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Terrafugia CEO Responds To "Flying Car" Criticism
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue May 13, 2008 04:42 PM
from the fly-drive-package dept.
from the fly-drive-package dept.
waderoush writes "The majority of the comments on last week's Slashdot post It's Not a Flying Car — It's A Drivable Airplane were critical, even dismissive, of Terrafugia's work to build a two-passenger airplane with folding wings that's also certified for highway driving. We boiled down these criticisms to the dozen most commonly expressed points, and today we've published responses from Terrafugia CEO Carl Dietrich. While hybrid airplane-automobiles are an old (some would say laughable) idea, Dietrich argues that current materials and avionics technologies finally make the concept feasible."
Related Stories
[+]
It's Not a Flying Car - It's a Drivable Airplane 243 comments
waderoush writes "Aviation enthusiasts have been dreaming of flying cars since the 1940s. But in an old machine shop in Woburn, MA, a team of MIT aero/astro grads is building what could be the first practical airplane that's also certified for highway driving. Angel-funded startup Terrafugia, headed by 2006 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize winner Carl Dietrich, hopes to have its first full-scale proof-of-concept vehicle ready to show off at July's AirVenture aviation festival in Oshkosh, Wisconsin."
[+]
"Roadable Aircraft" Moving Towards Launch 186 comments
We discussed Terrafugia's plans for what they don't like to call a "flying car" — rather a "roadable aircraft" — last spring. The Boston Globe has an update on Massachusetts-based Terrafugia and its fight to get airborne in these parlous times. "The last serious attempt to bring a car-airplane hybrid to market was the Aerocar, in 1949. According to Carl Dietrich, chief executive of Terrafugia, that company built six prototypes. It needed 500 orders in order to gear up for mass production, but it never got there... 'It can be hard to explain the value of this to non-pilots,' Dietrich says, 'but when you're a pilot, the problems of high costs, limited mobility on the ground, and weather sensitivity are in your face, all the time.' The company says more than 50 of the vehicles have been pre-ordered. The target price is $198,000."
[+]
Flying Car Ready To Take Off 315 comments
ChazeFroy writes "The first flying automobile, equally at home in the sky or on the road, is scheduled to take to the air next month. If it survives its first test flight, the Terrafugia Transition, which can transform itself from a two-seater road car to a plane in 15 seconds, is expected to land in showrooms in about 18 months' time. Terrafugia claims it will be able to fly up to 500 miles on a single tank of unleaded petrol at a cruising speed of 115mph. Even at $200,000 per automobile, they have already received 40 orders."
[+]
Flying Car Passes First Flight Test 273 comments
waderoush writes "Terrafugia — the Massachusetts company building a 'roadable aircraft' (that's flying car to you and me) — revealed at a press conference Wednesday that the Transition vehicle has been taken aloft for its maiden flight. The craft, which can fly up to 460 miles at 115 mph and then fold up its wings for 65-mph highway driving, was the subject of two hotly debated Slashdot posts on May 8 and May 13 of last year. The company said the first flight took place in Plattsburgh, NY; retired Air Force Colonel Phil Meteer was at the controls."
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Welcome. (Score:5, Funny)
Welcome to Slashdot.
Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
1. A "drivable airplane" makes sense. In the way that you do not have to pay for hangar space and keep it safe and cozy at home. You just store it at home. You just "drive" the vehicle to the airport, put it together, do your pre-check inspection, fly, do your post-check inspection, fold, drive to destination. It's not the "Jetson's" concept, you have to be a licensed pilot, but it's, in a sense, practical enough for use.
2. Terrfugia's CEO state that the materials are not available to make it practical. I certainly hope so. Folding, flying, driving it's going to put a lot of stress to a lot of parts on the vehicle. Flying or driving is bad enough to cause problems to components, combining both in one vehicle it's going to make matters worst. I sincerely wish them luck.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not entirely sure I agree (and yes, I am a pilot). In town, the drag of a car isn't a real big issue; at speeds of less than 30MPH, wind resistance is pretty minimal. At highway speeds of ~60MPH you've quadrupled the drag, and at typical general aviation aircraft speeds of 120MPH, you have 16 times more drag for a given shape and area than at commuter speeds. Consequently, a six foot wide car in town doesn't matter; at flight speeds, the drag of a six foot wide vehicle is pretty significant. That's why the Cessna 152 (a small trainer) is only something like 39 inches wide -- the narrower the fuselage, the less drag. A Cessna 172, a step up from the 152, is only about three inches wider than a 152, and most light single engine airplanes don't get *much* wider than that (I don't recall off-hand how wide a Cessna 206 or 207 -- the biggest single-engine piston airplanes Cessna makes -- are).
