woodandsteel

Ok, but that still doesn't answer my question of what specifically SpaceX did differently. For instance, you said bigger temperatures are needed and that is limited by existing materials. So did SpaceX invent materials that could stand a higher temperature?

Does anyone know what SpaceX did special in designing and building the Raptor that allows it to reach such a high pressure?

Top-level ev's like the Model 3 are already superior for most drivers. The only problem is cost, and that is being fixed in the coming years through steadily falling battery prices.

Other use cases like aviation and ocean boats are more difficult. It may well be that synfuels made with renewable energy will be the solution there.

I guess you could make a case that, today, SLS is further along. But SpaceX is moving several times faster here than SLS, so in any case it is going to be up and flying regularly long before SLS. And in terms of cost per weight to orbit, it will be a hundred times less.

So it looks like I was mistaken.

The effect of national policies vary according to region.

But let me ask, what do you think causes homelessness?

That was one line of thought that lead to the rejection of the Enlightenment view of the powers of human reason, but there were others.

Here's some historical background. In the 19th century the West enjoyed an extraordinary period of peace, prosperity, and technological progress, all under the guidance of Enlightenment philosophy, with its focus on the supposedly unlimited powers of human reason, and Liberal political philosophy.

But then there was what we now call World War I, which was remarkably destructive and killed of much of an entire generation of young men. And that in turn lead to the Communist revolution in Russia, and great political instability in Germany, which had been seen as the most civilized of nations, which lead to the rise of the Nazis, and also the Fascist regime in Italy. In addition modern developments such as radio and the automobile produced considerably cultural disruption.

All this produced great confusion and despair among much of the intellectual class, and a great many abandoned Liberalism and Enlightenment philosophy. The book in question discusses three philosophers who searched for alternatives, and one who stuck with the Enlightenment.

He never stopped thinking about philosophical problems, and when he returned to academia his views had changed radically.

I brought in conservatism because homeless is in part due to national level policies. Conservatives and liberals agree on that.

The article presents the expert case for why hyperloop is doomed to fail. Normally in this sort of situation, I assume the experts are correct, but not in this case. Let me explain why.

The reason is that we have been in this situation several times before with a Musk idea. The experts all said it was completely crazy, but nonetheless it succeeded spectacularly.

The reason the ideas succeeded is Musk is a genius and as a consequence he thinks things out much better than the experts, who are not geniuses, do.

I am not saying that hyperloop will succeed. No one succeeds all the time, and perhaps this time Musk will fail. I am just saying it seems to me virtually certain he is quite aware of all the factors that the experts say would cause hyperloop to succeed, and has developed surprising solutions to them, and there is a good chance these solutions will succeed.

Conservatives explain homelessness as due to liberalism. They say this works two ways.

In way, liberal values causes people to make poor life decisions that lead to them lose their jobs.

In the other way, liberal economic policies lead to a lack of jobs and also overly expensive housing.

Question: why is this called a supercapacitor, rather than just a standard one?

One of the reasons Musk is a genius is he can figure out these sorts of synergies.

This is too expensive and short range to sell in any significant numbers. That said, batteries are steadily becoming more energy-dense and less expensive. That means the proportion of cases where an electric boat makes sense will be steadily increasing.

Good point, so maybe that's their motive.

The first stage is potentially reusable, but according to the Wikipedia article this has not been funded, so when it starts flying next year it will be expended. The thrusters are reusable, but you need a whole lot more than that. Maybe some time in the future it will be funded, or maybe not.

I have no idea whether or not Tesla's stock is over-priced. However, it is definitely more than an auto company. It has a solar division, and it make electricity storage systems for home and utilities. Also, there are strong indications it is about to go into manufacturing li-ion cells. It seems to me it is quite possible that at some point it will be worth a trillion.

Let me add it is interesting that people who say Tesla is over-valued so often make this mistake, even though most of what I said is widely known. Perhaps people are being intentionally misleading.

Former interpersonal skills trainer here.

The comments have a lot of good suggestions. I would like to reinforce the emphasis on listening, and the idea of practicing one skill until you have it down, and then moving on to another. Also it is good to take a training course where you actually practoce the skills under the guidance of a teacher.

Also it is good to think afterwards about an interaction that went good or bad, reviewing as close to word-for-word if you can, and see what you can learn that you can use in the future. Also think of situations you have a hard time handling and see if you can think of how the skills you are learning can help, and again plan out what you might say word-for-word, and run though it a number of times, maybe even out loud, to make it more automatic.

When the ULA Vulcan was first announced, the plan was the engines, which are 90% of the cost of the first stage, would be recoverable and reusable. The idea was the engine section would detach from the rest of the rocket, fall a ways and then a parachute would open, and finally it would be caught mid-air by a helicopter. The idea was this would help it compete on price with the Falcon 9.

However, according to the Wikipedia article on Vulcan, this has not been funded, and so the rocket is going to be fully disposable.

I recall at the time of the purchase some, I think it included Cringely, said that Red Hat culture was going to take over IBM and save it. Alas, it looks like that is not going to happen.

That's technically true, but it doesn't do anything to advance the discussion of the issues the article raises. In particular, I really doubt that anyone who read the article was mislead by its use of the technically incorrect term "Silicon Valley."

It may well be that hydrogen is the fuel of the future for airlines. The problem is that with the rate global climate change is happening, we can't wait decades for a solution. We need something as soon as possible, and as far as I can tell, synfuel kerosene could replace fossil fuel kerosene decades sooner than hydrogen could. Do the hydrogen boosters address this concern?

I have far too many books to read. Could you perhaps give me a summary of his views?

You have a very unconventional meaning for the term "fake"

Is anybody building a plane that makes use of these new technologies?

Any alternative must use renewable energy. The question is whether that should be used to produce hydrogen or synfuel kerosene.

If I understand the article correctly, Sowell thinks that blacks have a highly inferior status today because they have a culture that is not suited to succeeding in modern society.

If we assume Sowell is correct about that, then my reply is that culture is not fixed. For instance, Western European culture is vastly different than it was 500 years ago.

So the question is why blacks have the particular culture they do at present. Does Sowell address this?

One gigantic advantage for synfuel kerosene that is carbon-neutral because it is produced with renewable energy, is you can continue to use the present airliner fleet. With hydrogen you have to spend many trillions of dollars replacing it.

Furthermore, replacing all the planes would take many decades, while synfuel kerosene might go into production much sooner.

Do the hydrogen airliner boosters take all that into account?

Two sorts of questions for those who support this idea

1) If is is so workable, then why don't we have hydrogen test planes flying today? Are there any technological problems that remain to be solved?

2) How is hydrogen supposed to be better than synfuel kerosene produced with renewable energy? And note than any argument must include the cost of replacing every current airliner with an all new hydrogen one, as opposed to keeping the present airliners.