45 thoughts on “Joe Biden’s “Infrastructure””

  1. It doesn’t matter. Biden lies and the media says its the truth. Aspiration beats physics. The nuance crowd are shallow people, even the ones in STEM.

  2. Come on!, Once again, the president appears to be half-remembering accurate information and repeating it in a way that is inaccurate to the point of near-incoherency.

    Geherity being a situational pedantic . Guess we should revisit his thoughts about the hyperventilating over bleach and UV light from 12 months ago.
    At least this time the president wasn’t talking off the cuff about a course of action that could kill people.

    1. You don’t believe the bleach hoax do you?

      Your media has fed you guys a lot of disinformation. I suggest you try applying some skepticism and analysis to it by going to primary sources.

      Think for yourself and you just might realize Biden can’t think for himself and can’t even read the script prepared for him. Then ask yourself who is running the show and why are they more like China than Democrats from the 1990’s.

      1. Yes, I saw that. So, he thinks airliners will fly faster than the Space Shuttle (over 3500 mph faster). That just confirms what I’ve been saying about him. In his prime, Joe Biden was a corrupt and profoundly ignorant man. He’s far from his prime today. It would be unfair to call him a moron. Unfair to honest morons, that is.

  3. ” the president appears to be half-remembering accurate information and repeating it in a way that is inaccurate to the point of near-incoherency.”

    Funny how you post this as part of a “whataboutism” defense of Biden*’s senility, while last year you probably posted an almost identical statement as part of condemning the Orange Clown.

    1. Let me fix this for you.

      ” the president appears to be half-remembering accurate information and repeating it in a way that is inaccurate to the point of near-incoherency.”

      Funny how you post this as part of a “whataboutism” defense of Biden*’s senility, while last year you ^Jim Gehearty^ probably posted an almost identical statement as part of condemning ^defending^ the Orange Clown.

      Someone obviously didn’t do the reading of the links considering beside my copying of Joe Biden “Come on man” , I just whole sale copied from Jim Gehearty that first line and what you quoted from my 2nd link.
      I figure it applied to Joe Biden comments better than Donald’s scientific method of connecting the dots of
      1.Bleach and UV light kill Corona Virus.
      2. why don’t we use it to kill it in people.

      Though think Joe been giving to much credence to Elon magic dust. The point still stands hyperloop-> Train and plane->space plane (Starship), closer to right than Trump UV light and Bleach cure Covid.

      Do cow farts really count as a fossil fuel?

      1. If anyone here has claimed that Trump is a scientific genius, you might have a point, but since no one has, you don’t. Biden is an idiot, regardless of whatever Trump did, Mr. Trump Derangement.

        1. The way you edited that quote from me leads to the conclusion that you are eminently qualified to work for 60 Minutes.

          1. And no one is under any obligation the read any link anyone other than our host posts.

            If anyone does insist on posting links in a comments section, then it is the commenter who should at least take the trouble to summarize the link contents, in the commenters own words. Enough to make readers interested in further information. Not doing a cutting and pasting.

        2. “Biden is an idiot, regardless of whatever Trump did, Mr. Trump Derangement.”

          That’s the main point. Whatever one thinks of Orange the Clown, he’s out looking for the next Mrs./exMrs. Trump right now. Slo Joe is actually the one (supposedly) in charge. Any screw ups after 1/20/21 are Joe’s, not Donny’s.

        3. If anyone here has claimed that Trump is a scientific genius, you might have a point,

          Um Trump has so I have a point?

          Now who claimed Biden is a scientific genius? So you, Mr.Geherity and the rest of the right wing echo chamber have no point?

          Is it really derangement to dislike the President who presided over the highest amount of joblessness claims, deaths and increase to the national debt. (Yes I fully expect Biden to shatter the debt.).

          Now my Hate on Bill Clinton maybe derangement for hating the only president since LBJ (Another one of my dislikes) with a budget surplus. But a lot of the reasons for my dislike of Clinton are easily applied to Trump.

          2. You are missing the point. What Trump (or Bush, or Clinton, or Obama for that matter) did or said doesn’t matter at this moment. Biden is the current idiot-in-chief. If he makes claims that do not reflect reality, he gets to be called out on it. Saying the name Trump, like some magic word, doesn’t make Biden look any smarter.

          3. The only reason that “Bill Clinton had a budget surplus” was because he created the first Republican congress in four decades, you moron.

            Oh that the excuse i would of said too. But it starting to ring a little hollow. Why hasn’t there been more budget surplus then? Republicans haven’t had control of congress since Clinton left office?

