Re:Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II
by 3pt14159 on Friday July 15, 2022 @11:33AM
(#32109183)
Imagine all of those minds that went into oil extraction and where else they could have been better spent over the years. I know turbines really leveraged computer models to achieve such stunning efficiency, but in all honesty I don't think it would have taken much past the 70s for us to have achieved nuclear / renewables at similar energy output as oil / gas at the same timeframe if we didn't have the shortcut available for so long.
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Re:Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II
by marcosdumay on Friday July 15, 2022 @01:02PM
(#32110281)
A lot of very smart people went into nuclear up to the 80's. It didn't make much of a difference.
People severely underestimate the impact computers have on our society and the dynamism of the current day R&D. Even here on HN.
Re:Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II
by Gravityloss on Friday July 15, 2022 @12:01PM
(#32109486)
Oil extraction engineering has a pretty phenomenal return on investment. If oil sells at 100 dollars per barrel, that's 600 dollars per cubic meter. If you produce a cubic meter per second (1/200th of world production), that's 50 million dollars per day.
But certainly, nuclear or renewables could have been developed more and earlier.