Well like many of the locations in the game HELIOS One's a real place, just unfortunately doesn't power any giant space lasers.

Reminds me of HELIOS One from Fallout: New Vegas!

As a person who has solar on their roof, our bills have shown a slight decline (and I live in a tropical location with no obscuring of the panels), but that doesn't offset the cost of production (both in labour and energy input which is mostly supplied by carbon based sources). I run a 6 KW/h array which is slightly overclocked as we are capped at 5 KW/h input to the grid (at 8c KW/h sell, 36c KW/h buy). I'm looking at a ROI in ~11-15 years

There are also many studies (and not just from people who are pro nuke or anti-climate change) showing that solar PV in general, and rooftop solar specifically, is small potatoes in terms of energy returns, even when considering possible future gains in panel efficiency and storage technology.

I am not bashing solar because I don't like it, I spent the money to get an array on the roof because I think we do need to do something, but I'm not kidding myself in to believing that we're saving the planet when the vast majority of solar PV going out these days is manufactured in countries that emit enormous amounts of carbon and pay people peanuts to do the work... When, as you say, solar is heavily subsidised or has rebates offered to drive take up.

Nuke is expensive, but it returns far more energy than is invested to build it. Hydro, similarly (although Cali etc shows why hydro might be a dead end in this changing world climate). We can invest an enormous amount of time in half measures, or we can do it right, at least until we crack large scale fusion power production.

If it worked as well as it's hyped to do, huzzah, happy days. But so far, the boom is mostly hyperbole. At the very least, f#ck off subsidies/rebates etc to households and instead build huge solar PV farms with helio tracking arrays which make a better return on energy invested and basically give far more bang for buck. Or sink it all in to wind and cut back on PV. It's a feel good technology with hidden baked in carbon costs that is lulling us in to a false sense of security.

While I am 100% on board with the "carbon bad, not carbon good, global warming = real, made by man and a real prick of a problem" message, the biggest fault made by people like Maher etc in prosecuting their case to the "sceptics" is reliance on bad information.

For example, the sums have been done on solar and wind, and generally speaking, wind is only borderline viable for supporting a society (and that's only if you don't add the cost of some form of buffering/storage). Solar, particularly home roof grade, is fucking awful, and essentially a waste of time compared to tracking mass production arrays. In terms of energy to build/install/maintain/remove, it barely pays for itself. Solar thermal is also more efficient (helios arrays etc), but the two best bang for buck technologies for producing massive amounts of power at a very low carbon cost are nuclear and hydro.

And they are two technologies that people seem to want to get rid of. Germany shuttered it's nuke capability after Fukushima (and added more coal capacity). Italy's solar market has fallen in a heap, France is almost carbon neutral only because it is predominately nuke powered. One of the original climate change warriors, Dr. James Hansen of Nasa, is fully supportive of nuclear power, and get's constantly lambasted by green types because they do not want nuclear power to play a part.

Refutation of solid science and willful ignorance is not solely the province of people who deny climate change, and it's no less deplorable.

>> ^mizila:

>> ^honkeytonk73:
The ability to send a robotic spaceship to collect scientific data billions of miles from Earth is insignificant, next to the magical powers of Jesus. Water to wine... see if Nasa can do that!

What do you mean, "see if Nasa can do that!" ?? First you have to show me Jesus doing that.


The ability to detect the helio-pause is insignificant, next to the power of invisible magical sky beings....... your lack of faith is disturbing .....

I know. They got the idea for Fallout 3 Helios One.

@GeeSussFreeK, sorry, but I'm gonna call bullshit on your accusation of "logical fallacy".

You incorrectly used all of the ones you mentioned, and in the process committed most of the ones you mentioned yourself.

A Straw Man argument is when you mischaracterize an opponent's position, and then attack it, just like you did when you said "Economies are not like biological growth."

A Red Herring is when you bring up an unrelated topic to try and get your debate opponent to follow it, like you did when you said "the study of human economies is ongoing and does not support either side absolutely."

An Appeal to Ridicule is when you simply insult the idea without making a counterargument, like when you said "there are other good reasons to disagree with the state of economies and politics of them, but you won't find them here."

Your entire comment seemed to be based on the Hasty Generalization that because the YouTube video lacked evidence and methodological rigor, that there was no evidence or methodological rigor behind the argument, even though they give a link to their 100+ page paper in the video.

