* Posts by John Robson

5178 publicly visible posts • joined 19 May 2008

Charge a future EV in less than five minutes – using literally cool NASA tech

John Robson Silver badge

Charge rates much beyond the current 350kW aren't really necessary... we're already battery limited, 350kW is 20+ miles per minute (350kW * 3m/kWh = 1400 miles/hour)

Most cars can't take that much current even when it's available (half of the charger is in the car, half is on the side of the road).

If stopping every three hours for ten minutes is too much then you probably shouldn't have a license.

USB-C iPhone, anyone? EU finalizes charging standard rule

John Robson Silver badge

Re: The EU fails in IT.

Why not - there aren't many devices that couldn't have two ports, one for universal charging, any number of others for other things.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: By the time it is standard

Possible - but for the devices in question it's unlikely.

USB-c handles up to 240W power delivery, and 40GBps of data transfer.

I think we'll be ok for a few years.

The real issue is that noone is going to want to think about designing the next connector - for anything, not just for portable devices.

India's Mars Orbiter Mission loses contact, burns all fuel, deemed 'non-recoverable'

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Still no ground penetrating radar?

So only nine times out of ten

Tetchy trainee turned the lights down low to teach turgid lecturer a lesson

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Notes? How old school!

My astro lecturer gave us a complete set of notes at the start of the course... with a handful of deliberate mistakes and a selection of blanks.

Enough to keep you in the lectures listening, but also enough that your attention was on what was being said rather than on writing.

NASA, SpaceX weigh invoking Dragon to take Hubble higher

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Insufficicent

I'm not turning blue at all...

There are advantages to being outside the atmosphere beyond sharpness, adaptive optics are utterly ridiculous (that's a compliment) in both concept and execution, and make for excellent observations.

But being outside the atmosphere still offers better seeing and a wider availability of spectrum... The better seeing is probably wiped out by the sheer scale of mirrors that can be dealt with on the ground - though even the LBT mirrors are smaller than a starship fairing - and we've seen how well JWST managed to handle aligning segmented mirrors if we want to go even larger.

The real benefit is the availability of spectrum either side of the visible.

If, and it's a big if at this point, Starship really does get the cost down to Musk levels of optimism... then the cost stops being a significant issue (you're paying a pretty penny for a mirror, at that point the transport costs are high to basically anywhere you really want it, starship might not be the most expensive option).

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Insufficicent

Why not both? If starship end up as cheap as it could be then a fleet of "superhubbles" could be launched.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Insufficicent

And by the time starship is flying it might make more sense to simply build a new hubble... with a larger mirror (correctly shaped to start with) and modern sensors.

Fake vibrating teeth could make great hearing aids

John Robson Silver badge

And for hearing aids much of what you perceive as quality is just not needed.

I don't care if they can produce sound over ~5kHz, because I can't hear it anyway (not until it's somewhere well over 100dB).

How do they get charged? I don't fancy sleeping with a power cable in my mouth.

California to phase out gas furnaces, water heaters by 2030

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Are they mandating the replacement tech?

"Air source is cheaper to install, but relies on a decent source of heat in the outside to work effectively (i.e. energy in to drive the reverse 'fridge needs to be less than the heat pumped into the house). In warmer climes it's OK, since the outside air is relatively warm & more humid. As it gets colder you have to drive the pump harder (more energy in) to gain an effective temperature difference, and as it drops below zero you get icing on the unit and even less efficiency, and ultimately a barely-warm house and no hot water, or lukewarm water at best and no household heating. It's very limited in applicability"

Thank goodness you worked that out before they installed them all over scandanavia!

What matters is the choice of heat pump, the refrigerant and design make a huge difference to the designed operating temperature.

As for folks in poorly insulated homes - the answer there is to bloody insulate them. It doesn't matter what heating system you use if you lose all the heat in five minutes.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Are they mandating the replacement tech?