What does this have to do with how much sense a drivable airplane makes? Well, the drawings of Terrafugia's design show a vehicle with a cross-section much like a car. It's rather wide, presumably for road stability and passenger comfort. Unfortunately, this makes a poor aircraft design because of the much greater speeds at which even a light sport airplane flies. Terrafugia is claiming some pretty impressive fuel economy numbers for their car, but I'm skeptical. I own a two-place tandem airplane (http://www.gecko-ak.org/N600LW/ [gecko-ak.org]); it's about as skinny as an airplane can get, meaning its flat-plate area is pretty minimal, and therefore it's drag should be pretty minimal as well. I burn about 4.5 gallons per hour at 60 MPH. That works out to 13 miles per gallon -- better than my Nissan Frontier, but not by much. I sincerely doubt Terrafugia will get 26-27 mpg, as they claim, in a wider vehicle, at twice the speed of my airplane.
Parent
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) A Cessna 152 (a 30+ year old plane) burns ~6 GPH at 111 knots (Vno), which is about double the fuel mileage of your plane and is quite in line with Terrafugia's numbers. It would seem that your plane just gets poor mileage.
2) Yes, air resistance is exponential, it's relative to the square of the speed - your math is correct. But drag at 30 mph is VERY low, so just saying "16 times that" doesn't mean much. Secondly, to get actual drag you also need to consider drag coefficient and frontal surface area. Frontal surface area is two dimensions - you seem only focused on narrowness. The plane in the article is wide - but it's also a lower profile than "normal" planes. We'd have to have more specific dimensions to know if the overall frontal surface area is more or less than an equivalent plane. Third, as I mentioned above the drag coefficient comes into play. Aerodynamics have come a long way since Cessna's were designed and since your Falcon was designed (20+ years). If you can sufficiently reduce the coefficient, you can increase surface area and end up with the same amount of drag or even less.
Parent
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
(Yes, you read that right - the C152 airframe was only minimally changed in 1977 as a tweak of the previous, highly successful 150)
It strikes me as quite appropriate that 21st Century technology would provide a significant improvement in capability/price/performance, when developed by current, high-quality engineers.
BTW, Burt Rutan is a legend in the field. You might know his company Scaled Composites [wikipedia.org] which won the Ansari X-Prize [wikipedia.org]. He's a legend in the field. Not only did he build an experimental aircraft design that outperformed other designs by a factor of 2 or more in speed, while halving fuel burn, he did so with a design that's relatively cheap and easy to build.
Some people like Rutan and Al Mooney [wikipedia.org] just seem to "get it right" when it comes to aircraft design, and they do it over, and over, and over again. The Mooney Mark 20 is a line of high performance, high reliability, cheap, complex aircraft that provide solid performance, excellent safety and great economy. The Mooney Mark-20 line (there have been lots culminating in the current "Ovation") is one of the few GA single-engine airplanes with a proper "crash cage" resulting in excellent safety numbers - you are half as likely to die (per mile of flight) while flying a Mooney in IFR conditions than the industry average.
A good indicator of airplane efficiency is its glide ratio - how far it moves forward for every foot dropped without power. The first number is the distance you move forward, the second number is is how far you drop. It's a ratio, and the higher the first number relative to the second, the better. A Mooney has a glide ratio of about 13:1, while a Cessna does about 7:1. A long EZ or a VariEZE can do anywhere from 15:1 to 20:1, a Boeing 767 did about 12:1 in the famous Gimli Glider incident [wikipedia.org]. Many ultralights do as badly as 3:1.
Can they do it? I'm quite sure they can. As soon as I can afford one, I'll probably buy. (It'll take me a few years, which is fine, since they won't be ready and tested by the "early adopters" for a few years, anyway)
I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want !!!!!!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Rgds
Damon
Re:Well... (Score:5, Funny)
Just wait until my carsubboatplane hits the market. Then your face will be red.
