TGW-791
Chapter: 26 Alien Encounter
Characters: ambassador Palas, Capt Chardis, capt hrrn'tn, chief gabriall, chief hrrkn'sss, deputy shawn, donte, dragonflys, gorilla, sheriff ace, venus
Location: Catia's pride, jackson
The Gentle Wolf
A modern adventure webcomic
wow.? your entire population is smaller than Billings Montana.!! o.0
I said on the previous comment that a spacefaring civilization should be able to grow whatever it needs, in space habitats or whatever. If their entire population is that small, maybe they aren’t a spacefaring civilization but rather a civilization that bought a few ships with their valuable ore.
In the long run they probably will get their own covfeve farms. In fact, that’s a nice middle-term project for the Catians: short-term, deliver lots of covfeve syrup; middle-term, help the amphibians build O’Neill habitats with covfeve farms inside.
I get more good ideas from my readers…
Thank you!
My pleasure, truly. I enjoy reading your comic and your comment made my day.
Population growth time.
Do the math. One tote = 1 kiloliter or 1,000,000 cc (same as a ml milliliter). The soft drink uses 5 ml to every liter. 1,000,000ml divided by 5ml yields 200,000 liters of the drink. Dividing the 200,000 liters of cofeve drink by 89,000 amphibians yields ~ 2.25 liters for every amphibian. 2 totes would provide just under 5 liters ( 1.32 U.S. gallons) per inhabitant of the amphibian home world. In return the cats get precious metals needed in their industries. Sounds like a win-win situation to me. Both sides profiting from an exchange creates wealth. Win-lose deals create nothing; certainly not wealth.
Sidebar: The folks pushing so-called “green” energy are doing so at the cost of lives. Cobalt is needed for the lithium batteries used in just about everything these days. The primary source for cobalt is The Congo. The mines in that nation are worked by CHILDREN! Tthe mines in which those children are working do NOT meet OSHA standards. Children in the Congo are killed or horribly maimed to supply the needed cobalt. This is at least as bad as the so-called “blood diamonds”. The whole push for green energy is so much bravo sierra! And now we know that the batteries needed to store energy for use when there is little sunlight reaching a given point on the earth’s surface or the wind isn’t blowing in the wind turbine farms are built upon the suffering of children. But you won’t read that fact anywhere in the mainstream media.
Bill, I have been coming to believe that the Entire purpose of ‘green’ energy is to ‘reduce the surplus population.’ Children in the Congo are cheap, (currently) easily-replaceable slave labor. When they are done – as in, Dead – just go get more!
They’ll worry about who replaces those kids when they begin running out of them.
Or else, when their population is nothing more than old men, move in and take it for themselves.
After all, prison labor is cheap and you can always amend your laws to ensure a plentiful supply.
The thing is, I’m pretty sure there are much more efficient, cheap and environmentally friendly ways to extract the cobalt, but the problem is that this will put a lot of people out of work. If such an improved system could be phased into use, while retraining the workers to work with the new system, and retrain the ones that would be displaced, from current high risk jobs, to others that either supported or augmented this new system, I think that this could not only improve their lives, but also be able to produce more cobalt at lower costs.
Lithium batteries are optimal for portable applications, whether it’s a cell phone or an electric car, but I doubt they’re the best for large fixed backup. The old Edison nickel-iron battery looks good to me – it’s the only battery chemistry with an unlimited number of deep discharge/recharge cycles. It rots away in about 30 years whether or not it is being used, but other batteries can take at most 2,000 charge/discharge cycles (5.5 years of daily cycles), with the capacity continually decreasing over that lifespan. A 7 hour recharge time means you probably only get one cycle a day, but that’s a good match to solar panels.
The main materials are cheap and readily available: iron, nickel, and a mixture of sodium and aluminum hydroxide – the only hazardous material is the hydroxides, but spills are easily neutralized with no poisons left behind. These batteries are very heavy for the capacity, but they’ll only be moved twice in a 30 year lifetime – once to install them, and once to remove the worn-out batteries.
But with the necessary electronics for backup power, they’re still more expensive than a fossil-fueled backup generator. And you’ll only get back about half the power that used for charging (like ALL storage batteries.) You lose a little converting AC to DC for the charger and a little in the charge regulator. You lose about 1/3 in the battery itself, because the charge voltage has to be higher than the discharge voltage. Then there is a little loss in converting DC to AC. So the cost for battery-backed solar or wind power is double the cost of the intermittent input power, plus maintenance and depreciation for the battery system. And that’s double the cost from solar panels and wind turbines that are only competitive when they are subsidized. If the greenidiots manage to push this through, lots of people won’t be able to afford to run their electric cars, heating system, water heaters, and kitchen range… (And probably won’t ge getting enough power to run all that, anyhow – especially in California where they’re moving to ban non-electric cars and appliances.)