Air source heat pumps are pretty much silent, they use a very large, very slow fan, and take up a relatively small amount of space - particularly in new builds which should be designed around the ASHP unit.

They also remove the need for a boiler inside the house...

Steganography alert: Backdoor spyware stashed in Microsoft logo

John Robson Silver badge

Re: IoC

The old "I heard that if you play the Windows install CD backwards it plays satanic messages", "That's nothing, I heard if you play it forwards it installs Windows."

Scientists, why not simply invent a working fusion plant using $50m from Uncle Sam

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Alien

Re: Indeed

It's more than a dream - when the rain stops just look up...

This rope-laying, ever-growing robot may one day explore your blood vessels

John Robson Silver badge

I suspect the trick is to *not* extract it, but use it as a strengthening agent for a weak vascular wall.

Good news for UK tech contractors as govt repeals IR35 tax rules

John Robson Silver badge

It's the rules about who is responsible for deciding whether you are subject to IR35 that are changing, not IR35 itself.

Update your Tesla now before the windows put your fingers in a pinch

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Beauty

What IS new with Tesla is the sheer number ...

of people who obsess over every little update.

Partly because they actually issue them, unlike most other manufacturers who would need the vehicles to go back into the shop...

Alert: 15-year-old Python tarfile flaw lurks in 'over 350,000' code projects

John Robson Silver badge

from / the path ../ is just /, so ../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../ is almost certain to be the root of the fs when you extract a tar.

So you just prefix etc/passwd or etc/shadow with that and robert is the brother of one of your parents.

Emissions-slashing hybrid trains to hit tracks in Europe

John Robson Silver badge

They'll charge between stations, and by using regen braking to slow into the station.

'Last man standing in the floppy disk business' reckons his company has 4 years left

John Robson Silver badge

I'm surprised

that for all these "industrial" use cases they haven't developed a floppy <-> SD interface adaptor (as in replace the floppy disk drive with something of the same physical/electrical format but that takes an SD card).

NASA to live-stream SLS rocket fuel leak repair test

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Space by instalment plan

Orion('s boilerplate model) has... but that's the payload not the rocket.

IIRC this capsule isn't a full Orion spec capsule.

**We** all know it's a less well built shuttle, but the claim is that it's all new...

"NASA's Space Launch System might look like a mishmash of heritage Space Shuttle parts but it's all new hardware"

https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/05/nasa_sls_northrop_grumman/

(Unfortunately not a quote with attribution, so...)

I don't recall the ICS having had a flight test of any sort either.

The odds are good that SLS will get to orbit first, but SS/SH will certainly not be beaten to landing by SLS.

John Robson Silver badge

Never been flown into space...

never been flown at all.

So it's currently behind starship, though not superheavy.

Don't want to get run over by a Ford car? There's a Bluetooth app for that

John Robson Silver badge

Whilst other manufacturers develop windows

Seriously - if you build a car where the driver can't see other road users around the car then you're doing it wrong.

Japan reverses course on post-Fukushima nuclear ban

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Wind and solar

Always amazes me that times when the "only" political decision is one that actually makes no sense doesn't bring parties together to go "Look, we know there is widespread fear around this - but it's actually the safest way we have to generate power. If we all keep that line and explain it then we can carry on doing the right thing"

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Wind and solar

My bad - the 120 is from the article, which excludes existing storage.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Wind and solar

Where did you pick 120GWh of storage from?

The analysis of Australia wasn't dependant on it being Australia... it took an estimate at the start of the year of how much solar/wind would be needed... and then scaled production accordingly throughout the year.

It turns out that their grid, with existing storage, would have been 98.5% renewable over the year.

Of course that only accounts for the year analysed, but it's a pretty good indication that we are on the right track.

Let's have a look at the UK for a moment, and imagine ourselves in those sunlit uplands of better governance.

30 million EVs with an average of 50kWh capacity is 1.5TWh storage... Even just 10% of that being available for V2G applications (and actually even V2H would be a serious help, balancing supply and demand) would significantly exceed your 120GWh storage suggestion.

