Super intelligence arriving soon?

If what Musk says comes true, which is no 100% sure bet, he will have it wired up and ready to go by the end of 2028. Even if he is off by a couple years, it will be by 2030, which isn't that far off, ya'll.

Folks are scared of super AI. That may be understandable, but it is coming all the same. If Musk doesn't do it, China will. It's a race, and somebody's going to win it. We're in that race whether you want to be in it or not.

Piddling around with the solar panels

11/3/26:

An update on the progress:

The controller arrived, but it didn't have all the equipment that it was supposed to have. Rather than send it back, I just ordered some wiring that it needed. It had a different electrical connector than what I've been using, so I really wasn't prepared for this curve-ball.

The new hardware came in yesterday, and I hooked it up this morning. It is running okay, but the verdict on the batteries will take a cycle or two to know. That hasn't happened yet as of this writing.

10/31/26: The original post is below:

It's been several months since the solar panels have worked. The batteries have been neglected, and maybe they're no good.

But not all hope is lost. After spending most of the day checking out the problem, and the solution may be a new charge controller.

What happened to the last one? Maybe the same thing that always happens. These things are not the best built things around. As usual, a good one may cost a lot more money.

But the good ones seem lacking too. So the decision is to buy another one that is a bit on the cheap side, and hope that it works this time.

There's still a 24 volt controller, but that would entail a re-work of the wiring.

For example, instead of a parallel system, there'd be a two-by-two arrangement so that a series for two panels and a parallel for the pair of two. The result would be 24 volts. The old system used at the RV trailer had that arrangement. Another problem with cheap electronics sabotaged that system.

What a pain in the butt that would be to go back to the 24-volt. Oh, well.

In other developments, the trailer is now located near the shaded area where the ladder and the washer is located. Why not get the most of what is available, right? Moving the trailer was a pain in the butt too.

These experiments are all going into the memory banks for a time that the knowledge may be needed. But the off-grid idea is still on hold.

Come to think of it, beavers may be out. Too big of a challenge to make that work.

What do beavers have to do with this? Only that it is an idea, like this one is. By the way, this was about the rodent. What did you think it was about?

Getting close to Flight 15

Both stages have been static fired now. That means the final preps should be in progress and a flight could happen within maybe a couple weeks?

Ten Years After --- Year 3000 Blues

Lyrics:

They took me down the grading station

And they classified me zed

'Cause of over population

They told me that I would soon be dead

But I slipped out of the force field

And hid beneath the monorail

But the automatic blood hounds

Lord, they're soon hot along my trail

Now if I had been a scholar

With computer working hard

Then my molecular structure

Would not be on the grader's card

So, I know that they will get me

Put my index in the brain

Then, the atoms of my body

Will be disposed of, Lordy, down the drain

They took me down the grading station

And they classified me zed

'Cause of over population

They told me that I would soon be dead

Methanol Wins - Robert Zubrin

10/26/26:

Way back when, before Tesla became a really large company that appears to be mastering battery tech, there was the concept of hydrogen fuel cell cars... Can these still compete against Tesla's battery powered cars? Here's some posts in support of methanol, which can be used to obtain hydrogen, or itself converted into ammonia that can carry hydrogen, which in turn can run hydrogen fuel cells. The answer to the question isn't in these posts, but there may be one if Eric Lerner's aneutronic fusion device can be made to work.

12/02/2011: The original post is directly below:

Robert Zubrin - National Review Online

Comment:  I've been sold on methanol for a long time now.  At least since 2005 or so.  It is also handy in making hydrogen for fuel cell cars, if anyone ever gets around to building one of these on a mass production basis.  Curious that there seems to be a glacial pace in making a flex fuel standard.

Thoughts about my off-grid project

This one has been on the back burner for years now. A question may pop up in one's mind. Will it ever get done? More on that later? As General MacArthur once said: "I shall return."

Ah! I wasn't gone long. In other words, I'm back.

A couple things here. I've been working on the new Construction Simulator game for the last few months. It has given me some new ideas. Folks may wonder how a game can be any good for real things in the real world. Look, if Apollo astronauts can use simulators to help the with the Moon Shot of the '60's, then I can do it too, dammit.

But it can only do so much. At some point in the future, I'll have to do it for myself, if I am to do it at all.

The main questions are when and how.

I'm land rich and cash poor. I've got credit, but I fear an inability to pay it back. Plus I'm getting on in age.

These are not show-stoppers. Or they don't have to be show-stoppers. We shall see.