Parent
unimaginable! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:unimaginable! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Unimaginable? I beg to differ, but where'd it go? (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact, the section is still there. So is the link. Welcome to BackSlash: http://backslash.slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org]
But where the heck did it go? Did the 'editors' realize that "whew boy, this sure is hard work!"? I never found any information on why it seems to have suddenly just stopped dead.
Maybe I missed a comment from an 'editor' somewhere in an unrelated thread, perhaps it's under some catch-all in the FAQ (it's not listed as a section in the "What are the sections for?" item).
What I do know is: I miss it.
Now to see if I'll get a +5 Off-topic..
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I read the start of your comment and was nodding my head - yes, this should be that sort of place, full of educational and interesting comments, where obvious (especially meta) jokes from people who don't read the article are nowhere to be seen. Then I read the end of your
whatever, good questions (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder (or wander offtopic slightly), has Africa any invasive species?
Re:whatever, good questions (Score:4, Funny)
Besides people? I can't count how many invasions there have been in Africa (and everywhere else, for that matter) over the past few centuries. :-D
Parent
Re:whatever, good questions (Score:4, Insightful)
That has its uses as a way of educating others on why the fallacies are wrong, but it sure takes up a lot of time and text.
Parent
But will it work? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm looking forward to the performance of the flying prototype. I wish them good luck on making it and flying it to Oshkosh this year. If they make it to Oshkosh even without meeting all of their planned specs I expect them to make money for years since this really does fit a niche that no other vehicle does. While they'll have plenty of revenue, hopefully they'll be profitable too.
solves the hangar space problem (Score:5, Insightful)
When is a car not a car.... (Score:3, Insightful)
No one thought there was a problem building a living room car that every one can afford. Many people still do not. To many people, the living room car is a reasonable and necessary item. Many even invest in tricking out their living room car with full entertainment centers. The benefits are clear. So much time is spent in a car, wouldn't it be great to have all the comforts of a living room. A beer, a tv, a phone. Room to spread out, get conformable, even made engage in intimate relations. And there is little to show that this is a bad thing. The drive is more conformable. Oil prices are up, which is good thing unless one is stupid enough to live in an oil poor region. General safety is up, unless one is stupid enough to drive a car that is not a living room.
Reading through the summary and responses there seems to be this same air of uncertainty that existed when the auto manufacturers were using a loophole in a law so that farmers could continue to farm to provide cheap inefficient cars to the masses. There is nothing particularly wrong with it. There is no reason why a person who can afford it should not have a aircar, or a land yacht, or anything else they think they need to be happy. However, such things do have long term effect on the human condition. Speaking personally, there are already severe safety issues on my street dealing with land yachts that they streets are too narrow to accommodate, especially at the speeds that these drivers like to travel. I can imagine somebody buying one of these, and trying to land. At the very least, i would expect a lawsuit demanding that we cut down the trees and pave the front yards to accommodate such planes. And don't laugh. Similar lawsuits have been filed as people wish to reclaim overgrown land for their big houses and big cars.
Thanks for the response (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this project has a lot of potential. I'm always surprised at the attitude people have that "well, I wouldn't buy it, therefore it's not a good product." News flash, folks: there are market segments you are not a part of. Just because not everyone would buy something doesn't mean no one will. Judging from the number of preorders this has gotten (and knowing many general aviation pilots who would leap at an opportunity to own something like this), I would say it has been very well received.
And he's right about the timing. While carbon fiber technology has existed for a long time now, it is just now gaining traction in general-purpose manufacturing, and the economies of scale are bringing the price down to the point where products can be built with it for roughly the same cost as some other materials. The convergence of affordable composite manufacturing and a new type of sport-plane license have finally made this type of vehicle possible.
The licensing programs for general aviation are much more strict than they are for automobiles. If this vehicle inspires regular car drivers to get their VFR licenses, I suspect the training will also make them better drivers.
However, I don't envy the cost of Terrafugia's product certification program. This vehicle needs to be certified to both FAA and NHTSA standards, which aircraft and automobile companies spend many millions on separately, just for the paperwork alone. Godspeed to the certification team!
Walk around inspections (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Walk around inspections (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich (Score:5, Insightful)
From http://www.audiouk.com/vintage/telephone.htm [audiouk.com]
From http://www.evancarmichael.com/Famous-Entrepreneurs/559/Lesson-1-Stick-With-It.html [evancarmichael.com]
Next clueless AC response?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We (the masses) can benefit from the wastefulness of the rich and the advances in technology their decadent lifestyle demands.