But we still need to generate; given that we currently dedicate as much land to airports as we do to solar generation I think we could reasonably expand said generation substantially without it requiring the vastness of central australia:

In the UK 1kW of nominal PV will generation ~1MWh/year using ~3sqm of roof, call it 4sqm of ground.

It generates more in summer than winter, and it generates only during the day... we know this.

UK annual electrical demand is 270TWh, so we'd need 270GW of installed capacity (on average), which would take 1,000 square kilometres.

That sounds alot.... it's half of the space taken up by residential buildings, or a bit less than the space taken up by community buildings, or about the space taken up by industrial buildings, or less than one percent of our agricultural land.

It should be obvious that solar isn't the complete solution for grid power in the UK, but it should also be clear that it is going to be a significant part of that solution.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Wind and solar

Yes you do...

But those periods are generally not sustained, and when they are sustained it tends to be because the weather is particularly good for other renewables.

Again - Australia isn't Japan, the UK or the US... but this is the most in depth review of a year (and the stats were actually generated week by week using real world data) that I am aware of.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewables-grid-is-well-within-reach-and-with-little-storage/

John Robson Silver badge

Re: "Green" Idiocy: Wind, Solar, Batteries...

Oh noes... we can't use renewables because my calculator doesn't work if I lock it in a coal cellar.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewables-grid-is-well-within-reach-and-with-little-storage/

Yes, I know australia is not Japan, the UK, or the US.

But it's the best detailed study I am aware of, looking at what would happen if we scaled up wind and solar generation using real world data, doing it week at a time, in real time...

John Robson Silver badge
WTF?

Re: Wind and solar

Windmills kill birds?

Well yes, some birds... but when the RSPB come out in support of them, you have to question whether you are cherry picking data.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/bird-death-and-wind-turbines-a-look-at-the-evidence/

"Overall, the RSPB says it scrutinises “hundreds” of windfarm applications every year in order to assess their possible impact on wildlife and bird populations and ultimately objects to six per cent of them."

And many of those will be "set the turbines back a bit" style objections.

Or we could look at other generation methods:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960148112000857

"The research concludes that taken together, fossil-fueled facilities are about 17 times more dangerous per gigawatt hour of electricity produced to birds than wind and nuclear power stations."

And that’s without getting into other human activities and structures – including buildings, roads and domestic cats.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Wind and solar

To be fair the quakes did damage the primary external power sources... just not the reactors or backup generators, or backup batteries, or control electronics. Those were all flooded and killed by the tsunami which was nearly three times the design limit for the site.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Wind and solar

There is probably a good reason to scram a reactor when the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan strikes just 100 miles away.

The acceleration of the ground at those sites exceeded half a g, which is 20% more than the design spec called for. Note that they are built on rock, sedimentary acceleration a few miles north was over 2g.

This alone destroyed the 6 primary external generators.

The tsunami that earthquake generated was 15m high at the plant.

The design of defenses was protecting against a 3m tsumami (based on the 1960 Chile tsumani), though that was revised to ~6m in 2002. They were in discussions about potentially higher tsunami, but little action had been taken.

Yes, they should have done more to protect against seawater ingress into the building (which killed the batteries and the backup generators). Either by moving the generators up the hill, or upstairs in the buildings.

But that's all the generators, batteries and switch gear that would have needed moving. Not exactly an overnight job.

The evacuation was ordered based on a level a little under 3 times the background in cornwall.

The background level before the tsunami was about 10% of that in cornwall.

The numbers were, and are, pretty small, and the risks are also fairly small - the biggest risk was always the massive bloody earthquake and tsunami. The Iodine and Caesium (particularly 137) is not something we want to be releasing... but the alternative is the last decade of burning fossil fuels - since they have ~25% coal still we can reasonably assume that the coal is what hasn't been displaced by nuclear generation.

Before the tsunami a third of it's electricity came from nuclear plants, it's now just 5%.