The closest thing to a logical fallacy here would be that this is a Weak/False analogy, but for that to really stick the analogy would have to really be a bad one -- the economy does consume resources, and it's not at all crazy to think that there are limits posed on economic growth by the availability of finite resources. A False analogy would be something like "providing national health insurance for everyone would be just like the Holocaust."

BTW, stating a hypothesis that's wrong (e.g. The sun rises every morning because the god Helios pulls it into the sky in his chariot) is not logically fallacious in itself. If you want to disprove the hypothesis that economic growth is bound by the finite natural resources of our planet, knock yourself out. Just keep in mind that takes actual work, not the silly pretense that everything you disagree with inherently contains a logical fallacy.

I'm just starting to get into post rock too. Thanks for the introduction paul4dirt and the recommendation RedSky. I discovered Helios through a VBS program. You should check them out if you haven't already. I like the album Eingya.

Oh, and if you want to see the nuclear test site in this video, enter these coordinates into google earth: 37N 116W.

I can't wait to get back and resume exploration via my Covert Ops Helios, one of the best parts of the game for me recently. As well as trying out the now fully trained Ishtar.

Eve Online is really a fascinating game, I have tried a bunch of other MMOs but nothing grabbed me as much as Eve Online, the freedom, the complexity, sandbox nature and the setting all keep me going.

best bet...on the bow of the lodged boat.....till th spliiway closed...othwise, sure, trust the helio-copter pirates of the dark!!

*sigh*.

While it is true that the Gracie family made submission attacks famous by representing Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) in mixed martial arts (MMA), everything you just posted is - and I almost never say this - completely ignorant of the sport and martial arts as a whole.

Submissions were not brought into "the sport" - and by this, I assume you mean MMA - by the Gracies. The Gracies, as I wrote in my BJJ sift, took the judo/jujitsu taught to them by Mitsuyo Maeda and developed the newaza groundwork into a new system, focused on establishing positional improvement and dominance before the application of submissions. It was this conceptual change from the general judo mindset of throw-and-fall-or-scramble-to-position, rather than the submissions themselves. Judo, for the most part, has all the submission BJJ does, it just generally doesn't train them as much or as well. So really, the submissions were brought into the sport by judo, which was brought into creation by Kano through adaptation of the teachings of jiu-jitsu. If you want to argue about fighters using the submissions, sure Royce Gracie made use of them famously in UFC 1, but the first UFC tournament was set up to ensure no other submission grappling styles, including judo, was entered to make a clearer differentiation of style versus style, among other reasons. When such fighter picking was stopped, submission fighters from many styles sprung up in MMA competition.

If you're not talking about modern MMA, then consider the fact that pankration from Greece in 648 BC was the first Western MMA competition, and chokeholds and joint locks were widely displayed and documented.

Consider that catch wrestling can be traced in nearly every culture, from Lancashire catch-as-catch-can wrestling to the US hook wrestling to the Indian pehlwani.

Or you might even be referencing the infamous gong sau of China, where kung fu masters would challenge each other for the rights to open schools in villages or cities, matching style versus style, starting from millenia ago and continuing to the present day. Of course, dubious as the documentation surrounding those matches were, and as stupid as kwoon-storming is, there have been accounts of Chin na masters defeating other strikers through armbars and rear naked chokes.

As for "ruining the sport", I can only assume you're talking about the present version of MMA, as represented largely by the UFC and Pride FC (which have recently been merged as one organization. The UFC and Pride, as you may know, evolved out of the Vale tudo competitions in Brazil and Japan, which when brought to the US were imitated and televised. Of course, you should also be aware of the fact that vale tudo tournaments were largely organized by Helio Gracie, the original creator of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and his descendants. The UFC was created largely as the brainchild of Rorion Gracie, Helio's eldest son and BJJ black belt, as well as Art Davies, one of Rorion's student. In fact, according to many inside sources who were present for the UFC's founding, it was created in a large part to showcase BJJ for the US, just as Pride FC was created in a a large part to showcase Rickson Gracie, another one of Helio's sons, versus Nobuhiko Takada, a famous Japanese shoot-wrestler and mixed martial artist who also trained in a form of submission wrestling. So how exactly do you figure that modern MMA, which exists largely because the Gracies wanted to showcase the effectiveness of submission fighting versus pure striking styles, is somehow ruined because it did exactly that?