Great information. Please check your email, I’ve created
an account for you so that you can read the extra stuff.
PC,
I have several models resized and oriented for transmission to you. I completed a cargo module for use with the Locust II along with the Eye-In-The-Sky (EITS) surveillance module. I also finished a multi-purpose cargo/pax module for the stock Locust. I was figuring on waiting until you announce your new internet connection before converting everything to .obj format and emailing them to you. I made a version of the EITS with the door open so you can see the interior from outside. Might be a chore for your graphics card. Its the most complex modle I’ve ever made. It took 10 seconds for Anim8or to consolidate all the separate elements into a single “solid”. I’d never seen it take that long. The project file is 90 Mb. Lot of individual pieces there. Plus Animator project files can get big in a hurry. All the new modules are on wheels so they can be rolled under the Locust instead of rolling the locust over the module to mate them. I tried to make the modules more like real-world cargo modules for the Sikorski Skycrane/Ch-64. Anyhow, email me or leave me a not here when you’re ready for me to begin transmitting .obj files (with accompanying .mtl files).
If you can send them, I’ll download them whenever my internet lets me, thanks!
Can do. Will send you the files this morning.
PC. When you can, check your email. I sent you all the models I have ready. You have the Surveillance module for Locust I, a multi-purpose cargo/pax module (also for L-I) and a cargo module for the Locust II.
Enjoy
hehe ,, what most are NOT telling you,, 90% of your appliances are DC… i have in my home ,, a 12 volt refrigerator , piezo igniter heater (tho it is gas burner..) an AC,. for a few bucks more my computer power supply was replaced with a DC unit.. (runs much cooler..).. that big block that you plug into the wall for your phone,,. that is a AC to DC converter.!!
also the “New” electric houses use a ‘Tesla’ battery block (3 feet wide x 4 feet tall x 7 inches thick..)
Almost nothing actually runs on AC. About the only things around the home that run on AC are the motors in your ceiling or floor fans and in your vacuum cleaner. Electronics all run on DC. The problem is that it is impractical to TRANSMIT DC. There is absolutely NO efficient way to step down DC voltage. But transmitting power means you MUST have high voltages or you will lose too much power in the transmission lines. With AC all it takes is a transformer to efficiently step down from the very high voltages used to transmit power. Why do they use very high voltages to transmit power? To reduce losses in the power lines. With the exception of superconductors, all regular conductors offer some resistance to current flowing through it. The formula for power is simple Power (P) is equal to Current (I – don’t ask why it’s not “C”) times Voltage (E – again don’t ask). P=IE. It’s simple arithmetic. If you want to send a megawatt (1,000,000 wats) You could do it at 100 volts but you’d have to send it at TEM THOUSAND AMPHERES of current. Remember I told you the wires have an amount of resistance? Try to push 10,000 amps of current through those wires – they’d melt. Power loss in the lines is purely a function of current and line resistance. Actually it’s a function of the SQUARE of the current through the transmission line resistance. Cut the current in half and line losses drop by a factor of 4. Transmitted power is a linear function of voltage and current. For the same power transmitted doubling voltage drops line losses by a factor of 4. At a voltage of 10,000 volts, versus 100 volts that same megawatt of power only requires 100 amps reducing our line losses by a factor of 100 square or 10,000! Of course 10,000 volts creates its own set of problems but that is another story. It is safe to assume that engineers are lazy louts who only do what they have to do. Figure that if the people who built (and build) electrical distribution systems use extreme high voltages they have a damned good reason for doing so.
well ,, right an wrong,, everything runs on AC.. but is converted to DC in the device.! that said.. i installed an inverter (AC to DC) in my house and converted (bought as DC) every thing in my house.. ceiling / box fans, vacuum, the works.. now even in 100+ degree summers here my electric bill is under $40 a month..
also three of my devices run on broadcast power (near)..
I agree with you that “green energy” isn’t a panacea, but IMHO you are taking your arguments too far. The main ingredient in a lithium ion battery cell is lithium, element number 3, and thus theoretically one of the most abundant elements in the universe. Various recipes for cells have included various amounts of “conflict minerals” but in general everyone is trying to reformulate to make the cells use as little exotic stuff as possible. Tesla in particular bought three companies with useful battery technologies, and they have invented new cells (called 4680 cells) that don’t use cobalt at all.
