Elon Musk - The Future of Energy and Transport [video]
oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk
oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk
Actually like cruise ships: they are not cheaper than flying. They are a lot more comfortable.
What if you made them really huge and mostly automated? Make the service be mostly self-service, like at an extended-stay hotel?
-- First world problems, people !
In regards to the proposed tech: if this allows for cleaner, cheaper transportation down the road for everyone then the economic opportunities improve for the globe.
My personal transport-of-choice is a motorcycle. I can get anywhere within ~400km of home in less time by bike than by plane. I reasonably regularly choose to ride Sydney<->Port Macquarie or Sydney<->Canberra for work, mostly because I enjoy the ride, only partly 'cause it takes me less time than cab-to-airport/checkin/fly/cab-at-other-end.
Then those people will have to be stomped on, hard.
People hate, but put up with, airline security checks because they (perhaps grudgingly) admit they serve at least some purpose, even if the actual details are often pretty questionable.
But trains and airplanes are fundamentally different in this respect. There's no rational reason to have airline-style security checks for train travel, at all.
What's that supposed to illustrate? That a bomb in a crowded place can be harmful? Hmm, ok, better get the TSA to cordon off all malls, clubs, popular restaurants...
The thing about air travel is that there is a better argument for (some) security to prevent hijackings and bombs, both because planes are very fragile (there's a decent chance for a smallish bomb to result in the entire plane being lost and all passengers killed), and because they're usable as missiles against much larger targets (as illustrated by 9.11). Planes, in other words, have a somewhat unique ability to magnify the effect of a given terrorist attack.
None of that is the case for rail transport. For the most part, a train is simply a very crowded place, in a society that's absolutely chock-full of very crowded places. Indeed, the long-distance/regional trains most likely to receive TSA "attention" are much less crowded than local trains and subways which will almost certainly never be allowed to fall under TSA control for practical reasons.
If you give the police free reign, you'll end up with a society that's only efficient for the police.
On the other hand making sure no one has guns on a plane seems worth queueing at the metal detectors for. Maybe that is just me being anti-gun though...
At any rate, there aren’t any in Germany, even though two islamic terrorists actually targeted two German regional trains in 2006. They left suitcases with – luckily – non-functional bombs in both (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_German_train_bombing_plot). That’s pretty much the only (attempted) islamic terror attack that ever happened in Germany†.
Bigger train stations usually have quite some police presence and there are (horribly racist) spot checks, but that’s all. (Usually the police want to check your ID card and then radio in the name to see whether there’s anything on your name. I’m guessing they are also trying to look for suspicious activity, but the most permanent reminder of the possibility of terrorist attacks are regular announcements to not leave your baggage unattended.)
Even when there was a lot of fear of terror attacks on trains or train stations being imminent a few years back, police presence (in bigger train stations) was merely bumped and you got to see some policewomen and men with submachine guns.
Everything would probably collapse in Germany if airport style checks were introduced in train stations. It’s just not realistic. The way trains are used doesn’t play nice with security checks. I mean, tons of people use trains in Germany to commute. Those trains are already plenty late in many major metropolitan areas, add security checks to that and you have a recipe for disaster. Plus: There are so many train stations, do you need checks in everyone of those? Even just including every high-speed train stop would probably result in many more train stations in Germany needing security equipment than there are airports in Germany.
But everyone can see that high-speed train stops are not enough. The terrorists in 2006 targeted regional trains! Those stop at train stations that are no more than a block of concrete next to the tracks. And those trains are plenty packed, often more so than high-speed trains.
Traveling by air has a different pace. It fits security checks better. There are few airports and airplanes don’t make dozens of stops god knows where.
The economic cost of bringing airport style security checks to trains easily outweighs any benefits even security fanatics might fantasize about. That’s why it doesn’t happen, at least not in countries with heavily used and dense train networks. (Now, countries with very sparse train networks that are not heavily used are a completely different story. Airport-style security checks do happens in those countries. Uzbekistan would be one example.)
