SPACE

[(o)(o)]

I still don't understand why electric cars don't all have solar panels plastered all over them.

Not enough available surface area to be particularly useful. Also it adds additional weight which then means more battery power is required to move the car, meaning it's even less useful.

OK.. how about wind turbines?

[zip accident]

I still don't understand why electric cars don't all have solar panels plastered all over them.

Not enough available surface area to be particularly useful. Also it adds additional weight which then means more battery power is required to move the car, meaning it's even less useful.

OK.. how about wind turbines?

That one is down to the second law of thermodynamics.

[RedOktober]

Pedals?

C5 4 EVA.

[KlaxonCow]

Tesla's steadfast focus on performance/speed over everything else

Umm, the Model S and coming Model 3 have speed limiters on them, in fact.

(If you google on the Model S speed limiter then you'll see that Tesla's actual problem is that folks keep demanding that they raise the limit or remove the limiter. And, once or twice, they've - wrongly, in my opinion - conceded to raise it by 5 mph to appease them. They're a young company, so I'll chalk it to the naivety of wanting to please customers. But, basically, you can't please everyone and you shouldn't set a precedent that moaning a bunch on the Internet will make you bend over backwards. Because, yeah, when they conceded a little extra on the speed limiter, these folks just asked for some more again. They can't be pleased and they're a minority. Fuck them.)

And as for their acceleration performance, that's just an intrinsic thing to how electric cars work. Even more modest electric cars - like, say, the Nissan Leaf - also have amazing acceleration.

The point is that an electric car is a battery and an electric motor. And besides the things that all cars need - brakes, suspension, etc. - then that's it, pretty much.

More power and the motor spins faster. Electric motors have some 95+% efficiency (compared to the efficiency of the internal combustion engine (ICE) being, at best, around 30%-ish). If you floor it with an electric motor, then it responds immediately.

It's a different type of technology, so there's no apples-to-apples comparison with an ICE here.

An ICE has to be revved up. It has gears. Acceleration is rev up, change gear, rev up some more, change gear and so forth. In comparison, a rather convoluted process to get up to speed.

And, just to shatter your illusions even further, there aren't just speed limiters. There's also necessarily - on all electric cars, not just those from Tesla - acceleration limiters too. If you could instantly release the maximum the battery can feed the motor in one go from a complete standstill, an electric motor will happily rip itself apart trying to accommodate that.

On an ICE, you've got no choice but to rev your way up to top speed, but an electric motor will - if you let it - attempt to reach top speed instantly (at least as quickly as the laws of physics will allow).

So, actually, electric cars all have acceleration limiters built into their software that forces a more gradual built-up acceleration, in order to stop the motor from rapidly committing suicide, as the stresses and strains of doing that once too often - even before thinking of the driver / passenger whiplash - would ruin it in short order.

Indeed, look at it from a different perspective. How could a start up like Tesla - even with Elon's money - be rivalling and even exceeding the performance of manufacturers who've been doing this, in some cases, for over a century right out of the gate?

It's because electric motors have always been the superior technology in this regard. He's able to leap frog them because he's gone in with a more performant technology from the off.

Again, to put things in perspective, an ICE has plumbing, for pity's sake. It has pistons firing up and down, causing a mixture of long dead things to explode under pressure, which drives another piston down to do the same again. There's oil changes. There's topping up the water. There's a radiator. There's exhaust.

Understand that while they've performed minor miracles of engineering (and marketing) to keep this antiquated technology alive and kicking, what we're really looking at is a refined Edwardian "steampunk" technology here. It's run by pipes and pressure, for goodness' sake.

If those pipes were brass and on the outside, it wouldn't look remotely out of place at a steampunk Cosplay convention.

The start up has been able to jump ahead to rival and exceed the established competition, because they were still playing the "prop up this Edwardian steampunk technology some more" game. Which is an easy leap frog, if you just start with the notion that you're starting with an electric motor from the off.

As mentioned, far better acceleration performance is an intrinsic given with an electric motor. You have to do absolutely nothing. That's just how electric motors work and, if anything, as also mentioned, manufacturers have to be worried about taming it - slowing it down - with acceleration limiters, to avoid the bloody thing wrecking its own life expectancy in short order.

Electric motors, by the way, were the original technology. Some of the first cars ever built were electric. It's the older technology, in fact.

But the grand problem had always been the batteries. There's not much point having an electric motor up front if you can only feed it juice for 5 minutes before the battery dies.

