Next Big Future - 6 new articles

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"Next Big Future" - 6 new articles

1. Crowdfunding a plasma thruster for interplanetary cubesats
2. Assuming the SkyCity Costs US$800 to 1.5 billion what are comparable projects in terms of costs elsewhere
3. South China Morning Post and Other Coverage of the Start of Sky City construction
4. More Pictures from the Start of Construction for the Sky City Skyscraper
5. Currency appreciation is often ignored in relative projected sizes of economies in 2030
6. Japan has given the LDP a landslide win. A win for nuclear restarts and economic restructuring
7. More Recent Articles
8. Search Next Big Future
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Crowdfunding a plasma thruster for interplanetary cubesats The CAT plasma thruster will propel a 5kg satellite into deep space, far beyond Earth orbit, at 1/1000th the cost of previous missions.   CubeSat Ambipolar Thruster (CAT) engine development: $200,000 Kickstarter. Has raised $42000 with 13 days to go Funding from Kickstarter will be used to create a complete flight-qualified CubeSat with integrated CAT engine and tested as a final unit in the University of Michigan LVTF vacuum chamber. Michigan University developers are working to complete and vacuum test a flight-qualified satellite with an integrated CAT. Through our existing partnerships with three NASA centers, the spacecraft will be launched into low Earth orbit and start its climb into deep space. The CAT engine is being developed at the University of Michigan's Plasmadynamics and Electric Propulsion Laboratory (PEPL). Our team also includes the state-of-the-art Michigan Exploration Laboratory (MXL), which has over six years of experience building and flying CubeSats. Initial CAT engine testing will be performed in our lab on the ground and then in low Earth orbit (LEO) to validate the CAT engine's performance and physics models developed by our team. Once these tests are completed, we will perform a series of spiral-out flight maneuvers to climb to higher and higher altitudes in order to escape the Earth. Plasma thrusters have been used on satellites for decades but they have been large, bulky devices that weigh up to 10 kg (20 lbs) or more, suitable only for large satellites. Some examples include ion engines (Deep Space 1 and DAWN), Hall thrusters (SMART1, GEO-COMM sats), resistojets, and arcjets. The CAT design scales down previously demonstrated technology (see Hall Thrusters, VASIMR) to make it practical for CubeSats, with a thruster and power supply weight of less than 0.5 kg (1 lb). Most of the thruster components have been built and have been tested individually. With your help through Kickstarter, we will be assembling everything into one compact thruster unit for testing the integrated components in the lab, then in Earth orbit, and then interplanetary space far away from the gravitational pull of the Earth The Michigan team says its system could fit inside one 10-centimeter-wide module of a three-unit CubeSat, and propel it at speeds of up to 10 kilometers per second. That would be enough to push the satellite at least a million kilometers from Earth, out of the planet's gravitational grip. Read more »      • Email to a friend • Article Search • Assuming the SkyCity Costs US$800 to 1.5 billion what are comparable projects in terms of costs elsewhere The 202 story Skycity skyscraper has begun construction in China and it should be completed in April to July 2014. It is projected to cost $800 million to 1.5 billion.   Some people make a big deal about the construction of skyscrapers happening just before an economic crisis. They pick 11 such skyscrapers, yet thousands of skyscrapers have been built. A recent study by Barr, Mizrach and Mundra (2011), entitled "Skyscraper Height and the Business Cycle: International Time Series Evidence" aims to see if there is, in fact, a correlation between skyscraper height and economic growth. The study looks at two types of data. First the paper looks at the announcement and completion dates of the world's tallest buildings and the peaks and troughs of the United States business cycle, as measured by the National Bureau of Economic Research. They find that there is virtually no relationship between the timing of record breaking buildings and the business cycle. Second, the authors investigate height and economic growth using the times series techniques of vector autoregression and cointegration tests. They investigate the time series relationship between the tallest building completed each year and the level of per capita GDP, for the United States, Canada, China and Hong Kong. The authors find that the two series are co-integrated, which means that they move together over time. That is to say, the tallest building completed each year in these countries does not systematically move away from the underlying income of the country, which provides evidence that, in general, skyscraper