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US US Politics General - Discussion of President Biden and other politicians
- Thread starter SeniorFuckFace
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- Nov 21, 2020
Don't forget ships(and subs) some of the huge cruise ships, among others, run on electric motors. https://www.wartsila.com/encyclopedia/term/mermaid-propulsion-unit
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- Sep 25, 2020
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- Oct 3, 2018
The military can't and won't ever be "environmentally friendly". The closest thing to environmentally friendly currently fielded by American forces are nuclear powered vessels.
Aside from manpower, what are the fuel sources that power anything on the battlefield?
Gasoline, diesel, and kerosene.
Want to haul troops around? Gas.
Need to move mobility containers? Gas or diesel.
Need to convoy? Gas.
Call in an air strike? Kerosene.
Need to lift a bomb onto a plane? Diesel.
Fuck almost every piece of support equipment runs on diesel, gas, or kerosene. As an example, you need gasoline AND diesel to build bombs.
Good luck operating a MAC II without an MC-7 air compressor. The MAC might be pneumatic, but the MC-7 runs on diesel. All of the forklifts worth a damn in the bomb dump are gas or diesel. The MJ-1 bomb truck is gas or diesel and the MHU-83 is diesel. All of that to make perfectly good bombs that those lousy pilots just throw away.
No way you can electrify that process without spending a fuckton of money. Billions? Try trillions. Every single piece of powered support equipment (compressors, light carts, power carts, heaters, tugs, forklifts, bobtails, jammers, etc.) would need to be changed, the infrastructure updated to accommodate the new electricity demand, and motorpool/AGE personnel retrained on how these newfangled electric things work.
All those F-15s and nukes Clueless Leader said people need to take on Uncle Sam require kerosene to get in the sky, save for the ICBMs which have their own freaky eco-unfriendly shit. Every single aircraft runs on kerosene. ALL OF THEM. Unless you bring up the few P-51s maintained by the Air Force's Heritage Flight (which used to run on LEADED GASOLINE), all military aircraft run on kerosene. Those fancy 5th gen fighters? Kerosene. The oldest operational bombers in the world? Kerosene. The infamous BRRRRRT? Kerosene. The tiltrotor wunderwaffen that the Marines and AF special operators can't shut up about? Kerosene. All kerosene all the time.
Beta Technologies has a working electric aircraft. That's about as much good as I can say about it. It's slow as shit with a pathetic range. I doubt they'll be vying for any Air Force or Navy contracts any time soon.
NOTHING can get done in the military without petroleum derived fuels. NO-THING. Imagine an Army powered by Tesla and an Air Force by Beta Technologies. Nothing would get done. Convoys would take forever and a day (sorry Sarge, can't start the convoy because the humvee is still charging) and force projection would be nothing but a fond memory (sorry sir, this Beta plane can't go beyond 250 nautical miles from base!). Only an idiot would try to force such a change where it didn't need to exist. All the money we blew in the JSF Program? Fuck the taxpayer and the F-35, we need CLIMATE FRIENDLY PLANES.
It gets very tiresome Ridin' with Biden. I want off Mr. Joe's Wild Ride.
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- Jul 25, 2019
Early ones (mostly concept and test vehicles) had shifting transmissions (more to deal with maximum motor speed than anything) and were murdering them. This was ditched pretty quickly. There's probably some sort of power curve to the things. I can't imagine they are perfectly flat across speeds. Maybe it's like the radial engine (constant power across speeds) vs jet engine (constant force across speeds) thing in planes. I'll think about it sometime when I have more time and less beer.
Either way, shifting transmissions are unsuitable for electric cars at the moment.
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- Nov 21, 2020
Almost all piston planes still run on leaded gasoline. There's a few diesel(kerosene) ones out there, and some don't need the octane of leaded and can use stuff closer to car gas(but must be ethanol free) but everything else with a piston engine still uses lead.
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- Jul 25, 2019
Ah, avgas. For when you need race fuel, but cannot afford it.
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- Sep 1, 2018
I have never seen an electric drive komatsu outside of mine expo. I know people at several WA mines and they all have fleets of 777F trucks.
I don't know why diesel-electric has never caught in the defense industry. Oshkosh has had technology demonstrators for years where they can park up and generate power.
https://oshkoshdefense.com/technology/propulse/
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- Jul 25, 2019
I don't know about industrial, but consumer EV's are not very robust and require specialists to work on. Like die on the side of the road because one of your redundant pedal sensors goes our (in a gas car this just limits your pedal response) or the same response because of a short and minor vehicle CAN network disruption.
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- Mar 15, 2016
Interesting.
FMG, Rio and BHP definitely have GE and Hitachi electric drive dump trucks. I used to run a workshop and we had the contract to overhaul the motors and alternators.
I'm not saying hydraulic drives don't exist just they aren't, in my experience, as common or as reliable.
There's a diesel hydraulic train that goes down to Bunbury, that one has a small Cummings diesel engine driving a two speed transmission. Very smooth ride. It's outlived it's planned retirement date by quite a bit too.
Anyway that's enough trainsperging from me.
spinal gas chamber
kiwifarms.net
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- May 19, 2020
Who was it - Rush Limbaugh, Tom Clancy, someone else - that coined the phrase that the military exists to “kill people and break things”. Somehow being green doesn’t seem to fit that mission. And that is the mission.
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- Oct 3, 2018
That phrase gets bandied about in the modern military very often. My commander spouted it at least 3 times in the last commander's call. The one I'm fond of is "putting warheads on foreheads". You hear it everywhere. The Weapons boys (2W1X1 AFS) have their own which is "giving the enemy the opportunity to die for their country." All of them are delightfully morbid.