Until the invention of the lithium-ion battery - by a Professor Goodenough (yes, that's really his name) - then you couldn't contemplate getting enough energy density versus weight out of a battery to make this feasible. I mean, even now that we've got practical electric cars on the market, they still can't yet match the range of an ICE with a full tank. Battery tech has come a long way and can almost just about reach the point where we can now consider it over an ICE - but only barely.

(Also, car-sized batteries are expensive. When Tesla started, no-one made them that size. The original Roadster cheats on this - it uses just a massive array of laptop-like batteries and made them operate as if they were one bigger battery. But now that it's been established in the market and Tesla has invested in "the Gigafactory" to specifically make car-sized batteries then the price has plummeted.

What has to be understood here is that, as mentioned, an electric car is, in essence, just a battery and an electric motor (or two). If the cost of batteries keeps dropping at this rate, then electric cars - once the expensive cousin to the ICE - will easily end up cheaper than it.

Well, you read that long list of things that an ICE has - gears, oil, plumbing, water, exhaust, radiator, etc. - and that's all actually very expensive and complex to put together. Electric cars were initially more expensive because no-one made the batteries for them. Not even Tesla. They hacked together something to make it work.

But with all car manufacturers now offering electric and hybrid models. And with some manufacturers - Volvo, GM, etc. - announcing their intention to "go electric" completely from various future dates. Well, there's now an industry to make the batteries and we have economies of scale.

Soon enough - much to some people's surprise, perhaps - electric cars will be the cheaper option and, at that point, the ICE - which is more expensive to fuel and maintain - seems dead in comparison.

In a sense, there's really no grand "visionary" perspective in these manufacturers promising to go electric by a certain date or in governments and cities declaring that they'll soon ban the ICE. It's more that they've done the projected costs into the future and realised that, by these dates, electric cars will reach parity and become cheaper, so selling a more expensive ICE - that costs more to run and maintain - to the public becomes an increasingly more impossible prospect. It's just bowing to the coming economic inevitability, rather than being at all "visionary", I assure you.)

[Rhythm]

For all the detail in that you've *massively* missed the point(s) about why I think Musk is a cunt of the highest order and Tesla are unreasonably lauded.

Much like Branson used to, he gets too much of a free pass for being "a bit of a geek/dude". If these endeavours were being led by Murdoch, Bezos, a Koch, Zuckerberg or similar I feel like there'd be a few more eyebrows being raised about how he's trying to mop up cash in the name of humanitarianism.

As for the cars, cars are universally shit. Always. And cities/countries/societies that let themselves be designed for use only by car owners need killing off, fast. That's the same regardless of whether it's EV or FF. A truly innovative blender of tech and design would be sorting out these problems instead of allowing people to continue to ship humans in such an inherently inefficient manner.

[Dio]

Much like Branson used to, he gets too much of a free pass for being "a bit of a geek/dude". If these endeavours were being led by Murdoch, Bezos, a Koch, Zuckerberg or similar I feel like there'd be a few more eyebrows being raised about how he's trying to mop up cash in the name of humanitarianism.

I think there's some truth that you can get away with more if you're cool (Branson certainly did) but really isn't the point that he does it, and they don't?

[Rhythm]

Much like Branson used to, he gets too much of a free pass for being "a bit of a geek/dude". If these endeavours were being led by Murdoch, Bezos, a Koch, Zuckerberg or similar I feel like there'd be a few more eyebrows being raised about how he's trying to mop up cash in the name of humanitarianism.

I think there's some truth that you can get away with more if you're cool (Branson certainly did) but really isn't the point that he does it, and they don't?

There's still the fundamental issue that I don't think he's doing anything worthwhile for anyone other than himself, but strokes for folks, huh?

[zip accident]

Much like Branson used to, he gets too much of a free pass for being "a bit of a geek/dude". If these endeavours were being led by Murdoch, Bezos, a Koch, Zuckerberg or similar I feel like there'd be a few more eyebrows being raised about how he's trying to mop up cash in the name of humanitarianism.

I think there's some truth that you can get away with more if you're cool (Branson certainly did) but really isn't the point that he does it, and they don't?

There's still the fundamental issue that I don't think he's doing anything worthwhile for anyone other than himself, but strokes for folks, huh?

I don't give a toot for the cars, but the rockets are as good as it gets at the moment (I was interested that landing two out of three was seen as a huge success, two out of three ain't bad, but they did loose a booster).

[KlaxonCow]

But Elon is not mopping up the cash. At least not yet.

