I’ve added this clarification to my comment. Thanks!

It seems that common types of rubber have a propagation speed in the range of 1.5-1.8 km/s, so we’re still quite a bit away from 10.5 km/s.

Whoops, force of habit. Fixed now to not be bicycle speeds lol.

Let’s break this down into parts:

send a spaceship into space

Assuming we’re launching from Earth’s surface, we will need to: 1) get safely away from the ground (or else we’ll crash first), and 2) achieve an orbital velocity of at least 11 km/s, which is needed to escape the influence of Earth’s gravitational pull. If we launch from the equator and launch towards the east, we get the free benefit of the equatorial velocity, which is about 0.44 km/s, so that reduces our required speed to “only” 10.56 km/s.

huge slingshot

The thing with all machines that yeet an object into the air is that they’re all subject to the trajectory calculations, again due to that pesky gravity thing. As much as we’d like things to be as easy as “point and shoot” in a straight line out into space, the downward force of gravity means we must aim upward to compensate.

Normally when one thinks of trajectory, it is to aim an artillery piece in such a way that it’ll land upon a target in the distance, but typically at about the same altitude as where it was launched from. But if the artillery piece is perched upon a hill aiming down into a valley, then a smaller angle correction must be made because it would hit farther than intended. When aiming at a target located higher than the gun, the correction would be a slightly larger angle.

In this case, to aim into space – assuming we mean something near the Karman line at 100,000 km above MSL – that’s a substantial height and we’ll need to aim the slingshot with a substantial vertical component. The exact angle will depend on what horizontal component we need, which was discussed earlier.

how much rubber band

The relationship between the necessary vertical component (to overcome gravity) and the horizontal component (to reach escape velocity, which is caused by gravity) can be drawn as two orthogonal vectors, with the rubber band having to provide the angled thrust equal to the sum of those two vectors.

We’ve ignored air resistance, but with this simple relationship, it’s clear that we can use basic trigonometry and the Pythagorean theorem to find that the rubber band vector is the sum of the square of those two vector magnitudes. Easy!

The only problem is that, on its own, the square of some 10.5 km/s is a huge number. Even 10.5 km/s without squaring is a huge number, already exceeding the speed of sound in air (0.343 km/s) many times over. I vaguely recall a rule somewhere that elastic deformation cannot exceed the speed of sound (EDIT: within the material – see excellent comment below), for reasons having to do with shockwave propagation or something like that.

But I think it’s all fairly intuitive that for a rubber band slingshot to accelerate an object, it too must be in contact with said object while accelerating. And while a rubber band contracting can reach air’s speed of sound (barely remaining intact), it cannot go much beyond that nor accelerate another object to thoss speeds. To then ask for the slingshot to accelerate to 30x the (air) speed of sound would be asking too much.

For this reason, I don’t think the rubber band slingshot to space will work, at least not for a typical linear slingshot. If you do something that rotates and builds velocity that way, then it becomes feasible.

I’m sure there’s a market for electric skateboards as art pieces rather than as transport or for fun. Do I think the market is huge? Def no lol

I can’t get over the severe protrusions that means this thing will run aground on almost any surface protrusions. It’s like those motorized shoes we saw a while back, where they built it and later found the one use-case it was good for: warehouses, which have very smooth floors.

How much were those ebikes priced at?

Given the payload requirement and the trailer, would an electric bike be acceptable? Yes, it would be larger but is also more dynamically stable than an e-scooter at the same speed. And the bike trailer wouldn’t need much changed at all to attach to a bike.

For an all-in-one solution, an electric trike might also work, with the benefit that your dog can ride in the basket straddling the rear axle. Although electric trikes don’t tend to come in below $1k USD.

At last, small shoe size comes in clutch!

After staring at the Ninebot Max lineup for long enough, and reading some reviews about the long-term reliability of the internal charger on the G30p, I found that the G30lp eschews the internal charger, meets my specifications, costs a bit less, and perhaps most relevant right now, it’s available refurbished through Walmart for $315+tax with a 90-day return period.

