Even in Japan it's cheaper to fly between Osaka and Tokyo than take the train. The train is a lot more convenient, though.
There are only a few corridors where high speed rail makes sense. Northeast US. Texas Central Railway is even trying to build a line between Houston and Dallas.
Building out everywhere though is a surefire way to rack up debt. Look at Japan, which is touted as a high-speed rail success story. Although the Osaka-Tokyo route is profitable (and very beneficial to their economy), the rest of their high-speed rail network essentially bankrupted JR Rail. JR Rail ended up being privatized, with most of the debt being funneled into a holding company owned by the government. JR East/Central are operating off of a high-speed network they essentially got for free.
Sitting on a train from Jilin to Beijing, I noted the below from Wikipedia:
> In another study conducted about Japan's High-speed rail service, they found a "4-hour wall" in high-speed rail's market share, which if the high speed rail journey time exceeded 4 hours, then people would likely choose planes over high-speed rail. For instance, from Tokyo to Osaka, a 2h22m-journey by Shinkansen, high-speed rail has an 85% market share whereas planes have 15%. From Tokyo to Hiroshima, a 3h44m-journey by Shinkansen, high-speed rail has a 67% market share whereas planes have 33%. The situation is the reverse on the Tokyo to Fukuoka route where high-speed rail takes 4h47m and rail only has 10% market share and planes 90%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail
The journey is a bit more than 4 hours. The above "4-hour wall" seemed to make a lot of sense. Passenger ridership end-to-end was not very high, but intermediate station pickup and putdown, consisting of quite large cities by European or North American standards, was high. Taking a plane would be slightly faster and sometimes a little cheaper, I prefer the train because of time in laptop/connectivity, good seat size/leg room/decline, ability to have a snooze.
Without the intermediate cities, the train would have be mainly empty. What the train brought/brings was a relief of bus/coach traffic, and a substantial increase in facilitating movement between 'smaller' (though not small) cities that mainly don't have airports.
I'd say it does - if you look at Amtraks long distance trains, the number of people traveling end to end, is usually small, its the intermediary stops that provide the bulk of the passengers.
Just to give you the price, a return fare Shinkansen ticket from Tokyo to Hakata (Fukuoka) costs almost exactly $400 (44660 JPY). I did a random search for air fares for next week and the lowest ones were $250 return (was looking at an English site, so it only gave me USD). The Shinkansen takes nearly 5 hours, while the flight takes 2. Even when you account for the crazy amount of time ahead you need to arrive for a flight, it will end up being both nearly half the price and half the amount of time. Especially for business travel, there is no way for the Shinkansen to compete. I've actually done that ride once and really enjoyed it, but you have to be a train fan :-)
Japanese airports are ridiculously efficient. I've gone through both Narita and Haneda a numerous times and it's never taken me more than 15 minutes to get through, even with an international flight. I can't quite remember how long they recommend for domestic flights, but I think it's 1 hour (i.e. 30 minutes before boarding).
Narita is right out for time to get there (like your scenario, it will take more than an hour to take a train there and make it to the check in desk). However, Haneda is only 19 minutes from Tokyo station by monorail. If you live in the more populated areas of Tokyo, it's probably not any more or less convenient than taking the Shinkansen.
Coincidentally, Fukuoka airport is only 3 km away from Hakata station (though you have to take a shuttle bus Edit: It's actually 2 stations away on the metro -- I didn't know this!). So in this example, it's really 6 of one half a dozen of the other. You end up in practically the same spot. I think this is one of the reasons why people fly to Fukuoka. In the other direction, I would probably fly to Sapporo if I needed to get there quickly, but would take the train if I was going anywhere in the Tohoku region (NE region of the main island). The main reason is that the Shinkansen stops at Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto and then you have to take a different train to Sapporo. When they finally have a line going all the way to Sapporo, I think it will be competitive because it takes an hour to get from Chitose airport to Sapporo station.
The fundamental problem with trains vs planes is that a 2 hour flight only requires 2 hours of wages compared to 5 hours of wages for the train. Owner driven cars obviously don't suffer from this problem so it can still be cheaper to take the car.
no - you dont factor in the sheer number of people that are travelling the routes on any given day, or extranalaties of the systems.. its a one-dimensional choice, by marketshare, in your example
Japan also has a privatized and almost fully-tolled highway network. A high-speed rail ticket for me to Fukuoka costs 9,000 yen; to drive a car instead the tolls alone cost 6,200 yen, add gas to that and the longer time it takes to drive, unless you're loading your family into the car the high cost of driving makes taking the train highly attractive. The US would never tolerate highway tolls like Japan has.
It’s not as expensive per mile as Japan, but US highways do often have tools, and if you’re on the East coast it can add up. Just crossing the GW bridge in New York costs about the equivalent of 1,400 yen. If you want to compare a similar distance something like the I-95 corridor from Massachusetts to North Carolina is a good choice. All told it would be in the range of about 3,500 yen in tolls depending on your route and stop-offs.