          4. When they first took control of Congress, they were more ambitious. Since then, not so much. And they have never had that much control of Congress since, absent a supermajority of the Senate with a budget-minded president, which they’ve never had.

          5. I think Trump said he had a high IQ.
            And if one had a high IQ, one could have learned something during one’s lifetime, and maybe have some wisdom.
            But Trump is quite old, and probably smart enough to know he isn’t as “bright” as he was decades ago.
            Whereas Biden might imagine and claim that he is currently a genius. And there nothing that indicates that is even close.
            But thieves tend rank their intelligence on how much they steal- and Joe has stolen a lot recently.
            So, brilliant!

  4. Perhaps Biden, when talking about a “commercial aircraft” that can “traverse the world in about an hour” is thinking about the SpaceX proposal to fly passengers on sub-orbital flights with a version of Starship? That doesn’t use any fossil fuels, does it?

      1. The answer is easy; a battery-powered version of Starship.

        It makes every bit as much sense as electric cars… 🙂

        1. It makes every bit as much sense as electric cars…
          Electric cars makes sense once thorium cycle nuclear fission plants have essentially made electricity ‘too cheap to meter’.

          But on a more serious note: I have yet to see really reliable numbers on wind, solar and electric car production in terms of use of rare Earth metals, pollution to manufacture and end-of-life issues, etc. Is this really sustainable as opposed to hydrocarbon fuel powered vehicles? I’ve read enough about the so-called ‘hydrogen economy’ to know this is nonsense. Seems like the resource draw on these supposedly rare minerals is even more severe than a reliance on oil. Serious question.

      2. I was, of course, joking about Starship not using fossil fuels. Getting to space without them wouldn’t be easy. Even if you were burning liquid hydrogen, you’d almost certainly use steam-methane reforming to get it.

      3. You mean other than methane?

        Oh, one could make methane (expensively) using, say, nuclear-power (or even solar cells!) to power the synthesis — while ignoring all the far-cheaper methane sitting in the ground and natural-gas pipelines. Then one wouldn’t be using any “fossil fuels” to do it.

        1. Well, I don’t know how you’d make a nuclear reactor or solar cells without fossil fuels. Even ammonia…

          N2 + 3H2 ==> 2NH3

          falls afoul of the fact the Haber process hydrogen is made by steam reforming of methane.

          All of this is why, in my old story “The Rocket into Planetary Space” (title borrowed, obviously), I suggested it would be worth our while to take our fossil fuels technolgy to space with us. CHON is petroleum in another form. And there are lakes of rocket fuel on Titan.

  5. Joetato Head of Government said, during the campaign, that he and his accomplices prefer ‘truth, over facts’.

    Well, ‘truth’ is relative, facts are hard.

  6. I can elaborate on a part:

    Tracks rated for fifty miles per hour need almost no banking and can have a curve radius of fifteen hundred feet, while a train traveling at a hundred and twenty miles per hour needs a track with significant banking, and a minimum curve radius of more than a mile and a half.” A train track designed for a train going 550 miles per hour would have to have an absolutely gargantuan curve radius.

    Going around a circular path, the apparent centrifugal force is v^2/r. So velocity increasing from 120 MPH to 550 MPH means an increase of a factor of roughly 4.6. Square it and you get almost exactly 21, which is the factor increase in the turn radius to keep the acceleration at the same amount. So the turn radius is 32 miles,

    It’s physically possible as long as there aren’t many stops and most of the rail line is underground (avoiding things like mountains and crooked surface right of ways). But that’s a lot of sofa money.

    1. I’d just love to see their plans for routing through Rocky Mountains and other ranges west of them. There is no effing way to do it without some of the most monumental tunnels ever attempted, and not just a couple of them either. And when an earthquake occurs and damages tunnels and tracks, entire routes could be disabled for weeks or months, something that airports aren’t subject to and can be easily routed around. Terrorist attacks wouldn’t be as bad, but could still shut down a line for days or weeks (even assuming far better rail repair units than we have now). High speed trains are for most of the United States a 19th Century solution to 21st Century problems. They might be alright for certain corridors, but without extensive use of eminent domain to acquire the land by force of law, it’s not going to happen since current rail paths cannot possibly handle such high speeds. Imagine the noise lawsuits from the noise of a 550 mph train passing every few minutes. The environmentalists will go berserk.

      1. I tried reading what you wrote but all I saw were $$$$$. I bet the payoff between campaign contribution and contract is pretty good, even when you toss the big guy 10%.

      2. Ah, but trains are very attractive to people in government who make planning decisions:

        * They require fixed infrastructure that requires lots of money to create … meaning that lots of people get money for doing work, lots of other people get money through graft, and still more people get rich by buying land and investing along the right of way.

