Hacker News Reader

torpfactoryon Starliner faced “catastrophic” failure before software bug found

It kind-of depends on what sort of issue you're finding in your test. Complex systems like spacecraft often have unexpected interaction effects which only testing can reveal. I would call these the 'good' kind of test learnings - ones that an army of great engineers wouldn't be able to predict.

This is editorializing but it looks like Boeing didn't uncover very complicated interactions - they failed at a more basic level of competency - timer synchronization for the launch issue and then a major software bug for an important orbital maneuver. Those sorts of issues really should be sorted out on the ground using hardware simulators. Furthermore, the timer synchronization failure prevented testing of the docking hardware, further delaying the overall program.

For a human rated vehicle, personally I think you should have at least one full-up, fully nominal test before you send anyone along for the ride.

torpfactoryon SpaceX will now let you book a rocket launch online starting at $1M

If you get on a SpaceX ride share, you don't get to choose your own orbit. You'll have to make-do with an orbit that may (or may not) be close to your desired one. Unless you want your satellite to have propulsion, which might eat up any cost advantage. With Rocket Lab, you'll get the orbit you want typically, since you'll probably be the only vehicle on board.

I suppose if SpaceX had an enormous manifest of small sats they could bin them into similar orbits, but that would really depend on just how successful they are.

torpfactoryon Wind turbine blades can’t be recycled, so they’re piling up in landfills

150 tons for the whole thing. Blades are like 5 tons each according to the source I looked at. Mind you this isn’t a terribly large turbine by today’s standards.

torpfactoryon Wind turbine blades can’t be recycled, so they’re piling up in landfills

If anyone is interested, here is a back-of-the-envelope mass calculation:

Energy content of natural gas: 53.6MJ/kg=14.8kWh/kg Efficiency of combined cycle plant: ~50% Energy/Mass Ratio = 7.445kWh/kg

Mass of wind turbine: ~150 tons Max power: 1.5MW Capacity factor: 0.4 Lifespan: 25 years Energy/Mass Ratio = 876kWh/kg

Obviously refining the materials for a wind turbine requires more energy than making natural gas. Also obviously didn't include the mass of the natural gas plant itself. Also obviously natural gas leaks are very problematic for climate. Also obviously if only the blades are discarded (and these are typically a small percentage of the weight), you could imagine continuing to use the tower, nacelle, generator, etc...

torpfactoryon Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

Either Tesla: (1) Call it a 'driver assist system' and carry that definition beyond all reasonable bounds. I've read the regulation, I don't think that defense would stand up in court. (2) Does physical testing somewhere other than California. The testing regulation is fairly onerous, and I could see them saying 'nah' we'll do this in Arizona, Nevada, etc.

You're right they don't report disengagements, but they still maintain a autonomous test vehicle permit in the state, according to the DMV website. Very strange indeed. I think (2) is probably right.

torpfactoryon Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

Nvidia is in an interesting spot - trying to create chips and toolkits for self driving without anyone actually having created the full self driving solution yet. How do you know that if you buy the new AGX chip from them you'll actually end up with a product someone will buy? Some of the other tier one suppliers (I'm looking at you, Continental) are kind of in the same boat.

torpfactoryon Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

That one is great! Moving into an oncoming traffic lane to get around stopped trucks. One of those things I would consider difficult for machines - when is it OK to break the normal rules of the road.

torpfactoryon Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

It's a fascinating video. Does anyone know of a similar video by Waymo, Cruise, Uber, etc?

Love them or hate them its pretty cool Tesla put this video out at all. Certainly gives us all a lot to talk about.

torpfactoryon Tesla's self driving algorithm's overlay [video]

Sorta looks like its avoiding a big puddle in the road to the left of the vehicle. Notice the 'wed road' number goes up fast when it's going through that section.

torpfactoryon Tesla Financial Results 2019 Q4

Depends on the definition of highway speeds a bit. At 60mph I hit the rated range pretty much dead on (500km/310mi). At 75mph it’s probably between 350 and 400km.

Generally agree about the charging infrastructure. Personally I have fun trying to find where I can connect to the grid but I don’t think everyone would call that fun...

