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Submission + - Did Tennessee Just Ban All CO2 Emissions?

vik writes: According to this BBC article Tennessee just passed a bill banning the dispersion of chemicals in the air that affect weather and temperature. Sponsored by the chemtrail and anti-geoengineering crowds, if signed into law it seems it would ban atmospheric CO2 emissions:

The bill forbids "intentional injection, release, or dispersion" of chemicals into the air. It doesn't explicitly mention chemtrails, which conspiracy theorists believe are poisons spread by planes. Instead it broadly prohibits "affecting temperature, weather, or the intensity of the sunlight". The Republican-sponsored bill passed along party lines on Monday. If it is signed by Tennessee's governor, Republican Bill Lee, it will go into effect on 1 July.

Comment Re:what's the deal? (Score 5, Informative) 102

Methane is relatively easy, for a cryogenic, to keep cold and dense. Because it contains more energy per unit volume than, say, hydrogen, you don't have to pump it so fast into the combustion chamber. Your fuel tanks, pumps etc. are smaller and therefore lighter.

Because it contains much less carbon than kerosene, it does not decompose into a black mess inside the engine.

But it is cryogenic, and suffers density changes during pumping, compressing, etc. If this gets out of hand it behaves much like trapped air in a garden hose. This is hard on the engine innards...

Vik :v)

Submission + - China beats Spacex and Blue Origin, orbiting first methane/oxygen powered rocket

An anonymous reader writes: Musk and Bezos have been slugging it out in the aerospace ring, each trying to get their methane-powered rockets into orbit first. Elon's Raptor propelled Starship skywards in a spectacular RUD, and the Blue Origin Vulcan has had, shall we say, a few unfortunate setbacks. There are others in the race, but no successes so far.

Enter The Dragon, in the form of China's LandSpace Technology Corp's ZQ-2. Far smaller than either of the above, but no lightweight with a cargo capacity of 6 tonnes to low orbit. As the article below explains, there are sound reasons why this technology is the preferable way forward for new launchers, and there are also tangible environmental benefits to the new propellants. A reusable variant is planned:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news...

Comment Crossing a chasm in two leaps (Score 1) 613

If something *almost* works, it's not there yet.

A big problem when travelling with an EV (ask me how I know) is when chargers are broken or otherwise unexpectedly inaccessible due to flooding, landslips etc. - particularly in rural areas. At that point, you are very glad of the "unnecessary" range.

Fortunately, there are a variety of vehicles available which people can pick required features from.

Comment Re: Alloys from advanced civilization ar anachroni (Score 1) 138

This is precisely the problem. We are looking at the material using our current knowledge of materials in our tech level, and it makes perfect sense to us in the same way that it made perfect sense to the Victorians that advanced computing devices would be made from fiendishly complex clockwork.

But advanced tech would be nanofabricated from lighter elements with high intrinsic bond strength, organised at the atomic scale. So in looking at exotic alloys we are barking entirely up the wrong tree.

Comment Alloys from advanced civilization ar anachronistic (Score 4, Interesting) 138

A civilization with the technology to reach earth would have reached the point where they had control over molecular manufacturing. They wouldn't use metals. They would be using bulk nanocrystaline diamond or sapphire due to their greater strength/weight ratios and durability in the interstellar vacuum. So, no, I don't think he's found advanced alien tech.

Comment GPL Forces RHL devs to break the RHL system (Score 2) 117

So if a developer builds an application with the RHL files, and a client asks for the source, what does the developer do? Refuse to release the source files they got from Red Hat and breach the GPL, or release the full source and break their contract with Red Hat?

From here it looks like Red Hat have just worked themselves into a corner where using their Linux becomes a legal minefield.

Comment Re:What is Figma? (Score 3, Informative) 25

Figma is a web-based 2d design tool primarily used for website layouts (think Illustrator, Inkscape, Sketch). It handles vectors and bitmaps, and can express shapes in CSS units (eg, em) so that designs are less ambiguous than (eg) a bitmap-based editor or a vector editor that uses (eg) centimeters. Rather than a fixed and small canvas size Figma is a ZUI interface with a large canvas that you zoom in/out

Comment Re:So they beamed power 50 metres (Score 2) 111

What the Chinese are discussing is slightly different to what the West wants to do. Western groups want to beam from geosynchronous orbit so that their patch gets all the power, and also to avoid shadow.

China wants to beam from low orbit, and swap power from site to site as the satellites progress in orbit. Presumably they'll beam between satellites to transfer power into shaded bits. Lossy, but then so is beaming 36,000km.

Cool thing though is beaming power to spacecraft or lunar colonies.

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