These ventures are incredibly risky. I mean, for Pete's sake, one of them is no less than space travel.

And whilst Tesla might look shiny and golden right now, they started as a massive joke. Bringing electric vehicles to the masses? Remember that the last bloke who tried that was Sir Clive with his C5 and, in this very thread, we still get the fucking jokes about what a ridiculous misadventure that was.

And Tesla is becoming much more than cars. Indeed, I'm very much the stereotypical geek myself, in that I actually give zero shits for sports and cars. So what really interests me about Tesla is that they're moving into the "solar panels + house battery" arena too, and will hopefully push decentralised renewable power to the same level of "was once a big joke, but is now the norm" that he's done with electric vehicles.

It's worth noting that the house batteries that Tesla make are necessarily of the same size and calibre as their car batteries. As is often noted, they are effectively hanging a Tesla car battery on the side of your house.

There is much more long-term vision here than I think you're grasping, to be honest.

The Roadster was, without question, a toy for the rich. But it paid for the development of the development of the Model S - a bit more "upper middle class" - and that's paying for the development of the Model 3 - which is not quite there yet, but he's getting ever closer to that "affordable electric vehicle for the masses".

In doing so, he's created a market that's also going to be implicitly creating house batteries, as he moves Tesla towards renewable energy.

And he's inviting everyone to follow him, because Tesla does not horde and guard patents.

I mean, that alone should tell you an awful lot. Tesla are not territorially hording and guarding patents, despite innovating in a potentially lucrative field. Because Musk wants others to steal his ideas and copy him. In interviews, he's talked about his plans to ensure that his businesses could carry on without him, as he knows that, most likely, his goals for space travel are probably not going to happen while he's still alive.

I like Elon because he's actually doing it, not just virtue signalling about it.

Yes, cars are shit. But he realises that too. Which is why another of his parallel developments is the Boring company and public transport. On that one, mind you, I have very serious doubts and must be the sceptical one. He wants a near vacuum in that tube and for it to extend for miles upon miles. Maintaining what will be the largest vaccum chamber on the planet - by a country mile or nine - is an insane ask, and there's a serious problem if he can't deliver that safely. A vacuum chamber of that size springing a leak would have rather unbelievable implosive force.

A video is worth a thousand words:


And, nope, that is not sped up or anything. That's just how fast and powerful a vacuum collapse can be.

Now just imagine people inside little pods - travelling at hundreds of miles an hour - being inside that vacuum chamber as it collapses.

Yeah, on this one, I think Elon's got it completely wrong.

But you can still see his mind at work. As Tesla working on cars has given them the "by-product" of house batteries, then SpaceX's necessary work with the vacuum of space gives him a "by-product" of expertise for his vacuum chamber public transport.

And I have to agree with this video that analyses his body language in an interview:



Elon might well be wrong and naive - as all of us might well be - but he's perfectly genuine about his humanist aims. And a linguistical analysis of what he says also tells you that there's zero megalomania there. As he's forever qualifying - in an almost self-depreciative way - everything he claims. He's always tacking on "as far as I can see" or "that I could think of", leaving open the fact that he knows full well that he could be wrong and missing something - and correctly inviting others to correct him if they know better.

Will he succeed? Fuck knows. It's not as if he's chosen "safe" areas in which to do business.

I do feel that, with the vacuum tube personal transport, he's going beyond the realms of scientific plausibility and it just won't work.

And, even with SpaceX, I think he's backing the wrong technology - rockets - when, really, what he wants is the Skylon space plane for a truly reusable single-stage vehicle, which'll prove so much cheaper. He ought to be working on the same hybrid jet / rocket technology as Skylon. They've gone far enough to prove - at least on the ground, in the lab - that you can build a working jet-rocket and I feel that's the real game-changing technology.

Take off like a plane, reach a decent altitude as a plane, then kick in the rockets to get to orbit. Use the atmosphere for as far as it'll take you. An air-breathing jet plane for as far as you've got air, then close up those vents and become a rocket for the final stage into orbit.

The point being that most of the fuel that a rocket uses is actually used up getting the damn thing off the ground. So if you can get to some 70,000 feet or so with a large winged U2-alike - and to be already travelling with significant velocity - before you even need to kick in the rockets, that's a massive fuel win.

And, of course, it's a plane by shape. It can glide in to land like the Space Shuttle did.

