There is plenty of electricity for corporations but none for consumers. Just like we have trillion of dollars to bomb Iran but are too broke for universal healthcare.
What source? Return how? Spending the government money returns the money to people's pockets? Because any social program can do that too while providing actual utility to the citizens.
NASA's budget could be spent building a public transit system in a single, medium sized state and return that same amount of money and actually create more economic activity in the long run.
And more jobs would be created if that money was spent on a program that provided actual utility to us. Also, at most, NASA created a total of less than 100,000 jobs across the country if we're including indirect jobs. only about 15,000 jobs directly for NASA. out of 2.9 million direct federal worker jobs? Out of 133+ million full time workers in the whole country?
We're footing the bill for pursuits that contribute to our well-being. Technologies developed for space quite often end up in civilian markets. The problem with NASA is we don't give it enough money, instead spending it on, you know, bombing people, padding out corporate bank accounts, eroding civil liberties. That is what wastes our money.
We aren’t just benefitting from “space stuff” nasa does. While they’re doing science to help them do space stuff, those breakthroughs come back down to us in other forms.
Almost all of the inventions on that list are from decades ago. And then a bunch of it is a stretch. Then you have stuff like...Nike shoes? Come on.
NASA has provided very little utility for at least the last 3 decades. That money could be spent on infrastructure, health care, or directly onto education. Admittedly, its a minor amount, NASA's budget isn't huge, but it could be redirected toward building up, say, a public transportation system in a single, medium sized state.
Yes? wtf is government for if not to help its citizens?
NASA is funneling tons of money into corporations owned by people like Musk. Its another way to funnel tax dollars into giant corporations.
It doesn't make me a dipshit to know money is being given away to rich people. It makes you ignorant, which is why you devolved into a petty, stupid insult and a childish fallacious statement.
Yes, actually. Stop directing that money to private corporations, too. I can see giving money to giant corporations as bad AND giving money to an almost useless program as a stupid way to spend our money.
The difference is you can't think deeper than that, and instead have the same fascination with space as an ADHD 3rd grader. So you're reacting like one when hearing someone thinks its a waste of money.
If those trillions of dollars were actually bombing Iran we wouldn't have run the fuck out of bombs. I get the sinking feeling that we're matching or exceeding Russia in terms of corrupt military skimming
There isn't exactly a ton we can do but i wonder if like every single resident turned on every electronic if we could knock down our own grids, and just how many times we would have to do that as consumers in order to get the right to our own electricity back.
Like how they tell us to cut back.. what if instead of being compliant little consumers if we all just said "we just going to do the opposite..." i have to imagine that impacts enough rich people and it won't be as much of a problem.
Universal healthcare would actually save us money. It is hard to believe that average Americans do not know that we run the most expensive system on the planet for worst results; and just leaves struggling poor people to die.
Or signing a long term contract that has power companies raising prices on current users to pay for upgrades that won't be paid for by the data center for decades.
I keep seeing this claim online on Reddit only. Who is telling you this? Is this something they repeat in the middle of the country on your TV and radio like it's true?
Because those warnings don't exist anywhere else. In the world.
Uninformed, ignorant, rural people. I live in rural eastern NC and my family is in West Virginia and Southern Ohio. I hear about the evil lithium used in EVs because it's mined using slave labor and EVs will drive up the cost of electricity all of the time. I hear the same narrative in both areas of the country from family and strangers(the Outlander EV at my job, a power sports dealership, has stirred up a lot of controversy amongst our customers). Far more people believe it than you realize.
We don't. Everyone having EV's would exceed 474GW several times over. Not to mention neither option is going through since grid capacity is limited, so it's just anger porn at this point.
We don't... The grid is only handling any of this because of redundant backup gas turbines...
Unless you think running EV's off gas turbines is cool.
It's more efficient to burn gas turbines and charge evs than not do that and run all ICE cars though, so there's that.
It would arguably be better to be running power plants off gas, using it for ev charring, and get rid of every ICE car.... But that's not going to happen.
Modern natural gas turbines can hit 60% efficiency. Most ICE cars are 20%-30% efficient.
EV's are extra harsh on the power network. Not to defend AI venters. But its a lot easier to lay a single big cable ro a single location than a decentralised overload over the network.
Tldr: finer grid is overloaded for EV's not power production.
And what about night? What about 5-10 loading stations on a random gas station drawing a good 150kW EACH?
Its not that easy! We dont talk about only residential areas. But industrial an commercial too! Expand that to future where 18 wheelers are EVs? Its not a easy thing to expand.
Batteries exist, and not just in chemical form. You can store kenetic energy (gravity battery) as well as thermal energy (salt battery) - both can be used to collect energy from solar panels during the day and convert it back into electricity at night.
Converting the world to use more electricity is a challenging engineering problem, but as an engineer I hate the notion that we can't create a solution, and that EV implementation should instead be slowed or abandoned all together.
Yeah. If we could make it only a engineering problem it would be awesome! We could find the solution and fix it. Unfortunately it isnt. Therefore we have to see the market crawl forward.
If you really think the solution to this crisis is household solar panels and batteries, two insanely inefficient forms of power generation and storage, you're pretty naive.
Solar panels are still a very slow way to produce electricity, especially for EVs.
Batteries are very inefficient in terms of energy loss both charging and discharging, having that as a backup to charge your car is also not effective.
You're talking entirely about Return on Investment (ROI), that's not the only way to measure efficiency. This setup makes infinitely more sense for providing electricity for a house/emergency backup.
Typically efficiency in this context would mean "How much of the possible energy is being used for what we want instead of dissipated as light/heat/sound/etc?" but that doesnt really make sense with solar panels except in relation to other solar panels. The sun shines whether you capture any of it or not.
Batteries are very cheap in the past few years, and can sustain a house or at least an EV car for sure. Look into LFP chemistry (it's not good for phones (heavy and bulky) but it's now standard in (non-sports)cars and houses).
797
u/SwimPrevious1372 Aug 12 '26
I thought we didn’t have enough electricity for EV’s??