Posts by John Robson

Re: When will Big Oil face the heat?

"which are unreliable and cannot be stored"

I'm sorry - you just lost all credibility with that one statement.

We need to do more - we need to get rid of FF as fast as is possible, and nuclear should be a significant component of that. But storage and good grid interconnects are important as well.

Re: Which Led Zep Album?

Have you actually done any calculations to come up with your 30kW requirement?

I live in a multiply extended 1940s semi, and a mere 6kW of gas input (metered data) will keep this house warm down to substantially negative (coldest of the cold snaps last winter) external temperatures (so I probably only need ~5.5kW of heat).

That still leaves us with several hours overnight when that input wasn't used for heating, and the same heat pump can therefore heat a hot water cylinder.

Assuming you're just reading the label of your excessively overpowered boiler then: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006140530856.html

No - there is no way in hell I trust that 30kW figure, nor would I buy it anyway.

Re: Which Led Zep Album?

As opposed to the completely energy free production of fossil fuels, which emerges at a steady rate, completely refined, directly into the UK gas network.

Re: Which Led Zep Album?

"My problem is they dont put enough heat out."

Really - so your problem is that you can't the label on the product?

They don't need to be backed up, and they work down to very low temperatures - see their widespread use in the nordics.

Why not have them all - oh, because MS wants you to buy an O365 license to edit a text file, carry on.

Re: rural customers

Given starlink - why do you need mobile coverage as well?

"Finally, remember that Starlink is not an ISP and when you connect to a ground station you get attached to any random ISP that's about, so that's probably where the FCC gets its panties in a bunch. But... it's a definition only public servants would get hung up on whereas everyone else would go "meh.""

It's an ISP - it provides internet services, it's therefore an internet service provider.

Yes, it has varied peering and connectivity points, but that's not unique to them as an ISP.

Well at the point where the alternative is no service then the £75/mo doesn't look too bad, neither does the ~£300 setup cost (there are quite often offers on, the current "normal" price is £450)

It provides a good service where there isn't a terrestrial alternative - good enough that you could reasonably share said service amongst a small community.

I don't think I've ever managed any value out of bundled "content", the internet *is* the content.

Re: Can't we just send a shuttle....

Consistency - we have a very good understanding of how hubble works, and what it images. It's a very useful calibration tool for new scopes.

It's also still unique - JWST isn't a replacement, though there is some overlap in observable frequencies.

The Roman scope has a similar diameter mirror but a massively wider fov, it's not looking at the same stuff.

Re: Can't we just send a shuttle....

The sensors are replaceable (and indeed have all been replaced at least once IIRC)

Re: Boosting

So who's going to pay for the new scope?

And what benefits will it bring?

The sensor packages on Hubble have been replaced before, we could replace them again... Hubble isn't nearly as old as the calendar would suggest.

And it's cheaper to send up a new instrument cluster than a whole new telescope.

Can you imagine sending up a mission with a robonaut and some replacement parts, then *leaving* the robonaut attached...

Re: Boosting

"Hubbles role in deep field observations has largely been supplanted by JWST though."

Different spectrum on each, so not really a replacement.

But the deeper the field the more red shifted the light, so there is some truth in the comment - they have similar resolving power (JWST has a bigger mirror, but detects longer wavelength radiation).

And of course the sheer light gathering capacity of JWST is a significant step forward, allowing deep fields with far less time spent on an observation.

Re: Boosting

To extend you don't need a manned servicing mission.

Give the grappling ability added to hubble last time up there it could be that we could literally add a "bolt on" attitude control and orbit maintenance module.

Re: Boosting

The upgrades have replaced vast amounts of the telescope over the years, but I'm not sure you could reasonably have built several new versions and launched those for less than the maintenance costs.

There were five servicing missions (STS-61,82,103,109,125) - the first being to install COSTAR, and you'd *never* have got the budget for an all new system then.

Could we launch something better and cheaper now?

Well - we could launch something new - the F9 fairing is certainly large enough (other rockets exist and have different fairing sizes, I just picked the most common launch vehicle of the moment).

But how much would it cost to build an all new instrument? It would be substantially more than the cost of replacing a few gyros, batteries, and other items with limited life.

If we really wanted to we could even leave a small thruster unit on the base for orbit maintenance.

JWST launch cost ~200 million, but the spacecraft cost multiple billions.

I know - it was more complex, but that's the kind of thing we'd want to to do improve on Hubble. You can launch an awful lot of maintenance missions, upgrading instruments etc, for the cost of a new bird.

Re: Four different launch providers....

Meh - I suspect that the integration will not be the biggest challenge they face.

And each of the launch suppliers will be keen to ensure that integration is done properly.

The chances of the Ariane 6, Vulcan and Glenn rockets all being completely reliable from the get go however... I suspect there is a decent chance they'll lose some to launch issues.

Atlas and Falcon both have good demonstrated reliability.

Re: The absence of backlighting

Could be backlit when the cable is plugged in, assuming that they didn't put the charging cable in an apple location.

Re: Been there, Done That. will do that again...

How much of your document does the cursor cover?

Heck, mine disappears when I start doing anything in the window, but even without that it's at most covering one character - maybe two, one on each of two consecutive lines.

Whereas if you don't have focus follows cursor then you can't pop up a reference document and type into your actual work window whilst still having the reference doc open, because your working document just needs focus, and to "peek out" from below the reference doc, which is only going to be there for a few minutes.

It's something you get used to very quickly, and it's much more natural - your focus is just where you (tell the computer you) are looking.

focus doesn't require interaction, and it certainly doesn't require the *whole* window to take priority

Re: Been there, Done That. will do that again...

Focus should follow the cursor, though that shouldn't necessarily bring that window to the front.

It's vanishingly rare that you ever want to focus on something that isn't where your cursor is.

They weren't failures... they were foundations.

Re: Anyone remember Falcon 9?

I'm surprised they aren't building a "catch only" tower half a mile or so away from the launch site... I know there is seriously limited space available since it's a nature reserve...

I'd have thought that the oil rigs would have made a good starting point for this kind of platform

It was a success - but it wasn't as much of a success as it potentially could have been.

They've demonstrated hot staging - deceleration is generally bad for fuel staying in the pumps, but that's a relatively trivial fix, just don't throttle those three engines down as far and you don't end up decelerating... the booster is important to reuse, but also it's never the primary mission.

We still don't know what actually went wrong on the ship, but the booster demonstrated the IFT system worked as well (which is a significant improvement on last time).

There are a few bits of hardware very close to ready to test, and stage zero looks in remarkably good condition.