Re: Drudge: Spy satellites watch Americans from space
- From: meiza<meiza@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 15:48:52 +0300 (EEST)
In sci.space.history Peter Stickney <p-stickney@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Rand Simberg wrote:
It's more like they have a tiny little country, and a relatively static
population.
In Englandland, it takes about 2 hours at most to drive from East Coast to
West Coast, and 10-12 hours to cover the distance N->S. (Including
Scotland)
With a higher level of built-up areas, and a much more urban population,
combined with the very short stage lengths, Rail travel is more or less
economically viable,
(It's one of the reasons that the Brits were never, ever able to build a
world-beating airliner, or a long-range fighter.)
Since the same situation pertains on the Continent, with the exception of
the Former Soviet Union, (Which is much too big) you're dealing with an
entirely different population and transportation model.
Driving in Europe is a luxury for the Leisure Class to enjoy, not the
necessity it is here.
There are some sparsely populated countries in Europe too, here in
the north we have Finland and Sweden. Rail traffic and buses work
here in the cities quite fine, and people walk and bike too. Many people
don't even have a car, you don't need it.
But in the countryside everyone uses a car, except perhaps city people
when going to the countryside by train. Trains are still the most
comfortable way to travel invented by man in my opinion. Nowadays they
even have double-decker carriages with gas suspension and air
conditioning.
Some of those transport solutions reduce the amount of
used oil somewhat, since most of the people live in the cities. The
cold winters then increase it correspondingly, as do trips to the
Canary islands or summer cottages. Combined heat & electricity production
ups the efficiency hugely as well as double or nowadays triple glazed
windows, something which I note some other countries waste a lot of
energy on. You save some in construction, you pay a lot in energy.
Gasoline costs 1.3 euros per liter nowadays.
Electricity is kept cheap here though, the industry uses it. One could
argue that exporting paper is indirectly exporting electricity.
It's much more expensive in Germany for example.
There's a trend with those cheap airlines nowadays though, flying
all over Europe. It's strange that kerosene isn't part of emissions
trading or isn't taxed. Also, people might fly from Helsinki to
Lapland since the train trip takes so long and the price is almost equal.
I do agree with you about European economic performance. My key index is
Battery sales. (Used to be in the Battery Business, and people with spare
dosh buy things that tend to have batteries in them. European market
growth in that area has underperformed projections by about 30-50% since
the mid 1990s. China, on the other hand... (Of course, it's easy to spot
up 10% growth, when it's 10% of a fairly small number)
Everything has a rechargable nowadays, throwaway batteries are in the
past. Or did you mean specifically those?
.
- Prev by Date: Re: Drudge: Spy satellites watch Americans from space
- Next by Date: Re: GAO: NASA's Deep Space Network: Current Management Structure Is Not Conducive to Effectively Matching Resources with Future Requirements.
- Previous by thread: Re: Drudge: Spy satellites watch Americans from space
- Next by thread: Two more articles about the CLV and CaLV evolution away from "shuttle derived"
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