height is not fundamentally based on height competition among builders. Finally, the vector autoregression methods allow the authors to see if skyscraper height can predict changes in gross domestic product (GDP) (i.e., if height predict recessions). The authors find that height cannot, in fact, be used to predict changes in GDP. However, GDP can be used to predict changes in height. In other words, the study finds that extreme height is driven by rapid economic growth, but that height can not be used as an indicator of recessions. The Central Subway is an extension of the Muni Metro light rail system in San Francisco, California, from the Caltrain commuter rail depot at 4th and King streets to Chinatown, with stops in South of Market (SoMa) and Union Square. The budget to complete the Central Subway is $1.578 billion. The project is funded primarily through the Federal Transit Administration's New Starts program. In October 2012, the FTA approved a Full Funding Grant Agreement, the federal commitment of funding through New Starts, for the Central Subway for a total amount of $942.2 million. The Central Subway is also funded by the State of California, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority and the City and County of San Francisco. Ground was broken for the Central Subway on February 9, 2010. It is expected to open to the public by 2019. Due to the capital cost ($1.578 billion for the 1.7 mile light rail line), the Central Subway project has come under criticism from transit activists for what they consider to be poor cost-effectiveness. In particular, they note that Muni's own estimates show that the project would increase Muni ridership by less than 1% and yet by 2030 be adding $15.2 million a year to Muni's annual operating deficit. With an average weekday ridership of 173,500 passengers as of 2012, Muni Metro is the United States' third-busiest light rail system after those of Boston and Los Angeles. The new Central Subway might increase ridership by 1700 passengers per day if Muni's own projections are correct. Read more »      • Email to a friend • Article Search • South China Morning Post and Other Coverage of the Start of Sky City construction A groundbreaking ceremony on Saturday for the world's tallest building in Changsha was greeted with praise from some mainland architects - and brickbats from others.   Some held serious safety concerns about the skyscraper, but others hailed it as a revolutionary work of prefabricated urban landscape. The more than 200-storey structure will tower 838 metres above the Hunan provincial capital and be made entirely of factory-made modules that will be assembled by workers in seven months. Yin Zhi , a professor of architecture at Tsinghua University and a senior adviser to the central government on urban planning, said that while "prefab" houses were common, a prefab skyscraper was "insane". His biggest worry was safety. "What about wind? Or earthquakes? Or a fire?" he asked. Broad Group, the developer, has been tight-lipped about the building, saying its structure was a trade secret, Yin said. Broad released a 15-page presentation of the project on Saturday, saying that the building's structure had been tested in three wind tunnels on the mainland. Read more »      • Email to a friend • Article Search • More Pictures from the Start of Construction for the Sky City Skyscraper The Skyscrapercity forum has pictures from the China Broad Group 202 story building site. Site preparation has started and the actual assembly of the world's tallest building will take 7 months. (H/T to readers Anthony Scalzi and phamnuwen for the additional information) Chinese urban per capita area of about 500 square meters Sky City Urban per capita area of only 4 square meters (including buildings surrounding land) • construction area of 1.05 million square meters The base is 9,000 square meters, floor Covering rate of 1%, significantly reducing construction Building area In the past, high-rise building energy consumption was much higher than conventional buildings but the Sky City will be the opposite. It will use a lot less energy • 20 cm wall insulation (walls 70% decrease heat loss) • quadruple glazing (windows 60% decrease heat loss) • window shade (located at the outer glass inside, isolated heat) • New air heat recovery (reducing ventilation heat loss 80%) • CCHP (equal to the cooling and heating without energy) • HVAC annual energy 90kWh/m2 (9 liters of oil equivalent) More than 30 buildings have been built using the factory mass production (can be built) Broad Group method. Read more »      • Email to a friend • Article Search • Currency appreciation is often ignored in relative projected sizes of economies in 2030 The Chinese currency Renminbi, or the yuan, has appreciated 34 percent against the U.S. dollar since the exchange rate reform began eight years ago. The yuan advanced some 20 percent against the euro during this period. What seems likely to happen with the Chinese yuan