"May have"
Sorry, I want something necessary before we spend tax dollars on it. Not desired, but necessary.
I think you keep missing that point.
E-5 at 11 years. My MOS was such a sweet gig, we had a saying. You didn't make E-6 till someone died or retired.
When the cold war ended, my job was outsourced to civilian contract as the security concerns were downgraded, and it was fixed station. Half the assignments were on Air Force bases which really sweetened the deal for my MOS. I could have stayed in, buy I didn't see a MOS that was available that I liked. They gave me more than $28k as a separation bonus. My MOS was 26V, which was later reclassified as 29V.
Have you ever considered how much more in taxes you would pay working a civilian job, at an income high enough to have the same net income after taxes? I'd be curious how much that would be. Like I said, it was over $18/hr for me in 1992.
Do you think that networks were necessary when they were developing ARPANet?
Have you ever wished you stayed 20? And yes, I realize how much more I'd have to make. Thankfully, with my experience, education, and military background, I should be able to make a decent wage on the outside.
Let me add something. For four years, I worked at a company that did rapid research and development. So many patents, so many new procedures, and the pathway to GHZ rated microprocessors.
Exactly WC, but you never would have found those spinoffs if you didn't engage in the R&D in the first place.
The private sector is capable. Stop belittling us by implying we need tax dollars and government assistance.
That specific system? Maybe. You have to remember, there were at least 1/2 dozen other similar projects going on at the time. Some were completely private ventures.
At times.
With annual cost of living increases, I could have easily retired E-6 at 20 in 2001. Today's equivalent retirement would be an additional $1766/month income today. Not enough to comfortable live on, but that would be a nice supplemental to my current income.
Still, impossible to know what my current job possibilities would be today. In 1994, I had the best break of my life. It gave me the experience and qualifications I have today. Never would have had that break without the military, but never would have had that job if i stayed in for 20.
If i stayed in for 30, that would have been 9/8/2011. 75% would give me $2650/month on top of any job I could find today.
So what was necessary about the government getting into networking? Especially if private companies were already doing so? I'm pretty sure that if you were around in the 60's and caught wind, you'd be railing against that as much as you are here.
I think finding ways to squeeze extra power out are useful things for our government to run R&D on, as that technology could have great payoffs.
I really don't think staying in 30 years is worth it, unless the economy is extremely poor. I've still got 8 to go, so we'll see.
I heard on NPR this morning that the avg enlisted retires at 39, the officer at 46.
The story was about the best city for military to retire. SA was only about 4th or 5th.
What were the other cities? Just curious.
And 39 makes sense for enlisted... most tend to join after high school.
You keep asking questions and it's getting to things I don't know. If you want a history lesson, that's beyond me. Ask someone else.
You said you'd only support government research if it was necessary. Do you think that it was necessary for governments to invest money into R&D for networks, given what you said about private companies already trying to tackle that area?
If you can't honestly answer because you don't know whether it was considered necessary, would you be willing to admit you might not realize the necessity of investing in energy solutions today?
During the cold war, better and secure military communications was a necessity. Need I say more?
During a period where more and more countries are using up more and more natural resources (see China), better means of capturing energy are a necessity. Need I say more?
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Norfolk, Virginia
Richmond, Virginia
Austin, Texas
San Antonio, Texas
Madison, Wisconsin
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Raleigh, North Carolina
Omaha, Nebraska
Manchester, New Hampshire
https://www.usaa.com/inet/pages/ente...URL_bestplaces
Thanks BD! Manchester isn't too far from my home, I'll have to dig into that article to see why they think it's a good retirement area.
heating oil is supposed to be very expensive this winter. So those far-north cities would that as a negative. heating with oil must be more expensive than cooling with coal or nuclear in the sunbelt?
Last edited by boutons_deux; 11-11-2011 at 02:59 PM.
more govt "wasting taxpayer $$":
The Coolest New Solar Manufacturing Technology You’ve Never Heard Of
The Optical Cavity Furnace is a new piece of equipment for making solar cells that is about to rock the photovoltaic industry by slashing costs and increasing efficiency. The news should not just excite tech nerds—by reducing the cost of producing solar cells by nearly three-quarters, this new technology represents another big step on the path to making clean energy the cheap kind of energy. Here’s how it works. By using optics to more efficiently focus visible and infrared light, the Optical Cavity Furnace can heat silicon wafers used in solar cell production much more precisely and uniformly than previous forms of solar cell manufacture. The resulting solar cells are stronger, more efficient, and have fewer impurities.