(Cars were for the rich initially. As were TVs. As were computers. As were LCD watches. etc., etc.)
Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich (Score:5, Insightful)
Energy is incredibly dirt cheap to the rich. They dont want hybrids, they want a sexy exclusive car with 1000hp. (Bugatti Veryon) They want a comfortable estate with expanses of elegant green grass that takes a ton of water to keep green. and they burn more electricity in their home than what 10 homes use.
Energy or transportation efficiency does not come from the toys of the rich. These innovations come from scientists, entrepreneurs, and yes some of the rich that want to give back to society by financing grand and foreward ideas. Like the New york subway, Space Ship 1, etc....
Done even think that the rich are playing with high efficiency items and they will trickle down. They dont. They play with their exclusive devices and then sometimes finance efficient things.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As for the rich part...well, nobody is claiming otherwise.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
(which is actually an anti-knock formulation for poorly designed or aging vehicles, but labeled premium to make people think it's "better")
2) While I agree with you on the second point, it's not an "anti-knock" formulation, it simply has a higher flash point. And you got it backwards - most older cars can't burn (ignite) the higher flash point as well and will actually lose power on "premium" fuel. The premium fuel is for higher performance vehicles which push compression ratios higher to achieve more power and thus generate more heat and need a hi
Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Try solving some real problems that advance society. Building crap just because selfish rich people are wasteful enough to make you wealthy providing them with useless toys is nothing to be proud of.
Did you do some aerospace engineering?
Composite design?
Impact resistant deformable bumpers that are aerodynamic?
I can imagine you grunting that same thing to the guy inventing the wheel, instead of sharpening a pointed stick like you think he should be doing.
Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich (Score:5, Insightful)
I welcome the rich pensioners that bought Mercedes cars with airbags in the 80's, so that development by Mercedes could be financed and now you get life-saving airbag in even the smallest cars.
I welcome the yuppies that bought the first aluminum bikes, costing probably several thousand dollars back then, but now anyone can have a bike that is light and doesn't rust.
I welcome the showoffs that wanted a mobile phone in the early 90s, so now wireless technology is cheap enough to be used in third world countries, and get people connected.
Should I go on? Advances, especially in materials, are often sustainable because of some marginal hobbies of rich people. They want the lightest and strongest, even when it is actually not needed for their cause (do fishing rods really need to be made out of carbon-fiber?). But the amount of money that they want to invest can keep small innovative companies alive. In the end, we all win.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And, thanks for pointing that other one out, I thank the people who bought the first expensive cars with anti-lock brakes (again, not used the first time by Mercedes, but still greatly improved by the [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
RE the flying car, it's actually much more reasonable than most other private planes, for which the Transition's $150k price tag is really bargain-basement (for a new plane). A new Cessna 172 is around $250k. And this particular model has a number of money-saving features
Re:frost piss (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:frost piss (Score:5, Insightful)
Two words. Gas mileage. Show me any verticle fan craft, carrying 4 adults, that gets anywhere near the gas mileage of any normal car on the road.
Using engine power to hold the craft up is the antithesis of obtaining reasonable mileage.
Now add a gyroscope to that and a second safety thing and a third, so it's impossible to get it upside-down
Hand-waving those hard parts away doesn't make it any easier.
For any type of non-airport ops, we need 6" precision in a heavy crosswind. Why 6"? That's what you do in your car in a parking lot. Not getting upside down is only part of the problem. You have to come down sometime.
Maintenance. A LOT of cars on the road are spectacularly badly maintained. Do you want those same clowns flying overhead, ready to break down?
Parent
Re:frost piss (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:frost piss (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Moller also claims to have a functional 'flying car'.
Re:frost piss (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not practical for commercial airliners due to square/cube problems however economies of scale make other enhancements more practical in that regime.
And.. Oh, Terrafugia's design does call for one. Big surprise there. IOW, unless your regularly inspected and certified safety system fails, you're not going to die from poor maintenance in other areas, although if it's anything like skydiving, you might just lose your license for a period if negligence is the reason for parachute deployment.
Parent
Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but you're confusing what you want with the actual state of affairs. Why you want it to be that way is a little mysterious, but your ability to confuse it with reality suggests just the sort of disconnect that might drive you to want to see a failed economy, the better to justify your world view.
