Link Nexus for March
some links... for March!
hypersonic (mach 5) passenger aircraft startup Hermeus raised $100 million to keep scaling (announcement thread). haven't heard much about this one. Boom seems farther along, though building a slower plane. Russian airspace is now closed to many foreign carriers & it adds hours to Europe-East Asia trips. must go faster. also, between Hermeus and his recent Helion fusion investment, Sam Altman is truly swinging for longshot huge-payoff bets, it's awesome to see
cool videos from Waymo, demonstrating large-scale virtual reconstruction of urban spaces. progress in autonomous vehicles continues
Aether raised some money. it makes synthetic diamonds using captured atmospheric carbon. neat
US fedgov blocks road for mining in remote Alaska. i really hate this. if the US is to grow clean energy while ensuring supply chain resilience we simply have to keep a strong domestic mining industry. this requires roads. Alaska is big, its wilderness will survive. Politico had a huge article about this project several months ago, which i commented on here
somewhat related, environmental activists are trying to block the creation of a seabed mining industry. i think exploding metal demand from clean energy will inevitably make seabed mining happen to some degree. opponents won't be able to generate the same amount & intensity of opposition that currently kills so much new rich-country on-land mining. out of sight, out of mind
profile of a new wave power startup, this one focused on harbors & shoreside structures like seawalls & docks, rather than open-ocean. still in the demonstration phase, no commercial contracts...
tundranaut started an energy newsletter, recommended. good initial post about California's rooftop solar ratesetting shitshow
Alex Gilbert podcast deep-dive into SMR nuclear regulation. there's a good bit about how unusual & dysfunctional it is for nuclear innovators to pay for their own safety regulation through NRC fees, vs it being publicly funded like the EPA. typically when you have industry-funded regulators you also have mature revenue-generating businesses that you can squeeze without strangulating. the FAA is funded by airlines and not the Boeing r&d division, for example
speaking of NRC, this new substack looks good
Erthos raised some money. this is a firm that builds utility-scale solar arrays by placing panels flat on the ground, without racking or trackers. lol. you hear more and more about 'agrivoltaics' that integrate agriculture & solar, & can provide benefits around crop production, ecology, land-use politics etc. Erthos is the precise opposite of this, presumably just obliterating any plants under the panels. but i'm totally supportive— there's a lot of land out there, ppl who scream about the ecology & land-use costs of solar are almost always operating in bad faith & don't care about this issue in other contexts. i also think Erthos is notable because it gives a glimpse of how significant cost reductions are still possible, in principle. there's a world in which you have truly dirt-cheap plastic solar panels that can be plopped down anywhere & plugged in easily
Alec Stapp on SpaceX as a government subsidy success story
Flock Safety, a crime surveillance startup. i know there has been some dispute over the effectiveness of competitor ShotSpotter's gunshot detection system. & my libertarian impulses are somewhat creeped out by this whole enterprise. but honestly crime is very bad and it's good to catch & punish criminals
Not Just Bikes continues its excellent series translating Strong Towns analysis into short youtube videos, with a look at how dense areas subsidize suburbs in terms of public infrastructure spending relative to tax revenue. if you're unfamiliar with the Strong Towns memeplex & watch this video & immediately start generating arguments for why it's flawed or incomplete, don't get too dismissive— this research has been heavily discussed in urbanism circles & is not the last word on the "suburbs vs traditional urbanism" debate. but this public finance perspective is really important to understand. infrastructure maintenance is expensive & underrated
reminder that the Jones Act is bad and should be eliminated. everyone is thinking more about national economic self-sufficiency lately, so it might actually be harder to scrap the Jones Act now despite it directly contributing to the current energy crisis. but hopefully not. there are ways to ensure US sea shipping robustness in key areas that aren't as costly as this protectionist policy
the Jones Act is a big deal in offshore wind, & has really slowed the emergence of that industry. Dominion is financing a big ship for the east coast, but the entire thing is just way costlier & slower vs a scenario where US companies use ships from Europe's more mature industry. ppl criticize wind power for being highly variable & uncertain (much more than solar), but offshore is more consistent & the more you combine different variable renewable profiles the easier & cheaper reliable grid management becomes
very good long Foreign Affairs piece on energy geopolitics. this was written in late-2021 but holds up despite Russia stuff. makes some essential points about how the energy transition will be messy & have counterintuitive effects on the economic & political power of certain states, especially oil producers. it will also have certain deglobalizing effects: less trade in energy, & the offsetting trade in clean energy inputs is less tightly-coupled to economies, compared to fossil fuels (e.g if China suddenly cuts off polysilicon, existing solar panels won't immediately stop working. this gives more time/slack for markets & industrial ecologies to adjust & makes China's control over solar qualitatively different compared to say, Saudi Arabia's influence in oil markets (not that it's not a problem though!))
