And if not why are we even investing in this because those short hop flights frankly need to be eliminated for trains anyway.
Well, islands and other geographical features still exist in some places to provide geographical and geological barriers to train connections between certain city pairs.
If humans can hang glide I don't see why we couldn't use those aerodynamic principles to try to glide a car hooked up to glider wings. It's a real engineering challenge, but I feel like it would be possible to get some distance in a scenario where a car uses its wheels to go fast, drives off a cliff, deploys some kind of glider wings (or drive with the glider wings timed out to where the car gets to the cliff edge right at the point where the wings plus updraft provide enough lift) to get the vehicle to glide a substantial distance.
Seems horribly dangerous but not impossible.
With mirrors, the maximum power is whatever sunlight hits the area of the mirror. Which for these satellites is 324 square meters. With solar irradiance at 1361 W/m^2 , that's only 440 kW of energy, probably spread over a very large area, and not all of the spectrum useful for whatever you might want to use it for.
It's an unbelievably stupid idea, but that also swings the other way in that it would be highly ineffective for any nefarious purpose, and will probably run out of money before it scales up to where each annoying satellite really does damage to visibility in the nigh sky or anything like that.
Just think about it in terms of the number of people and number of days per year where they need to raise the indoor temperature by a certain amount, compared to the number of people and days needing to lower the temperature.
If you're looking at a place where it's 95°F during the day and 85°F at night, and you like to set the temperature to 75°F, you're only cooling it 10-20°F by time of day.
But if you're looking at a place where it's 35°F during the day and 15°F at night, and you want to heat things up to 65°F, you've gotta change the temperature by 30-50°F throughout the day.
Even when you're comparing absurdly hot weather to absurdly cold weather, you're still comparing something like 110°F to 0°F. You're still looking at a 70°F swing versus a 35°F swing towards comfort.
Throw in the fact that combustion of fuels (fossil fuels like heating oil or natural gas, or other fuels like wood in a fireplace) is usually only about 1/3 or 1/4 as energy efficient than the equivalent temperature change by heat pump, and you can see how much more energy intensive the typical indoor heating setup is compared to the typical indoor cooling setup.
Some of it is obscured by the fact that fossil fuels are much cheaper per unit energy than electricity from the grid, so that heating bills aren't as expensive in the same ratio, but in terms of actual energy used, it's a big difference.
Even in the U.S., we use a lot more energy heating homes than cooling homes. Around 43% of our total in-home energy usage is on heating, and about 8% is on cooling.
Heat waves don't cause nearly as big of a strain on our grid as winter storms, because AC doesn't consume as much energy as even our efficient heat pumps in the winter.
That's because a heat pump that can lower the temperature by 10°-15°C is really all you need in the hottest part of the summer, whereas in the winter raising the temperature 25°C isn't uncommon.
I was flabbergasted the first time I realized just how far north Europe is, compared to North America.
Paris is at 48° 51' N, significantly further north than Toronto (43° N), Montreal (45° N). London is at 51°N 30', which is further north than Vancouver (49° N), and just slightly further north than Calgary (51°N).
Even southern European cities like Ibiza (39° N) are at comparable latitudes to northern American cities like Philadelphia (40°N) or even New York (41°N).
If Europe starts seeing climate comparable to similar latitudes in North America, that would represent a huge change from the recorded history.
That's not true. There is plenty of profit to be made with selling stuff that helps reduce energy use, selling energy that uses less fossil fuel (or produces less CO2), undercutting competition with more efficient methods, etc.
The tech world talks a big game about disruption and making billions or even trillions from it. You don't think there are people who want to make trillions disrupting fossil energy companies?
that 20000-30000 premium over ICEs
What currency are you using for this comparison? Definitely not USD.
A Tesla Model 3 runs for about $40k. A Camry runs for about $35k. Or if we want to go down market a Nissan Leaf is about $30k and probably comparable to a $25k Sentra.
Similar trim levels of vehicles offered as both EV and gasoline powered show minimal difference. Compare the Ford F-150 Lariat in both the gasoline ($75k) and the EV versions ($79k). Or the new Lexus ES, where the EV ($49k) is actually cheaper than the hybrid ($51k).
And if you go into the used market, EVs are starting to hit that market in real numbers, too. Plenty of options for under $20,000, and a handful of options for under $10,000.
Cars are expensive. EVs generally are close to that already expensive price.
For the hallway picture, each blue line corresponds with what should be a parallel line, along edges of square tiles or the corner of the floor and the two walls.
For the dinosaur doll, each white dot connects a feature on the dinosaur to that feature's reflection.
For the shadows, each white dot connects a corner of the object to the corner of the shadow.
I think each of these lines is meticulously chosen.
Some military tanks are going hybrid, too, despite not really being able to move very far on the electric battery. It's still worth it for idling and running the on-board systems without actually running the fossil-fuel-burning engine, though, and is potentially a stepping stone towards greater improvements in the electric drivetrain for quieter and more energy efficient movement.