Round numbers: I think when there are ~2-3x the number of supercharger locations (not chargers but locations), it will basically be at parity with the convenience of gas. I believe range (500km @ 60mph) is already acceptable and if the number of locations is increased it will be even less of an issue. Just my $.02

torpfactoryon How Tesla's battery costs impact its gross margins

Personally I’m rooting for Tesla’s vertical integration approach. Tesla doesn’t need to be the best, just good enough to make a component of adequate quality for less than what the supplier would charge for it. I do think they’ve figured out some places where they can get to that level.

For commodities like semiconductors it would be insane to try and open your own fab: those players are so much more sophisticated than anyone else. For mechanical components I think they logic is a lot more complicated. In a phrase: it depends. I’ve been working in product development for a few years and have been to overseas factories to help set up assembly lines. Some suppliers are fantastic and we won’t beat the quality / price. Others just don’t seem to get it and we’ll spend months and many engineering hours basically teaching them how to build what we need. It’s those cases where I would personally prefer to be more vertically integrated.

torpfactoryon How Tesla's battery costs impact its gross margins

Tesla have shown a rather large appetite for vertical integration. For example, they make their own seats. Why? I guess they think they can eek out some advantage. They could certainly get commodity seats from a traditional auto supplier, but they must have some line-of-sight to making them cheaper, or better or maybe just more customized than what a supplier would produce.

I think the same will be true for batteries. They won't be making a copy of the Panasonic cell design. They will only become a manufacturer if there is some advantage to be gained. They will probably seek to integrate IP from their Maxwell acquisition and improvements from their research group in Canada.

torpfactoryon How Tesla's battery costs impact its gross margins

Sure, but batteries are far more 'core' to Tesla's businesses than trucking or car carriers. TBH, I never understood that comment by him. I imagine he got interviewed right after some Tesla operations meeting where they were struggling to find trucking capacity and he just blurted out 'lets build car carriers' to the nearest microphone.

torpfactoryon How Tesla's battery costs impact its gross margins

I think he intends for Tesla to be the end use for all the cells. Unless their products start tanking, in which case he'll pivot.

torpfactoryon How Tesla's battery costs impact its gross margins

Based on the companies they have been acquiring, it certainly looks like they want to start their own manufacturing.

https://electrek.co/2019/10/05/tesla-quietly-acquires-batter...

In addition Musk seems to be saying they will need an incredible ramp in battery production (to 2-3twh/year!!!) to make an important contribution to global warming. Given his style, I wouldn’t doubt he intends to have Tesla do the manufacturing: Q2 2019 earnings call:

https://youtu.be/SG-59Os2H5o

Obviously he doesn’t want to upset Panasonic too much in the short term: they have a lot to lose if Panasonic pulls the plug early.

torpfactoryon Fiat will effectively fund Tesla’s German factory

It’s an economic disincentive for Fiat to continue producing them. Sure Fiat could continue to sell those cars, but being on the hook for shoveling Tesla $2bn every few years isn’t a winning long term strategy. Hurts Fiat, helps a company that’s got much better CO2 performance. CO2 will be reduced because it will now be in Fiats financial interest to produce EVs. It certainly won’t happen overnight but the incentives are clear for Fiat.

torpfactoryon Automate the Boring Stuff with Python (2015)

I really liked “Problem Solving With Algorithms and Data Structures Using Python”.

https://runestone.academy/runestone/books/published/pythonds...

torpfactoryon Electric Cars Threaten the Heart of Germany’s Economy

I think the issue with bus charging is that if you want to plug in all those busses at their various depots and charge overnight, the electrical infrastructure can’t support the new load (multiple megawatts per depot). Bus depots were never wired for that kind of load.

You literally need to build new substations and wires to service a fleet of busses. I think there is probably generation capacity but it might not be deliverable to where it’s needed.

torpfactoryon Electric Cars Threaten the Heart of Germany’s Economy

Isn’t gas also more expensive? Most of Europe is like the equivalent of $6-8 a gallon IIRC.

torpfactoryon Newly discovered formula explains efficiency gains from bifacial solar cells

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophyll_a#/media/File:Chlo...

Best be making green absorbing panels. The plants ain't using that part of the spectrum.

torpfactoryon More Teslas on the Road Meant Hours-Long Supercharger Lines over Thanksgiving

Similar story here: drove up I5 from Portland to Seattle to Leavenworth and back to Portland. Traveling Fri through Sun. No lines.

torpfactoryon Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

Sure, but the price at which the shares are available decreases with fewer available buyers. Let’s not give oil companies the money or collateral to finance their expansion.

torpfactoryon Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

"I hope that humanity will be able to free itself from its addiction of fossil fuels (arguably it is the primary reason for violent conflict in the last 30 years and the driving force behind climate change), but my bet is that things will get worse for a lot longer before we even reach the inflection point of “peak oil”.

