pfdietz

14 ms·

421.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
Another use for their bespoke jet engines!
422.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
In Japan, HST noise is limited to 70-75 dB at 25 meters from the track. The 108 dB sonic boom will be experienced over a much larger area.
423.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
I mean, if WW3 is coming, then that difference is very unfortunate.
424.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
All events have multiple causes. But history turned on what he did, and would have been very different otherwise.
425.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
It sometimes is a single person. Consider the failed beer hall demagogue who wrecked a nation, a continent, and nearly a world.
426.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
Not even close, unfortunately. WW3 would be massively worse than what we have now.
427.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
So, we're about to have Great Depression 2 and WW3? Fun.
428.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
My patrilineal ancestor came over somewhere around then (or, at least, between the end of the Civil War and then, records are not clear). It would be nice to trace that back into Germany but records don't seem to be easily available,
429.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
No, I mean legally they should be considered obvious, as the difficulty to create them becomes small. It makes no sense to give someone a monopoly on an idea that anyone could get just by prompting an AI. Now if the invention also includ
430.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
If an AI can invent something then it should be considered obvious.
431.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
Physics famously has a rather cavalier attitude toward formal rigor, but that's because the ultimate test is comparison with experiment. String theory shows what happens when that bulwark against error is missing.
432.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
> We stopped because people were scared of nuclear, This is the usual line nuclear advocates use, but it doesn't fit the facts. Nuclear stopped because it became clear it wasn't competitive with alternatives. There were large
433.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
It was intelligence-insulting crap.
434.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
Directional solidification is a kind of additive manufacturing? You're carefully adding to macroscopic crystalline structure at a propagating melt/solid interface.
435.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
That's a bad idea. Subduction zones move very slowly, and material would come back up in "mud volcanoes", especially with the added heat input of the waste.
436.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
I can't connect to that now, but that's the title of a copyrighted Lawrence Watt-Evans story, one that won a Hugo award.
437.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
Yes, it's a horrible pile of pseudoscientific TV crap. Why did you imagine it was relevant?
438.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
Overlay journals can also have a short editorial description of the paper, basically an executive summary of what it says and why it's interesting or noteworthy. Examples: https://discreteanalysisjournal.com/ https:&#
439.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
You might also be interested in the story of Lew Allen's Balls (which is much less prurient than the name might suggest). These were pumpkin-sized steel spheres, coated in a thin layer of graphite, that were suspended as close as 10 m
440.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
Renewables have shown excellent experience effects. These effects are a kind of positive externality: improvements in the technology become available generally to future consumers. It makes sense to subsidize positive externalities, just
441.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
The SL-1 accident was something. One of the casualties was missing for a short time until they found him speared to the ceiling by a control rod that had been ejected from the reactor. They were all buried in shielded caskets, several feet
442.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
That's true, but the cost of reprocessing is also very high, per kg. And aren't the nuclear bros always telling us how little nuclear waste is actually produced? There's about 30 tons of spent fuel per GW(e)-year from today
443.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
Perhaps SSC's cancellation avoided a nightmare scenario where all that energy beyond what was needed to find the Higgs was wasted. And perhaps Science as a whole benefited from diversion of resources away from fundamental particle phy
444.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
SpaceX charges what the market will bear, and because they have no good competitor their profit margins can be very large. Anyway, the number is from fairly old Musk interviews. Costs have likely decreased since then. https://ww
445.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
How do you know nuclear is even on the "tech tree", rather than being a blind alley? Isn't this argument just assuming what you're trying to show?
446.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
Falcon Heavy is more expensive per kg than F9, because it throws away more things. SpaceX flies it for certain military missions but you will note they launch their own stuff on F9. A full launch on F9 (with recovered S1) is estimated to c
447.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
Fusion would be useless for launch to orbit. Even fission sucks for that. It's really hard to beat the cost and power density of chemical rockets.
448.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
It doesn't have to be free, it just has to have a low cost. And remember, we're talking not about the cost now, but the cost up to centuries in the future. The ultimate time limit is set by when spent fuel stops being self-prote
449.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
This is the conspiracy theory reasoning I was talking about. Nuclear is wonderful, but a global omnipotent green conspiracy has hobbled it. Or, maybe, it really is complicated and needs regulation to keep it sufficiently safe in a world wh
450.
by pfdietz 4mo ago
Why wouldn't they be low? In the limit, if launch becomes operationally similar to air travel, costs will be a few times propellant cost. And propellant is very cheap. LOX is almost free (the second cheapest industrial liquid after

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