Also, people are researching entirely new technologies for large-scale storage of energy. The one I’m most interested in is the liquid metal battery. If you know how aluminum is refined, you know how much power that process uses; people are working on batteries that can take in massive amounts of electricity and then give back massive amounts of electricity. They are big and heavy, and need to be kept hot, so they are ideal for fixed installations near wind farms or solar farms or what-have-you. The US military is very interested in these as well. Google for “Ambri liquid metal” and you can read more.
I think most of the people reading this comic would love to have a house with a battery and solar cells, so that if the power company fails to provide power the house still has power on its own. Combine that with a capable electric vehicle and you could be energy-independent even if bad government decisions results in fuel becoming scarce and/or expensive. That is possible now for those who can afford it, and in just a few years should be affordable for anyone. This can only be a good thing.
But Germany stands as an example of how NOT to do green energy. They are shutting down perfectly good nuclear power plants without having anything to replace them with, and in the end they are burning more coal to cover. Any “green energy” plan that leads to burning more coal should be filed under “You’re Doing It Wrong”.
Something tells me there is a non-negligible chance that “King” T’Chaka is about to make a serious, probably fatal, mistake.
Less than 5% dry land is probably much less than 5% arable land. Still, 89,000 is a very small population to occupy it. (These people aren’t having any trouble with the ship’s artificial gravity or with the atmosphere, so their surface gravity probably isn’t far off Earth’s or Catia’s, and Iceland’s population alone is nearly 4 times as much.) That’s besides the fact that ‘dry land’ may not include coral reefs and swamps and other places an amphibious species might be able to inhabit. So, their population is probably held back by this and possibly other health issues.
Also, I would venture a guess that there is one or more sizeable asteroid belts in this system to be mined and none in Catia’s, else their interest would more likely be in manufactured goods, food that would be exotic on Catia, or other things than in raw materials like minerals or rare earths. And yes, I remember that Catia is metal poor compared to Earth.
As amphibians, their communities are probably on the coast. Their population might be good sized, considering their circumstances.
It just occurred to me that with such a small population, they would either have had to be Masters of all forms of production in order to have their own spaceships, or they are a lone colony, or Other aliens discovered them first, and they went UP from that point by way of trade to get what they needed. I sort of think that such contact wasn’t always friendly, which might explain why they prefer outsiders Go Away.
HR, why would I want to spend all the money to put in solar cells for an event which happens so seldom? We lose power VERY infrequently around here and seldom for more than a few minutes at a time. We did lose power in that cold snap back in February but it was less than 18 hours. The long axis of my house is oriented north to south so I have very little south-facing roof on which to mount the things which means the available power I would derive is simply not worth the investment.
Photovoltaics are hideously inefficient. The figures I have been able to find suggest a working efficiency for most solar cells of around 20%. Add in my almost total lack of southern exposure (needed to allow decent insolation throughout the day) and the things simply would not help.
But lets look at other so-called “green” energy sources. Take alcohol. You could not DESIGN a WORSE motor fuel if you tried. Alcohol is corrosive.. It absorbs water out of the air. (It is so good at doing so that you can never get any alcohol at greater than ~98% pure) Plus it has absolutely ZERO lubricating effect unlike petroleum based fuels. But when you look at alcohol from the standpoint of energy used to produce vs energy available in the product alcohol REALLY looks bad. According to a study by a scientist at Cornell, (read it here: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2001/08/ethanol-corn-faulted-energy-waster-scientist-says ) “Adding up the energy costs of corn production and its conversion to ethanol, 131,000 BTUs are needed to make 1 gallon of ethanol. One gallon of ethanol has an energy value of only 77,000 BTU.” The bottom line is “about 70 percent more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that actually is in ethanol. Every time you make 1 gallon of ethanol, there is a net energy loss of 54,000 BTU.”. I ask you. In what bizarro universe does that even BEGIN to make sense??!
Look, HR, if you are the fan of Mr Anson you would appear to then you are aware of his famous word “TANSTAAFL”. Actually, tanstaafl is just the first law of thermodynamics expressed in the vernacular. From where I sit all the “green energy” schemes look suspiciously like violations of the principle of tanstaafl. They all look to me like somebody wanting to tear down the fence before they know why it was built in the first place!
While I agree with the vast majority of what you say…..
The long axis of our house is oriented N-N-W TO S-S-E. In the summer months the sun in our region sets a bit north of north-west. The entire back roof of our house sees 11 hours of sunlight. Having said that, we long ago rejected the idea of solar.
