Landing the first stages

I am always surprised how conceptually simple most really good ideas are.

The cost of the energy required to get to space is cheap. Perhaps even as cheap as $1 a pound. The problem is that the cost of hardware needed to get to space is really high. If you had the equivalent of a 747; something you could take off to space, refuel, and quickly take off again space travel would be cheap.

A lot of ideas I have seen are simply trying to get a single vehicle which can get to space like a plane. This might be possible, but has thus far been really difficult. There might be an easier way though. Make a multi stage rocket, but make the stages which drop off into drones. The drones could then land, be hooked back together, then launch again.

SpaceX is trying to do something similar to that. So far the tests haven't gone all that well, but given how well a lot of their launches have been going I expect those details to be worked out quickly.

Less Licenses

I knew driving was becoming less common amount young people due to things such as high cost and more strict DUI punishments. Still, this statistic surprised me a bit:

In recent years, fewer young people are interested in driving. Just 79 percent of people between 20 and 24 had a driver’s license in 2011, compared with 92 percent in 1983

Now more than 1 in 5 young people do not have a drivers license, when thirty years ago it was about 1 in 12. Having just made a huge bet on the idea that homes within walking distance of businesses will increase in attractiveness, I am probably not unbiased on this subject though.

Opposite of the Flynn Effect

I have long been interested in the Flynn effect partially because the steady raise in IQ scores goes against what most people seem to want to think. Every generation wants to complain abot "kids these days".

What I did not realize is that I may be looking at too short a time scale. The human brain has been shrinking for 20,000 years.

Walk Scores in New Housing Developments

I went to see a bunch of model homes today. A few things were pretty impressive:

They really are selling like crazy. Essentially every one we talked to had raised prices since last year, in one case as much as 40%. Two fairly large developments we visited only had one home remaining, another which was over 500 homes was within 30 sales away from selling out. Not only that but there is a huge volume of new homes on the market. In total several thousand new homes are being built near me, many in areas which haven't had new construction in decades.

It seems to be universal that new single family homes are being built at above the 7 homes per acre where public transportation actually starts to make sense. Considering that the newer apartment complexes are even higher density it seems likely that another decade of construction and public transit will be less of a joke in Southern California.

Because they are on such small lots, third stories seem to be quite common. I felt like that was an unusual feature of the place I bought, but it is almost standard in more urban areas. Amerige Heights in particular did a good job of making a practical third story.

Another thing which struck me was they all seem really hard to be trying to hide from people. Even those which were not gated communities seemed to be trying really hard to isolate themselves from the outside world with high walls and poor pedestrian access. In a country where crime is rare and social isolation is common this seems a really strange way to set up cities.

The new home I ended up buying does a bit of this, but it also seems to be designed so someone without a car will not starve. I decided to see if my instinct was right, and looked up a walk score for every new development I am aware of which is near me. Sure enough, most new developments are pretty awful. Maybe I should be surprised more though by the five new developments which actually are classified as "very walkable" though.

Village Walk Town Homes, San Dimas -  88
Colony Park, Anaheim -                              82

Avo, La Habra -                                                77

Brio, La Habra -                                                77
Vintage Walk, Covina -                                  74
Lone Hill, San Dimas -                                   69

The Collection at Citrus Park, Fullerton -   68

The Gables, Whittier -                                     66

Amerige Heights, Fullerton -                          60

Alcott, Buena Park -                                         60 
Donovan Ranch, Anaheim -                             58

La Floresta, Brea* -                                          55  
Dakota Meadows, San Dimas -                      49

Noble, Eastvale -                                               45

Summerwind, Brea -                                        38

Corta Bella, Yorba Linda -                               34

Sycamore Creek, Corona -                               34

Seacountry, Chino -                                          35

Sorano at Blackstone, Brea -                            31 

Davenport, Eastvale -                                       29

Palisades at Vista Del Verde, Yorba Linda - 28

Westmont, Chino -                                            23

Arietta, Chino -                                                 18

Orchard Glen, Corona -                                    17

Hearthside, Eastvale -                                      11

The Villages, Santa Fe Springs -                     6

*Future commercial property planned into the site design, this will ultimately increase the walk score.

Gardening

Well, I have hardly earned a green thumb, but I have at least managed to keep plants alive.

Right now I have:
Hyssop
Purslane
Dill
Thyme
Golden Sage
Chives
Garlic Chives
Chinese 5 Color Pepper
Weeping Mulberry
Albion Strawberries
Italian Alpine Strawberries
Alexandria Alpine Strawberries
Cape Gooseberries
Lovage
Goji Berries
Goumi Berries
Sorrel
Lemon Verbena
Rat's Tail Radish
Strawberry Spinach
He Shi Kho Bunching Onions
Green Grape Tomato


Here is a month and a half of messing with my yard.

July 6:

July 14:

August 3:

August 18:

Albion Strawberries:

Alexandria or Italian Alpine Strawberries:

Hyssop:

Dill:

Green Grape Tomatoes:

 

Purslane:

Air Bearings

The part of the hyperloop project which worries me the most is stability. The pods have to stay in the tube and cannot make contact with the walls at significant speed. The proposal was to use compressed air to keep it on the wall, kind of like an air hockey puck.

That just sounds implausible. So I did some reading. Turns out, you can buy commercial air bearings which can hold hundreds of tons! A few tons of pod shouldn't be an insurmountable issue.

Hyperloop

When I first heard about the Hyperloop idea, I was sure it would just be a vactrain. They have been talked about for ages, but just haven't quite been cost effective enough for anyone to try.

I was right. After reading through their blog it seems to actually be something quite a bit more brilliant though. An idea to reduce the cost of a vactrain by operating at fairly high pressures compared to other vactrain designs. Like all great ideas, it is dead simple. Put a fan on the front of your train to push air behind you.

The problem is that a train will push most the air in the tube up to the front of the tube as the train goes along. By the time the train is at the end of the tube air friction will be tremendous because most of the five hundred miles of air in the vactrain tube will be in the last few miles. This can be solved by making the vacuum really good. Most vactrains proposed had really good vacuum pumps to overcome this problem. A fan is much cheaper than a vacuum pump though.

Unfortunately my fluid mechanics is not good enough to spot a flaw in this design if there is one. Still though, this sounds really plausible. We build long pipelines and linear motors all the time too so I bet that even their cost estimate is fairly good.