The solar cells supplement the diesel generators. The plan isn’t to go completely green, it is to have the right mix of power sources to operate the FOB and reduce the number and size of fuel convoys. Fewer convoys means fewer convoy attacks and fewer casualties.

The Nuclear surface fleet was scrapped due to the exorbitant expense of nuclear maintenance and refueling. Nuclear maintenance costs in the ballpark of 4 times more per operational day than non-nuc maintenance. Throw in mid-life refuelings, and burning dinosaurs looks like a pretty good idea.

Throw in the fact that…

Well, if you accept the trans-gender argument, on what grounds can you refute her position? Race, class, and culture are far easier to be considered constructs than the biological markers of sex and gender. After all, why would anyone give up her white privilege if she didn’t really feel like she was black? 

It is exactly the people who frequent this blog who are the reason why this woman is a national figure/butt of jokes and is now facing homelessness. When she was regarded as black, Ms. Dolezal was judged on the merits of her work. Now, she is only judged by her racial identity. By outing and shaming Ms. Dolezal,…

I think this is where the manufacturers push back. The battery is often the biggest distinguishing element between EVs. If everyone is running the same battery, then there are no bragging rights and marketing points between cars.
Further, if everyone is running the same battery, automakers lose flexibility in size,…

Where may I watch this Exo-Suit boxing you speak of?

Agreed. She didn’t work out with Ryan Reynolds and that dude is duper into his wife and daughter right now. We can put the puzzle pieces together now. 

Agree. ET has not held up well, while Bladerunner remains classic.

Thank you. This is good supporting information.

So did I. But I still got into a car wreck.

The small powerful lasers you imagine are science fiction. The space based weapons you mention in paragraph#2 are against international treaty. Further, space based weapons won’t work because heat-rejection in space can only be accomplished by radiation. The massive cooling that lasers need could not be accomplished…

Lasers are line of sight weapons. Because the projectiles are moving too fast at the re-entry phase and are too high during the mid-course phase, anti-ballistic missile systems have only been designed to target the weapons during the boost phase. That means the laser system will have to be within 200 miles of the…

Listen to Torch. Your first car will get destroyed. By you. By your friends. By some tweaker smashing windows and swiping subwoofers in the campus parking lot. I recommend a manual Civic, Carolla, or Focus. Something cheap, with readily available parts, and an active mod/DIY community.

Whatever car you get, you will…

Imagine you run a taxi service and each of your cars is expected to drive 1k miles per week. Under this plan, you can schedule routine maintenance and overhauls and size your garage, tooling, and workforce to meet the load. THEN, demand surges and your drivers are driving 3k miles per week. All of your routine…

None of them have.

Sorry, initially read this as “James Blunt Rapes 14 year Old on Social Media”

Good. I hope we completely pull out of all middle-east countries and the war on terror. Let those countries sort themselves out. We can take all the money we save by not dropping bombs on spend it on domestic energy production.

The terrorists only hate us because we prop-up unpopular authoritarian regimes to promote…

Miniaturization doesn’t make the laws of thermodynamics better, it makes things worse. Removing waste heat, takes mass and mass flow rate of cooling. These things aren’t getting much smaller.

Lasers are always “just 5-10 years away.” This crap has been going on since the 70's. I was at directed energy conference earlier this year. The lasers themselves are pretty mature and get high KW power on target. The problem is that the energy generation, energy storage, and cryogenic cooling equipment for a high KW…