So... Japan uses ~1 PWh/year, so 250TWh of coal per year, for a decade... that's 2.5PWh, at a reasonable estimate of 25 deaths/TWh... that's 60+ thousand deaths as a result of using coal rather than nuclear generation.

Was the initial evacuation overkill?

I'd rather evacuate safely and unnecessarily occasionally than not.

But the evacuation itself caused serious issues as well.

The limits places on background doses were pretty strict - again I'd rather start strict and loosen after consideration.

Was the decision to cut back on all new builds and all existing nuclear generation for a decade overkill - absolutely.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Wind and solar

I know Australia isn't Japan...

But a detailed look at renewables in Aus shows... pretty promising results with very little storage:

https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewables-grid-is-well-within-reach-and-with-little-storage/

Pull jet fuel from thin air? We can do that, say scientists

John Robson Silver badge

Re: The plan for the combustion fleet isn't to ban them from the roads

Ambulance transport should, along with the care provided at the hospital, be free at point of use - in any civilised society.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: The plan for the combustion fleet isn't to ban them from the roads

"I really would like to see your solution for an army in the wilds of Afghanistan or wherever dealing with electric vehicles, not to mention farmers in remote(ish) areas. There may be a solution for them in the future, but it certainly isn't here yet."

Sorry, you're trying to compare an invading army with a person moving around their town/country in peacetime? No wonder everyone thinks they need to drive a tank to take their kid the four hundred yards to primary school "because it's unsafe to walk with all the cars around".

Farmers don't have that big an issue. Even remote areas are generally pretty well supplied with electrons, and pretty much by definition farmers will have significant area available for renewables installation.

Can every piece of farm machinery be electrified tomorrow? Probably not

Does that mean that none if it can/should? Absolutely not

Does that mean that none of the rest ever will be? Absolutely not.

At what point have I said "works for me so must be perfect for everyone"?

The only vaguely contentious thing I have said is that we have far too many cars, and society is built around assuming that everyone and their dog has sole access to one.

If we actually planned to reduce our reliance on cars then we could do so easily. It won't happen overnight, but it would happen. You simply make the alternatives nicer, faster, cheaper than running a car. You don't build dormitory developments with no transport links to anywhere except the closest motorway junction. You build them with high quality pedestrian and cycle access to the local town, the local shopping centre, the local doctors, pubs, cinema, schools, industrial estate, office blocks.

You run, and enforce, default 20mph speed limits in built up areas, you charge for parking... not rocket science. But the carrot has to be put first, in many cases the stick is never needed.

T-Mobile US and SpaceX hope to deliver phone service from space

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Really?

Can != may

Rest in peace, Queen Elizabeth II – Britain's first high-tech monarch

John Robson Silver badge

Re: ta ta Liz

It had been rumoured... I was somewhat shocked when Lis Truss referred to him as King Charles III before any announcement from Clarence house, and even more when the BBC picked it from that as an official source.

We'll likely never know whether he had intended to use George but decided against rocking the boat at such a time or whether he was always going to use Charles.

The answer to 3D printing equipment on Mars might lie in the Red Planet's dust

John Robson Silver badge

Re: So much for commercial space flight

Getting back is relatively easy - you can aerobrake to lose most of the velocity.

Shuttle: $54k/kg

Falcon9: $6k/kg

Starship: Target: $10/kg (not 10k, 10)

I suspect Musk's aim of $10/kg is somewhat optimistic, but another factor of ten reduction is plausible.

So shuttle cargo better be worth it's weight in gold (currently $54,784)

Falcon 9 cargo is valued about as titanium (currently $5k ish?, hard to find)

Starship might be worth as much as silver (currently $589) or a little bit more than copper ($7)

Bye bye BoJo: Liz Truss named new UK prime minister

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Trussed Up

We'll never recover what we lost - but I think we'll get some commerce back, even after it's all gone.