—
† In 2011 an Islamist shot and killed two US soldiers (wounded two more) on the way to Afghanistan who were in a bus in front of Frankfurt Airport (about to be transported to Ramstein Air Base).
No, of course not. It's just not realistic, for the same reasons that you gave.
There are spot checks. It has only happened to me once, since I don't fit the profile. That also has drawbacks that you mentioned - it's far too close to racial profiling, and though it's often under the banner of "anti-terrorism", it mostly confiscates knives.
Notwithstanding the 7 July 2005 bombings, Terrorism isn't a major threat. More people die from far more mundane, accidental things.
Even taking the subway means passing through a quick bag check.
Airport-style security at train stations is a terrible idea for many reasons, but it's not as impractical as you make it sound.
At high altitudes, it may be more efficient to beam the power from orbit then from the ground or flying tankers.
EDIT: replaced "the biggest" with "a big", point well taken.
The biggest? Not sure about that. Eliminating most of the fuel tankage is pretty huge.
> more efficient to beam the power from orbit than from the ground
That would be vital for over water flights. This might even be a way to jump start orbital solar power satellites.
> flying tankers.
By "electric tankers" I meant using beamed electric power to haul jet fuel to altitude, as a first step. Airplanes purpose built for this use case would have range or efficiency advantages.
In line with InclinedPlane's comment upthread, I do have a question: how do you prevent such power delivery systems from becoming orbital weapons platforms? It wouldn't be difficult to make such satellite transmit power to a building or road insatead of a plane.
Rectennas proposed for power transmission are quite large. You can probably design these, such that diffraction limits make spot focusing the beams difficult. You probably can't prevent them from being used as weapons, but you can probably make them rotten weapons.
In any case, you can secure these from most personnel by using crypto and formal methods. This stuff had better work, because if we have powersats, then we'll also have lots of very capable orbital rockets which will use the same security schemes, and those will be >much< more potent weapons.
My understanding is that air is still the medium they use for propulsion so I'm not sure how big this benefit will be (like how a jetski jet doesn't work out of water).
Even if we were talking about a blended wing plane covered in PV arrays and much lighter than a 777 (due to not needing fuel) and thus requiring less power we're still talking about delivering 10s to 100s of kilowatts per square meter of plane. That compares to 1 kilowatt/m^2 of direct sunlight. That's a hell of a lot of power, and I'm not sure there's a way for that amount of power to be safely and effectively delivered without a considerable risk of destroying or damaging the plane.
Do you mean emergency thrust, takeoff thrust, or during cruise? These aren't going to be the same amounts. You're going to have to have some amount of batteries for emergency purposes, so these could be used to provide peak power. Beamed power will also have different properties which will lead to different economics and standard operating procedures. (With more gradual climbs.)
> Even if we were talking about a blended wing plane covered in PV arrays and much lighter than a 777 (due to not needing fuel) and thus requiring less power we're still talking about delivering 10s to 100s of kilowatts per square meter of plane. That compares to 1 kilowatt/m^2 of direct sunlight. That's a hell of a lot of power
1000 watts per square meter doesn't seem such a big deal. Right now, I have a 300 watt parabolic space heater about 8-9" or 20 cm in diameter aimed at me from about 3/4ths of a yard. The intensity of this device is much higher than 1000w/m^2. I note that the rear of this device is made out of ordinary plastic and doesn't ever get too hot to touch.
As a matter of perspective, imagine building a large structure out of aluminum with one handheld hair dryer attached to every square meter of the bottom side. (1400 watts.) That would indeed be a lot of power, but barring untimely rain or some kind of design or equipment failure, you wouldn't expect this to go up in flames.
Heck, this thing is a toy, and I'll bet the intensity is a good fraction of 1000 watts/m^2.
Doesn't matter, that's a percentage difference, and doesn't affect the orders of magnitude here.
> 1000 watts per square meter doesn't seem such a big deal.
Maybe you misread what I wrote, 1 kilowatt/m^2 is the power of direct sunlight. The power per square meter to power a jumbojet realistically needs to be 10s to 100s of times higher than that. And those are dangerous levels of power. For example, the risk of eye damage from reflections would be a significant concern, but realistically at those power levels you could risk melting plastics and so forth.
