I wasn't addressing the question of quantity of funding, but rather the efficiency of the funding. Is the research valuable, or is it just pretend-value from spending intended as pork? A lot of government funded research is of that kind. More generally: the market has a way of evaluating research value (did it lead to profit) while the government's actions have no reality check. They depend on the wisdom of officials who inevitably have conflicts of interest.
Simply determining the value of something is difficult. This is a big part of why communism didn't work -- it's impossible for central planners, however wise, to figure out. The communists piggybacked on price signals from other countries but that's not a great substitute for ones own market generating the price signals.
Absent price signals, determinations of value inevitably get corrupted by other interests. Look at the long, sorry history of NASA's manned space program. Value there has become "does this deliver $$$ to my district".
My dad worked on Mercury and Apollo. The first put men in space and the second put men on the moon. There was a shit ton of spin offs from this. We got a step up on GPS because some grad students were saying what if after recording Sputnik ephemerides.
Research doesn't work by central planning. Grants to researchers is competitive. There's corruption not because of the scientific method but rather because of the human condition.
Your view of this is very politicized. I'm done here.
The manned space program was entirely political, so complaining about politicization is hilarious.
Apollo was a national potlatch. It was "look how rich and successful capitalism is; we can put 4% of the federal budget into a pile and set it on fire, we're so good." Spinoffs are an unjustifiable myth. To the extent we can know, they'd have occurred anyway (ICs, for example). The most important thing to remember about Apollo is we didn't go back, which is clear evidence it wasn't needed. But to a true space fan, like a true communist, space programs can never fail, they can only be failed.
First, the hull shapes of container ships are tuned for a particular cruising speed. They accelerate up to that speed and cruise across the Pacific. In particular, the ship's bulbous bow is shaped to create an efficient counter bow wave at that speed.
Before 2007, that cruising speed was faster, maybe 27 knots. This is just like the 707 doing 525 knots in the article. It was faster but not efficient.
Enter Slow Steaming. They redesigned the hulls for a lower cruising speed, maybe 18 knots. They actually took ships into dry dock and re-nosed them. The result was better fuel economy. Fewer shippers (some still are) were willing to pay extra for the 27 knot speed. With Slow Steaming, the results are lower costs and significantly less pollution.
The economics of flying and shipping are largely the same in this case.
I've always wanted turboprop planes to become more common for long haul flights. Many people would gladly pay for premium economy with spacious seating in the entire cabin if the price was competitive even if the flight took an extra 2 hours. In fact a 10 hour flight can be more nice than a 7 hour flight in terms of consuming a whole cycle of the day.
I find the most onerous part of the flying experience to be the invasive searches at the airport followed by the corralling and grouping of people onto the plane penny pinching everything from a bottle of water to whether my bag goes in my lap or the overhead bin. The size of the seat area and length of the flight haven’t come to mind as travel complaints for a long time.
Yep. It's the feeling of being in constant high alert the whole way through the airport. I regularly take a 40 min flight and it leaves me exhausted because of this. My theory anyway!
> It's the feeling of being in constant high alert the whole way through the airport.
This is something you can change though by changing your mindset and outlook. Airports are what they are, they are highly predictable and unlikely to change drastically. On the other hand you can recognise when you are begining to feel on alert, acknowledge it and let go of the feeling. Let it wash over you like a wave.
You are presumably not a terrorist, nor a criminal. The worst thing which can happen is that there is some misunderstanding and you are delayed a bit. And even that is very unlikely. If you make peace with that maybe that will help with the feeling?
Not saying that you can go full meditating zen monk with “this one little weird trick”, but if you can make the experience more pleasant for yourself by just a little bit maybe that is worth the try?
Humans are notoriously suggestible by nature. If we are told to look for something, we are likely to convince ourselves that we have found it. Airport staff are actively looking for terrorists and criminals in a way that few other professionals do.
This means that even as a passenger with a completely clean record, every action you take is viewed through the lens of being potentially suspicious. The worst case scenario is not being delayed - it's being falsely accused.
Less importantly but hugely more likely is that you travel is disrupted. Your bags are misplaced or stolen. You can't take your water bottle so now you have to buy another for 10x the price. Your passport was accidentally torn so you now have to explain that to a skeptical border police officer. You don't speak the foreign language well enough to explain yourself. Your flight is cancelled and you must now rush to the only hotel to book a room before they sell out - or risk waiting in order to convince the airline to book it for you.
