Posts by PlacidCasual 85 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Oct 2010
There is nothing "Funny" at all. It was dark outside there was nothing to see. We know this because we saw the cameras enter darkness on the way up before the test and leave darkness on the way down after the test. We also did get an external view of the cargo bay door closing from the outside and it was barely discernible in the dark as it was only lit by the interior lights.
The previous 3 StarShip V2 failures all seem to be related to the major changes to the downcomer assembly compared the V1 and it remains to be seen if the remaining V2 can be modified to sort this problem out. But I don't think we have anything like the information to know if this was a design issue over a commissioning issue. If as Scott Manly suggested it was a fluid hammer issue that could be entirely down to ground systems issue it is too early to know better.
So SpaceX have used a lot of NASA funding for development but they have built the Flacon9 and Falcon heavy with over 100 flights between them and are routinely underbidding every other operator out there. They have already transformed the space launch market. They're using their reusable rockets to deploy a massive satellite internet service at breakneck speed that is literally orders of magnitude larger and faster than anything that has gone before. All whilst developing an even more ambitious fully reusable (or maybe refurbishable) launch system at a pace with no recent parallel in space launch history other than his own company. They have committed to fast development schedule based on taking risks and whilst it's having set backs it's frankly amazing yet all anyone seems to do is whinge about it. I'm amazed at the negativity.
I get people saying you still have to load the wagon but surely the long term game for something like this with maybe standardised modular interiors will be your business or household robot loads/collects the parcel and takes it into your house. Rob-couriers could work 24/7 which might reduce road burden.
I don't know why they seemed to have rolled back from the K-Max twin rotor helicopter cargo drone they tried in Afghanistan a number of years ago. As you suggest resupply in dangerous areas or even combat search and rescue in hostile areas seemed like a great solution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaman_K-MAX
This whole debacle goes back to the 1997 Strategic Defense Review when we chose to build gas turbine, cheap to build, expensive to run, low capability carriers over nuclear powered high capital, low running cost, catobar carriers that would had a reasonable choice of cheap and proven planes to fly off the damn things whilst we waited for the F-35 to sort itself out.
We'll end up with no sodding planes and use the things as replacements for HMS Ocean.
Still we're only spending £50Bn a year on the country's credit card interest payments. Heaven help us when the low interest introductory period runs out on that :-(
Amen to that. At £20m a pop and proven record Super Hornets would have suited us perfectly until the unit cost of F-35C's became tolerable. We could have actually bought and used the damned things, the F-35B will bankrupt the navy and we'll never be able to afford to use them.
What we really need is some Textron Scorpion type planes in large numbers, cheap to buy, cheap to fly, cheap to maintain and great for bombing medieval idiots back to the stone age which seems to be the purpose of our armed forces these days.
Always for us the bleeding edge we can't afford.
In multistorey or large houses you need connected alarms as if there is background noise you may not hear the alarm. Connected alarms all go off simultaneously so knowing which one is triggering the alarm is not the trivial act you might think. Not all alarms have disable buttons. Our recent houses have had 2.7m ceilings I can testify that getting an alrm off the ceiling whilst it blasts you in the face with 95dB is not easy or pleasant. Nest have solved all of these problems very neatly, my connected alarms tell me audibly and by app which alarm is going off and if it is smoke, CO or fire. I can silence them whilst they still monitor by app and audible voice by pushing a button using a a broom or similar.
And £240 pound for 7 years piece of mind? I can pony up £35 a year for that.
I lived in a 3 storey house with wired connected detectors but they kep failing and couldn't be silenced when her indoors burnt the toast. So I moved to Nest Protects and found the ability to silence them useful but more so the fact it calls out the location of the fire from the other alarms. In addition there has been more than one occasion when the app push notification has told me about an alarm, still normally the missus burning food but handy. Finally loss of power events or spurious alarms are no longer annoying chirps that tell me nothing but are easily understood error statements in the app.
I live in a very inexpensive part of the country now and have moved to a much larger house and find having the widely spaced but communicating alarms helpful so instead of dashing around the house looking for the connected alarm that's going off I can go straight to the problem.
Exactly.
