> If you find a screwdriver on an alien planet, you can deduce the existence of screws, machines that require fasteners, and ultimately a living being that built those machines.
"Hey, Bob! Here's the screwdriver we lost yesterday."
(Or close enough. From one of Arthur C. Clark's SF humor stories?)
In theory, tax rules could make that situation possible.
In practice - yeah...NO. Unless your "if I died now" world includes people near & dear to you who'd really need the insurance money, then don't waste your money or time on it.
Might anyone have a view under the hood here, and not be under NDA, to comment on why ULA hasn't replaced Northrop Grumman with a less failure-prone SRB supplier?
They would have to admit that they were wrong to switch away from using the proven Aerojet-Rocketdyne AJ-60A boosters (developed for and still flying with the Atlas V family).
America has zealously supported Israel since the 1940's - generally against the explicit advice of America's top diplomatic and military experts - because it's been d*mned obvious to America's elected political leaders, since the 1940's, that failure to zealously support Israel would result in their own failures to win American elections.
(That may be now be changing, due to American voters souring on support for Israel.)
But somehow, the western press seems perpetually incapable of up-front stating that support for Israel is a clear western voter preference. Not a decision by policy experts. Or by moral philosophers. Or by budget analysts. Or based on any of the other sorts of cerebral wonkery which the press starts drooling a river over the moment that anyone rings the "Israel" bell.
This kind of crap is why I stopped paying for news.
I'm thinking that the landlady's "NO!" is based on: (1) You can't save yourself any money by doing this, so why are you interested?, and (2) Complex stuff that she doesn't know or understand about electricity and her property's wiring and whatever you might end up doing might end with her property burned down.
> Complex stuff that she doesn't know or understand about electricity and her property's wiring and whatever you might end up doing might end with her property burned down.
What wiring? Literally connect the setup to the regular power outlet, no fuzzing with wires or otherwise, probably any human who've connected some electrical gadget/device to a socket before could get these solar setups going in a couple of minutes.
Can't there can be over-current issues if you are not using a dedicated wall outlet for backfeeding the solar?
Consider a situation where the plugged-in solar inverter is capable of providing 15 amps into the circuit, but so is the breaker feeding the circuit from the panel. If you plug in something that can consume 30 amps, it will be able to do so by pulling 15 amps from each source without tripping the breaker, so you can end up with 30 amps traveling in your building wiring that is only sized for 15.
At least that's how I understand it. I don't know if any of the grid-tied inverters that can plug into a wall have some way of detecting and compensating for this. Clearly other countries have been able to come to a decision to allow it. I vaguely remember someone explaining that the 230V systems in Europe somehow mitigate the issue but I don't remember how.
If you've got normal residential power outlets, then you've got wiring inside the walls. Those wires are sized for the number of amps that the individual circuit's fuse or breaker allows, plus some limited safety margin.
Depending on hidden-in-the-wall details of how a circuit's wiring is run, and where you plug in panels and electrical loads, it might be quite easy to overload those wires - without blowing the fuse or tripping the breaker.
Overloaded wires can get very hot, and electrical fires starting inside walls really is a thing.
Yeah, so I guess when both the renter and the landlord doesn't understand the solution (or renter does understand, but didn't explain properly), it'll be a hard sell indeed.
Thanks for clearing that up. Sorry to muddy the waters, but the solar backpack was an experiment unrelated to my request to place actual solar panels on the balcony.
I would say that it is not out of ignorance that my landlady denied my request. Rather, when you're dealing with tenants who live in an apartment along with hundreds of other tenants living in identical apartment units, you become quite averse to any unique snowflake situations like this.
The maintenance crew is really good at maintaining a fleet of refrigerators, toilets, and ranges that are the same model and hook up in the same way. They offer a standard set of appliances and fixtures that are provided in each unit, and they are serviced uniformly! Imagine if you had a fleet of 500 Supermicro 1U servers, and one of your colocation clients wanted to hook up a custom Ethernet switch made in Outer Mongolia. You'd probably say "no" too.
Regardless of how these panels hook up to the "grid" inside here, it would be nonstandard. The cord itself would snake through the door, onto the floor, somehow, without a dedicated conduit, and it'd be subject to damage, and the door would never close properly. The panels themselves would cover and conceal some part of the railing, and that is considered unsightly and unwanted; they don't want tenants up there with concealed balconies, much less clothes or junk hanging off of them.
The uniformity and conformity of each unit is key. It's like living in an HOA. When we sign the lease, we agree to keep our exteriors neat, tidy, and uniform. There are no flags or signs or stickers that we can put outside. It reduces controversy as well as easing the burden of maintenance and cleaning.
Many years ago, I was renting a very modern 2BR unit and I decided that one of the rooms really needed a ceiling fan (it was a hot summer in a chilly climate!) so I went to Home Depot, purchased a kit, and installed the ceiling fan where a dome light had been. I didn't... ask anyone... and I have no electrician's expertise, nor did I check whether the structure could support it. It must've been quite a surprise when they found it after I moved out!
> So my assumption is immediately that some relatively large lobbying group feels threatened by 3d printing...
I'd say the real groups behind this are the anti-gun ideologues, the "do whatever it takes to stop my panic attacks over Bad Things maybe happening" left-wing control freaks, and the old-fashioned "big state" authoritarian crowd.
And the only reason they're paying attention to 3d printers is that some pro-gun ideologues and provocative makers have been talking up the concept of 3d printing guns.
The "Thucydides Trap" theory is popular bunk. But it sounds really cool and topical, and <0.01% of people know enough Ancient Greek history to dismiss its faux-scholarly backstory - so of course it's a hot meme now.
Vs. in reality - the fundamental problem is stupid local optimization within the ruling elites of both the established and rising powers. In a (sane) minor power's ruling elites, an ambitious & talented person can get ahead while advocating restraint, avoiding conflicts which might lead to war, and generally playing it safe. Because in a sane minor power, most people understand that major conflicts are too likely to end horribly for them.
Not so in the ruling elites of an established or rising power. Aggressive postures, risky behaviors, and "we can get away with this" words and deeds are too often normalized and rewarded. Prudence and restraint are penalized for running contrary to short-term interests, or just the prevailing mood. (Remember that ruling elites generally live in a bubble of ambitious sycophants, theory-spinners, and talking heads.) And there are more feedback loops here. Aggressive and risk-taking leaders and organizations often respond to setbacks or anxieties by dialing up the aggression and risk.
(Yes, I both read Asimov's Foundation trilogy when young, and have a good idea of how limited his fictional psychohistory is. Unfortunately, neither China's nor the US's current leaders seem inclined to less-aggressive strategies.)
Try asking an aerospace engineer about the delta-v requirements for that. Mercury has no atmosphere - so you can't aerobrake, as we do on Mars.
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