expansive Austin Vernon post on natural gas economics & related things
Vice article about USPS not doing the economically rational thing and switching most of its truck fleet to EVs, because it's too expensive up front or something. their existing trucks are old & terrible; EVs are perfect for this application & companies like Amazon are trying to switch over asap (though running into supply constraints). Congress also passed a bipartisan USPS reform bill that among other things mandated mail delivery six days a week, which seems absolutely insane to me
we should simply sell off USPS and let them sort this stuff out as a private entity. we have internet now, we have a robust private market for package delivery— what's really the point of having govt run a (low quality) mail service? if your concern is about providing communications & package delivery services to poor, old & very rural/remote people, there are much better ways to do that, such as directly giving people money. if your concern is about USPS providing good jobs to people... well i just fundamentally disagree about the purpose of government. there's no market failure here any more, mail delivery is not a public good
a Texas utility is going to try out Quidnet's pumped hydro energy storage tech, compressing water down into rock. supposedly pretty cheap, but they all say that. it does seem cool, though. 1MW, 10 hours
update on airborne wind energy. don't hold your breath, but it could succeed in some niche & off-grid contexts
some Breakthrough Institute folks did a good retrospective on that thing where Sri Lanka totally fucked up its agriculture sector with a misguided push to go 100% organic. i also enjoyed these graphs from @WesternScramasa on twitter, about the incredible productivity of US ag. industrial agriculture has many problems & downsides, but at the end of the day high labor productivity is very very good
books
Drift into Failure: From Hunting Broken Components to Understanding Complex Systems by Sidney Dekker. applies complex systems theory to safety & risk management. the main point is that lots of theories & approaches — even those purporting to be 'systems theories' like the swiss-cheese model, normal accidents & high-reliability organizations — are still hopelessly wedded to an individual-broken-component 'linear' mindset. the complexity of technology & society has outpaced our ability to understand & manage our safety-critical systems. thinking in terms of complex adaptive systems can help us get better (and grok how hopeless the task is). i enjoyed this book, the topic is always fascinating. that said, it was very repetitive. also quite pessimistic & pretty abstract. there were lots of great case studies about airplane crashes etc, but the actual argument is pretty light on concrete organizational advice. there are some suggested principles at the end, but mostly the book just critiques existing safety theories, sometimes unfairly, without showing any irl examples where 'drift' theory performs better. overall i found it to be interesting, but too harsh on existing frameworks
The Lord of the Rings trilogy by JRR Tolkien (audiobooks, read by Andy Serkis, I, II, III). as i mentioned last month wrt The Hobbit, the audiobook definitely adds something to this series. Serkis' narration is excellent, and it's fun to observe the ways in which he follows & diverges from the movies in terms of style, character accents etc. In fact it's been so long since I'd read these books & the movies loom so large in my mind that merely experiencing the story in its original formulation (with characters like Tom Bombadil, excluded parts like the scouring of the shire etc) was rewarding & surprising. it certainly holds up