I'll have to check, but I assume you make the same exact complaint when Slashdot talks about new video boards, hair-splitting differences between Linux distros, the space program, squabbles over pirated movies and music, 4D rubik's cubes, what China does with web filtering, sailing robots, and whether or not Google is obscuring people's faces in Street View? Nah, I won't check, because I'm sure you did.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years (Score:5, Insightful)
most people would be happy to trade cars, just they don't have the cash to
Heh, right. Lots of $1000 cars will get 35MPG, your ego just refuses to be seen in them -- you want the trendy status symbol Prius. The same way you refuse to live within 100 miles of where you work, and then complain about gas prices, as though they're the problem.
I'd love to see $8/gallon gas. I spend about $20/month on gas, even on my small income doubling that is a non-issue.
Cars themselves are luxury items, of course, and you're perfectly capable of living in a city and using public transit like most of the world.
Parent
Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years (Score:4, Interesting)
Incidentally, the total energy cost over the lifetime of a Prius has to be at LEAST twice what it is on a TDI Golf - and that's even less if you run your Golf on WVO or just biodiesel.
Here's where I part company with you. Public transit doesn't work in the US like it does in the rest of the world. The only (well, statistically, the only) places that actually have working public transportation systems are major cities and in most cases that's not true either. I lived in SF and I could drive to work AND FIND PARKING in fifteen minutes, but it took a minimum of an hour and a half (assuming everything was on time and I made my connections, HA HA HA) to take the two buses and the light rail that represent the most rapid public transit between bernal heights and potrero hill.
In other words, even if you live in a major city, public transportation will probably fail you in the US.
This, however, is the result of deliberate actions taken on the part of the automotive companies; they bought bus and trolley lines and shut them down, and they lobbied for rail subsidies to be terminated in favor of the federal highway system. The federal government readily agreed, since it provided them with just one more form of leverage to apply against the states in their battle to severely curtail states' rights. Their attempts have been largely successful; for example, several states long avoided legalizing medical marijuana under the threat of their federal highway funds being terminated. This is all logical from the federal government's point of view, since marijuana was originally made illegal under the much-abused interstate commerce clause of the constitution, and that's the purpose of the highway system during peacetime.
Anyway, that's a slight digression, but if you can even afford to live in a city (I paid $800 for a ROOM in San Francisco, my landlord who was the manager of a toys R us turned out to be a tweaker... fun shit.) it doesn't necessarily follow that public transportation will do you any good. And before you suggest it, there is NO FUCKING WAY I would ride a bicycle. It's actually a health hazard to ride on the street not just because of the danger of some dipshit running you over, but because of all the exhaust you're sucking.
So I agree with your apparent assertion that (most?) hybrids are stupid (I think they make some sense when used as a taxi, and series hybrids make a LOT of sense) but I think the rest of what you have to say is pretty ridiculous.
Parent
Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years (Score:5, Insightful)
first off, there are plenty of solutions to the "energy crisis". What type of make believe fiticious crap world are we living in where if economics force us to change it's the End Of The World.
1. Solution #1 - switch to an alternate form of energy. There are a ton of options. The last time I checked the sun was still shining and we can still get power from it. Be it solar, wind, or nuclear, there are a ton of options. Why don't we do this? Because the economics don't say we should. Oil is still cheap, but The *second* oil becomes too expensive, there will be a ton of alternate energy sources available to tap. The only reason we don't do it is becuase oil is STILL too cheap.
2. We can also *gasp* change the way we live. Shit, I know i waste plenty of energy. Heating air conditioning... hot water in the mornings, driving to work, pure wastage. How can I get away with wasting energy? Simple, it's cheap. it's less than 5% of my total income so I don't give a crap. I pay roughly 6x that on mortgage. Before the world falls apart, I'm sure we can adjust the way we live at least a tiny bit. But OMG, you may have to sell you SUV and buy a geo metro. Truely the end of the world.
BTW, I'd love to see soemthing backing up that statement about you needing more energy to create a solar panel than all the energy you will ever get out of it. Smells like slanted anti-alternative-energy BS to me, but if you got it from another article or source I'd be interested hearing their twisted logic OR I could even learn something and find out I'm wrong, but i highly doubt it on this issue. Perhaps you're thinking of Ethonal. Either way, source please.