The National Renewable Energy Lab, or NREL, the DOE office responsible for the research, and a corporate partner AOS Inc. are now working to bring this technology to scale.
The partners plan to build an industrial-scale Optical Cavity Furnace capable of producing 1,200 highly efficient solar cells per hour. NREL has cooperative research agreements with many of the country’s biggest solar cell producers.
http://www.altenergymag.com/stories/...r-heard-of/420
I feel like the world has turned into a great big episode of the transformers. We need to find more and newer ways to produce energon cubes.
Energy efficiency pushed to extremes is the cheapest, most immediate path to "create" energy (that will not be available if efficiency isn't increased. Crushing energy prices will be widespread, and the energy corps will love it and do everything they can to hasten those $Ts of profits).
Natural gas and coal electric utility CEO on Solar: In “3 to 5 Years You’ll Be Able to Get Power Cheaper from the Roof of Your House Than From the Grid”
CEO of NRG Energy: The fundamental issue of our day [is] climate change…. The people who were opposed to climate change legislation used one of two tactics. They either said, “Well, we don’t believe it’s happening.” Which, of course, is just a bald-faced lie.
Or the second part of the one/two punch is, “We can’t afford to do anything about it because a synonym for the word “green” is “expensive.” But looking forward, electric vehicles will be far cheaper to operate than internal combustion engine vehicles. And solar panels on the roof will provide power more cheaply than taking power from the grid.
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/1...-cheaper-grid/
The cost per installed kWh has been going down in a pretty steady fashion since the invention of PV.
Had some stalling as demand was taxing supply, but module costs continue to drop.
http://www.txchnologist.com/2011/dec...per-watt-solar
the silicon costs will keep declining,meaning the costs of the rack, inverters, batteries, meters, labor will begin to dominate. And of course if you want batteries to go off grid, they're not moving down much.
I talked with a SA PV installer last week who said his company is booked solid through the end of the year as people want to get the 30% Federal tax credit.
I hate tax credits. Maybe this one should be phased out. Drip it 5% per year. 25%. 20%. 15%, etc. till it's zero.
HyperSolar Discovers Method to Make Renewable Natural Gas Using Solar Power
HyperSolar, Inc., the developer of a breakthrough technology to make renewable natural gas using solar power, today announced that it has filed a patent application for the production of renewable natural gas using sunlight, water and carbon dioxide. This renewable natural gas is a clean, carbon neutral methane gas that can be used as a direct replacement for traditional natural gas to power the world, without drilling or fracking, while mitigating CO2 emissions.
Using advanced nanotechnology, HyperSolar intends to eliminate the harmful aspects of extracting natural gas and preserve its existing delivery infrastructure and economy by fundamentally changing the source of natural gas from underground to above ground. The company intends to do this by creating natural gas above ground using sunlight, water and carbon dioxide, in a renewable and sustainable manner.
http://www.altenergymag.com/news/201...ar-power/22158
====
See, I said nanotech was the key to some real (solar) energy breakthroughs. One or a couple of these breakthroughs will be tranformative.
Weakness? Water is an input, and probably a very pure if not distilled water, so there is energy consumed purifying the water. We have/can capture Ms of tons of polluting green house gas CO2.
Deionized water isn't too expensive if you have your own filtering setup. It is cheaper and more pure than distilled water.
Now, in my opinion, this is the type of technology that has a future. No need for large scale low efficiency processes. We already have gas appliances in many homes, and it is easily stored.
It wouldn't surprise me if this company is all privately funded rather than getting millions from the government.
Maybe they took my idea:
I wonder how difficult a task it would be to uses solar electricity and convert 2(H2O) + CO2 to CH4 + 2(O2)? If we extract the carbon from the air to begin with, we would have no fear of adding to it when we burned it. We already have storage and pipelines in place for natural gas. just add this to the system.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