I don't disagree with you that some relaxation can go a long way to making such an experience more pleasant, but it's still true that there's more to go wrong in one international journey than in a whole month of most people's day-to-day lives.
You sound like you've never had an issue, and hey, congrats, but let's not pretend that there aren't plenty of horror stories and legitimate reasons to worry. And suppressing legitimate worry is a bad habit, particularly for folks who don't have white, male, and several other "default" identity markers in their profile.
I got plenty. My luggage got lost more than I can count. Missed connecting flights due to delays. Had a flight take of with four hour of delay to then ingest a bird in the engine on climbout so we had to land back imediately with a smoke filled cabin. Got selected for extra screening plenty of times, had been asked to go to the security office to answer extra questions about my luggage. Had my share of flight cancelations too. The most serious issue was perhaps when I got waylaid for a few weeks because an airline didn’t like the stamps on my imigration paperwork. According to my imigration lawyer the airline was in the wrong and misunderstanding the law, but what can you do? We got it sorted with the embassy as soon as we could and I was on my way.
Thing is that worrying would not have helped with any of these. Simply not the right answer.
In flight from Dubai to JFK, I had two 500ml used empty plastic bottles (not reusable, just basic transparent). Security made me throw 1, saying one 1 empty bottle allowed.
They have changed drastically in our lifetimes because of 9/11. You used to be able to simply go to whatever gate you want and then show your ticket and get on the airplane. This is all still evidenced by the design of airports such as charles de gaul or the one in berlin that just closed which both have annoying security addons that disrupt the design and flow of the original architecture. All of this security theater has simply added to the cost of running an airport. I doubt it makes any of us safer.
For me, that sense of being on high alert is less to do with airport security and more to do with feeling that nearly everyone and everything you interact with is some sort of low level scam. Overpriced food and drink, duty free, poor value upsells, the sea of manipulative advertising, plain old pickpockets, someone trying to sell you tickets for a chance to win a car, someone approaching you in a queue to do a “survey”…
It’s like browsing a Fandom site but in real life.
Which airports are these? Honest question. I've been flying frequently for 20+ years but the only complaint I can relate to is "overpriced food and drink". Definitely never had anyone sell me tickets or approach me to do a survey. So I'd really like to know which airports are these where these things are common?
I’m always wondering why there are American Express people in gardmoen in Oslo. Like where in Europe can you spend Amex I guess someplace but definitely not Oslo. My Amex was mostly useless there which is why I eventually got rid of it when I lived there.
> The worst thing which can happen is that there is some misunderstanding and you are delayed a bit
Even so, the little things alone can ruin the experience, before adding the big ones.
Maybe it's a busy day at the airport and you're stuck in a surprise 2h security screening or passport check queue. Maybe you're pulled over for a routine check, or 2, or 3. Maybe you have 1kg over weight for your hand luggage and they expect you to check it in for extra cost while others are allowed with oversize luggage. Maybe they keep changing the gate 2-3 times and you have to constantly be alert and ready to move around the airport. Maybe your flight is late 1h or 7h. Maybe you have to sit in a crowd with dozens or hundreds or people in the (off)boarding area. And so on. There are just so many more ways to be irritated by air travel.
And that's just before you are on the plane. Seat comfort-wise air travel is probably the worst option. I'm above well above average height so I have to pay extra for a decent (not great) experience, or be ready to do the check-in the first moment it's available, or if there are no sits with extra leg room I'll suffer for hours, or be hit over the knees with the different carts by every inattentive flight attendant if I try to spread towards the aisle, or sit behind someone who reclines their seat the whole way.
There's only so much will you can have to have all these things slide. It's like saying that whenever you get punched in the face you can lean into it to make the experience better. It will still very much suck, just marginally less. And I flew hundreds of times, I tried all the tricks. For average travelers there's a ceiling for their air travel experience and it's in the "hopefully tolerable" range. And I tolerate it because I have no choice but it's objectively a bad experience almost without exception.
Mindfulness and CBT sorts of things have always seemed like saying, "but have you tried just not having anxiety?"
