Well, this week’s Links article is likely to prove a bit on the spicy side, thanks in no small part to the Chinese balloon that spent the better part of the week meandering across the United States. Putting aside the politics of the whole thing — which we’ll admit is hard to do, given the state of the world today — there are some interesting technical aspects to this story, which the popular press has predictably ignored. Like the size of this thing — it’s enormous. This is not even remotely on the same scale as the hundreds of radiosonde-carrying balloons sent aloft every day, at least if the back-of-the-envelope math thoughtfully sent to us by [Dr_T] holds up. If the “the size of three buses” description given in most media reports is accurate, that means a diameter of about 40 meters, for a volume of 33,500 cubic meters. If it’s filled with helium — a pretty safe bet — that makes its lifting capacity something like three metric tons. So maybe it was a good idea to wait until it was off the Carolinas to shoot it down.
In other potentially spicy news, we stumbled upon an article this week that provides details on Toyota’s seeming foot-dragging when it comes to electric vehicles. Toyota has staked out a pretty staunch “hybrids-only” approach to its vehicle lineup, and although it’s working on a battery-only platform, it’s pretty safe to say that the Japanese carmaker has not been favorably disposed to converting to an all-electric lineup. The numbers they use to defend that position are interes ..
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