Given our mission these days seems to be bombing iron age villagers back to the stone age we should be investing in a large fleet of cheap to buy, cheap to fly and cheap to maintain planes. A smaller fleet of up to date interceptor and air to air craft are only required to win the air superiority battle and start bombing the modern foe back to the industrial revolution. By the time there are boots on the ground, the cheap to run fighters should be pulling the shifts.
Why oh why we didn't build nuclear carriers with Catobar is beyond me, we could be flying highly competent and cheap F-18's now hired from the yanks.
Like all things energy wise these days no doubt when the story reached the MSM the "theiving utilities" will be blamed for what is ulitmately a political decision.
That £11Bn is being added to our bills as a "green initative" that will save us money.
We so need to renationalise the energy utilities just to stop our incompetent lords and masters playing the current incumbents off each other to achieve the least practical solution.
This is not the case for honey bees. They overwinter as a colony. A poor winter and spring can kill a colony. Equally whilst it is possible to split colony this affects honey production and colony strength. As a bee keeper I lost 3 of 5 hives 2 winters ago and struggled keep my 2 going through the following summer. Last summer was very good however. Most sensible beekeepers would tell you that no single cause is to bame but rather a raft of causes. Insecticides, monoculture diet (all the same food), poor winters/springs (wet and windy), varroa mite, diseases and in the US the routine long distance wholesale relocation of colonies to support the furit industry. All add up to weaken the bees and kill them off.
Hi
I'm not an IT professional, I'm a mechanical engineer. But I am responsible for all the IT in my house. I use a Sky router modem, because as far as I know I have to. I use powerline adapaters with encryption and wifi with encryption. My NAS, my Sky box, my TV and desktop are wired connections via the powerline and my tablet and phones are wifi. With the best will in the world I don't know how to improve the situation, I'm guessing my router has a generic admin password but I can't remember if that's something Sky let's me change.
No-one involved in the process of recieving and purchasing this stuff has ever suggested I need further measures to make it secure. It's a very unfortunate situation to be in.
I do find all of this stuff remarkably interesting and our knowledge of the solar sunspot cycles and the effect it may or may not have on the climate. I'm generally sceptic mostly because as an engineer I find it hard to believe the level of confidence we claim for such a fundementally complex system but it is great to be exposed to the elements of the story and gain even a glimmer of understanding.
I guess in so far as the state is concerned at the moment it is only my meta data that falls through their net. The nosey tech companies are being far more targetted and intrusive. Now I admit I am inviting them in but for many services for which I'm willing to pay I can't opt out of inviting them in and offering them access to data I consider superflous to the service I want to buy.
If I get a plumber round to install a tap whilst makeing conversation I might offer to tell him that I had a nice meal at Luigi's Italian last night I don't see any reason why his terms of service should include leafing through my wallet to look at my reciepts.
It seems everything and everyone wants to know who and what I am, where I am and what I'm doing. Services I've paid for have T&C's that require me to allow this and that, Android and friends I'm looking at you, and the device is useless without me accepting the EULA. I have nothing to hide but still find it creepy and annoying. Why does a website need my location if I'm browsing on a smartphone. I feel we're handing too much authority to others but the only other choice is to opt out of useful advances. If it's free and advertising pays for it well thats my call but if I'm paying for a service it puts my nose out of joint to for all the other intrusions to be foisted on me.
I have two very young children and I realise they are going to grow up in an entirely different World from myself and I'm terrified by the prospect of how differently their perception of life may be to my own.
I agree with the main thrust of your post. But I guess its the balance of useability against efficiency that may settle the matter. Liquid fuels can be quickly refilled and if you want greater range you just fit a bigger tank. some common infrastructure is already in place (petrol stations) and fuel cells "may" have longer useful lives than batteries. So the recyling cost may swing the energy balance.
It will be interesting to see how the engineering and costs balance out. My gut says fuel cells but I wouldn't be suprised by batteries.
If we built induction track motorways we could charge cars whilst they drove along overcoming a significant useability hurdle.
*wanders off into a Heinlein-esque daydream*
How can you patent something like that? What invention or innovation does that include? If the box, for example, were specifically sized to act as a wave guide for some specific frrequency that increased reception by a wonderful percentage on the basis of man years of lab testing I would get it but if its just a box it is beyond credible.