I don't get it. Address the feeling, let it wash over you. It won't wash over. It sticks and causes the chemicals in my body to fuck me up completely. I can already tell you that I'm anxious.
While you may be aware that you're anxious, part of the point of things like mindfulness is that not everyone is aware of what their autonomic nervous system is doing to them, because it functions largely unconsciously. So it's helpful for many people in some circumstances to notice what their body is doing, and then pick up practices that engage the parasypathetic nervous system and calm down a fight or flight response in cases where it is silly and unhelpful--say when one is in a airport, rather than confronting a large carnivore in nature.
And, perhaps, you can appreciate that the sooner one notices what is happening subconsciously, the easier it might be for some people to "put out the fire" of their autonomic response. Even if getting good at this might take practice.
Maybe this awareness and these tools are not things of interest or value to you, but they don't seem to be things that are that are that hard to understand abstractly, even if you don't practice them.
Probably this is _the_ solution for many? GP seems to talk from experience with this, or similar situations.
Probably it could work for you too, if you haven't tried it yet. (Also, if you haven't tried it enough times. One experiment/measurement is not enough.)
This feeling of letting it "wash over you" is a verbal construction that is very helpful and apt for some, but others may describe it's different. Some people may start to think of it as "experiencing these feelings with more remove" or something. It's something that takes practice often done with guidance from a therapist or psychologist.
For many (this is not universally true), what is experienced as "anxiety" is like a preset program or routine that auto-executes across cognitive, behavioral, and emotional channels. CBT isn't a cure, but helps you interrupt the program during its cycle or before it starts by inserting new and different programs that don't auto-run without effort. As you sense your anxiety spiking ("awareness training" may be needed to get this early insight), you engage in behaviors or techniques to prevent the normal cycle of anxiety spiraling and calm the nervous system.
It is effective, but it is not a magic trick and takes practice.
There are visualization techniques that help with the washing over, but there's also the advice, which CBT therapists do give but randos on the internet always forget, that sometimes you're having anxiety (or another "negative emotion") for a reason, and it's a bad idea to ignore it in those cases.
If you want to get better at the "washing over" thing, maybe try visualizations like:
- As you breathe, imagine you're pulling over to the side of the road and watching your anxious thoughts drive past.
- As you breathe, imagine taking each anxious thought and placing it on a leaf on a stream and watching it float away
But in general, security theatre is kind of a legit reason to feel anxious - these folks have real power over you and can screw up your life - so it's ok to just feel it in those situations.
Yes. This is why I don't mind taking like an 8-10 hour train when I go to vienna from amsterdam even though the flight takes way less time. Because tbh, just getting to the train is mindless, you simply show up and find your seat. There isn't anything more to it.
You must be of size medium to small then because legroom is definitly an issue for me, especially for longer flights and I'm just 180cm. (just below average hight)
Or alternativly you can afford better seats than me.
I am of the same height as you, and I managed a Ryan Air flight to Madrid a couple of weeks ago with enough legspace that I was able to put my bag under seat in front and pull it out without having to shift around noticeably.
On the other hand, I took an Iceland Express flight many years ago, and my knees were uncomfortably pressed against the seat in front.
For me, the size of the seat area is probably the biggest nuisance on a long flight. I'm not super tall, but above average and depending on my body position, either my knees or shins are always lightly pressed against some hard plastic or metal from the seat in front of me. Not painful, just a constant discomfort, especially if the person in front moves a lot.
The biggest quality-of-life improvement for flights, for me, was paying up each way for an emergency exit seat. A secondary benefit that I hadn’t initially considered but turned out to be huge is being able to get in and out of my seat at any time without making the entire row get up or having to get up for others.
Airport bullshit/overhead, and transit times, are why I massively prefer overland or over water transport for shorter journeys (up to say 1000 miles) even when it takes a few hours longer.
I’d rather be happier, less stressed, and get there more slowly, than go through all the nonsense. I can always read, work, play a game, or just watch the world go by so the time isn’t wasted (unlike so much of the dead time in a noisy and crowded airport).
It also has the increasingly important benefit of being more environmentally friendly.
Depending on how the airport is arranged you can find yourself doing a lot of walking or standing around in not quite stationary queues. If you can manage to find somewhere to sit down where it isn't too noisy, it's fine, but often that's harder than you'd think, and you find your concentration is just continually broken by something or other that's going on or that you need to pay attention to.