Remembering that Americans on average drive much larger cars that use more gas than Japanese people, and I’m not sure thst your point holds up.
The OP actually has to live pretty close to Fukuoka for those prices (probably you were thinking they lived in Tokyo). The distance they are talking about is less than 200 km (maybe 150 miles) -- so about 15% of the distance you are talking about. Tolls roads are very expensive in Japan. Trains are also surprisingly expensive, though very well run.
Taking on debt to finance a public good like high speed rail is perfectly reasonable. Privatization isn't a natural outcome of a public corporation running a deficit--it's the result of a political decision to disinvest in that project.
Agree. Government debt is a good thing - just ask fiscal conservative Ronald Reagan, who was the first president since World War II to increase the national debt relative to the GDP. Government is not a company, and judging it by the standards of a company is a mistake. (If anything, it is the dual of a company.)
Ronald Reagan lowered government revenues with a round of tax cuts and sharply raised government spending. The debt was entirely from increasing the military budget without having taxes to pay for it. I would not describe his presidency as fiscally conservative.
Even with parking for a couple days priced in, it's still considerably cheaper to rent a car and drive from DC to NYC than to take the train (and takes about the same amount of time). I much prefer train travel but unless it's heavily subsidized the way highway travel is, I don't think it will ever be competitive or widely popular.
Flying is quick, but the time at both ends kills it for shorter trips. I'd rather take the train. I love riding the rails in Europe. It's a very pleasant way to travel.
shinkansen stations are sometimes a bit put there, though not as bad as the airports. Chinese HSR stations are usually way out there, adding to lots of endpoint time, though still not as much as Chinese airports. Europe is pretty ideal, though I’ve had to transfer train stations in Paris before coming off a TGV. Not fun.
JNR ("JP Rail") is in debt because underperforming local lines and inability to increase fare. During privatisation, the Shinkansen is only leased to the newly formed companies as it's making money hand over fist. JR East/Central/West have since bought the line, though.
And flying is cheaper precisely because people like Shinkansen more, though it's not always cheaper.
Carbon pricing may change this cost-benefit ratio though - planes are grossly carbon-ineffecient. With a respectable carbon price, will electric HSR become economical?
Because valuation of a software company doesn't come from the products they offer, nor the current user base with credit cards on file. It comes from a perceived potential growth/platform/network effect so all of these companies have to pretend that they will someday be a panopticon that commands your entire life in order to keep that sweet VC money flowing in even if they just repackage s3 with a nice client.
Woah. I clicked the link and was logged in already. I'm sure I logged in on this computer (work) at some point, but I'm disappointed that session didn't expire. I can't remember the last time I logged into dropbox here, it feels like months!
Landscape pictures can serve as a reminder of what you were doing, a sort of diary. Sure, you could find professional photos, but they won't be as rooted in your memory.
By looking at an old photo you remember where you were, what you were doing, and _why_ you decided to take the photo.
In other words, while a pro may be able to capture the location better, they won't capture your memory of visiting it as well.
MOND does work a lot better than Lambda Cold Dark Matter (L-CDM)... but only for explaining the rotation of galaxies. It can explain this rotation almost perfectly given only the mass distribution: no tuning is required. Dark matter, on the other hand, has issues with dwarf galaxies and has no predictive power: you just fit the dark matter to the results you observe (Which is why you end up with some dwarf galaxies that are almost entirely composed of dark matter, and ones that almost have none. With MOND it just works).
Of course MOND can't really explain the third peak of the cosmic microwave background radiation, so it isn't perfect either. It is also phenomenological, with no underlying physical theory at the moment. Still, it's surprising that it does work at all.
I should also mention that the bullet cluster, which is touted as proving dark matter, causes issues for dark matter as well as MOND. The velocities involved in the collision are higher than can be explained by the current dark matter models. MOND kind of sucks at dealing with clusters, as well.
TL;DR
MOND is a lot better than LCDM at explaining galaxy dynamics, LCDM is a lot better than MOND at explaining the cosmic background radiation. Both aren't that great at dealing with clusters (but you can also make dark matter work with enough fiddling).
Although there are teething issues, for US allies the unit the F-35 is attractive due to a unit cost which is lower than any of its competitors (such as the Eurofighter Typhoon).
For domestic use, the F-35B STOVL jet used by the Marines is a dramatic improvement in range and capabilities over the Harrier.
The F-35A/C are less of an improvement, but I would by no means call them a failure. It's easy to criticize a program due to cost overruns and mismanagement, but that doesn't mean the end result is bad. At the very least it's a sunk cost now, so we'll just have to deal with it.
