Ransen's Blog

 

Arthur C. Clarke's First Law: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." I was reminded of that law when I saw this...   Starship prototype SN9 during its flight test at Boca Chica, Texas, in January 2021   ...and this...     Artist's impression of the Moon landing vehicle is based on SpaceX's Starship design  Both images reminded me of 1950s Science Fiction book and magazine covers. Vertically landing rockets were scoffed at by scientists and engineers because of the huge processing power and exact control required to keep a rocket balancing on its "tail". When I saw this...  ... (these are landing , not taking off) I was amazed. And here are the covers of 1950s magazines...      One cover even got the shape right:        

 When I decided to put solar panels on my roof it was because I hate the heat of the Northern Italian Summer. And I saw thousands of roofs around me which just absorbed the energy during the day and gave it back to the air during the night. Such a waste of easily capture-able energy! The unexpected consequence was the pleasure I got monitoring the energy captured. The WEB interface to the data from the panels is a wonder. I can see how it is doing real-time: It was only 10 in the morning when I made this screenshot, but by midday it can be up to 2500 watts. I can see how it has been doing during the week: In the image above it is interesting to see how the cloud cover reduces the energy produced. By the time we get to July and August the curves will be smooth and uninterrupted. You can see how the month is going: Since they have been installed the panels have generated almost 2MWh of energy. And every time I check on how my panels are doing I get a warm fuzzy feeling of contentment. Pr