Budget airlines and priority boarding are a particular bugbear of mine here. Most people pay for priority boarding just for the extra bag it allows you to take into the cabin. You end up with two thirds of the flight made up of people who have priority boarding. That's great, but there's only so much space in the overhead lockers, so you have everyone queuing up way before boarding starts to avoid having their cabin back checked into the hold at the gate.
The whole process is just... endlessly tedious and wearisome. I'd genuinely rather board a much slower form of transport, like a train, coach, or ferry (or even drive under some circumstances) than deal with being treated like cattle at an airport. The whole experience of airports, and getting to and from them, sucks.
Hence why I like going by train tbh. A long-distance train (well, long-distance for German standards. Probably grocery-distances in terms of the US standards) reaches the main company office in 5 hours or so, while a flight (including all of the stuff around it) takes about 3 hours.
Except with the train, I can just drop myself into the seat 10 minutes from home and go to sleep / work / do other things for those 5 hours without a care in the world.
Well, then you're talking Boston to NYC or NYC to Washington DC in the US basically. In which case I agree train is better. But there aren't a lot of options to do that.
How would a change in engine tech from jet to turboprop give more space to the passengers? Even if they are more efficient, that just means the airline can save on fuel but cram just as many paying passengers into the fuselage.
I also don't think "Many people would gladly pay for..." has been proven in the marketplace. If anything, the success of Ryanair, Easyjet and co has resoundingly proven that people will gladly suffer less spacious seating if it means paying less.
> I also don't think "Many people would gladly pay for..." has been proven in the marketplace. If anything, the success of Ryanair, Easyjet and co has resoundingly proven that people will gladly suffer less spacious seating if it means paying less.
Given the number of 7 hour flights I could find, I really don't think that proves anything except maybe people will pay more.
> I've always wanted turboprop planes to become more common for long haul flights.
The math doesn't seem to make sense for it: there's a maximum speed that can be hit with turboprop (x), and if you can only carry so much fuel (y) as part of your useful payload (to maximize carrying revenue-generating cargo), then you can only go a certain distance. That distance turns out to be <1500 nmi.
The Breguet range equation is the first stop for roughly determining range. The three knobs are aerodynamic efficiency, structural efficiency, and fuel consumption.
Broadly speaking, fuel consumption has an outsized influence on range as the other two terms are usually fixed at a maximum value by state of the art.
I'm not sure turboprops would be efficient for a long-haul flight. They cruise at lower altitudes, which makes sense for short-haul (no point climbing to FL410 if you're going to immediately begin descent for arrival), but for a longer distance I think that would hurt efficiency.
I think the common thread in airline pricing for the past decade has been that consumers want to pay the absolute least they can for every flight, disregarding almost everything else about the flight/plane.
I don't think that's a fair assessment when pretty much all upgrades are overpriced for what you get over the base service. And the markup is even more obscene once you discount bundled upgrades that you don't need. There isn't really an option to e.g. pay 10% more for 10% more seat pitch - and really the price increase should be less than 1:1 that if you keep the baggage allowance and food / other services the same.
There are things like Economy Plus on United. But, yes, in general Economy is priced for the bulk of people who want the absolute lowest fare--and once you have a class of seating that isn't the absolute lowest fare, there are a lot fewer constraints to how high it can be set.
while the cabin may be able to be more spacious (like dirigibles and blimps) the flight my not be more comfortable because a turboprop's ceiling has you flying well within the troposphere where the majority of weather occurs. that may also put wear and tear on the airframe, incurring costs additional to the extended crew hours.
Did the crackdown on cheap sulphurous bunker oil have no effect on it? Or was there no real crackdown and it was just media hype? (This is a genuine question).
The crackdown was so successful that some scientists attribute the even-warmer-than-expected weather we have had in the last few years to additional warming due to the lack of light-reflecting sulphur in the atmosphere (https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-low-sulphur-shippin...). Oops...
Not sure if that's sarcasm, given the existence (or, not) of practical fusion technology.
We do of course know how to power large ships with nuclear fission. The US Navy has been doing so - for generations(!).
