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electronWizard's comments

electronWizard | 3 years ago | on: Battery cost declines raise prospects of all-electric container shipping

I don't think most people appreciate how automated commercial vessels already are. The ship navigates autonomously from port to port. If you have a twenty man crew on a commercial vessel, they are split across two 12 hours shifts, you may only have one officer on the bridge during on watch, a few engineers below supervising the engines and performing preventative maintenance while underway, and able seamen will be doing the rounds checking nothing amiss such as loads moving etc. The crew are largely there to respond in the event of a crisis as commercial vessels are such an expensive asset.

I think it's better to think of the crew doing underway asset management than "sailing" the vessel.

electronWizard | 5 years ago | on: Texas Senate passes bill aiming to counter federal subsidies for wind and solar

This article from Mises actually goes into the numbers, demand was up 24% compared to normal and natural gas made up most of the short fall.

https://mises.org/wire/wind-power-disaster-texas-no-matter-w...

The author compares the day of the Texas Energy Crisis to the same day of the previous year, but I'm taking his word that this is a fair representation of an average mid-February day for the Texas power grid.

There were issues with some natural gas generators having supply issues due to the cold weather, but natural gas provided 91% more electricity (measured in MWh) compared to an average winters day, and was down only 7% from what it provides during the peak summer demand. Wind was down 72% compared to an average winters day.

Renewables do have some downsides despite all their benefits, and maybe there should be an honest discussion about how public policy should address this. Subsidies for intermittent energy supplies should probably be partly contingent on also providing grid storage.

electronWizard | 5 years ago | on: NASA names headquarters after first Black female engineer Mary W. Jackson

Probably not to be honest, she deserves the merit she is getting for the work she did. However, the Apollo program in the 60s at it's peak was 4% of the US government budget compared to 0.5% today. The federal government was had a fire hose full of greenbacks aimed at NASA so I'd assume they were hiring huge numbers of engineers directly, and also indirectly through all the aerospace/defense manufacturers who were working on the space program while also simultaneously getting huge contracts for designing ballistic missiles.

NASA has a much smaller budget today so I wouldn't be surprised if you've got to display much more merit in college or your career to get selected as an engineer.

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