I have one of these and it is a little annoying that some of the functionality is being removed and I hope they are able to find a way to correct the issue. The feature in question was extremely helpful and removed much of the annoyance from fire alarm use. Having spent the previous ferw years getting on chairs to prize the balsted thing off the ceiling every time I wanted a steak or burnt the toast was not good and you would often forget to put it back up for a day or two compromising on your safety.
Despite the cost of these things I think NEXT have to be applauded for trying to bring additional functionality to some unloved home devices and apply some of the features we've maybe all being dreaming of for years to fruition.
No they can't afford an extra £60k to maintain shift C+I engineers. With the glorious exception of the nuclear industry and maybe embedded co generation at an oil refinery I would be amazed if there is a thermal power station in the UK with a shift C+I engineer. The systems will have been online for years because they can't afford the lost man hours of the specialist engineer at the central engineering headquarters driving back and forth to highly distributed assets to to update PLC's or SCADA systems. That facility also allows the site engineer to log on remotely if needed to.
Plenty of power conmpanies are downsizing like there is no tomorrow. Didcot A, Cockenzie, Kingsnorth, Ferrybridge C, Isle of Grain, Fawley, Littlebrook, Iron Bridge, Keadby, Tilbury all closed or closing soon. The remaining UK conventional fleet is trimming numbers because power generation is not profitable and influenceable costs like maintenance and staff numbers are being squeezed. First they cut the fat, then they trimmed the meat, they've sucked the marrow and now they're knawing at the bone. It's the same in Europe too, in the Netherlands 2 brand new super efficient gas stations have been mothballed because there is no profit. If you aren't sucking at the Government teat taking subsidies you don't make profit in the UK power industry anymore.
To the best of my knowledge syncing and connecting of generators to the grid still requires manual control on all "signficiant" UK power stations. OCGT's and wind farms will have auto and internet controlled syncing arrangements but other plants still require a person to hold down a button on a phyically connected electrical comtrol loop not a networked one.
It's 3am on Monday morning in January and you can't get you're first oil burner in because the PLC is seeing a problem with an instrument that is locking the start up sequence. You're the Shift Manager and you'v confirmed there is no safety risk. Do you wait for the senior C+I engineer to drive in to work log on and find the problem and "frig out" the sequence and expose yourself to missing you sync time for generation and a cash out in the market of £100k's or do you ask the C+I engineer to log onto the company intranet from home and change a 1 to a 0 from the confort of his own home. But more importantly within 10-15 mins of you identifying the need.
The UK power industry is on it's knees it can't afford the manpower to have shift C+I engineers (or any other type for that matter) to fix problems. So problems that can be fixed remotely need remote solutions.
In my experience SCADA systems aren't used to update Mrs Smith Direct Debit.
My eyes must have decieved me when I looked out my office window a few years ago and saw 750,000 tonnes of coal. Now that is only 3 months worth of coal at normal operating levels for a 2000MW station but the photos I've seen of stations during the miners strike show approximately 2 million tonnes of coal next to them.
I can make no comment for plants in the US but UK plants also work on a delivery straight to bunker basis but also often keep 100,000's of tonnes on site as a hedge against price fluctuations. Places like Bristol Port also store inordinately large volumes of coal.
I think nuclear power should be the heart of our and the Worlds energy policy. Fossil fuels will run out sooner or later, no one is seriously suggesting they are being created by natural processes faster than we're using them are they? Fission in its many forms offers us a a good interim until we create fusion or wipe ourselves out. In the UK I'd like to see a 50% or 60% nuclear backed up with combined cycle gas for load management and a few large coal stations as strategic reserve (you can pile 6 months generating supply of coal next to a station, you can't do that with gas).
Oh irony of ironies. I was in a crash on the M25 this morning. I was in a static queue of traffic when a lorry ploughed into the back of the queue smashing up the cars behind me and driving my car into the one in front.
The sooner robots control motorway traffic the better.
I'd be happy if this technology was limited to motorways only initially because the number of crashes I've seen on the M25 in my life beggars belief. I regularly drive this motorway and the sooner the robots take over the better, we're just not very good at managing the situation. Weekdays you have experienced motorway drivers who are overconfident and in too greater numbers and the weekends you have panic-y drivers who rarely use motorways you-yo-ing up and down in speed using their brakes too freely and crashing like its the latest fashion.
