Super long-term kernel support

Posted Mar 21, 2018 15:28 UTC (Wed) by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
In reply to: Super long-term kernel support by rahvin
Parent article: Super long-term kernel support

The “age of oil” will stay with us until we figure out how to run long-haul commercial aircraft on something other than hydrocarbon-based aviation fuel (not obvious). Or figure out how to beam stuff (including people) from A to B, whichever happens earlier.

Super long-term kernel support

Posted Mar 21, 2018 16:14 UTC (Wed) by excors (subscriber, #95769) [Link] (1 responses)

That sounds easy - just replace planes with fully-reusable suborbital rockets (like the BFR spaceship, but with hydrogen instead of methane if you want to avoid hydrocarbons). Much more exciting for passengers too.

I've read Glasshouse so I wouldn't trust teleporters not to infect me with malware or accidentally clone me. Especially if the teleporters are running a 20-year-old kernel.

Super long-term kernel support

Posted Mar 21, 2018 16:22 UTC (Wed) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link]

Never mind "accidentally clone me", what about copyright infringement?

Super long-term kernel support

Posted Mar 21, 2018 16:19 UTC (Wed) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] (2 responses)

how to run long-haul commercial aircraft on something other than hydrocarbon-based aviation fuel

Some carriers are already experimenting with flying on biofuel. Currently it is blended with lots of fossil fuel, but I expect experience and research will eventually allow switching to 100% biofuel.

Super long-term kernel support

Posted Mar 21, 2018 18:29 UTC (Wed) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link] (1 responses)

There is also work on electric aircraft engines that aren't propeller driven, don't ask me about them I don't know anything about them just that there are a bunch of companies working to solve it.

Overall aircraft and ship travel combined use about 20% of petroluem, but the ships can easily be converted to electric drive, the trick is aircraft and it's going to be a hard one to fix no doubt. But if Electricity gets as cheap as the projections are showing someone is going to have a LOT of incentive to produce a plane with electric engines with the same performance and speed as Jet Engines.

Super long-term kernel support

Posted Mar 29, 2018 18:39 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

I gather it's also easy (whether it's fuel efficient or not ...) to manufacture oil. Fill a pressure vessel with plant material, heat, and when it's cooled you have a substance pretty similar to crude oil.

And converting one form of oil to another (especially making petrol and diesel) is pretty easy using zeolyte catalysts, so I think making liquid hydrocarbon fuels from bio-matter isn't a chemistry problem.

It's an economic problem - can we do it efficiently enough to make it worthwhile?

Cheers,
Wol