The mortgage crisis.. I guess I don't give a shit. There aren't any losers here. You have gready companies who sold a lot of mortgages when times were good never considering that things may turn south because that might impact their current earnings portfolio. If some of them go belly up its no big shakes to me. I frankly think a few of them SHOULD be put out of business becuase if there was anyone in this mess who was at fault, it was them.
Then you have greedy homeowners who took crazy ass loans or "no paperwork required" loans. Look, buying a house is easily the single biggest investment of your life. If you don't run a few numbers through excel and say "does this make sense" then I don't really feel a lot of pity for you when you can't afford your house. It most likely means you overbought when you got the house (which most people do). But now you've lost your gamble so you have to declare bankruptcy and have to wait 7 years before you buy another house. It's not the end of the world. It sucks, but you took a gamble because housing prices were going up and up and everybody but you was getting rich but you... and now the bubble's burst.
The US is a strong country and we can survive all of these things. The world is not coming to an end. The sky is not falling.
Thank you, but I'll save my pity for a bunch of children who died when their school's clasped after the earthquake in China or other people who actually deserve it.
don
Parent
Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years (Score:4, Insightful)
Photovoltaics are still messy, but solar-thermal plants are entirely doable, both technologically and economically. The trouble is, as you said, that the "powers that be" apparently have zero serious interest in replacing coal plants with anything different.
Over the years I've noticed a growing disconnect between US leaders and citizenry. I'm tempted to opine that your "leaders" simply don't give a damn; the US really needs to give the Old Guard the boot at the next election, on both sides of your weird two-party-one-horse government. I remember when your dollar was worth two of ours - now it's heading the other way around.
Parent
Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years (Score:5, Interesting)
Prove me wrong on this.
Since you asked...
1: There is absolutely -ZERO- events causing the gas and oil spikes...
We're AT WAR in the MIDDLE EAST. War means chaos. Chaos means production becomes unsteady. Unsteady production means LOWER SUPPLY.
Also...
CHINA and INDIA are ENTERING THE MODERN AGE. That means they want cars, and power plants, and other things that burn oil. Half the world starting to do what Americans have done for a century means INCREASED DEMAND.
You know what happens when you LOWER SUPPLY or INCREASE DEMAND? Yep. Prices go up. And this isn't even mentioning Peak Oil.
2: Congress is absolutely powerless to do anything to stop it,
The price of oil? Pretty much. Congress also can't stop hurricanes. What's your point?
the current administration just plain doesn't care about the American people in any way.
Actually, they do. Every single elected offical in Washington cares deeply about their country--the Republicans just think we're better off if they leave us to fend for ourselves, even if some of us starve. (Are you starving?)
Even if Congress try to do something, how can they pay for it? Sell war bonds to China? The US is bankrupt.
The US is FAR from bankrupt. China's only where they are in the world because we're allowing them to grossly distort the currency exchange, because we want them to work for peanuts. Push comes to shove, we can just sue in the WTO and slap a Tarrif on investments and production from China.
3: The dollar is rapidly losing ground against every single currency in the world. The only reason that the dollar buys what it does is because people believe in it... and people are not anymore.
Odd. I still get paid in dollars, and they purchase enough goods for me to go back to work tomorrow.
The dollar won't be the uber-currency of the 21st century. Good. Hegemony is boring, and Americans suck in a boring world.
4: There are no solutions to the energy crisis. Nuclear plants are not going to be built anytime soon, nuclear fusion is a joke to keep tokamaks funded, even though there have been -zero- advances in fusion since the laser was invented. Solar is a joke because it costs more to make a solar panel than what energy it ever gets through its useful life. Wind, geothermal, are only useful in rare areas. Pretty much, the US lives and dies on coal and oil... and cars don't burn coal.
"no solutions": I suppose you're right. We'll never go back to $1 a gallon gasoline. Shucks. But we knew this was coming twenty years ago.
Nuclear: Plans are on the tables, Greenpeace's founder is endorsing Nuclear... sorry, there will be new plants built or chartered by the next Presidential Election. Maybe before this one.
Fusion: I won't even dignify this with more than "you're wrong."
Solar: Ok, in small batches, for small device use, in the northeast, a photovotalic cell takes more energy to create than it will produce in its lifetime. But (1) they get significantly cheaper with larger batches and technology improvements, (2) they last longer in larger installations, and with increased tech, which increases their total energy output, (3) in some places (deserts) they pay-off in less than five years already, (4) photovotalic isn't the only means of solar power. Reflected-light to melt salt or boil water works pretty damn well.