Only issue with that is the US military is a "money is no object" scenario. Price container shipping at the unit cost of hauling it on a naval nuclear reactor, and we'd be looking at degrowth anyway. It's proven, practical technology, but very very expensive.
(Other countries with nuclear deterrents run their sub fleets on fission, but even those with nuclear subs have found it too costly for their surface fleet).
Microsoft expects to get fusion power from Helion in 3 years, so (if we are very, maybe unrealistically, optimistic) the wait won't be that long.
Actually, seeing recent developments, I'm afraid the only remotely realistic chance left to limit global warming is for fusion to become widely available and dirt cheap pretty damn soon! Renewables, you say? Nah, those windmills are disgusting and made in China anyway, so we're better off burning good clean American coal and oil (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/03/trump-war-on...).
We can't even close the hole in the ozone layer. We were all patting each other on the back for a job well done (which it almost was), but then took our foot off the accelerator and now it's opening back up again.
Chlorofluorocarbons stay 50-150 years in the atmosphere, once they are there it takes a while for things to go back to normal.
Hydrochlorofluorocarbons are also now banned pretty much everywhere, replaced with hydrofluorocarbons and hydrofluoroolefins which both have an ozone depletion potential of 0 (zero).
Note that if you did want to directly compensate for the decrease in sulfur (exclding reductions in emissions), I think you could just, like, spray water in the air?
Bunker oil is an orthogonal issue. Generally, it's restricted to offshore use. For example, ships have to switch to low sulphur 60 miles outside of San Francisco Bay.
As for the IMO 2020 restrictions, I've read that they have significantly lowered pollution but that would be in addition to Slow Steaming.
Both industries optimized for efficiency once fuel costs and environmental concerns became bigger factors. The difference is that in shipping, slow steaming is more flexible
It's still kind of surprising that the optimal design / speed for fuel efficiency has plateaued though, given how much more powerful the modelling tools are now. The FAA certification overhead presumably has something to do with this.
I was very struck recently looking at the Wikipedia pages for the KC-135 Stratotanker (first flight 1956) and its ongoing replacement the KC-46 Pegasus (first flight 2015). Just from the pictures of the two planes, I'd have no idea that one was more modern than the other.
I use it daily. I live in Silicon Valley, but house is in the shadow of a hill, and we get zero reception. If I’m too far from the WiFi router, I’m off grid. Since last year I’ve been able to send and receive iMessage texts when out in the backyard or walking around the property.
In all seriousness, have you considered adding an outdoor access point? They reach quite far as you usually have Line of Sight. Trying to get a centrally placed indoor AP to penetrate inner and outer walls is guaranteed to give reception issues.
Oh yea that's the Silicon Valley I remember from my time there. I lived in Mountain View and at&t 768kbit DSL was the only available internet (Comcast dropped connection so often I had to cancel). Many years ago but still fascinating how bad it was in what one would consider the centre of the internet. Good times...
That means absolutely nothing, unfortunately. I usually see that icon when I'm on the Subway, and I'd be deeply impressed if Globalstar could actually transmit through a few meters of water and a couple more of rock.
The only thing this icon does seem to respect is general geolocation (i.e. I haven't seen it in unsupported countries). You'll only know if you have satellite connectivity if you actually try using it.
The SOS icon means you're off your network, but you can still make emergency 911 calls. The phone will connect to whatever network is available (if any) to make the call. By law (in the U.S.), the other networks have to carry the call free of charge.
I have an iPhone X that's not signed up with any network, and isn't capable of satellite communications, but still displays the SOS icon because it can make 911 calls.
I'm talking about the SOS + satellite icons appearing together. In my experience, that only appears if there is no other network available, which is the case in most subway tunnels in NYC.
The really experienced of us will have made this mistake enough times to know to avoid it.
I didn’t get a smart phone until the 2010s. Stupid I know but it was seen as a badge of honour in some circles ‘bah I don’t even use a smart phone’ we’d say as the young crowd went about their lives never getting lost without a map and generally having an easier time of it since they didn’t have that mental block.
Ai is going to be similar no doubt. I’m already seeing ‘bah I don’t use ai coding assistants’ type of posts, wearing it as a badge of honour. ‘Ok you’re making things harder for yourself’ should be the reply but we’ll no doubt have people wearing it as a badge of honour for some time yet.
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