The engine load is probably a steady, consistent magnitude. While a landing load is rapid and variable. Also, you need to design legs for wind loading after landing, which can be high if you want to launch often.
Zaps shop floor and the exterior of the equipment doesn't need clean room conditions. Inside the chamber, they do a good job after a teardown, but even then it gets contaminated really quickly with the tiny amount of fusion byproducts.
They are working on a liquid metal container to help with keeping things clean, but frankly in my opinion its just something to keep investors away from asking why there's no possible roadmap to net-energy production.
Q: When are you going to be able to make energy?
A: Good question! Have you seen our new animation... liquid metal!!!!1! it's awesome!
I think the original plan was to convert the heat back into electricity with a turbine. So the higher temperature of sand would greatly improve thermodynamic efficiency.
>I think the original plan was to convert the heat back into electricity with a turbine.
Is that just speculation or did you read it somewhere? IIRC the original motivation of PNE was a bunch of engineers at uni speculating on how to build the perfect building for engineers, and making it self-sufficient would require handling its own heating, which they originally thought would be best done with a big hot-water tank to store the heat. No turbine was suggested, IIRC.
Yes a storm could damage the coal plant with some small probability. But now you have replaced the coal plant with batteries + solar. Solar will be disabled by every large storm due to cloud cover. The grid will certainly be less reliable.
From solar panels that we track at my organization the solar generation decreased by ~90% at 90% cloud cover. Cloud cover isn't the most important metric, it's irradiance, but still a good indicator and so yes, in a storm the power generation will drop by atleast 90% probably
> in a storm the power generation will drop by atleast 90% probably
This is incorrect for several reasons first we care about Wind + Solar + Hydro not Solar alone.
8X % reduction in solar over 15 minutes sure, but track full days output and it’s not 90% across the full day. Similarly you rarely see 100% of theoretical output over a full day, so it’s really the delta between expected output and minimum output that matters.
Also, you don’t build exactly as much generation as you would need assuming 100% output every single day. That’s just as true for Nuclear/coal etc as it is Solar / wind. Redundancy has a cost, but it can effectively guarantee a surplus.
Modern turbines can adjust the angle of their blades to extract less energy from the wind. There’s always tradeoffs so people still chose maximum wind speeds based on the area. But, we’re talking being near the center of a hurricane not just storms at that point.
“The beautifully bright and still weather may have been a welcome reason to hold off reaching for our winter coats, but the lack of wind can be a serious issue when we consider where our electricity might be coming from.”
Seems like a good case for using wind or wave power which would presumably provide max power during a storm when solar provides less power. Of course, I suppose a bad storm could also damage these forms of energy generation as well.
Pilots still fight turbulence today, usually by changing altitude. If this system allows the plane to stay at optimal (but turbulent) altitude, it could save fuel.
Drag force increases with the square of speed, so it’s probably more to do with a longer flight costing more operational hours than a short one. I can’t sell flights on a plane that hasn’t landed yet.
I mean, they do anyway, but eventually it leads to refunds, and fines from the FAA. Actually on second thought it’s probably not physics or logistics, it’s the FAA.
Surely there's more industry knowledge and better tooling/PPE behind stainless steel given the widespread adoption in all kinds of industry? I'd assume the risk for the workers installing it in homes is far lower as the top + sink is usually delivered in a single piece and only needs to be mounted on its support while with engineered stone often the slab is cut to size and reshaped on site
This article isn't really talking about the tiny amounts of on site cuts (which are typically done outside on site anyway).
Other articles have shown the shops where this product is cut in mass without any PPE. The shops are a hazard to anyone that gets close as there appears to be about zero dust control.
But even this is a tempest in a teacup compared to the amount of concrete cutting occurring without PPE. I don't see concrete being replaced on job sites, so I do wonder what the motivation behind many of these articles are? It's like some industry group that sells a competing product wants more exposure to their product without actually making the workplace safer for the people working with it.
Private car insurance companies are pretty sophisticated, so they certainly know if a certain vehicle is causing higher claims and will price accordingly.
But, IMHO, the legal minimum liability insurance policy is way too low. A serious car accident could easily cause millions in personal injury damage. Most US states require only ~$50k personal injury coverage.