I don't even know how to respond to your comment without sounding flippant. 10 billion dollars for a questionable program would upset me, let alone 1.4 trillion. It's blindingly obvious that this is a result of graft.
No one has made a clear case that the US is in any sort of danger if we don't upgrade our planes.
Imagine if that 1.4 trillion went towards fighting global warming, cancer, or lack of health care. It's sick.
The United States has a role in the world. Leaving aside subjective thoughts on whether we should fill that role, or continue to fill that role, if we vacate that role then somebody will fill that role instead.
The most obvious and likely right now would be the PLA if the United States were to vacate that role tomorrow. Or more likely, it would go unfilled for almost a decade before the PLA takes it.
Personally speaking, I would rather the US continue to fill the role it currently has than see it vacated and filled by a group like the PLA, and in order to do that, the United States has to maintain technological and military superiority over its competition which means continuing to research, develop and procure new fighters, carriers, destroyers, submarines, and maintain the US nuclear arsenal. Or to put this another way, the world isn't standing still, so why would America?
It seems I mixed multiple issues together. I can't claim that I understand geopolitics enough to suggest that we should stop all military spending. I was mainly suggesting that for such a huge expenditure a clear case for it should be made to the public. The other issue I'm getting at is that there's no way the F35 should cost as much as it does. For instance if Musk for some reason was tasked with designing and building the next generation of aircraft I'm sure it could be done for at least an order of magnitude less than the F35. The money is mostly lining the pockets of sociopaths and massive intentionally inefficient bureaucracies.
If Musk wanted to bid on future US Military contracts I am sure he would be able to, but since he doesn't seem to be in the business of constructing fighters for the Air Force I think we can safely leave him out of this discussion.
The F-35 is a complex weapons and sensors platform, tasked, perhaps overtasked, for many different capabilities and mission-types. I think you can make a compelling argument that it may have been cheaper to divide those into separate proposals and take separate bids for more specialized fighters, but then you would have been stuck justifying each and every one of those to Congress rather than the F-35.
Not developing any sixth generation fighters when the competition is, was not an option though. I'm not happy, as a member of the public and US taxpayer with precisely how the F-35 turned out, nor am I happy that F-22 production was shut down by the Obama administration with the F-35 expected to fill its role instead.
Technological superiority does not guarantee military superiority. It is perfectly possible for a less advanced opponent to deliver more overall effect by using resources more carefully.
I don’t see any that as an argument against achieving and maintaining Technological superiority. If, hypothetically, you had to discard one in favor of the other, military superiority would win out in terms of priorities, but the US has and should maintain both.
This is really difficult to think about because the US is able and prepared to spend limitless amounts of money compared to other countries. You could argue that there is an opportunity cost to developing the F35. But has the US really limited expenditure in other areas as a result?
It seems to me that the US strategy depends on adversaries playing by the same rule book and trying to compete using similar technology. In that environment the US is absolutely going to have superiority in military capability and technology because they can spend such vast quantities of money.
The risk comes when an adversary throws out the rule book and looks for technology and tactics that nullify that advantage and are affordable. The US could be found lacking, but I don't suppose that is a fault with the F35 program exactly. And I guess that a lot of the individual technologies developed as part of the F35 program are useful in their own right.
Apologies for the later reply, it has been a busy couple of days.
Certainly there is an opportunity cost in any large-scale expenditure, but the technology developed for the F-35 will be useful beyond just the F-35.
The United States has maintained technological and military superiority over its competition precisely because it is willing to invest large sums of money into the Military-Industrial Complex. The Space Race was one expression of this, and the United States and global economy has been coasting off the technology and discipline developed precisely to safely land a man on the Moon and safely return that same man home.
Yes, there are risks to putting too much money into extremely large capital expenditures which can potentially be lost in war but that is 1. the nature of war and 2. the US Military generally looks to be effective in all theaters of war, whether their opponent is following the same the rule book or not. The Air Force has their missions, and the Army, Marines, Coast Guard and Navy have theirs.
At the scale of the Department of Defense's budget though, opportunity costs don't mean the same thing to them that they mean to you or I though. They are operating arm of the largest economy of the world and should be viewed through that lens.
As much as it sucks, military dominance matters a lot - it's likely better for the US to have the greatest conventional weapons than Russia/China/EU having them.
Given the ongoing split between US and EU it's no longer inconceivable that in 20-50 years trans-atlantic relationship deteriorates to the point of open warfare, sadly. Unfortunately, the brightest (or at least prudent) people aren't ruling either continent any longer.
I still find improbable that in 50 years there will be a single hegemonic “coalition” in Europe. So even if we will not be friends anymore US will have to deal with maybe 2-3 regional powers, not a single global one.
