A fictional one, from Fox. We’ll see how realistic it is.
Category Archives: Business
South California
Last but far from least, we conclude our tour of the new Californias with the one furthest south, shown as orange on the map.
The Welfare State Of West California
Moving on in our examination of Tim Draper’s six Californias, from Nuevo Colorado (aka Central California), we come to the new state of West California. It’s ironic that it’s shown as green on the map, considering that it will be born into pension and welfare poverty.
Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
First California, and now some people in south Florida want to split with Tallahassee. The reason is sort of hilariously stupid, though:
Harris told the commission that Tallahassee isn’t providing South Florida with proper representation or addressing its concerns when it comes to sea-level rising.
“We have to be able to deal directly with this environmental concern and we can’t really get it done in Tallahassee,” Harris said. “I don’t care what people think — it’s not a matter of electing the right people.”
Mayor Philip Stoddard agreed with Harris’ reasoning, saying he’s advocated for secession for the past 15 years but never penned a resolution.
“It’s very apparent that the attitude of the northern part of the state is that they would just love to saw the state in half and just let us float off into the Caribbean,” Stoddard said. “They’ve made that abundantly clear every possible opportunity and I would love to give them the opportunity to do that.”
If there weren’t enough reasons for me to leave Boca, living in a state dominated by south Floridians would seal the deal.
Lockheed Martin’s Fusion Plans
Michael Beliore interviews them. No mention of space applications, though.
Bootstrapping A Solar-System Civilization
There was an interesting blog post at OSTP last week:
Have ideas for massless exploration and bootstrapping a Solar System civilization? Send your ideas for how the Administration, the private sector, philanthropists, the research community, and storytellers can further these goals at massless@ostp.gov.
Needless to say, I don’t expect this to go anywhere with the current Congressional committees.
A History Of SpaceX
There’s a good article over at Quartz about the company and Elon. It had a few errors, though.
@qz You don't need to reach escape velocity to get into earth orbit. You only need about 71% of it.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) October 21, 2014
@qz Also, the Merlin isn't the first US liquid rocket engine since the 70s. The RS-68 was developed in the 90s. But good article overall.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) October 21, 2014
@qz Oops, another error. First stage doesn't get it into orbit, it just gives it a head start. Second stage generally needed for orbit.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) October 21, 2014
@qz Oops, Senator *Bill* Nelson, not Ben. Ben was in Nebraska, and didn't give a hoot about space. Still reading…
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) October 21, 2014
And the response?
@Rand_Simberg @qz thanks for noting these for us, we've corrected http://t.co/9fuM6UrbHg
— Tim Fernholz (@TimFernholz) October 21, 2014
That’s exactly how it should work.
Nuevo Colorado
Continuing our tour of the six new Californias proposed by Tim Draper, this new state would be the only one with no Pacific coastline. Nonetheless, it has tremendous potential that is currently being hamstrung by Sacramento (or rather, the coastal voters who dominate the legislature). It would have a population of a little over four million, equivalent to Kentucky, and about a million fewer than Colorado. But as I’ll explain, its red depiction on the map below is appropriate, because it could be viewed as another Colorado in the making, except one only a couple-hour drive from the ocean.
The New State Of Silicon Valley
Continuing my series (I now have four states up at Ricochet), the next state is Silicon Valley.
Unlike North California, Silicon Valley would be the new state with the most geographically misleading name. Shown in yellow on the map, it would encompass the current Silicon Valley in Santa Clara County, but it would also include all else on that peninsula, including San Francisco, and the East Bay all the way up to Oakland and Berkeley in Alameda County and the bedroom communities of Contra Costa County, all of which is quite densely populated. And beyond that, it would also extend south, all the way down into the Big Sur coast, to the southern Monterey County line. It would be the third largest of the new states, with a current population of almost seven million, like Arizona, Washington or Massachusetts.
The Quality Of Metal 3-D-Printed Objects
Looks like it’s about to exceed any other fabrication technology:
“We can now control local material properties, which will change the future of how we engineer metallic components,” Dehoff said. “This new manufacturing method takes us from reactive design to proactive design. It will help us make parts that are stronger, lighter and function better for more energy-efficient transportation and energy production applications such as cars and wind turbines.”
The researchers demonstrated the method using an ARCAM electron beam melting system (EBM), in which successive layers of a metal powder are fused together by an electron beam into a three-dimensional product. By manipulating the process to precisely manage the solidification on a microscopic scale, the researchers demonstrated 3-dimensional control of the microstructure, or crystallographic texture, of a nickel-based part during formation.
Crystallographic texture plays an important role in determining a material’s physical and mechanical properties. Applications from microelectronics to high-temperature jet engine components rely on tailoring of crystallographic texture to achieve desired performance characteristics.
“We’re using well established metallurgical phenomena, but we’ve never been able to control the processes well enough to take advantage of them at this scale and at this level of detail,” said Suresh Babu, the University of Tennessee-ORNL Governor’s Chair for Advanced Manufacturing. “As a result of our work, designers can now specify location-specific crystal-structure orientations in a part.”
This will be key for human expansion into space.