but the metric the OP was using was power density. nuke fuels are MUCH more energy dense than hydrocarbon fuels. but putting a reactor on each plane would probably have negative externalities.
but mixing your comment with a few others, maybe a nuke plant on the ground that cracks the co2 in the atmosphere to make carbon neutral hydrocarbon fuel.
> but putting a reactor on each plane would probably have negative externalities.
Probably? It would be a disaster every time one crashes, would carry a huge proliferation and terrorism risk. Oof.
In the 50's some countries were that crazy and they even put reactors in space. Two of which crashed and one contaminated a huge area in Canada. Luckily common sense prevailed and these things don't happen anymore. Though nuclear ships still exist, there's only a few icebreakers in the civilian fleet AFAIK.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought we still use RTGs in space on some satellites? Not counting extraterrestrial research, since those are definitely still powered by RTGs
The ones I speak of had actual reactors with moving parts. Most of them were Soviet, one was American (a research one, the soviet ones were active radar sats with a shelf life of only a few months). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US-A (The soviets called them US-A for some weird reason, lol). There were 33 of them, 3 of which have already crashed to earth.
But yeah RTGs are very nasty stuff too. They are much easier to secure against breaking apart on re-entry though (although dropping a concentrated plutonium source into a random place is not a great idea either obviously).
i wish there was more talk about this. it seems i heard a lot about making hydrocarbons from co2 in the air + solar or algae a couple years ago. if your hydrocarbons are made this way it seems they would be carbon neutral.
i'm guessing there's more research to make it feasable since i haven't seen "carbon neutral gas alternative" at the local Chevron.
There has been quite some buzz about ammonia, as it is fairly easy to turn electricity into hydrogen, and hydrogen into ammonia. It has a reasonably high energy density, is not too nasty to handle, and already has a huge industry built around it.
i would have given this guy credit if he compared cost of production for petro fuels when talking about energy debt.
also conflates power with energy, but fine.
if you talk about cost (dollar or kilowatt hour) per joule delivered to a vehicle and then compared the total cost of electric vs. the total cost of petro, i would listen. but he ignored the fact that petro fuels cost money, energy and water to produce.
and there some things electric motors can do that ice can't. an electric ekranoplan isn't too infeasible, but we know from soviet studies you can't keep salt water out of an aspirated motor when you're that close to the water's surface. turns out electric motors can be sealed against water.
and dissing physicists? wtf? makes me think he failed out of an engineering physics degree cause he didn't understand math. as we used to say, the limit of a bs or be as gpa approaches zero is bba.
I directly compared them in visualization 6 ($75-110/kWh conventional vs. $245-380/kWh lithium, all externalities included). Electric ekranoplans would be badass, and sealed motors solve one problem, but battery chemistry is the real beast – we're bumping against molecular bond limitations, not just engineering challenges. Current lithium-ion cathodes are only achieving 25-30% of their theoretical capacity limits, while lithium-sulfur promises 2-3× better density but sacrifices cycle life. Trust me, I want electric propulsion to succeed, but we need fundamental chemical breakthroughs beyond intercalation mechanisms. Got any data on those Soviet experiments? Those Russians were decades ahead on some wild electrochemistry concepts.
Back in the day Convex Computer Corporation was laying off a large fraction of its staff.
The plan was to come into the warroom and just hang out. Your manager would come and get you and take you into a private conference room to discuss your package with an HR specialist. The packages were pretty decent, at least.
In gallows humor I drew some stick figures on a white board for each of my team with their unix logins below them. As people were RIFfed, I would go over and put a universal red circle and slash "no" symbol around the figures who were laid off.
My time came and I marked myself as a "no" and handed the red marker to a co-worker.
I remember being a little ticked off at my manager, but when I came back to say goodbye to everyone I noticed his figure / login name had been exed out. The last thing he did before metaphorically being shot in the head was to metaphorically strangle half his children.
"What was deluxe became debris, I never questioned loyalty. But this dead end demolishes the dream of an open highway."
Modern CS programs teach to what they perceive to be the interview their students will encounter after graduation: what is a tree data structure, how to craft a SQL query and how to calculate a CRC with a python library. More advanced CS/CE departments still teach discrete math and compilers/parsing for students intending to go to grad schools.
My experience with recent CS grads is it's easier to hire Art and Political Science grads and take the time to teach them programming and all it's fundamentals. At least they won't argue with you when you tell them not to use regexes to parse HTML.
I couldn't find reference to quintrophy or quintrophy1x in the IACR eprint archive (or on a google search.) And I think you forgot the references to external review.
Thanks for your comment! As this is a brand-new project, it hasn’t been submitted to the IACR ePrint Archive yet, and there’s no prior mention of it there or in broader searches, being that it’s a fresh release. We built this as an original implementation to push the boundaries of encryption strength with a 512-bit key and custom transformations, and I’m excited to share it with the community here first.
we lived in rona hills for about 4 years. not biking distance, but close enough to visit frequently. and as a youngster they let me conduct the AF orchestra there at the AF 25th anniversary. Very good memories.
but mixing your comment with a few others, maybe a nuke plant on the ground that cracks the co2 in the atmosphere to make carbon neutral hydrocarbon fuel.