Change must happen. Change will happen. I don’t think the oil and gas industry is anywhere near to disappearing. Given the current valuation of many integrated oil majors, the favorable growth and interest rate environment, I believe that it is a good time to invest in oil companies."

I love the cynicism of this perspective: We are well aware the world will burn because of this technology, but hey, you can make a buck now, so keep perpetuating the status quo. These kind of opinions are so frustrating.

torpfactoryon California Can Expect Blackouts for a Decade, Says PG&E CEO

Shouldn’t PGE forgo payouts to shareholders in order to keep infrastructure to a better standard? Surely the long term value of PGE is diminished (and thus their ability to pay dividends) if they are found liable for fires or effect rolling blackouts as a “solution”. The pension funds could invest in something else instead.

torpfactoryon Nobel Prize: Lithium Ion Battery Creators Led a Revolution

What is the limit? I’ve heard a ton of different opinions on what it might be.

torpfactoryon Sea 'Boiling' with Methane Discovered in Siberia

Geoengineering is really the only realistic option if this is the case.

Sulfate aerosol injection is by far the most promising. And cheap - maybe 5-8b per year [1]. I'm not claiming this is a good idea in any way. As they say: desperate times call for desperate measures. We could buy ourselves several decades to sort our (as humans) shit out. We don't understand the unintended consequences very well, but at least this technique mimics natural processes (volcanic eruptions).

[1]https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/7/3/034...

torpfactoryon Starship Update

I think you would be firmly in “creating completely new markets” territory at that point. It would be like trying to imagine what one would need 1000x as many transistors for, at the dawn of semiconductors. The world certainly wasn’t buying that many vacuum tubes, was it?

From my perspective, these are the big ones in the near term: 1) LEO satellite internet. Fixes the lag issues with GEO orbits, making space internet directly competitive for some applications. 2) Tourism: I would certainly pay a very pretty penny indeed to see the earth from space.

Longer term: 3) Global sun shade or other system for preventing global climate catastrophe. In 30 years I think we’ll be talking a lot about this. 4) Resource extraction, which otherwise doesn’t make sense with expensive rockets. 5) Self sustaining mars base. Still can’t figure out what the economic incentive is for this. It will cost a lot of money for what return exactly?

torpfactoryon Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks from Rivian

Delivery trucks run during the day mostly. Cities may prohibit deliveries at night for noise reasons. Deliveries at night might be more likely to be stolen, etc. Could be able to fix the first issue with the quietness of EVs perhaps.

torpfactoryon Earth to warm more quickly, new climate models show (By 2100, could rise 6.5C)

There’s so much modeling that couldn’t even be done 80 years ago. Electronic computers were in their infancy, climate science was just beginning, weather satellites (hell any artificial satellite) had not yet been launched.

The inputs, the models themselves, and the main way to compute an output had mostly not been invented.

This is a fundamentally unfair comparison. If it couldn’t be computed analytically, it wasn't really possible to compute it 80 years ago. That absolutely doesn’t mean we should just ignore these predictions. Are we supposed to always wait some arbitrary time before listening to long term prediction?

torpfactoryon Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405

I think we should look at this probabilistically. Yes, autopilot should be improved to prevent this, but no system is perfect. Certainly not human drivers. IMO the correct comparison is whether Teslas are on average more likely to hit firetrucks while on autopilot than normal vehicles while being driven by humans.

I'm sure this data most likely won't be forthcoming, but I think it's important to keep in mind that we should be looking at accidents fleet-wide and not in isolation. Autonomously driven cars will have accidents. More importantly, their failure modes will be different than human drivers. However, as soon as they are even a small margin safer than human drivers, their adoption would save lives. Besides, the systems will continue to get better. Human drivers have proven stubbornly difficult to improve.

We ought not reject autonomous driving technology only because it sometimes gets in accidents that appear to be strange or arbitrary to us. I consider the carnage perpetrated by human drivers to be arbitrary, but most people just take death on the roads as a fact of life.