RGV flyover Starbase

The impression here is that Starbase is going to have to get more complex as time moves forward. Indeed, they will have to get more efficient in order to reach the ambitious goals of launching these rockets on the pace that Musk has indicated. The efficiencies have been noted. More are necessary, in my opinion.

A way to generate power is within your grasp, but there is a catch or two

A theory is spinning up in my head. The theory is that convenience has rotted the brains of just about everyone. So everybody looks for the easy way out, and there isn't one.

Here's a way out. It means going back in time before the convenience rotted everybody's brain. Americans used to be more self-reliant. Now everybody wants somebody else to do it for them. This is what I call the convenience trap. It has a great risk of leading to a totalitarian society.

Anyway, the Amish didn't fall for it. But will the Amish survive if the nation goes totalitarian?

By the way, the Amish are self-reliant, but they aren't necessarily rugged individualists. They have cohesive communities. They have rules. Those who wish to stay have to follow the rules. Freedom might mean that you can break the rules, but not if you want to remain in a cohesive society.

Is there an easy solution to cleaning the contamination in the fuel supply for Starship?

10/16/26:

It appears that the speculation is wrong.

Speculation alert: A bit of persumption here, as the question probably answers itself. If there was an easy solution, SpaceX would be using it, yes?

10/7/26:

How to implement the idea? This idea differs from the AI discussion in that the contaminants are created. If they are created, then they must be removed. Is the removal feasible?

To answer that, I refer to the testing for the Skylon concept SSTO vehicle. It uses a pre-cooler that enables it to fly at hyper-sonic speeds. Although the Skylon has not flown, the pre-cooler has been tested and found feasible. Perhaps a device similar to the Skylon pre-cooler can take the carbon dioxide and water contaminants out of the oxygen mix coming off the pre-burner pumps? The pre-cooler from the Skylon can handle a lot of hot gasses, that's its job.

Besides, there's really not that much, about 2 tons according to the deep dive mentioned in an earlier post.

Perhaps the hot gases off the pre-burner can melt the ice and vaporize the dry ice so that they can be released?

That would imply a two-step process. First, freeze the mixture, then melt and dispose of it.

If it is two-steps, then that implies two devices or chambers. A freeze chamber, and a melt chamber.

Perhaps a mechanism can alternate between the two? A third chamber may need to hold gases from the pre-burner until a chamber is ready?

All this implies a level of complexity and control that SpaceX would rather avoid?

In that case, on chamber only, and it just freezes it until it can be disoposed of later.

10/6/26: The original post is below:

Anyway, not knowing any better, let's look at one possibility. First of all, SpaceX's contamination problem results in the icing problem that starves the engines for fuel. It's my guess that this is a large part of the reliability issues that the engine appears to have. Note that I use the word "appear". It isn't an engine problem per se, but a system problem.

The "system" uses the contaminant to maintain pressure in the tanks as they empty during flight. The contaminants come from the burning of the methane and the oxygen in the pre-burners that deliver fuel to the engines at high pressures. So there's some burning of the fuel, and it gets mixed into the tanks. The tanks are holding cryogenic fuels, so the contaminants will freeze and that's where the problems start.

Carbon dioxide is one of the contaminants, and it is the bigger of the two issues. Water ice floats on the liquid oxygen, but dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) sinks. When it sinks, it can clog up the fuel intakes. No bueno.

The idea I had was to freeze it out of the exhaust BEFORE it gets injected into the oxygen tank. It is mostly oxygen, with the contaminants as mentioned. If the contaminants are frozen out, then there's no more contamination, right? But what to do with these contaminants?

Carbon dioxide (dry ice) can be vented off since when heated, it will revert to a gaseous state. Water ice will melt, but isn't a huge problem anyway if it refreezes.

How to heat it? It may not take much, as the freezing point is about 100 degrees below zero Farenheit. This is actually much warmer than the cryogenic oxygen.

All this may seem simple in concept, but there may be a catch. Or is there? That's what I'm not too sure of. Carbon dioxide will behave differently when under pressure. If you pressurize it, it may get a little tricky to handle.

In practice then, you would cool the exhaust from the pre-burners, using the cryogenic fuel as a means of cooling down to a solid state. Then you would have to obtain a heat source, perhaps from some return gas from another heat exchange in order to return the dry ice to a gaseous state, which can then be vented off.

Easier said than done, perhaps...

Water freezes at a relatively high temperature. Perhaps the water could be used to change the state of the dry ice to a gas.

Could this work? It probably would, but would it be worth it? It all depends on how much hardware you'd need in order to implement it.

There's a lot of heat exchanging going on, and maybe that would make it too complicated.

But this is just a speculation anyway.

Stuff's happening, no bumper sticker required