Wind: Wind blows everywhere, some places essentially constantly. Couple a wind farm with a flywheel, and you can produce pretty damn good power. Essentially anywhere in the United States. Not eveywhere, but hardly "rare" for any meaningful definitions of that word.
It's Economics, stupid: Let me put this a little bit more clearly. Wind, Geothermal, Wave, Solar, and Nuclear lose out to oil and coal for electricity generation because the latter are so god damn cheap.
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Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, they do. Every single elected offical in Washington cares deeply about their country
What?
This proves that you have no idea what you are talking about.
People who care about this country are not starting illegal wars, driving up the national debt, getting rich in the process, and then taking the money out of the country and doing further harm to our economy.
Are you paid to say this shit, or are you just brainwashed?
The US is FAR from bankrupt. China's only where they are in the world because we're allowing them to grossly distort the currency exchange, because we want them to work for peanuts.
The US's debt is truly astronomical. We're overdrawn on our credit as it is.
Nuclear: Plans are on the tables, Greenpeace's founder is endorsing Nuclear... sorry, there will be new plants built or chartered by the next Presidential Election. Maybe before this one.
Greenpeace's founder's opinion is not being echoed by Greenpeace. 9 out of 10 hippies I talk to (this is not scientific but I talk to a lot of hippies) just refuse to come around to the idea of nuclear with breeder reactors. Incidentally, if we don't use breeders then using nuclear is a HORRIBLE and TERRIBLE idea; we can gain a couple orders of magnitude in efficiency this way. With breeders, nuclear can be not just practical but also profitable without subsidies.
Solar: Ok, in small batches, for small device use, in the northeast, a photovotalic cell takes more energy to create than it will produce in its lifetime.
Who told you that? It COSTS MORE TO BUY than it will save you in its lifetime, but that is the result of market forces, not physics.
Think about it for a second; a solar system pays you off monetarily in about 20 years (yes, it's a long time) even without any special energy credits. Are you really saying that the power company charges me more for power (and I'm just talking about base rates here) than the sum of the amount that they charge the people who make the panels plus the amount that those people charge me for costs plus their profit? Obviously it's not impossible, but it is also not true [csudh.edu] . It takes less than seven years at 12 percent, which is a pretty reasonable estimate of the actual efficiency output (who cleans their panels enough?) when your panels are supposed to be around 14 or 15%. And that was for crystalline PV, not thin film, which requires less energy expenditure. It wouldn't seem so at first because of the petroleum-based nature of the plastics involved, but it is so hugely energy intensive to produce pure silicon that it winds up being that way anyway. They also cost less to ship due to their mass being a small fraction of a completed PV panel.
Wind: Wind blows everywhere, some places essentially constantly. Couple a wind farm with a flywheel, and you can produce pretty damn good power. Essentially anywhere in the United States. Not eveywhere, but hardly "rare" for any meaningful definitions of that word.
Wind has real problems; it truly HAS been a problem for flocks of migratory birds, but that is a lesser issue to the fact that those wind turbines are not especially inexpensive to produce, they do make a lot of noise (we are slowly waking up to the effects of noise pollution) so you don't want one in your backyard, and they MUST be placed up in the air so that they get wind in most cases. This keeps small-scale wind from being broadly useful, although it IS useful in some places.
Of course, when the conveyor shuts down, and the jet stream shuts down, the weather patterns we take for granted are pretty much all going to change...
5: The mortgage crisis is just the tip of the iceberg. Its only going to be a matter of time before banks start having to be bailed left
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If you had R'd TFA... (Score:5, Informative)
If you had read the fine article you'd have seen that there were two major components to the answer for "Why now when it has always before been infeasible?":
1) New materials make it technically feasible.
2) New FAA regulations, creating a new class of aircraft (Light Sport) that's drastically easier to certify, makes it bureaucratically feasible.
I believe 2) completely answers your objection.
But thank you for playing.
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Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years (Score:4, Informative)
The US economy grew at .6% (annualized) the last two quarters, amidst a massive spike in oil prices, and food prices, and a financial service sector meltdown, and new-home-building doldrum, and assorted other minor panic. Unemployment remains about 5%, inflation (via the CPI) just .3%. If anything, this testifies to the strength of the rest of the US economy. My local Ph.D. economist opines, "If anything, the government should stop stepping on the gas."
Invest in America. It's underpriced.
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