|
| Your Money: Financially, Solar Power for the Home Is a Tough Sell |  |
| Even with federal and state credits, installing a home solar power system can mean waiting years for savings on energy bills. |
|
| Mars Global Surveyor Died from Single Bad Command | |
| wattsup writes "The LA Times reports that a single wrong command sent to the wrong computer address caused a cascade of events that led to the loss of the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft last November. The command was an orientation instruction for the spacecraft`s main communications antenna. The mistake caused a problem with the positioning of the solar power panels, which in turned caused one of the batteries to overheat, shutting down the solar power system and draining the batteries some 12 hours later. `The review panel found the management team followed existing procedures in dealing with the problem, but those procedures were inadequate to catch the errors that occurred. The review also said the spacecraft`s onboard fault-protection system failed to respond correctly to the errors. Instead of protecting the spacecraft, the programmed response made it worse.`"
|
|
|
|
|
| Harnessing High Altitude Wind Power | |
| jakosc writes "The Economist has an interesting article about increasing the efficiency of wind-powered generators by turning them into flying wind farms. These tethered generators would harness high speed jet stream winds above 15,000 ft and in theory could give outputs of 40MW per generator. (links to a pdf) The developer`s website has more details of some of the safety, technological and economic issues."
|
|
| Missouri’s Renewable Energy Mandates | |
| A new mandate is being proposed by senators from Missouri supporting the expanded use of biofuels, particularly ethanol and biodiesel. According to this article from Columbia Tribune, a bill from Senator Bill Stouffer, would apply a 5 percent biodiesel mandate to Missouri-sold diesel fuel beginning in April 2009 as long as its price [...] |
|
|
|
report some news for our community
RSS feed 
subscribe me
|
[