StrandedonEarth

The biggest advantage I see to home PV installations is redundancy in case of disasters disrupting the utility supply, if a major storm destroys transmission towers, for instance. Available power may be limited in such cases, but it’s better than having the contents of fridges and freezers spoiling during a lengthy outage, or having to find fuel for generators. Of course, no solution is perfect.

I see solar as complementing baseload on hot summer days, using the excess solar to power air conditioners. But I suppose it would be little help in the evening and none at night, without some form of storage. I suppose a liquid-based hvac system could pre-cool a tank during the day when solar is plentiful, to be circulated at night to keep things cool. Sort of the opposite of concentrated solar-thermal power, which heats molten salts enough to keep generating power at night, but that only really works in areas with few overcast days. Modern photovoltaics still work on overcast (especially lightly overcast) days, when it doesn’t even really matter which way the panels are pointed.

I also heard that a medevac chopper was ready to take off so it only had to make a short hop to also be there in presumably record time

Didn’t watch that clip, but from what I saw/heard on the news, the pilot didn’t flare and landed hard, collapsing the starboard gear and tearing off the starboard wing. The lift from the left wing then rolled the fuselage over. Amazing nobody died, and only one person remains in hospital.

SuperfluousJ and Rocket-propelled Cat have good advice. I'll just add a few bits for docking: There are different mods for docking port alignment, I like "navball docking port alignment indicator". It just adds a red circle on the navball; aim at that and the docking port axes will be parallel, but not necessarily lined up. Another trick is to make each craft target the other craft's docking port; be sure to also "set control from" each docking port. This will make the docking ports point at each other, but they may still want to drift apart, causing one or both craft to rotate. This isn't actually necessary; it works well with small craft, but not when docking with a large station. Finally, I made this handy graphic years ago; play around to see how the how the translation controls (IJKL, H/N for fore/aft) affect the different markers on the navball. Which brings up another point: make sure your RCS is balanced around the CoM, or positioned over the CoM (you can check this in the VAB, with different propellant loads. Don't forget to refill the tanks before launch!) Also, using CapsLock turns on fine control for RCS, and helps balance it so your craft doesn't rotate when trying to translate. When docking, you really don't need to look at the space view, the navball provides all the information you need, and is all you really need to look at once you have control and targets set. Before long, you'll be building crazy stuff like this...

For all your upcoming launch needs… https://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/

Hydrogen for energy or for storage has been thoroughly debunked. Airlines have given up on it. Michael Barnard has several articles on it, here’s one… One possible exception is a large reserve of “white hydrogen “ or fossil hydrogen, found in France. Fossil hydrogen is common, but usually heavily diluted with methane and other gases. The French find is unusually pure. But then, all the problems of handling it still apply.

Just like how ULA builds Atlas V and Vulcan…

Also, lithium ferrophosphate (LFP) batteries, while not as energy dense (that’s improving), don’t have the thermal runaway problem of other chemistries. They can also cycle a lot more over their lifetime. One advantage of base load plants with EVs is that charging at night keeps the plants more utilized. On the flip side, daytime charging can absorb the glut of peak solar power. With V2H, the vehicle can power a house at least until baseload power is cheaper at night. Although I don’t know how the economics will actually work out with such a complex combination. I’ve also pondered how solar works at higher latitudes, with the winter shortfall. Could solar-powered summers reduce hydro reservoir demand, saving the water for winter? But they can only store so much, need minimum flows for fish, etc. Very complex and probably not do-able…

BC has relied on hydro for decades, but now drought has thrown a spanner into things. I know this is bordering on conspiracy theory, but is there any evidence or proof that the anti-nuclear movement was funded by fossil fuel (coal) interests?

Hopefully they can send some sort of probe to explore that…

Wow, sounds like a mega-sized version of Vancouver's Bloedel Conservatory. A good history in that link From a separate website: To stay on topic, it seems like a quite do-able size for a heavy-duty dome.

Ok, I should have posted links earlier. I had trouble finding the Global News clip where they talked about altitudes, I guess they were showing a clip from other news agencies. I did find this, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/02/02/helicopter-airplane-collision-dc-updates/78154023007/ , which is probably where the info came from that ATC radar showed the HELO at 200' (some posters mis-parsed my post and thought I said radar showed the CRJ (jet) at 200', and the error propagated). To re-iterate, per the previous link, the jet's black boxes showed the jet at 325' and pitching up, and the pilots "verbal reaction (presumably cursing). Reportedly, but not confirmed, ATC radar showed the HELO at 200', but obviously it was not. This clip https://globalnews.ca/video/10992669/dc-plane-crash-how-the-black-boxes-will-help-investigators-piece-together-final-moments/ talks about changes to helo flight paths following the accident.

On the news this morning, the CRJ black box said it was at 325', while the ATC radar had the helo reading at 200'; they were still searching for helo black box at the time. Good point about the fact that the helo shouldn't have been in the approach slope in the first place. Expanding on the empty seat at ATC, I heard there was supposed to be one ATC managing only helo's, but with that empty seat, whoever was managing helo's was also managing fixed-wing. An apparently bad radar reading doesn't help. Is it possible that one aircraft was using radar altimetry (not ATC radar) while the other was using barometric altimetry, which from my (admittedly limited) knowledge wouldn't be as accurate? E: Pilots were already complaining/stressed that there had been too many near misses in the area. When such occurrences are happening regularly, it's only a matter of time until the Swiss Cheese slices line up.

Swiss cheese model in effect: I've heard empty seat in ATC, meaning increased workload on controllers. Chronic understaffing in ATC in general I've heard trainee helo pilot, so instructor fell into same trap as trainee? They were probably both looking at the aircraft taking off, not noticing the CRJ. Too many lights...