        * They require fixed infrastructure. Aircraft and automobiles don’t run on tracks, and their routes can be altered without massive, long-term construction projects. Responsiveness to change is anathema to long-term central planning.

        * They can be controlled by government. They can be disabled by unions. Does that suggest anything?

        1. * They can be controlled by government. They can be disabled by unions. Does that suggest anything?
          Free market dynamics at work? Er, uh, hmm….

        2. ” They can be controlled by government. They can be disabled by unions.”

          Well, to be fair, I think that’s also true of commercial air travel.

    2. … avoiding things like mountains …

      If you look at a map of the North American rail network, you’ll notice that there are lots and lots of tracks east of the Rocky Mountains and hardly any westward in the Rockies, Sierra Nevadas, and Cascades. That’s because conventional railroads — steel tracks supporting powered steel wheels — can’t handle grades steeper than about seven percent.

      (One reason the California “High-Speed Rail” system probably will never be completed: to go north from Los Angeles, the line has to tunnel under the Tehachapis, go around them to the east, or both.)

      Engineers have tried to get around the grade problem through a variety of techniques; some attempts have even used jet engines mounted on top of the cars to supply motive force. Alas, no particularly effective solutions have been found.

      1. A lot of the old rail lines in the west have been decommissioned and turned into pedestrian trails. For whatever reasons, they didn’t have the traffic to keep them in service. The same conditions that lead to the near demise of rural farm towns probably has a lot to do with it.

        2. Here in Colorado there’s so much traffic on existing freight lines that a company that wants to reopen Tennessee Pass, after it was closed down at the start of this century. They are meeting all sorts of resistance by the Green-tinged. Seems actual freight railroads aren’t as well loved as hypothetical “high-speed” passenger lines.

          (In Utah, because the Greenies are so opposed to pipelines the same company wants to put in about 100 miles of new track into the Unita Basin (and Indian reservation) to ship out the oil and coal.)

    3. If Starship P2P really gets going in the coastal cities, you can fly from NYC to LA in 45 minutes, NYC to Sydney in about two hours. Regular jet travel can serve ‘regional’ travel in about the same times. Again why are we bothering with trains outside of freight and urban transit?

  7. After lying about Women’s soccer pay gap the previous week, why not lie about technology this week?

  8. The California Zephyr still runs between SF and Chicago, via Grand Junction and Mesa County. I think Musk believes he can tunnel under the Rockies one day. I wouldn’t bet against him. Hyperloop will only work as part of a coordinated transport infrastructure plan that includes EVs and Starship P2P. I live in the boonies of NC. I want to go to Tokyo. It drives me to a hyperloop station 20 miles away, and hyperloop takes me, in my car, to LA, at 400mph. I wonder if P2P would then take my car to Japan with me in it in an hour or so. Ultimtely, I think P2P will move inland, but I’m only 200mi from the Atlantic, so probably would leave for Tokyo from the Newport News P2P station…

    Years ago, I tried to figure out why airline tickets cost what they did. Turns out they were priced to be competitive with driving all the way, rather than flying and then renting a car. In many cases, it’s just as quick to drive somewhere, than fly. I can drive to NYC in 5 hours from here. Or, I can drive to the airport (1hr), park, get in line, wait for my plane, fly (almost 2 hours most of the time), wait to get off, deal with the airport crowd, rent a car, and finally drive somewhere else.

    1. Depending on where you live you can Uber to the airport. Ditch both the parking delay and cost. Also if you can walk at your destination most places you can Uber from the airport to hotel etc. Or rent at the destination and Uber home from return airport. This doesn’t work for everybody, just a possibility to cut cost & time. If one is a frequent flyer (I’m not) it definitely is worth going with TSA pre-screen.

  9. There’s a hybrid mode that hasn’t even been considered. True ground based rail has the extreme expense of buying the required right of ways, and then building high speed tracks, all of which would also apply to any kind of hyperloop system. The rail system (but not the hyperloops), also have a high risk of hitting things on the tracks and derailing.

    So instead, how about something that acts as a floating or flying train that skims just above the ground, anywhere from 50 to 200 feet? Something like a Boeing flying nap of earth with its throttles to the firewall? It has the speed of even Biden’s proposal, but without the added expense.

      1. Well if those barges are towed by horses walking trails along the canal banks it’s endorsing carp & crap!

    2. So instead, how about something that acts as a floating or flying train that skims just above the ground, anywhere from 50 to 200 feet?

      Ekranoplan? Might go well with your canal idea.

      Monorail? Monorail! Monorail!

      Hovercraft? No, my hovercraft is full of eels.

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