The challenge is being enough of a country to even consider reentering.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Trussed Up

"A position that I believe the UK too may have to consider until tempers have cooled sufficiently in a generation or 2."

I don't think it will take a generation or two... it might even be possible in less than a decade or two.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Lol...

Not even 57% of tories could bring themselves to vote for her.

81,326 out of 172,437 - that's just 47% of registered (i.e. politically interested) thieves voted for her.

NASA's Artemis rocket makers explain that it's a marathon and a sprint

John Robson Silver badge

Not all new

All the liquid engines are old hardware, some of the booster segments are (partly) old hardware.

The tank might be different, but it's very similar.

The engine mounts and plumbing are new I suppose

NASA scrubs Artemis mission yet again because SLS just can't handle the pressure

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Recycling

"Most of the aerodynamic losses were probably nn the fuel tank"

I'd wager that most of the aero resistance was in the (very roughly) plane shaped object, not the pointy cylinder.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Recycling

"I don't remember many issues filling the Shuttle main tank - one would think NASA knows what it is doing - in the Saturn V itself two whole stages had to be filled with LH for launch anyway - so if you get issue loading tanks it doesn't really matter where they are."

Shuttle averaged a scrub a launch I think... And the H2 lines were always difficult - H2 is just hard to handle.

California asks people not to charge EVs during heatwave

John Robson Silver badge
Coat

Re: Does this apply to everyone?

So you mean you could precool your house and use the thermal mass to deal with the slightly offset thermal peak? Almost like a battery, for heat... Must come up with a name for that.

California to try tackling drought with canal-top solar panels

John Robson Silver badge

Re: 372 miles

I don't know - I quite liked it.

Both sides are seriously oddball, non SI units - but both are also fairly well understood (particularly in USland)

Tesla faces Autopilot lawsuit alleging phantom braking

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Uncle Albert who brakes before every sharp bend "just in case"

Remember that many cars nowadays will show brake lights based on deceleration, not just on brake pedal activation.

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Last week

"What would "autopilot" be expected to do in that situation?"

Brake in a straight line, probably stop before the deer - because it's far better at car control than you.

Decision making might be suspect, but the car has full antilock braking, and probably independent control of braking on all four wheels.

NASA scrubs Artemis SLS Moon rocket launch

John Robson Silver badge

Re: But how many Falcon Heavy launches could you get for the cost of one SLS launch?

"Like it or not, Orion is the ship that is taking astronauts to the moon and the Starship lander is what is going to land them. The only things that can launch these are SLS and Super Heavy."

Given that the starship lander is required, and is by definition human rated, and designed for long duration missions... there is nothing actually stopping them launching in a dragon, docking with the starship in LEO and being on board from TLI to return.

It would need an additional refuel for the return and that's a *big* extra step for human rating but otherwise a 'simple' case of launch more tankers.

The return would be powered back to LEO, then dock with dragon for return (or even just beef up on the heat shielding for the dragon to moon-rate it rather than the LEO rating it currently has) - then haul an F9 second stage (already man rated) to the moon on board the starship for the return.

Assuming that starship works as planned then the above is likely to be cheaper than even the operational costs of SLS - ignoring the sunk costs totally.

Do I think it's likely? No (not even remotely).

Is it possible, or even attractive financially? Yes.

Meet the CrowPi-L – a clever, slightly rustic, Raspberry Pi laptop chassis

John Robson Silver badge

No room to open it up and run the Pi internally?

UK's largest water company investigates datacenters' use as drought hits

John Robson Silver badge

Re: Hosepipe bans

"I think a lot of people are concerned that their actual metered water bill is going to be a *lot* more than the standing charge, but if that's what they feel, that pretty much would indicate to me that they *know* they are likely wasting water and don't really care... unless of course it hits their pocket."

Or that they know that their medical needs consume significantly more water than the average person.

Binance exec says scammers made a 'deep fake hologram' of him to fool victims

John Robson Silver badge

So in no way a hologram

It was a video fake...