Magnets! How do they work?

[freebeard]

Eighteen thousand RPM with printed PLA parts. Not bad.

What makes magnetic gearboxes so amazing?

In the thumbnail the modulator is unpopulated. ???

[redpoint5]

I'll give it a watch.

To immediately derail the thread, I've recently been thinking about the railgun method of sending payloads into orbit or beyond. Apparently a few concepts had already been proposed and given the name StarTram.



For some reason I had it in mind that a decent amount of speed could be achieved to accelerate people at 5G in perhaps a distance as short as 10 miles. This proposes a distance of nearly 1,000 miles to accelerate at a leisurely 3G.

[freebeard]

That looks easier to draw than to instantiate.

It would need to be straight as a laser, else at orbital velocity occupants would be shaken up and down and side to side. That might work on the Moon where there is no atmosphere.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by freebeard

That looks easier to draw than to instantiate.

It would need to be straight as a laser, else at orbital velocity occupants would be shaken up and down and side to side. That might work on the Moon where there is no atmosphere.

Yeah, moon has the advantage of not needing to construct a tube that withstands the crushing force of a vacuum under atmosphere, or the need to create the vacuum in the first place. Getting things off the moon will be a cinch.

I kinda think humans will continue to be sent into orbit on conventional rockets, but other payloads will likely be sent via other means such as Spinlaunch or mass driver. The things we need beyond earth can be delivered relatively cheaply.

[freebeard]

Everything we need is out there already, except maybe Phosphorus.

Space Elevators - Could We Really Build an Elevator into Space?

Threadjack!

A Hundred Years of Firewood-Powered Vehicles (documentary)

This is the deepest dive on wood powered vehicles I've ever seen, and yet IIRC not a single wood-powered VW Beetle. Takes twenty minutes to get to the 1920s. 75% of the vehicles in the road were wood-fueled during WWII.

Then it went away like the horse and buggy.

[freebeard]

A quiet evening at Ecomodder, so I took a look at Physics dot Org.

Physicists probe 'astonishing' morphing properties of honeycomb-like material
"The quantum material in question is known by the chemical formula Mn3Si2Te6. But you could also call it "honeycomb" because its manganese and tellurium atoms form a network of interlocking octahedra that look like the cells in a beehive." Sounds like Fuller's Vector Equilibrium. Needs further attention.

Scientists demonstrate that electricity may be obtainable from water with a high salt concentration
This suggests getting electricity from river water flowing into the oceans.

New tool helps researchers investigate clouds, rain and climate change
The tool generates second-order effects from the model, for comparison more directly with the radar data that is gathered. And it's open source.

Watch brain cells in a dish learn to play Pong in real time
800,000 neurons self-asemble in a dish!

Like the Electric Prunes, I had too much to dream (last night). And I haven't even looked at the Nanotechnology tab.

[freebeard]

CO2 battery -- as efficient as pumped hydro at one quarter the cost. The trick is compressing the gas at ambient temperatures so no heat transferred as with compressing air..

Breakthrough Battery Proves We Wrong About Carbon Dioxide!

[Piotrsko]

Don't fast compress it and it won't get hot but you're still putting energy in. What about it cooling when you release it?

Otoh, my beer when it's fermenting does get a couple of degrees warmer

[freebeard]

I watched again and remember their sponsor Hoymiles, a micro-inverter. Their four-in-one is perfect for my need. Thanks.

At ?t=313 it's claimed that a property of CO2 is that it compresses and decompresses at ambient temperature.

[freebeard]

At Permalink #5 is the story about running cars on wood. Comes now Robert Murray-Smith with a process to make methanol from Oak wood:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGKlpicqldE

I'm imagining an alternate timeline where there are moonshiners, but instead of corn squeezin's they make fuel for their tractors and NASCAR race cars.