Consider yourself lucky. Around here streets tend to run either N-S or E-W. My street runs E-W so the long axis of my house is N-S. You can look down on my little cottage on Google Earth (or maps satellite view) at Lat/Long 29 22 50.44N 98 22 09.73W. If you look I have damned near NO usable southern exposure. I actually had a salespuke for a solar panel firm come look at it and even he had to agree that the way my roof is made would not make for an efficient solar panel installation. If you look in the surrounding neighborhoods you will find a couple of homes with solar panels but not many. They simply do not pay for themselves – even with government subsidies.
first : alcohol is neither acidic nor basic when dissolved in water,.! alcohol is used as a ” Fuel Dryer “.. the moonshine (everclear) i make is 95% alcohol , 40% (by volume) water is added to make it drinkable.
then,, the modern motor (after 1970) is designed NOT to be used on non petroleum products,. IE: Ethanol.. (because that takes away from the bottom line prices..). my 1965 buick lesabre ran fine for 5 years ( 1980 – 1985 ) on moonshine.. (i sold it when i went in the military..)
also it takes 116,090 BTUs to make one gallon of gasoline.. an a value of 132,000 BTU.
https://nhcleancities.org/2017/04/can-compare-energy-content-alternative-fuels-gasoline-diesel/#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20conventional%20gasoline%20has,of%2084%2C250%20Btus%20per%20gallon.
Mr. Mullins, we are both guests here, in a space meant for discussing the comic. So I will keep my remarks brief.
The most useful energy-related metric is “Energy Returned On Energy Invested”, EROEI (or just EROI). If your alcohol math is correct, the EROEI for alcohol would be less than 1. Disastrous! Another one to file under “You’re Doing It Wrong.”
On an EROEI basis, nuclear power is about the best you can do; it offers a huge return. I’m in favor of building new, safe nuclear power plants, both on Earth and as we spread throughout space.
Solar panels don’t have the kind of EROEI that a nuclear power plant has, but they do in fact have a EROEI much greater than 1. In short, they pay for themselves and then make a profit. So if any person wants to put solar cells on his home, perhaps with a battery to back it up, that is IMHO a rational decision. And I personally regard it as axiomatically good to be as independent as possible… no man is an island, but it’s a virtue to be independent and resilient within reason. i hope you don’t disagree.
IMHO any “green” energy technology with a reasonable EROEI and not-too-bad side-effects can have a place in our energy portfolio. Why not? But I don’t believe in a free lunch, nor do I propose to tear down Chesterton’s Fence.
The artist has not complained of any discussion that interests him as far as I have seen. These comments are worthy additions, and even if some are seemingly off topic, many may generate future story lines, or just be interesting or useful. Good intellectual thinking at the very least. These topics and format and the situations are meant to stimulate thought, as I see it.
An entire movement in the world demands Chesterton’s Fence be removed, no matter what. That is a major force of thought and revolution in our nation today. Marx is a source. Critical Theory does it. Franklin School thought taught it. Post modernism does it. The concept of tearing or burning it all to the ground to build back a paradise is pervasive across many claimed solutions presented for quite a while. Actually seeing and reading intelligent factual discussion of these issues is a pleasure I do not find enough of.
The return by nuclear power is good. I expect it in space. The unfortunate problem is people do not fit all foreseeable risks into what they are doing. History has meaning. The Japanese and the US contractor ignored many things at Fukishima. One major concern ignored was the historical information contained in ancient Japanese on rocks on hills around Japan. These racks contained inscriptions stating “Safe above here.” They referred to the historical tsunamis. While building next to water is energy efficient, the aftermath of not securing for a foreseeable tsunami was not a good return on energy invested. The dilemma between what the tribe needs and what people will get away with continues. Understanding is a major value that you point out. Good comments.
In my experience, many or most liberals view the world through a lens of “how things ought to be” with very little worry about “what has worked in the past.” As an extreme example: Communism will bring about a paradise on Earth! Yes, it has brought misery and death every time it was tried, but those countries all did it wrong, and the new would-be Communists are certain they will be the ones to do it right!
I consider myself to be a libertarian with conservative tendencies. I’m what’s called a “minarchist”, who thinks that government should be small but we do need one. Another school of libertarianism is the “anarchocapitalists” who argue that we don’t need any government at all, because the free market will solve all problems up to and including national defense. People can just pay for police protection like they pay for a doctor! Insurance companies can offer “war insurance” and maintain ships, missiles, aircraft, etc. to defend the country! And I say: first, show me a country where this has been tried, and worked; I don’t want to be the first to try the experiment. (A small government has been tried and worked quite well.)
PC, looking at the Oil pipeline cyber attack 2 weeks ago, and now the meat industry attack, coupled with the BRILLIANT leadership of this country, your scenario of social collapse at the beginning of TGW seems to be prophetic.