After investigating a three-vehicle accident that happened in Las Vegas in January 2022, the NTSB is again recommending a few measures to curb speeding, one of them being the “need for intelligent speed assistance (ISA) technology and countermeasures including interlock program for repeat speeding offenders.”
We already have plenty of laws, but DA’s and the DOJ choose to enforce them selectively. It is irresponsible of the NTSB to make a major policy recommendation that will effect every car buyer in America based on one horrendous car accident.
The NTSB says it is only making a recommendation. If this gains traction, all automakers will comply based on the threat of lawsuits. The entire Covid Shut Down disaster was based on mere recommendations by Anthony Fauci. A generation of children were emotionally and intellectually damaged because school districts covered their asses by following the recommendations.
When car companies start designing cars to work against the car owners, it won’t stop.
Republicans currently are in the majority in the House of Representatives. The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee should hold hearings to question the NTSB to learn who is responsible for this governmental overreach.
Twelve years ago, former Wall Street banker Randall Atkins bought an old coal mine outside Sheridan, Wyo., sight unseen, for about $2 million.
Several years after Atkins bought the Brook Mine, government researchers came around asking if they could run some tests to see if the ground contained something called “rare-earth elements.”
That government researchers are looking out for America is good news. Yeah, that’s pretty cynical, but recall President Reagan’s joke.
“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help. “
The deposit was found in conjunction with researchers at the Energy Department’s National Energy Technology Laboratory. They spent years developing a model that combines data with artificial intelligence to predict unconventional deposits of rare earths and critical minerals, and it forecast sizable deposits in the Powder River Basin in northeast Wyoming, which includes the Ramaco site.
Rare earths minerals are a strategic resource. Most of the cool technology relies upon them. Those really powerful little magnets are made from rare earths. China mines most of the rare earth minerals and they are not a friend and ally.
It’s good to see the Department of Energy working to make America less reliant on foreign trade. I hope the mine owner, Randall Atkins, becomes fabulously wealthy.
On the Moon, astronauts will need protection from a different set of hazards. They’ll have to contend with cosmic and solar radiation, meteorites, wild temperature swings, and even impact ejecta. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has found hundreds of lunar ‘skylights,’ locations where a lava tube’s ceiling has collapsed, making a natural opening into the tube.
The International Space Station is only about 300 miles high. That gives the ISS some protection from cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are positively charged particles moving at relativistic velocities. Alpha radiation consists of some of the same positively charged particles, and is the type of radiation that Putin has used to assassinate opponents. He used polonium which emits alpha radiation. Those particles are big and slow, and can be stopped with a piece of paper. When a person ingests polonium, the radiation attacks the person from the inside, with nothing stopping the particles.
Cosmic rays are moving at nearly the speed of light. Shielding with lead, as one might use to block Superman’s vision, doesn’t work because the particles hit lead atoms and knock them free. Those heavier atoms would act like shrapnel.
Hydrogen atoms are good for shielding from cosmic rays, so water, ice or plastic works, but you need a lot of it, on the order of several meters. A lunar lava tube would provide meters of rock and would be excellent shielding.
On the Moon, astronauts will have to contend with the temperature swings. Earth’s natural satellite is a world of temperature extremes. One side of the Moon is in direct sunlight for half of the time, and surface temperatures reach as high as 127 degrees Celsius (260 °F.) The side that’s shrouded in darkness sinks as low as -173 °C (-280 °F.)
The Moon is a world of temperature extremes only on the surface. Apollo astronauts did experiments with thermal conduction on the surface of the Moon. Go down half a meter, and the temperature is a constant temperature of about -4 °F. It gets colder than that in Ohio.
Because the Moon has no atmosphere, heat is not conducted through convection, but only from radiation from the lunar surface to the -450 °F of space and through conduction through Moon rock. A lava tube on the Moon be -4 °F. An enclosure that is insulated from the floor of the cave would lose very little heat.
China’s future plan, after successful exploration, is a crewed base. It would be a long-term underground research base in one of the lunar lava tubes, with a support center for energy and communication at the tube’s entrance. The terrain would be landscaped, and the base would include both residential and research facilities inside the tube.
This is likely to be every nation’s plan. China has 30 million people living in caves, so maybe the idea doesn’t seem as novel to them.
It’s ironic, to say the least, that the U.S. is seeking to imitate China’s economic model at the moment that its industrial policy fractures. Look no further than its collapsing electric-vehicle bubble, which is a lesson in how industries built by government often also fail because of government.
It’s always a bad idea when the government tries to nudge us into something. If EV’s are a great idea, the market will recognize that without the need for carrots and sticks. After all of the lying and bullying with regard to Covid, we don’t believe what the government tells us. Their motives are suspect and their thinking is muddled.