So while I won’t get to experience the joy of onboard charging, I get a bit of time to try out this e-scooter and see if it’s for me or not. Plus, I can always build my own adapter to allow the brick charger to connect to EV charging stations haha.

also uses just a standard “desktop computer cable” for charging

As an afficionado of the IEC 60320 electric power couplers, this adds an outsized plus-modifier to your recommendation. I will look into this some more. Thanks!

Whoops, fixed!

I’m about 70 kg (150 lbs) so that shouldn’t be at the edge of rated e-scooter performance, I think. To be abundantly clear, low-speed is not mandatory for me but rather, high-speed is not desired nor do I want to pay extra for it. My preference for low speed is simply because my objective is to be faster than walking, and since that’s a low bar, I don’t even need to take on additional risk of bodily injury.

If a candidate e-scooter can do 40+ kph (25 mph) but can be conveniently set up for just cruising at 15 kph, I would have no problem. But if I have constantly adjust a sensitive throttle on a e-scooter that is eager to bolt away fast, then that’s a usability issue for my slow-speed use-case.

to vulgar childlike poetry so he can actually interpret it

This reminds me of a BlueSky thread I saw linked on Mastodon, of people riffing on the ludicrous and flawed idea that great literary works need to be distilled using LLMs into plain language, to “avoid difficult language”: https://bsky.app/profile/adamcsharp.bsky.social/post/3lb5og7vrv22j

It’s like watching education happening in reverse. Even Orwell would be baffled at these happenings vis-a-vis AI/LLMs.

In a lot of ways, EUCs have an apparent risk that roughly matches their actual risk, with a strong majority of the – admittedly few – EUC riders I’ve seen wearing full gear, as though they’re going to motocross. Whereas I think e-scooters have the issue of masking their actual risk.

IMO, the lack of a handlebar or tiller will always be something deeply discomforting to me, but I’m also a person who can’t/won’t ride a bike without using the handlebars. Though that might be because of an ingrained need for control from years of riding bikes within suburban traffic.

Anyway, I digress. Yes, I do think an EUC could fit the bill, but sadly it doesn’t fit for me.

I’ve already bemoaned the non-existent journalism that exists with Ecoticias before, and my only regret is that because that prior post to Ecoticias three months ago was deleted, I cannot properly link to my earlier comment, which reads as follows:

Can we please stop linking to ecoticias? These articles are either AI-written, or have terrible copyeditors. Even just the title already shows a poor understanding of ebike terminology, as well as units. 180 Wh is a unit of energy that might describe a battery’s capacity. Whereas motors are rated in Watts (a unit of power) or horsepower for Americans.

Also, this particular topic is somewhat old, with a much better link showing up in this community last year: https://lemmy.world/post/12008344

In a nutshell, voices are not eligible for copyright protection under USA law, whose hegemony results in most of the world conforming to the same. The principal idea for copyright is that it only protects the rendition of some work or act. A writer’s manuscript, an artist’s early sketches, a software engineer’s source code, and a vocalist’s audition recording, are all things that imbue their creator with a valid copyright, but only for that particular product of their efforts.

It is not permissible to copyright the idea of a space opera, nor a style of painting, nor an algorithm for a computer routine, nor one’s own voice. Basically, pure thoughts cannot be copyrighted, nor things which are insufficiently creative like a copyright on the number 42, nor natural traits or phenomenon.

If we did change the law to allow the copyright of a human voice, then any satire or mockery that involves doing a good impression of someone speaking would suddenly be a copyright violation. This is nuts, because it would also deny someone else who – by no fault of their own – happens to have an identical voice. Would they just not be allowed to speak ever? Although intellectual property rights stem from the USA Constitution, so too do First Amendment speech rights, and the direct collision of the two would have strange and unusual contours.

For when ideas can be protected by law, see patents. And for when voices can be protected, see soundmarks/trademarks and brand rights, the latter stemming from rights of association. Such protections generally only hold when the voice or sound in question is an artificial product, like the sound of Ronald McDonald, and the protection only limits direct competitors from using the voice or sound improperly; everyone else is free to do impressions if they want.