So, be clear that if you think this is all unqualified support for Elon because "he's a cool dude" then it is you who's entirely missing the point. I'm an atheist - by philosophy, I don't worship anything. My belief is in the Scientific Method (for its proven track record, as it asks for no faith and has delivered, without prejudice, to absolutely everyone) and that commands me "Nullius in Verba". And I just don't give credits for "geek / dude" points, because I don't give out "ad hominem" points at all - amongst the few bits of Biblical wisdom that I do hold by is the old "you shall know them by their fruits" angle.

And, bottom line, even if Elon was a total money-grabbing megalomaniac whose "humanitarianism" was totally a virtue-signalling sham, then there is a degree to which I just don't care, so long as the roads are electric, there are people living on Mars and the Moon (personally, I'm for a permanent base on the Moon and give little shits for Mars, but I'm in the minority there), all houses are solar-panelled and energy generation has become decentralised, and so on and so forth.

I mean, Sir Isaac Newton, by all accounts, was a misanthropic cunt. But that's really not the point in science, you see. We call them "Giants" - thanks to Newton's own quote - but they are absolutely not gods, and there is zero compulsion to even like them, let alone worship anything.

"You shall know them by their fruits."

Hey, even the stopped clock of an ancient desert tribe's mythology book can be right twice a day, you know.

I like Elon because he actually does.

And, yes, there's a massive danger in actually doing, because reality will never let you be idealistically perfect. You've got no choice - as I feel is Elon's lot - but to live with having your ideals forever compromised in the act. If you're just virtue-signalling, then the last thing you want is to actually do anything. I realise full well that if I shut up more often, then I'd make myself look far better. When you speak freely, you then have the slight issue that you've got to take responsibility for your words.

Okay, let's say that Elon's totally wrong. Then, pray tell, what's actually right? Ah, you didn't have the balls to propose the alternative, I notice.

Tell me, how do we sort this shit out exactly?

Do you have the balls to put your virtue on the line? Do you just want to look good, or do you actually want to be good and make good happen - which will necessarily make you look bad in someone's eyes?

That's why I like Elon, even when I think he's got it all horribly wrong. At least he's fucking trying.

Because when you consider the population of this planet is some 7 billion and we've only basically got one or two guys to whom we can point to and said "at least they're trying", then that's fucking depressingly shameful, isn't it?

[Dio]

The energy part is the important thing. Powerwall and the like enables renewables. Ten years ago the idea of going more than about 25% variable-generation renewables long term was laughable, but now there are routes to at least 50% that don't paint you as a crazy fool because there's no (non-financial) reason we couldn't equip every home with a three-day bridge, and scaling up to get there is now a 5-10 year job not a 20 year one.

[Daniel]

That interstellar object that passed us by last year was really weird.

https://www.universetoday.com/140391/co ... olar-sail/

Feel free to speculate...

[Istar]

It's an asteroid.
It's a weird, curiously-symmetrical asteroid.
It's a weird asteroid with an odd spin.
It's a weird symmetrical asteroid with an odd spin, from outside the system.
Ha ha, no, it's not an alien probe.
It is on a weird trajectory though.
I mean, if you wanted to plan a gravity-assist flyby of Sol II, III and IV, you'd probably pick something very similar to this, coincidentally.
It certainly has an unusual albedo for an asteroid though.
No, really really not an alien probe.
It has come coincidentally close to the three primary life-supporting candidate worlds around Sol though.
And in terms of manoeuvres, pulling a high-G deceleration from above the plane of the system, rotating into the plane of the system, and then leaving on a course pretty close to the precise vector to pick up speed as you pass close to three planets as they line up ahead of you ... amazingly lucky.
Definitely not an alien probe though, LOLZ.

Hmm. It's changed speed and direction all on its own. What a very strange asteroid it is.

[Barney]

Not to mention that it's an asteroid and definitely not a solar sail, despite a solar sail almost fitting perfectly with the observed behaviour and characteristics. But yeah, just a really weird asteroid. Seriously, isn't the fact that it's come from another star enough for you guys? It's just a really, really weird asteroid that looks like it could be a solar sail if you squint just right.

[zip accident]

That interstellar object that passed us by last year was really weird.

https://www.universetoday.com/140391/co ... olar-sail/

Feel free to speculate...

There's also, from the same professor, this:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11 ... comet-but/

The PDF is mostly coherent, but theres an awful lot of "please patreon me" from the interviewer after the professor stops speaking.

[Firefox]

My problem with virtually all of the news articles about Oumuamua is that they include a spiffy artist's impression of a spindle-shaped asteroid, but really that's just a complete guess and nobody knows what it really looks like.