Seems like their homemade ones were working pretty well at a fraction of the cost.

Three

Any consumer electronics is difficult to get into. Certainly the auto industry. Railroads. It’s difficult to start an ISP, even a non profit one. I think the list goes on.

Ok. Same reason firefighters are not supposed to let their kids wear their helmet while selling lemonade. They are supposed to be impartial.

For the same reason police shouldn’t be allowed to participate in white power marches in their uniforms. They are supposed to be neutral.

Or people stop speeding.

Hopefully this change will alleviate that problem.

People don’t speed because they are distracted. People speed because they think they are better than average drivers; every damn one of them.

It’s pretty much the only place left to operate. Protectionism has stopped innovation everywhere else.

Down votes for you being an anti-witchhuntist?

Right now I use all/new as I build my subscribe and block list. Eventually I will use subscribed/scaled

I would be very selective on where I used battery power, if at all. At the moment I think I would use grid power instead. For air conditioning I would get the house as cold as I could while the sun was shining then coast throughout the night. Same for the refrigerator. I would run the table saw on dc directly from the solar panels.

Much of the existing grid’s issues could be fixed with reconductorting. Changing the design of renewable interconnect for half-cycle ride-through and power-factor compensation would have been interesting but now there is so much capacity this is practically inconsequential.

As DC interconnects becomes more common the grid becomes more resilient and flexible. Most of these are paid for with private investor money.

Seems like a great opportunity for grid-issolated solar cooling.

I think you are correct. I think it is mostly FUD by large generators. Not that the grid doesn’t need updating but it’s not due to distributed generation yet.

If I were going to do solar today I would do grid isolated with automatic transfer switches. The panels are much cheaper, you get power when the grid is down, and you have more granular control over how you use power.

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Ive done it just for fun. It was some time ago. Bought a screen in a frame, a squeegee, tried a couple mask methods but was most pleased with the photosensitive stuff. It is quite fun and results were impressive for the short time I spent on it.

Rail is hard to steal because it is hard and heavy. Look at the price of small sections used for anvils. It was a shock for me.

I participated in a exploration of PRT that was done by someone at University of Washington a few decades ago. One of the things discussed was the comparison of travel times between slow PRT and fast light rail. It doesn’t take many 60-90 second stops to really slow your average speed.

It’s kinda like that brain teaser: If a race car does the first lap at 60 miles an hour how fast does he have to go on the second lap to average 120.

I would say 30kph would be plenty especially for nonstop on-demand service. 60kph sounds unrealistic.

The reason I think you could lay new track is that kiddie train track is really cheap and used railroad rail is pretty valuable.

The value of a scrap railroad track varies by material and its condition. Depending on its dimensions and shape, a ton can range from $300 to $750. For example, an R50 track will fetch a price of between $200 and $750, while an R65 way will cost more than twice that.

It would be simple to make self driving golf carts that followed a magnetic or inductive guideway or even used a virtually guideway with gps. There are a few of these available off the shelf right now. One I remember is dutch and there was another produced in Great Britain.

Suspended monorails don’t take taller rails. You can keep the train upright. It has been well demonstrated. The amount of weight on the rails is insignificant compared to what they were designed for. I doubt there would be any detectable movement.

All that said this seems like an overly complicated solution.

I think you make some good points.

Most importantly, the hard part of these projects is the right of way. I agree that it should be used to its greatest advantage. I suspect you could rip these rails up, lay down kiddie train rails and a bike path for the same price.

The biggest reason for standard monorails is grade separation.

The burden of air resistance is negligible at these speeds. The rolling resistance, lifespan, and pollution of rubber tires is a disadvantage, but at these speeds it is probably the best use of rubber tires.

You only need two lanes for pods at passing tracks. The need for continuous two way traffic probably means the capacity has outgrown this solution.