Ford recently reduced its EV production targets as its losses and unsold inventory grow. At the end of June, it had 116 days of unsold Mustang Mach-Es, and GM’s electric Hummer had more than 100 days of supply. And this is in a growing economy.
Electric vehicles have a limited range, recharging takes hours and they catch on fire. Some consumers may overlook these features, and they are welcome to buy one.
From a policy perspective, we don’t have a bunch of nuclear power plants generating cheap and abundant energy. Pushing to electric makes no sense until we’ve got the nukes.
Our grid is not robust. My power went out for three hours yesterday while the weather was sunny and mild. Fix the grid.
Toyota, my choice in vehicle manufacturers, doesn’t go in for fads so my next vehicle will be another conventional Tacoma.
With all of the technological innovations we have, more of us should be richer and more comfortable. Governmental interference is pissing away the future we should be enjoying.
A space solar power prototype, SSPD-1, has achieved wireless power transfer in space and transmitted power to Earth. The prototype, including MAPLE, a flexible lightweight microwave transmitter, validates the feasibility of space solar power, which can provide abundant and reliable power globally without ground-based transmission infrastructure.
This is one of those dangerous ideas that sound wonderful until you understand it.
Sunlight in space has much higher energy than the sunlight that reaches us. The atmosphere screens out gamma rays, x-rays, and most of the ultraviolet. That’s good because these high frequency waves of the electromagnetic spectrum would give us cancer and break down all organic molecules. Solar panels in space could capture much more energy than they do on the ground.
If that energy is captured and beamed down to the Earth, we are adding energy to our environment. The idea is analogous to putting mirrors in space to direct additional sunlight to ground-based solar panels. More solar energy would be added to our system, so the climate would warm up.
With only a couple of satellites, the warming would be negligible as a few power stations generate electricity and profit. When internal combustion engines were invented, nobody worried about adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Beaming energy from space is not a utopian solution, but a bad idea.
The energy beam coming from the satellite would be focused and powerful. When the beam hits the target, electricity is generated. When the beam hits something else, it’s a death ray. Tesla wrote about this, and his papers remain classified. Interlocks would be installed to terminate the ray if it wonders. Those interlocks could be removed when a target needs to be destroyed. That makes beaming energy from space a dangerous idea.
ATLANTA (AP) — The first American nuclear reactor to be built from scratch in decades is sending electricity reliably to the grid, but the cost of the Georgia power plant could discourage utilities from pursuing nuclear power as a path to a carbon-free future.
The federal government is nudging us toward an all-electric future. Gas stoves and wood stoves are being regulated to extinction and gas hot water heaters will be next. Wealthy people are given a $7500 incentive to buy electric cars with conventional cars to eventually banned. This is happening while the electric grid is getting less reliable. Wind and solar power are being subsidized while they are known to be intermittent, fair weather electrical generators.
If the federal government wasn’t actively trying to make our lives less secure and comfortable, we’d be building a new nuclear power plant every two years, like China is.
The third and fourth reactors were originally supposed to cost $14 billion, but are now on track to cost their owners $31 billion. That doesn’t include $3.7 billion that original contractor Westinghouse paid to the owners to walk away from the project. That brings total spending to almost $35 billion.
That sounds expensive, but two years ago, the federal government spent $2 trillion on a Covid stimulus package, and we’ve got nothing to show for it. Biden’s college loan forgiveness plan was going to cost $30 billion per year, and again, we’d have nothing to show for it. Instead, build a new nuclear power plant every year so Americans could have cheap and abundant electricity. Nuclear power plants are one of the safest ways to generate electricity and produce no carbon dioxide (if you care about that sort of thing).
Nearly 200 million Americans are under “dangerously hot conditions” alerts with temperatures expected to soar past 100F (38C) in several major cities.
Those major cities are places where it often gets above 100 F in the summer, so no real surprise.
PJM Interconnection, the company in charge of power supply in 13 states and Washington DC, warned that “extreme heat and/or humidity may cause capacity problems on the grid”.
“Temperatures are expected to go above 90F (32°C) across the footprint, which drives up the demand for electricity,” the company said in a statement.
Rather than give a $7500 rebate to rich people buying Teslas, banning gas stoves and portable generators and offering incentives to install wind and solar power, perhaps the federal government could try working for the benefit of the American people. The federal government loves burning money. How about spend enough to harden the electrical grid and build 30 new nuclear power plants.
If global warming and climate change are inevitable, wouldn’t it be great to have abundant and reliable electricity to provide air conditioning?
Making a good electric car is challenging. It’s also difficult to make a good aircraft. Making a flying car isn’t likely to be very good at either function, but it’s fun to see them try.
Electric motoring is, in theory, a subject about which I should know something. My first university degree was in electrical and electronic engineering, with a subsequent master’s in control systems.