Point being that the military is more concerned with lethality and combat effectiveness instead of eco bullshit. Sure you could call letting the forklift idle fraud, waste, and abuse but I call it not having to turn it over by bridging the battery terminals with a screwdriver because the Hyster special is a big, big pile of shit. Those diesel fumes are the smell of me getting a job done on time and a pilot getting more bombs to carelessly lose over hostile territory.
The next time I get deployed I might paint little eco friendly logos on the bombs for a laugh. Maybe even certified organic/non-GMO labels too. Can't forget the CA Prop 65 warning either.
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- Nov 15, 2021
Heavy & fragile.
Frankly, if you haven't run any wild injuns off their land, do you really belong in government at all?
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- Dec 2, 2018
If the future military vehicles run on electricity, I can imagine the fun effects the extreme weather may have on the batteries' lifespans and durability. Additionally, electric vehicles aren't really designed to be rugged - they're suited for pavement, not the extensive off-roading that is needed when you're going through enemy territory. Imagine burning the motor out since there isn't enough torque provided to get the vehicle out of the sand dune your squad is stuck on, even if you floored the accelerator.
The logistical nightmare that would come with trying to replace highly specialized components would probably be made worse by the computerized parts scarcity.
The logistical nightmare that would come with trying to replace highly specialized components would probably be made worse by the computerized parts scarcity.
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- Nov 15, 2021
Electric motors have much flatter torque curves than diesel, so that's not an issue. The three biggest problems with EVs:
1. They are heavy. Batteries have much lower energy density than chemical fuels.
2. They don't work well in the cold
3. They take a long time to recharge, and charging them fast destroys them more quickly
1. They are heavy. Batteries have much lower energy density than chemical fuels.
2. They don't work well in the cold
3. They take a long time to recharge, and charging them fast destroys them more quickly
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- Jul 25, 2019
The fast recharge thing is getting hot in industry. They do a lot of weird stuff I don't understand to mitigate that. Expect the fast charging to get less damaging incrementally until it's not a problem (for consumer vehicles at least). Robustness and weight? That requires a breakthrough invention to solve. New ideas like that take one guy to just stumble on. Could be tomorrow, could be decades.
You'll never fix electricity delivery though. There's not enough energy on tap barring portable nuclear generators or just being a less efficient diesel vehicle (with generators) to charge them without an electrical grid. Infrastructure doesn't exist during a defensive war. Certainly not during an expedition.
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- Jul 19, 2020
This can't be overstated enough - Chemical engines have a massive advantage in tolerance and tolerance to failures - People drive in vehicles that have no right to be running into mechanical shops all the time, and thats just civilian, commercial vehicles. Whereas a military vehicle can expect to be exposed to dangers far in excess of a karen or someone who doesn't know how to drive. While I wouldn't expect a chemical engine block to fair much better than an electric against a direct hit from anything that goes boom, a near miss can seriously fuck up a lot of those sensitive electronic pieces an electric vehicle relies on. Meanwhile your chemical engine can be expected to tolerate any of that shock, and a few extra pieces of metal violently joining the engine block while you're at it.
You wouldn't want to keep driving it in that state, but it'll get you outta the shit in the moment, and that matters.
This is just random political spouting though, lies and promises to try and up the now, and figure out the reality later. I really want to know who on the biden admin thought a green military was a good goal - your base doesn't like the military in the first place.
Standardized Profile
kiwifarms.net
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- Oct 5, 2018
While there are various practical problems moving away from hydrocarbons, which may be solved given enough time and money, that won't change the basic physical facts that make hydrocarbons really good for storing and transporting energy. Gasoline is a liquid, will conform to the shape of any container you put it in, stays good for a while, is easy to move around, and engines will run for decades with minor maintenance. It gives you 46.4 MJ/kg. Diesel is similar at 45.6 MJ/kg.
Lithium-ion batteries ... I don't know if EVs are different, but I'm replacing Lion batteries all the time. Phone manufacturers know this and make it harder to replace batteries so you have to buy new phones. They degrade faster in heat. And they only give you 0.875 MJ/kg. That's a fiftyfold reduction in energy per unit mass. That matters when you have to carry your energy with you through the air, across the desert, etc.
There are more advanced batteries being researched, but they aren't practical yet, and they still have to be charged with something. Which will almost invariably be the burning of hydrocarbons. Because unless we learn to air-drop nuclear reactors and set them up in hostile areas, which would probably require a new COCOM and decades of development, that's the only source of energy to charge those batteries.
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- Aug 31, 2020
Huh. The way you just said it makes me think the government wants to be the exclusive gas user on the planet while they force us to be stuck in the electric cars.
Screamer
kiwifarms.net
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- Jan 20, 2021
I'm sure the green army will just be a way to pour billions of dollars into "research and development" to the arms industries and various billionaires (not that one) electric vehicle companies.
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- May 6, 2019
I find that I am note entirely against the idea of putting R&D into this... but the idea of being able to switch -now- is ridiculous. Military funding has always been a good advancer of technology, and if it were someone like Trump who would not accept a bad business deal I'd honestly like the idea.
Taking aside the green hell angle that this admin is going for, the first Military to find a way to use renewables only and still actually function as a military will have a massive leg up. It would make them independent, theoretically, of any other country and mean that they'd not risk supply shortages shutting them down. The civilian benefits of the technology are entirely secondary.
But yah, laughable to think this would work right now.
Taking aside the green hell angle that this admin is going for, the first Military to find a way to use renewables only and still actually function as a military will have a massive leg up. It would make them independent, theoretically, of any other country and mean that they'd not risk supply shortages shutting them down. The civilian benefits of the technology are entirely secondary.
But yah, laughable to think this would work right now.
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