So for the titular questions, the hypothesis posed simply will not occur under current law, and it’s hard to see how it would be practical if the law did permit it.

If I understand correctly, the proposal would:

• terminate the Southwest Chief and Pennsylvanian service
• add a train with mixed consist of passenger cars and flat cars that will transport whole 18-wheelers, cab plus trailer, or charter buses
• will aim to do NYC to LA in 72 hours, or an average speed of at least 40 MPH (64 kph)
• introduce renovated or new bilevel passenger cars
• does not propose where or what facilities would be needed to drive vehicles onto the flat cars
• and somehow this can all be done by May 2026

What planet has this company been inhabiting that they think this is a reasonable proposal?

Just from the freight perspective, surely it would be simpler and easier to send intermodal freight by rail and then have short-haul trucking at the bookends, rather than what seems to be a boneheaded plan to put long-haul trucking on rails.

The shrinking interest in working long-haul truck routes will not be alleviated by spending rest time on a train, since the root complaint about the job is how much time is spent away from home and family. And I can’t see why the host railroads would be fine with Amtrak – aka the National Railroad Passenger Corporation – carrying freight.

I sense something deeply amiss or even quite possibly scammy about this.

Once again, the editor fails to capture in the headline what nuance the author so painstakingly wrote into the article:

A two-wheel machine without pedals IS NOT an ebike. Those are motorcycles (aka motorbikes).

Even the police got it right, with both Irvine and Desert Hot Springs PD referring to the arrests as involving an electric dirt bike and a minibike, respectively, which are types of motorcycles. The author even goes through pains to describe how such electric motorbikes exist outside the three regulated classes of actual e-bikes.

To be abundantly clear, I’m not a fan of unfettered spying by police drones, nor am I a fan of disincentives to electric mobility. But here, the editor is pulling a stunt out of Orwell’s 1984 by diluting the meaning of commonly understood words. I am not having this.

Link to the blog post with the background on why this was made : https://ericwbailey.website/published/you-must-listen-to-rfc-2119/

I mean, amateur radio was illegal to encrypt

Was? I’m not familiar with a jurisdiction that presently allows licensed amateur radio operators to send encrypted or even obfuscated messages, with the unique exception of control-and-command instructions for amateur radio satellites. The whole exercise of ham radio is to openly communicate, with other frequencies and services available for encrypted comms and whatever else.

To be abundantly clear, I very much support encryption because it keeps good people honest and frustrates bad people. But it’s hard to see how, for ham radio, encryption could be reconciled with the open and inviting spirit that has steered the radio community for over a century. In a lot of ways, hams were doing FOSS well before the acronym came into existence.

I have great admiration for the radio operators, precisely because when all the major infrastructure falters, it takes only a battery and a wire up a tree to recover some semblance of connectivity.

(this is entirely tangential to the OP’s question, but I feel like hams deserve a good word every so often. Also, I understand that last weekend was ARRL Field Day in the USA)

It gets even more interesting when aviation uses:

• feet for vertical distances – such as 1000 ft overhead separation for aircraft heading towards each other
• meters for horizontal distances, such as 1.3 km between two aircraft going for landings on separate, parallel runways of the same airport
• statute miles for visibility ahead of the aircraft, such as when fog is ahead
• nautical miles for distances to waypoints and navigational aids

The bizarre thing is that these are all conventions that stemmed from good rationale, at least initially. Using meters for horizontal distances means it’s hard to confuse it with vertical distance, when speaking over rough radio comms. Statute miles is what the meteorological agency in the USA would report, and ATC provides that information to pilots. And nautical miles, as the name suggests, has a rich seafaring tradition, which aviation adopted wholesale.

It’s why aircraft have the red (left) and green (right) navigational lights, same as ships do. It’s also why the “rule of the road” for two intersecting aircraft is for the right-hand aircraft to go first, since their pilot sees the other’s green light, while showing a red light to the halting aircraft.

TL;DR: everything boils down to: “it’s how we’ve always done it”