Comments by "Scott Franco" (@scottfranco1962) on "Real Engineering" channel.

No, the supersonic boom of the Concorde was used by a group of eco-nazis to scare people into restricting and banning it. I experienced a supersonic boom from an aircraft flying 100 feet from me. It is not that bad.
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We need to get RID of base 10 numbers! There are NO base 10 computers! We need to stop converting to and from antique base 10 numbers to compute them!
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The major purpose of the GPS system was to give submarine launched ICBMs a guidance source during their boost phase and thereby dramatically improve their accuracy. Sub launched ICBMs get the initial guidance for their onboard inertial navigation units from the INAV unit on the sub itself, which has limits on accuracy. When the ICBM breaks out of the water, it lights off and enters the boost phase to send it to its target. It is during this time that it can achieve a GPS position and fine tune its course.
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The push for socialized housing created the artificial effect of "city center collapse", where the centers of cities became a mix of business only districts and areas of poverty as people escaped to the suburbs. Now with gentrification, this effect is being reversed in many places. What is the answer for low cost housing? Better jobs, economy and less need for subsidized housing.
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A good presentation, but having to use vacuum tubes without the invention of the transistor would have slowed down integration only a bit, if at all. After the "death" of the vacuum tube, cold cathode emitters were invented, and several highly integrated solutions based on vacuum electron transport were demonstrated later for applications such as flat screen TVs. A good example of dual path technologies is CMOS architecture. That was considered a loser technology behind MOS for many years before its inherent advantages allowed it to become the predominant technology.
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That was an amazing video. Seems like computers have set off a new building boom.
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The natural direction of any species that is successful is to breed uncontrollably until natural resources are depleted, leading to die off and natural selection. This oscillates. The good/bad news is that intelligence, unique to humans, counters this effect. This is good, and bad because (as the German example) maturing societies encounter a population collapse.
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Thats really amazing. I had always assumed that ANY satellite based system would be slower than a terrestrial cable based system. I would point out, however, that short range terrestrial will probably still beat it due to uplink/downlink overhead. An amazing presentation. Good job.
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"3 times the height of the space station" Do you think the geniuses in DPRK figure out if they are going to hit something in orbit before they launch?
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One big factor with electric airplanes is that weight of fuel goes to zero as the airplane flies. I didn't see that factor in the video?
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Just a note: The modern age of ICs would have still happened without the transistor. Micromachining can and does create vacuum based electronics, it was considered for a while as a technology for flat panel television. Similarly, cold cathode vacuum tubes were invented before transistors arrived (no need to heat the tube). If transistors had never been invented, the IC revolution would have been delayed by perhaps 5 to 10 years. The only real constant here is human ingenuity and the continuous desire to improve. In any case, according to the quantum computer researchers, we are going to leave transistors behind at some point anyways.
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Ok, I skidded off the road here. L2 is behind the earth so it blocks the sun from the telescope? So why does it need the cooling thing?
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Get an extended battery. End of problem.
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The weight of a pressure tank is a killer for aviation applications.
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As a fixed wing pilot, it seems that helis are already complex enough, and the Osprey added to that dramatically. Putting that kind of load on the pilot in this day and age is not necessary. The flight operations better worked out by computer and controlled by the pilot using simple up/down, yaw left/yaw right, forward and backward stick movements, then let the computer translate that to flight directions.
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@Theuwaenig Is that Metric or Imperial length bananas....
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PSH is very scalable. The greens are against it. Same problem as always. More reservoirs, more opposition. Near me is the San Luis reservoir in California. It has no real natural inflows, it is fed by pumping water up into it from the aqueduct, and then letting it flow back downhill to generate power. Its a big battery, and it is also useful to store water. California desperately needs both facilities. We generate a lot of excess power from wind that is wasted, and much of the water that flows from the mountains here is simply dumped into the ocean. So why don't they build more San Luis reservoirs? Because in California, there is a large group of "green" lobbyists who are against it. A simple measure that would allow the biggest reservoir in the state, Shasta dam, to increase its height and thus its capacity (an existing reservoir!) ran into critical opposition. What do the greens want? They want Shasta gone, and all the rest of the reservoirs gone as well. ie., restore the land to natural state. Not enough water for people? Stop development so people move away. Etc. The greens SAY they are for carbon free power, but then do everything they can to prevent it from practical implementation.
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The plants on earth are capable of pulling carbon out of the atmosphere and restoring balance IF we stop dumping it back in. The plants were the ones that created the atmosphere in the first place, and deposited the carbon removed from the atmosphere below ground, storing both carbon and power. All of that originally came from the sun, and we can get it from the sun as well, though wind and direct sunlight. The only other power source on earth is nuclear, which we can extract from geothermal sources (yes, francine, that power came from nuclear sources inside the earth) or directly from fission or fusion. In my opinion it is most cost effective, in the long run, is extraction via direct solar, indirect via offshore wind, and indirect via geothermal. Any use of carbon based energy from the ground is not renewable, and will eventually kill us. We CAN form a balanced and sustainable energy economy.
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I disagree with the premise. Wind and solar are far cheaper, and the problem of intermittency will get solved with large scale batteries. In the meantime, peaker plants running on natural gas are cheap, and can be throttled or shut down and restarted. Nuclear plants are none of that.
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There is something wrong with the math here. You say DC lines have a cost to convert AC to DC and back. But solar power is inherently DC. The video makes it sound like AC-DC and DC-AC converters are needed at each end of the transmission cable, but the reality is the difference between converting DC to AC at the solar plant vs. DC to AC at the European end of the cable. IE., simply move the conversion to the European end of the cable and pick up DC efficiencies for no net cost differences. I suspect what is really meant here is the conversion by boosting the voltages of the lines up and down to the high voltages needed by the transmission line, but the explanation given does not make that much sense.
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@seneca983 And I pointed that out in my post. The point was the video was too simplistic in what it describes as the difference between costs of HVDC and HVAC feeds. Also, I seriously wonder if transformers are still a thing in HV stepping. Transformer use in small electronics is virtually gone. Your wall warts shrank to 1/4 of their former size by use of switching power supplies. This is done by high frequencies and use of capacitors instead of transformers, which are expensive and heavy because of the copper windings. PS switchers are why you can't get good AM reception anymore. All of the wall warts in your house are polluting the killohertz bands...
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@seneca983 Kinda amazes me how people won't do even basic lookups before opening their mouths on internet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Capacitor-commutated_converters_(CCC)
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So high efficiency jets are becoming hybrids of a jet and a ducted turboprop.
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So the only way you got to airlines generating %25 of worldwide emissions is if all other sources are reduced. Somehow I think we can live with that. Also, electric aircraft can replace a huge number of short haul flights, and this will be an important factor in the future. Finally, electric batteries CAN be placed in the wings, and so have the same weight and space advantages.
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Thanks. This makes one thing very clear: decommissioning diablo is stupid from any point of view.
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PS. the name "airfield" comes from the fact that airports started as just a field. The original idea was you took off or landed against the wind, whatever the direction it pointed.
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The government can ask around and find out what the best ventilator is, then go to that company and pay them a reasonable amount to license the design. Then that design can be given to the manufacturers like Ford and GM who are tasked to do the work and produce that verbatim. This means, by the way, the design is already approved.
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Again, SOME Leafs saw a degradation of %25. I drove a 2013 Leaf through a 3 year lease to 2016, and saw no degradation whatsoever.
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