prai1SE

Not parent poster, but Swiss citizen having lived in London for past 2 years, my wife is a healthcare worker for the NHS.

There are def. signs that human suffering of substantial parts of the population has dramatically increased over the last years.

Here‘s what I can see:

- Substantial energy bill increases: For us at least 100% over last year. Media is full of stories of people not being able to heat their homes

- Dramatic inflation, with cost of food now approaching levels I know from Switzerland. For example, a regular weekly shop for 2 people used to be 100£, now it‘s typically 170£.

- Continous strikes of large parts of key sectors: Teachers, Uni staff, train/ tube drivers, nurses, doctors, public servants. They are mostly protesting the fact that pay has not kept up with inflation for the past decade.

- Huge increase in food banks: I think this is a clear proxy for human suffering. There are foodbanks in hospitals for staff.

- I specifically see the suffering of healthcare staff. Service levels are going down to scary/unsafe levels and most doctors I meet through my wife are talking about leaving for Australia or New Zealand or go to other industries (huge waste given that it takes a decade or more to train a doctor).

- Infuriatingly, the link to policy makers is broken. There is no plan or ideas in place from government to improve things. Given the poor quality of the media here, typically the ley workers themselves are blamed (tube drivers, healthcare staff, etc.).

- Obviously Brexit, which is a whole different post but reinforces the feeling over here that things are going in the wrong direction.

Don‘t get me wrong, if you are in software, finance, engineering etc. you can have a very good salary and will not feel the pressures I‘ve listed above (also if you‘re young and don‘t need healthcare services). The UK and London are still amazing places.

But for lots of people quality of life has gone down a lot.

I think there is value in having this proposal written and published.

Even if it does not get built anytime soon (say because today‘s society thinks this is a waste of money), having the idea discussed in public helps and might inform future decisions.

For example, we still reread proposals like the Dyson sphere, space elevators, a next-gen LHC, etc. . None of this is either technologically feasible today nor realistically fundable, but it shows the ambition and might spark discussions.

I‘m also a fan of nuclear but do you think as a global economy we can collectively invest into multiple huge industries at the same time which aim to solve the same issue (too-cheap-to-meter & renewable power, deployed asap to avoid runaway climate change)?

What I mean is that wind + PV are on a roll at the moment. This has turned into a huge and hungry global industry which has a lot of momentum (people wanting to work there, technical readiness, investors ready to supply capital, public acceptance, pretty decent public opinion on the industry). From personal experience, I used the live in Munich where one of the main industry fairs (Intersolar) takes place, and it‘s a huge and ever growing event.

So even though I like nuclear and agree that the currently running reactors should stay online as long as possible, I appreciate that getting the nuclear power industry to the same fitness level as the solar industry would take a long time (which we don‘t have) hence me preferring solar.

This is a zero-sum mindset, which I believe applies here.

Having been somewhat active in my uni days in „environmentalists“ orgs (eg Greenpeace), I think being blamed by everybody is part of the game as an activist. The reward is knowing that one has had an impact in pushing the needle a tiny bit.

And now it slowly emerges that the decades of activism have started to pay off now that we see more amd more stats about surging PV/Wind deployment and them providing already significant chunks of electricity needs in Europe (where I‘m from) and globally.

I like the headline, specifically aimed at aviation. This might definitely turn some heads. While this is still strong on the marketing with few details, it shows the intent to electrify air travel at some point, which is a good thing IMO. Also might put pressure on SAF, which themselves have a long way to go.

Also, this could be interesting already for existing small and/or short range airplanes like Pipistrel‘s training aircraft or Eviation‘s Alice. I don‘t know the energy density of their current batteries, but this could give them a boost very soon.

Is there any specific reason why the suit is not white/reflective? It looks like that would be thermally not ideal, and a departure from all previous designs.