versus the US dollar over the next 17 years and 27 years out to 2030 and 2040 ? There was an analysis by Jonathan Anderson, an economist at UBS, a bank where he calculated the value added share of exports for China. Headline figures show that China's exports surged from 20% of GDP in 2001 to almost 40% in 2007, which seems to suggest not only that exports are the main driver of growth, but also that China's economy would be hit much harder by an American downturn than it was during the previous recession in 2001. Jonathan Anderson, an economist at UBS, a bank, has tried to estimate exports in value-added terms by stripping out imported components, and then converting the remaining domestic content into value-added terms by subtracting inputs purchased from other domestic sectors. At first glance, that second step seems odd: surely the materials which exporters buy from the rest of the economy should be included in any assessment of the importance of exports? But if purchases of domestic inputs were left in for exporters, the same thing would need to be done for all other sectors. That would make the denominator for the export ratio much bigger than GDP. Once these adjustments are made, Mr Anderson reckons that the "true" export share is just under 10% of GDP (in 2007). That makes China slightly more exposed to exports than Japan, but nowhere near as export-led as Taiwan or Singapore. Andy Rothman, China Macro Strategist for CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets wrote an analysis of China's economy. Net exports accounted for 8.8 percent of China's GDP in 2007, but fell to only 4 percent in 2010. In 2013, China could be done to about 2% of GDP in net exports. In 1958, 86% of urban workers in China were employed by state-owned firms. Between 1995 and 2001, the Communist Party laid off 46 million state-sector workers — equal to sacking the entire combined workforces of France and Italy in six years. As a result, the state's share of urban employment fell to 28 percent in 2002, and now stands at 19 percent. roughly 45 million of the 228 million workers employed in Chinese Industry work in the export sector. That sounds like a lot, right? But there are 1.35 billion people in China, of which approximately 795 million are in the work force in some capacity. How do 45 million Chinese workers - manual laborers, for the most part, working in companies that operate on Foxconn's margins - produce $1 out of every $3 in China, as the share of GDP from export sales would indicate ? They don't. Why? Because the export/GDP ratio didn't discount the imported materials ("churn"). It just lumps everything into "exports," regardless of where the materials actually came from. These "made in China" goods actually have very little in them that was made domestically in China. China is shifting to ramping up domestic consumption. This will mean a stronger currency would be helpful. China's shift to domestic consumption means that a stronger currency will mean citizens will be able to import oil and commodities at lower Read more »      • Email to a friend • Article Search • Japan has given the LDP a landslide win. A win for nuclear restarts and economic restructuring Japan appears to be on the verge of giving the LDP a landslide victory. This is a win for Abenomics and nuclear reactor restarts. The Japanese prime minister's ruling coalition has won a solid majority in the country's upper house elections, gaining control of both chambers of parliament. Shinzo Abe's decisive win is being seen as a mandate to press ahead with difficult economic reforms - an endorsement for the Liberal Democratic Party's 'Abenomics' programme, which has helped spark a tentative economic recovery in Japan. The LDP and its new coalition partner Komeito now have 135 of the 242 seats in the upper house, after winning 76 of the 121 seats that were contested this time around. The country's main opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan, has just 59. Members serve six-year terms and elections are held for half of the seats every three years. The landslide victory means both legislative chambers are now under government control until at least 2016, unblocking the bottleneck that has hampered legislation for the last six short-term leaders. Fresh from his win in Sunday's polls, Mr Abe vowed to stay focused on reviving the stagnant economy during a news conference on Monday. Read more »      • Email to a friend • Article Search • More Recent Articles Could Indonesia surpass India on a nominal GDP basis ? New York has a $20 billion plan for city development that would offset climate change Report from China indicates that site preparation has started for the 202 story Broad Group Sky City Skyscraper Carnival of Space 311 - Mars Water Tracks and Spaceplane development in the UK Carnival of Nuclear Energy 166 - US energy regulations are not designed to efficiently save lives or the environment

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