tells him a date.

With some optimism that might only be thousands of years rather than hundreds of Millions.

But it's only necessary for Earth to be uninhabitable for a short time to end the Human race. And that can happen due to man or nature, today. If people aren't somewhere else during that process, that's the end.

Actually I was thinking nuclear power rather than magic.

I agree with the other commenter, there will be lots of people living in space if they can only get there. Mars is a good start.

Obviously I am missing something, then. Please fill me in on your better information sources. Email to bruce at perens dot com if you don't want to put them on Slashdot.

It's time to start planning another trip to Lompoc. The Motel 6 was sort of yukky last time. Maybe I'll try something else. There was an official visitor observation site that I found and got into last time, but that was for the Delta, and it was on Pad 4 if I remember correctly. This one is all the way on the other side of the base on Pad 7 or 8, isn't it? There are some farm roads that might be good observation sites if they are open.

I am not confident that the world will remain a hospitable place for life until we are ready by your standard.

Getting the resources and people there is very close to being within our technical capability. The task ourselves, if we perform it, will take care of the remaining gaps.

Creating a self-sustaining colony outside of the Earth's environment is going to need a lot of work, but it is not work that can ever be achieved on this earth. We have to actually put people in space to achieve this. Our best experience so far is with submarines. Academic research has so far yielded only farcial frauds like Biosphere II.

Technically, making transceivers work when there are 30 of them in vehicles next to each other can get difficult. People wonder why you can buy a dual-band walkie talkie for $60 but the one in the police car costs much more. If it's well engineered, the one in the police car has some RF plumbing that isn't in the $60 walkie talkie.

You are exactly right. One thing though, it's "Ham" or even "ham". It's not an acronym. Thanks!

You do know that science isn't the only reason to go to space, don't you?

There is the issue of continuing the existence of the Human race, and whatever other life we choose to bring with us.

Planets and suns aren't sure things, you know. We sort of take ours for granted, but there is the evidence of the sky around us. And the ominous silence of a galaxy that should be filled with intelligent life...

Is anyone still taking June 7 seriously? And where is it supposed to happen now? Cape Caneveral instead of Vandenberg? I would certiainly drive down if they held it at Vandenberg. I was there for the first try on DISCOVR.

The first test was supposed to come off much earlier than May. There are both commercial launches and government ones in the way, and there was the Helium pressurization issue which put some things off schedule.