Have you tried another TV? Not the easiest diagnostic, I know, but circuitry can decay, often via failing capacitors.
Another source of trouble can be trees growing up into your line-of-sight, causing variable signal absorption affected by rain and wind. Or new buildings. I once upon a time...
Keep in mind the economic value of the oxygen separated from silicon or aluminum. O2 is 8/9ths of the weight of H2/LOX rocket propellant, and 4/5ths of the more practical methane/Lox propellant. It could be supplied to low Earth orbit (or anywhere else in space) far more cheaply than bringing...
Binoculars are a good way of keeping up the stargazing in winter - setup time is zero, so even a 5 minute session becomes practical and there's still much to see, not to mention starhopping practice and general familiarization with the sky. They're best for open clusters; the big ones of...
The main stopping benefit of ABS brakes is to avoid the steep temperature rise at the skidding footprint, which softens the rubber and allows it to slough off, thus lubricating the interface, leaving the skid mark and lowering the available stopping force. On ice, the reverse occurs; the...
Electric motors fare even worse against jets and fan jets, as an e-jet also requires the weight of the compressors and fans to be added.
Against small piston engines though, they are the clear winner, being of comparable weight and having a huge maintenance/reliability advantage. This shows...
That's the root of it, indeed. Even electric lights are magic to at least a large minority of the population.
As far as my backyard goes, I would rather live next door to a nuke (not graphite moderated!) than a hundred kilometres downwind of a coal plant and all that lead, mercury, cadmium...
Wind or solar can just as easily be used to synthesize airplane fuel. In fact, synthesizing methanol (which makes a terrific ground transport fuel) has been proposed as a power storage method to take better advantage of the cyclic and irregular nature of wind and solar.
And, yes, Gen IV...
I just watched the Chernobyl series on TV so my present view of the much vaunted 'Nukes' is a bit coloured. We can't blame the whole of that episode on the shortcomings of a bad regime.
No, not a regime thing; a technical thing. That plant was the equivalent of some 1920s car with no...
Even better; use electricity and waste heat from 4th gen nuke plant to make synthetic kerosene from aboveground (perhaps even atmospheric) carbon. Aviation related global warming (2% of total problem) solved, without poisonous or impractical fuels.
Of course the mere adoption of 4th gen nukes...
Bob01234 . . . Aluminum/air fuel cells would be a marginally practical option for an electric aircraft in the prop commuter or lightplane market. Aluminum carries a bit over 30 MJ/kg energy differential over aluminum oxide. One drawback would be the increasing weight of the cell throughout a...
Sophie, 'thinking' people are a smallish minority. Any scheme to save the world/build utopia that depends on most people behaving notably better will founder. Even getting the few hundred decision makers in China and India to abandon their plans for 1400 new coal fired power plants is only...