cynar

It’s worth mentioning they also had a battle bridge, that was buried away inside the ship. I accept them not using it much as a conceit to television (and set costs).

Given that enterprise was foremost a ship of exploration and diplomacy, and how many aliens ended up visiting the bridge. Having a “public” bridge and a battle bridge would make sense.

In the UK it’s apparently around 4-5x better in summer. That’s a bit situation dependent. However, even at 10x, solar still competes well with wind. A useful turbine is still over 10x the cost of an equivalent winter output of solar panels. The only advantage they have is space efficiency. However, if space is that much of a premium, then it’s likely messing up low altitude wind as well.

It’s also worth noting that solar panels are effectively a rock that makes electricity. Wind turbines have moving parts. They can ice up, and have to shut down in winter storms.

I would love wind to be a viable home companion to home solar, but the maths just doesn’t add up. It’s amazing at grid scale, but crap at home scale.

It would be closer to 4.8kWh/day. That is assuming a strong steady wind. Real world conditions would take a significant cut. Cut windspeed in half with clutter (trees, buildings etc) and you’re down to 0.6kWh/day.

Basically there is almost nowhere that wind wins over solar. At least at consumer scale.

The article claims 200W average. The 1kW is to deal with gusts.

That’s also assuming perfect mounting conditions.

Sadly, wind power scales up MASSIVELY with blade size and height. The inverse makes it mostly non-viable for most homes.

They need consistent, strong winds to function well. Power output scales with a cube of the windspeed (2x wind speed = 8x output) and the square of the blade length (2x length = 4x output) This means they need to be considerably above everything that slows the wind down. Once you’re 50m+ above the tallest trees, you might as well just scale up the blades and go grid scale, you’ve done the hard bit.

Oh, and from the article, it’s 200W average, in perfect conditions. Conditions that almost no one can meet.

Solder joints are use case dependent. If done badly they can become a weak point that can fail. Either from heat, or from mechanical stress.

Ideally, you want a crimp connector, or a proper terminal. However, in this context, I would not have an issue with it. You can also see it’s been done well on this version.

As for the wire, I was referring to the incoming cable. Power strips should be designed for the worst case scenario. In the UK, that would be a sustained 13A 240VAC load. The wire cores look a little under spec for that load. There might be a fused plug upstream, that de-rates it to a safe load. We can’t tell from the photo.

I’ve seen a lot worse working safely.

A couple of concerns however.

• Those Chinese universal sockets work, but are quite dangerous. They lack a lot of the safety features of sockets like the BS1363 (UK type G socket). They also can fail in nasty ways, due to wear and tear. Loose contact being the nastiest.

• Those wires also look a bit thin. If the plug is properly fused on the other end, it should be fine. They don’t look rated for sustained large loads however. Even if they are fine initially, any damage e.g. a bit of furniture pinching them, could push them over the edge. A hotspot can easily become a melty cable, which is a fire risk.

*Internally, it looks safe, but not amazing. Solder joints aren’t the best option, but they aren’t subject to motion either, so should hold up fine. There’s a bit of a lack of isolation, but again, it’s fine so long as it’s not damaged internally.

In conclusion, I have a hard veto No on the Chinese universal sockets. Other than that it looks acceptable for light loads. So long as it’s not treated like it will withstand anything and keep working safely.

For reference, I’m UK based. Our plugs are some of the safest in the world, at the cost of being big and bulky.

That’s not a UK plug socket. It looks like one of those Chinese “anything plugs”. They are fine the first few times, but can get dangerous over time. They also lack a lot of the safety features the BS1363 specs require.

Modafinil (or one of its other variants) would likely be better and safer. It reduces your need for sleep significantly. Combined with some caffeine pills it would have a better effect for far less insanity.

It’s the difference between an ebike and a JATO rocket. Both will mostly do the same job. But one is a lot less spectacular, but likely a lot more useful.