I for one look forward to our electric overlords.
Numerous renewable companies already do this, as little as 1.5m on a weir is sufficient to get renewable energy from a river. Sadly their are few such locations where the captial costs don't massively outweigh the return. Even the small projects on weirs require Government subsidy to payback.
In engineering if you have to add the word civil to the project you can add a 0 to the cost.
Sadly the energy density of most of the proposed "mass" storage schemes is not even close to being useful to smooth out a heavily renewable based power generation protfolio.
Dinorwig (SP?) only has storage for a few hours at high loads and is the UK's most useful pumped storage site. The volumes of water, compressed air or low grade heat required to store industrial levels of electricity are mind boggling. Fossil fuels are so useful because of the energy density they bring to the party. A 500MW coal power station unit will use circa 150-200 tonnes per hour at full load you need the equivalent of 100-120 such units to meet a typical peak winter demand. Thats upto 20,000 tonnes of coal an hour, all very do able. If you changed that to pumped storage you'd probably have to dam up every U shaped valley in the United Kingdom and turn it into a dam.
The report below demonstrates periods of low renewable supply during high demand periods are not uncommon.
http://www.jmt.org/wind-analysis-report.asp
The moment a decent mass energy storage system is devised I will support mass renewable energy iniatives, until that day I think they are a dangerous irrelavance just pushing up costs for no good reason.
This problem affects the UK to a lesser extent. Many of Britains power station are running at a loss for the next few years. Despite the closure of Kingsnorth, Cockenzie, Grain, Fawley, Didcot A, Tilbury and the eventual closure of Ferrybridge C there is no profit in fossil energy generation. King Coal is makning money this year but has had a shaky few years and carbon tax will squeeze them eventually. Super efficient gas stations run at neutral and old gas stations are being thrashed to make money in the balancing market. Even efficient plant is being mothballed like Keadby. Nuclear is still making money but noone is willing or able to invest in the next gen plant. But renewables and biomass are raking it in. Drax is converting to north american wood chip, as is Lynemouth and numerous small CHP's are getting in on the action too. Everyman and his dog (read overseas soveriagn welath finds) with wonga to spare is piling into offshore wind to secure their 10% return on capital guaranteed from the british bill payers wallet. Whilst relaible efficient plant struggles because the politicans have gamed the market to reflect their own predjuidices.
Dictionary entry: Wind farm - a device powered by politicians flatulence used to harvest subsidies.
Npower's recent report throoughly debunks the oh so convienient myth of power company price gouging and excessive profits. Lewis Page breaks it down in another article today. Smart meters whist pointless are only a small element of the massive costs our elected representatives are heaping on us.
In my experience the reason PLC's etc are connected to the internet is to allow potentially distant engineers and systems experts to access the control system in the middle of the night or from great distance to "frig" out some snafu in the system which is preventing a power generating unit getting on the bars. The age and complexity of most turbo generators mean that certain instruments or interlocks failing to register in the correct state holds up the sequence. Most power companies in the UK (probably nuclear excepted) can't afford to emply enough staff and particulalry on shift who are capable of dealing with this on site. So some poor bugger gets a phone call and it is explained he can come in or he can dial in. The company supports dial in because then they don't lose him the next day which they would if he came in to work.
But I agree it is vaguely mad to have critical equipment internet connected.
to do something smart?
This is a gift horse. We should put these unexpected revenues into a soveriegn wealth fund to give future generations the benefit of our good luck. We should also ban export of this gas, why sell it on the World market we could easily reduce UK energy costs by 50% if we limited it to the domestic market. Imagine the industries which would once again become viable. Automation in process industries has meant that manpower costs relative to energy costs mean we no longer lose out to low labour cost countries if our energy costs are low. It's a multiple win, increased GDP in productive jobs, export income, more people in work lowering welfare costs and it can regenerate the north.
Saving for the future and empowering the now is the correct course of action. Which is why I expect our stupid dumbass polticians to allow companies to sell it into Europe at low prices pissing away advantage for short term political gain. that applies to polticians of any party btw.