Indeed I did. However, I was primarily thinking about the waste heat, which would only be about 1 or two kilowatt/m^2.
> For example, the risk of eye damage from reflections would be a significant concern
I doubt this would be a concern for microwaves.
> but realistically at those power levels you could risk melting plastics and so forth.
That's only if all the power went towards melting those plastics. If the transmission and conversion is efficient enough, then this isn't necessarily the case. Also, just don't use plastics.
Shielding passengers inside a metal hull from 10 kilowatts/m^2 isn't that big a deal. Nor would dissipating 1.5 kilowatts/m^2 of waste heat.
Even rounding down to 100 megawatts and then assuming a 70m x 60m triangle (2100 m^2) you end up with about 50 kilowatts per square meter. Now consider that the power gathering equipment not only needs to be extremely efficient (as even 95% efficiency would dump enough heat into the plane's structure to cause it to melt fairly quickly) but also needs to be built extremely carefully as any imperfection that resulted in a drop in efficiency for any small part of the plane would result in catastrophe.
And, of course, as mentioned there would be the problems of bleed-over and so forth. You want to be able to fly planes over populated areas, most likely.
"Kin's flyer circled the low offices and headed northward to the big complex on W- continent. It skirted the bulk of what had been Hendry's machine, its new pilot now laying down a pattern of offshore reefs. The manoeuvre gave them an impressive view of the big collector bowl atop the machine, its interior velvety black. 'Why?' said Jalo, peering. Kin twirled the wheel. 'Beamed power from orbiting collectors, slaved to the machine. If we flew over the bowl we wouldn't even leave any ash.' 'What would happen if the pilot made a mistake and the beam missed the bowl?' Kin considered this. 'I don't know,' she said. 'We'd certainly never find the pilot.'"
For example:
Steve Jobs, an art school college dropout, doesn't meet Wozniak - Where is he now? Steve Jobs gets himself killed in India. Steve Jobs doesn't get hooked onto computers or doesn't hang out with the right hobbyist crowd at the right time, in the right place, with few other options to pursue.
When you look at history you'll see a bunch of events that could have - and most probably - should have happened and things get a whole lot less certain. Things are only guaranteed to people because they happened - but at the time - not so much.
Once you see the world through this light - it's difficult to make the kind of statements that others make about the past and the future. It also reduces the effect of both the halo and hindsight biases and just generally lets you get a feeling for the anthropic principle and its constant interference with daily life (aka we would not be discussing this had Elon not been a success).
These are called mistakes of omission (could have happened) and not commision (did happen). The deeds of omission far out weight all the deeds of commission.
No telling what condos at Colony 1 will be going for.
I really want both companies to succeed and I'd be happy to contribute to either cause (yes, I see both primarily as a cause and philosophy, not just a company). Judging from response around the internet there are many people like me who are just as excited. I can't buy a Model S car because I don't have that money, but I'd be happy to throw some money at Tesla or SpaceX for a little badge and a warm feeling.
The recent launch success makes the likelihood of it going public soon a little higher, and then everyone will be able to participate - but I can only imagine all the caveats in the filing documents, and frankly after watching the debacle of a meltdown called Facebook, I wouldn't trust anyone on Wall Street to properly bring this to market unless a Dutch Auction was used.
Solvable? Probably. But we haven't solved it yet.
Note that you will need to provide some identification info (I don't remember what) if you want to upload a long HD video to YouTube. IIRC not needed for 480p.
(edit: nevermind. Use the other mirror (^^up there) instead.)
(and when did universities stop having ridiculously overdimensioned internet connections?)
About the same time internet video took off
Ok. I used Burnbit to create a torrent
Disregard the stream. It was buggy in Chrome and only mildly better in Firefox. (Oxford can't afford a more robust video solution?)
Tackle the MP4 file instead. Only left click open it in place of downloading it.
Quicktime should take care of the rest.