And finally, you have absolutely no idea about submission grappling. If you think getting a submission hold is a "basic skill" that can beat anybody, and the sport now revolves around using and avoiding those holds, then how do you figure that only one of the five current UFC title holders is a well-known submission specialist, and even HE won his title fight two days ago by knockout? If it's such a get-out-of-jail-free card, why doesn't everybody just use those magical subs? How come sprawl-and-brawl and ground-and-pound are becoming such dominant strategies of fighting in MMA fights? Oh, and what did you mean by "strength, skill, stamina or fighting spirit" having no effect on submission grappling? Superior skill, strength, stamina, and fighting spirit is what submission grappling is all about. The fighter with the greatest combination of all four will win, just as with any other art in MMA. Look at Yuki Nakai, the grappler who continued a fight despite being eye-gouged illegally to the point of complete blindness and yet continued on not only win his fight by submission but also fight AGAIN the SAME night against the most feared grappler in the world at the time, Rickson Gracie. Look at Ronaldo de Souza, aka Jacare, who had his arm broken in a fight but continued to fight and win. Heck, look at Rickson Gracie, who is well-known for having an insane cardio routines involving sandy beaches and mountain running. Or any of the MMA athletes at the top of the sport, who train and spar and weight lift and run and work out for hours on end each day and every day so they can become strong and build up endurance and improve their skills, all thanks to their fighting spirit and determination to be the best.

If you doubt me on any of those facts, just get yourself to a real, honest-to-goodness MMA gym, and tell the first MMA fighter you see that submission holds are ruining the sport. Seriously. I'd like to know what happens.

Do you know why I'm annoyed by your comment, Enzoblue? I'm annoyed because training submission grappling is not fucking easy. It is hard, painful work to train. It is expensive as hell, in terms of money as well as time and effort. I am shit-awful at it, and my only goal each day I step on the mat, which is every damn day, is to suck a little less than the day before, and sometimes, like today, I don't feel like that's happened, and I haven't been able to move my neck in certain directions for days because of a neck crank that got cranked on too hard. And yet tomorrow, I'm going to put on my smelly, sweaty gi, get in my friend's carpool, and go roll around on a mat with large, sweaty men who outweigh me by over 50 pounds on average for several hours, and come back tired and sore and cranky. (Hah, pun, get it? It's a joke because my spinal column isn't functioning properly.) And I'm happy with all of that, from the musty gym smell to the same old jokes my friends make about me being gay that they've made for years, because through my training I know I am acquiring a skillset that is not available or acquired in the general public, and yes, I do take pride in what I do because it is a part of my life and part of who I am, and also there's the fact that my training and dedication can and have helped me to choke fools out who are deserving of it, just as those things have saved the lives of friends and acquaintances who were attacked in ghettos and Iraqi villages. And yet here you come to say that I, along with every other MMA competitor who has devoted far larger amounts of their life to perfecting the art of submission grappling, am ruining the beautiful sport of mixed martial arts, a sport that I am, as well as those competitors far above me, dedicated to as well and one that I do my best to represent well in the public eye. No. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to let you say that, because you're wrong.

Consider this: the UFC and modern MMA changed what "one would actually consider fighting". People used to think those flicky, chambered TKD kicks would hurt, or that they could just avoid a takedown attempt with elbows to the spine, or even in later years, they could just fight out of guard. The sport has evolved, and anybody who has a half a brain can see that a good MMA fighter needs to train to fight out of the three ranges that have been established through the test of the fight, standup, clinch, and ground, as well as be able to strike, grapple, and submit from all three ranges if necessary, as well as defend against an opponent's attempts to do so to oneself. Submission grappling is part of the sport out of necessity, not because it's what people (and by that I mean Westerners) think of when they think about fighting, or because it looks pretty - it's in the sport because it works. The skills and abilities trained in sub grappling allow a more skilled fighter to beat a less skilled opponent, given reasonable size comparisons, just as with every other martial art that has been used with success in MMA. The concept of MMA is the extension of Bruce Lee's philosophy of Jeet Kune Do - take what works, and lose what doesn't. So in reality, sub grappling being used to win fights in MMA is really part of the evolution and development of martial arts, in fact it embodies what MMA and the development of effective martial arts is all about. And if that simple fact offends, then perhaps you don't understand quite as much about MMA as you might like to think you do.

Tags changed from "helios, solar, power, aircraft" to "helios, solar, power, aircraft, nasa" by gold star member pho3n1x.