If the UK power industry is any indication the complexity and bespoke nature of UK power station control systems may provide some security. The systems have often been upgraded in a piecemeal way over decades or made backward compatible to obsolete plant as legacy systems become to old maintian. It means each station has a unique control system controlling a unique plant architecture. In the UK even plants with nominally similar plant process set ups have different PLC's and control interfaces because the build to price philosophies used in construction. When only one or two long serving members of staff can interpret how changes in the control system will effect the process it probably means cyber attackers will be somewhat flumoxed even if they gain access.
So during the day when they didn't need many lights on and it was quite windy they managed a decent amount of renewables. How does that plan fare in mid winter low pressure system when there is no wiind or sun? The back up plant just becomes less cost efficient as more and more highly variable, high uncertainty counter cyclical generation is added to the grid.
On Monday eight Scottish windafarms were paid not to generate because there was too much wind generation in the wrong place on the grid. On Tuesday a Scottish coal fired power station was paid not to generate because the wind generation had to take priority in that region of the grid. The grid company has increased our bills by £50 a year over the last few years to pay for the capital costs of linking remote small generators to the grid and to strengthen the grid connections to accomodate badly placed generation.
I don't think anyone is looking at 600 bar steam cycles yet, I'd be very surprised if they were. 700°C and 250bar is the current acheiveable envelope with current materials. Even then you're only looking to push the 50% efficiency envelope.
Earlier comments about district heating are not really applicable in the UK. Our housing stock is too old and disordered. In the Soviet Union it was a common solution but they had large apartment blocks relatively near the heat sources. The capital cost of district heating really demands high denisty housing near the source. This might be achievable with a distributed co-gen strategy but you would have to re-ordeer society to achieve it.
Whilst I'm no fan of nationalisation I really think the only way to achieve a rational energy policy is for generation and gas supply to be regulated absolute monopolies at the very least. The planning and investment decisions can then be taken without the great uncertainty of market trends and political intereference.
Is that true with regard to the storage tanks?
I'm an engineer with a professional passing interest in nuclear power. I've read numerous *shudders to say it* Wikipedia articles on the 1950's experiments into molten salt reactors and thorium reactors.
Is the energy density of the salt sufficiently high that decay heat is only a limited meltdown/containment failure risk? So passive cooling arrangements and heat sinks are sufficient.
Are tanks such as these really going to the that highly irradiated, the 1950's salt reactors, if the articles are correct, were routinely left unattended to "trip" off using this facility. That would suggest regular occurences of emptying the drain down tanks which would be unlikely if there was a high radiological risk.
It is however nice to see some new fast reactor concepts being considered it must be better to burn through our waste and create ultimate waste that only requires 100's of years of storage rather than 10,000's.
You may be conflating two issues when discussing the installation of your local wind turbines.
You may be getting less power outages in your area because they have strengthened the regional/local power grid to accomodate the new wind power generators. This probably has the side benefit of improving the stability of the domestic supply in your area.
I can make no comment about the reliability of wind power in South Australia but in the UK a wildlife organisation did some research showing it wasn't that useful when you actually needed it.
http://www.jmt.org/news.asp?s=2&nid=JMT-N10561
I'm all for nuclear though it has many of the attributes we require in our opower generation and could easily help the transition away from fossil fuels as their availability dwindles in the future.
I agree with you on the storage front. Hydrogen is not an energy dense fuel. There are so many things that make sense about a hydrogen economy built on mass nuclear and renewable generation. But hydrocarbons are just so useful, there is many times more hydrogen in a pint of petrol than there is in a pint of hydrogen, the physics of it is our enemy otherwise it would get my vote.
On the refuelling issue I guess until satellites are built for refuelling you'd have to create a sapce tug to move them to the desired location. I assume that all satellites must still have the hard contact points used for launch still on them so wouldn't a space tug just attach there and drag em into position?
It has been an openly kept secret for years that the majority of prices rises in electricity are being driven by the political process rather than the economics of generation. The Big Six are regularly pilloried in the press yet they can only dream of making 10% guaranteed return on investment. Large Combustion Plant Directive, Industrial Emmissions Directive, Climate Change acts etc are all significantly increasing the cost of electricity by ministerial diktat. Now the emmissions cleaning ones do at least have a clear cause and effect reducing NOx and SOx is deomstrably good for the environment. But the CO2 stuff is increasing prices with no prospect of ever making a difference and the chosen routes to the target are the most expensive and unreliable available. Minister made madness.
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