Götterdämmerung;3051066 said:
You fail to tell us how we violated safety codes by laying all our urban power lines underground. Somehow we manage to have one of the highest safety codes in the wolrd
without compromising on esthetic. Indeed, sohisticated we are.
That is your opinion.
Götterdämmerung;3051066 said:
The rocket design such as Apollo is still in use today, no? Why are you comparing apples with watermellon? You fail again!
Indeed comparing a pioneering reusable space vehicle against the established expendable one-way use method is like comparing an orange against the watermelon.
Show me a credible argument against reusable vehicles. Do we discard a car once we arrived at the destination? Heck, do we discard a bicycle? Anytime you make something reusable, you are going to incur much higher cost because it must be much more physically robust to withstand repeated usage. But why is it that we persists in making so many things in life, especially tools, reusable? Back in WW II, the US wisely withdrew experienced combat pilots to stateside after X missions so they could impart their knowledge for the next generation of combat pilots. What they knew were institutionalized to this day. The Japanese, and to lesser extent the Germans, did not. The result was that eventually the odds caught up with their best combat pilots and the Japanese had to resorted to suicide pilots. Ask the Japanese how much easier and less expensive it was to train one-way pilots and manufacture one-way 'fighter' aircrafts.
So yes, comparing the Space Shuttle, a pioneering vehicle and program against the established method of one-time use throw-away vehicle is very much like comparing the orange against the watermelon. Here is your problem:
- Show us a credible argument on why it
WOULD BE impractical to have a reusable space vehicle. Not technical feasibility because we know that it is technically feasible. But why would it be impractical.
- Show us a credible argument that in the future,
ALL space vehicles
WILL BE one-way expendable. Eurosnobs believes they know everything about anything so it should be easy for you to divine the future, right?
Circular 'logic' is what I call 'self insured and self assured logic' because its goal is to convince the believer that he can never be wrong. That is what I see here: The Space Shuttle, the first of the reusable type, is the only one of its kind because it is too expensive and it is too expensive because it is the only one of its kind.
So by your argument, compare to the orange, we should not eat the watermelon because it is too heavy, it require a dangerous tool -- the knife -- to open because its rind is too thick, it is too messy, and it has too many seeds.
Götterdämmerung;3051066 said:
I got pwnd just because you claim so? Now that's funny. Fact is, our citiy planning and our sense of beauty is just superior to the US. There is no city in the US that can rival any of Europe's capitals and big cities in beauty and vibrancy.
Again, you are talking about transmission lines outside the city, which is also exactly the same here in Europa as in the US, namely overground. But dishonest as you are, you try to mix city planning with unrelated topics just to make a point. Remember, we are talking about power lines within the city where the power doesn't have to be transported over dozens of miles.
Thus showing you the sophistication of European city plannings and enginerring because we managed to overcome all the obstacles, geographic and topographical issues, make our streets look clean and stylish and still have less power outage than the US.
BTW, we also waste less energy than the average US American without lowering our living standard.
You see, we have beautiful cities, use less energy, have better social security, less crime. It seems everything speaks for our sophistication, right?
Uh huh...
If Power Lines Fall, Why Don't They Go Underground? : NPR
Other industrialized countries have more of their neighborhood power distribution underground. David Lindsay, an expert at the Electric Power Research Institute, says places like Western Europe have an edge because they rebuilt their cities after the war.
"A lot of the infrastructure there is much younger than it is here," Lindsay says. "Infrastructure in general here dates to before World War II, and it was just added on and added on and added on."
American cities could upgrade by putting wires underground, but that's an expensive proposition.
"The general rule of thumb we use is a factor of 10. Installation costs, construction cost is a factor of 10 difference between overhead and underground," Lindsay says.
There are two methods for buried power lines: tunnel and earth.
Tunnel buried power lines are sometimes inside tunnels that are as large as a human being is tall. Earth buried is when the power lines are simply insulated and buried in close proximity to each other into the ground. Insulation gets thicker with higher voltages and that incur cost. Tunnel buried power lines must be insulated to the same degree as well. Not so with overhead power lines that can be bare copper.
What kind of insulation? How about pressurized oil?
High-voltage cable - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For higher voltages the oil may be kept under pressure to prevent formation of voids that would allow partial discharges within the cable insulation.
There are many methods but all of them costs far more than overhead power lines.
So when Europe began to rebuild after WW II, crude and rude explanation as it is, the reality is that the bombs pretty much dug up the neccessary underground infrastructures for the Europeans to do as they see fit when it comes to how to run electricity to their homes with the unexpected consequence of giving Eurosnobs like yourself a convenient crutch to make yourself feel better over the Americans. It is not so possible for the US except for new housing developments, like in my neighborhood. The Japanese have their overhead power lines and bombs dug up their grounds as well. For the Australians, no bombs did the hard work for their lands and they have overhead power lines.
In the cities and towns, buried power lines are distribution, not transmission lines which are overhead and spans over the continent. If a distribution line run along a road, it cost more to duct those distribution lines so they do not creep due to road vibrations. There cannot be anything over the paths because access to the lines must be available no matter how infrequent it may be so the land must be purchased or somehow secured. Buried power lines, regardless which method, must be highly overengineered (cost) in order to withstand powerful and persistent physical forces that comes with civilization in the form of cities and towns with their roads. It also cost more to replace and/or upgrade buried power lines because of growth. These costs, may be up to 50 times depending on earth composition, are always passed on to the consumers one way or another.
In the US state Florida, the potential for flooding from the swamp and the sea is very real, given the varying water tables, so it make sense to have overhead power lines where even though they are at greater risk with hurricanes, repairs after such is far less expensive and less time consuming than it would be compare to a tunnel flooded with sea water. What about areas that have both water and frost tables? I guess Germany is fortunate enough to have been spared the conflict to allow the luxury of aesthetics with buried power lines with the unintened consequence of giving Eurosnobs a way to feel superior to the Americans.
Bottom line is this...Your arguments are stale and are not taken seriously by engineers worldwide who have experience at building and maintaining both overhead and buried power lines. Most chose the latter. But if you must feel that it is important to mislead a few gullible people on an anonymous Internet forum to the superiority of the Europeans with buried power lines the best example of civilized Europe...Be my guest and have a nut.
…. During the operational years from 1982 to 2010, the average cost per launch was about $1.2 billion. Over the life of the programme, this increases to about $1.5 billion per launch
