Science!! Fucking magnets, how do they work?
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Melvin
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Scientists at Stanford develop water splitter that runs on ordinary AAA battery
It's too bad they're only using AAA batteries. That would be a really cool piece of tech if they could manage to get it to work with solar panels instead. Oh well, back to the drawing board I suppose.
It's too bad they're only using AAA batteries. That would be a really cool piece of tech if they could manage to get it to work with solar panels instead. Oh well, back to the drawing board I suppose.
Palum
what Suineg set it to
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iannis
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Splitting the water has never been a problem from what I understand. That's easy to do with electricity. The problem is the efficiency of the entire process, which includes the fuel cell and the electrolysis.
I guess they made a new doo-dad to do it with, and it does it on a very small scale.
Honestly, I don't know if anyone outside of stanford gives a fuck. The only important thing looks like they used nickel instead of platinum. So that's 1 step closer... but it's still reads more like a "This is what we did with our grants. We didn't just spend it on hookers and blow."
Edit: I mean it's not nothing. It seems like only one very small piece of the problem.
I guess they made a new doo-dad to do it with, and it does it on a very small scale.
Honestly, I don't know if anyone outside of stanford gives a fuck. The only important thing looks like they used nickel instead of platinum. So that's 1 step closer... but it's still reads more like a "This is what we did with our grants. We didn't just spend it on hookers and blow."
Edit: I mean it's not nothing. It seems like only one very small piece of the problem.
Melvin
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The way I read it, they've made a pretty significant improvement to the efficiency and scalability of the electrolysis process. I don't think anyone is claiming this is the new paradigm that's going to make fusion research unnecessary, but still, progress toward new energy storage and distribution methods is a good thing. I'm sure that the engineers at Hyundi, Toyota, and Honda are going to be more interested in it than you are.
Melvin
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I googled for a few seconds and foundthis 7 year old articleabout something that might be similar to what you're thinking of? But the thing is that process, even with bacteria, still uses platinum in the cathode, so it could possibly be improved by the nickel/nickel-oxide electrode Sanford developed. Oh, and the bacteria also release CO2, which a pure electrolysis process doesn't.
Am I barking up the wrong tree by looking up bacteria? I don't remember reading about moss or algae in this context, but I'm wrong often enough.
Am I barking up the wrong tree by looking up bacteria? I don't remember reading about moss or algae in this context, but I'm wrong often enough.
Cad
scientia potentia est
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The nice thing about producing hydrogen fuel cell cars is that the fuel source is then completely decoupled from the vehicle - we can scale up and increase efficiency in how we produce hydrogen, or get it from solar or wind or whatever, and the cars can also improve on efficiency/materials etc and we don't need to say "well, that would be great except we can't afford to replace 10 billion cars. Fuck it"
That decoupling is important.
That decoupling is important.
Sentagur
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Seems Russia is no longer needed to get astronauts into space
NASA Chooses American Companies to Transport U.S. Astronauts to International Space Station | NASA
NASA Chooses American Companies to Transport U.S. Astronauts to International Space Station | NASA
Alex
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Sentagur
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I think your read something into my response that wasn't there. i was not disputing the 2-3 years thing from the article.
I was just saying that if russians decided to be dicks, the tech is there and US could just throw more money at this to speed the program significantly.
Eomer
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You said Russia is "no longer needed". For the next 2-3 years, it's needed, because you can't just throw money at NASA to speed up the approval/certification process for this. Right from NASA's press release, it says "with a goal of ending the nation's sole reliance on Russia in 2017". That's a goal. How reliable is NASA for making deadlines over the past couple decades? If anything, it is likely to take more time, not less.
In the mean time, the US and ESA still have to be able to get astronauts to the ISS, and Russia is trollololing them with this Crimea bullshit:Russia moves ISS astronaut training to newly annexed Crimea | Ars Technica
So there's still a significant problem to be worked out for the next few years. But absolutely, great news in the medium term.
Palum
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Fuck it if we can go from a Benny Hill backing track with footage of test rockets exploding to the moon in under 10 years, we should be able to get back to LEO in under 3 years.