Your vision is unbelievable. The only way the us fights the eu is one or both sides are taken over by a complete dictatorship. The people on those countries would be diametrically opposed to this. Trump is not a dictator (regardless of his authoritarian preferences). Trump seems to be actively trying to knock the us out of cross country allegiances. I think whatever damage he causes, we'll be able to repair them over time.
Unit cost is always a difficult measure because any purchase also involves agreements on counter investments, how much of the plane you can license build yourself etc (with F-35: probably not much!).
There is also the much more important measure of total lifetime cost. Flight hours are expensive for the F-35 compared to many 4th gen fighters.
I find it difficult to see why a plane designed to work stealthily in contested airspace would be very attractive for the role European air forces like Denmark or Norway have.
The Harrier was also incredibly flawed when compared to normal fighters. It had a very poor safety record, was slow, and could not carry much fuel or weapons when taking off vertically. This was a consequence of the vertical take-off design which has never proven itself to be effective for jet aircraft. The only benefit could be that you don't need the expense of a full aircraft carrier. That might make sense for a relatively cheap aircraft, but the F35 is not cheap. And you are pushing up the price of other variants as a result of the need to have a jump jet version. All so that you can have a fighter jet land operate from an amphibious assault ship. Should that really influence the procurement of over 3000 aircraft?
It's worth mentioning that while electric turbopumps are a lot better that pressure-fed designs, for larger engines they aren't as effective as using pre-burners (due to the weight of the batteries).
The weight is an issue here too. It's something like 200kg of battery in the first stage. The second stage is designed to use its batteries one by one, and them drop them as they're expended.
One bit I remember from reading about rocket systems design is first stage performance is less critical than second and follow on stages. The cost of lower ISP/Mass ratio on the first stage is linear, you just make the it proportionately bigger. Where with higher stages the cost is exponential.
Which makes me wonder if electric pumps might make sense for larger rockets even though their performance is lower. You'd need a larger first stage, question then is how much bigger vs cost savings from a simpler design. I don't have an out of my keister answer for that though.
>The batteries had a low auto-ignition temperature of 150 degrees Celsius, which meant they were highly likely to burn up in the atmosphere before reaching Earth's surface, MfE said. The batteries contained no lead, acid, mercury, cadmium, or other toxic heavy metals.
I think this article misses the point of Georgism: that the land tax replaces all other taxes.
In other words, while land belongs to the government (people), individuals are entitled to the entire product of their labor (as well as returns on capital). Georgism is simultaneously extremely Communistic and Capitalistic.
Not having fast FP64 is a design decision. Space isn't free, and FP64 takes up a lot of space that could be used on delivering higher FP32 perf, which is more important for video games.
Except that's not how it played out. The Tesla GPU all the way through Maxwell was just a different binning of the GeForce GPU, usually clocked lower for passive cooling and improved stability (sure, K80 is an exception, but K80 is a strange and tragic evolutionary dead-end IMO).
Tesla P100 was the first real HW-level divergence with its 2x FP16 support. But because we still can't have nice things, GTX 1080 was the first GPU with fast INT8/INT16 instructions, followed by the mostly identical except much more expensive Tesla P40. So we ended up with the marchitecture nonsense that P100 was for training as P40 is for inference despite being mostly identical except as noted above.
I'll assume Volta unifies INT8/INT16/FP16? And I think it's OK if the Tesla card has higher tensor core performance, but if the tensor core on GeForce is slower than its native FP16 support, I can only conclude NVIDIA now hates its own developers and has decided to sniff its own exhaust pipe. Isn't having to refactor all existing warp-level code for thread-within-thread enough complication for one GPU generation?
Also, if consumer Volta ends up with craptastic FP16 support (ala 1/64 perf in GP102 vs GP100, slower than emulating it with FP16 loads and FP32 math), NVIDIA will create a genuine opening for AMD to be the other GPU provider in deep learning.
I don't have an answer for you. But, I'd rather spend tax dollars building railroads in SE Asia than blowing up the Middle East. #Iraq2Trillion #neverforget
Did you really think he was talking about the body count?(Have 2 trillion people even ever lived...?) He's clearly talking about the projected cost of that war.
Right now we're using the tools of taxation and legislation to transfer our country's wealth to 'elites' - mainly through taxation for 'defense' spending, patent law legislation, and finance.
Those choices are not obviously the ones that will have the most beneifical long term impact on our country's power.
There are only a few corridors where high speed rail makes sense. Northeast US. Texas Central Railway is even trying to build a line between Houston and Dallas.
Building out everywhere though is a surefire way to rack up debt. Look at Japan, which is touted as a high-speed rail success story. Although the Osaka-Tokyo route is profitable (and very beneficial to their economy), the rest of their high-speed rail network essentially bankrupted JR Rail. JR Rail ended up being privatized, with most of the debt being funneled into a holding company owned by the government. JR East/Central are operating off of a high-speed network they essentially got for free.