Modernizing Movie Theaters

It's no secret that I have a few issues with people who use their phones or talk during movies.  These people are not necessarily as awful as the images I conjur while building up the energy to tell them to be quiet*, they simply have a different way of enjoying their movie experience.  What is challenging for these individuals and myself is that our clashing perspectives cannot really co-exist in a 200+ person theater.  Unfortunately most movie theaters will only an announcement at the beginning of the film and they will leave it up to movie patrons to actually do something.  I don't know about anyone else, but if I'm paying north of $15 per person before we even get to the hyperinflated snacks I really don't want to be the one who has to shush people, alas the poor/poorly paid theater staff is also not really paid enough to enforce things.  Beyond that concern, there is a non-trivial percentage of the population who does want to talk/text/tweet/tinder/(t word for using the internet)/(some other t word for going against movie theater etiquette) and honestly there should be an opportunity for them to go to movies and truly enjoy themselves.  For the current model of large movie screens and large audiences, there really isn't much that can be done to consistently ensure that guests get an experience that they would really enjoy.  Movie theaters could embrace the slightly smaller screen experience to make people happier.

When I suggest that movie theaters could embrace smaller screen experiences, I'm not referring to a theater where everyone just brings their phone and watches a movie on their phone. (but that could be a business idea, I would just need to tell investors that it uses AI and blockchain) What I would like to propose is a movie theater franchise that would have smaller screening rooms for a small number of guests, think 1-25 person screening rooms.  Reducing the number of seats would allow for the seats to be comfortably placed closer next to the screen, allowing the perceived screen size to remain roughly the same, but drastically reduing the actual size.
Smaller screens change how you can structure the movie theater design rational, instead of the theater owner needing to invest in massive infrastructure, their screening spaces can be more distributed.  One could envision a movie chain where their screening spaces are more evenly distributed throughout a city, instead of having massive multiplex, screening spaces could take over more flexible shorter term leases allowing the theater owner to be more flexible in where they expand their market space.  This sounds nice for a theater owner but why might consumers embrace this model?  Because they get more choice, right now your choices of movie theater are basically screen size and seat type, a mini-theater means you have more choice.

Potential features/upsells to interest the business side of things
-watch movies past their theatrical release
-watch movies with people who are willing to share a space with your desired experience, aka, your baby, your friend who needs the plot explained, color commentary  (obviously you use an app and AI to achieve the matching, because investors love buzz words)
-reduced transit time to the theater (there is the possibility that the small screens could take over old retail leases, in theory getting you that much closer)
-being able to pause the movie, this would most likely be an upsell, but I could see a group put up cash to allow for intermissions to make the viewing more pleasant
-stream non-traditional content, want to watch a twitch stream on the big screen, the operator doesn't care, if anything they would prefer it as they don't have to split the proceeds


downsides
more theaters at disperate locations creates the possibility that maintenance schedules would get more complicated and could impact both cost structures and prices as a result
how would concessions work for locations that literally have just one screen with like 10 seats (I say fancy vending machine, but it is a complication.


Anyways, I hope you liked the concept, feedback and comments are welcome



*note I acknowledge that I will be on the more agressive end of the spectrum in telling people to be quiet and that's probably not as nice as Mr Rogers would like me to be

Looking at the future of Low Earth Orbit

One hundred kilometers above the Earth's surface space is starting to fill up with debris, with hundreds of now defunct satellites and tens of thousands of smaller bits of waste.  As the cost for launching into space continues to go down the volume of satellites will continue to rise.  While we are unlikely to see a dramatic loss of orbiting equipment as portrayed in the movie Gravity, there is a risk that the volume of debris could reduce the overall life expectancy of spacecraft in more crowded orbits.  Researchers from around the world have suggested various ways to clear orbits, ranging from designing satellites that will intentionally fall back to Earth at the end of their useful life, to using high tech harpoons, and using lasers to slow down materials sufficiently for them to burn up in the atmosphere.

As of May 2019, there have only been handful of small-scale experiments intended to test some of the proposed methods of eliminating space debris.  While the results for these removal methodologies appear to show positive results, humans have yet to establish a standard for cleaning our space-based messes.  While all reasonable solutions to space debris should be given consideration, this article will make an argument for the use of satellite-based laser platforms as a way to control space debris.

Lasers can be used in two primary ways to eliminate space debris ablation and vaporization.  For most readers when they think of using a laser to clear space debris, they are likely thinking about vaporization.  Vaporization is achieved by aiming a strong laser at a piece of material as long as it takes to heat the material enough for it to be broken down into microscopic components.  This requires a very strong laser, several megawatts, and as a result a large amount of power.  The approach preferred by researchers at NASA deals with ablation.  Laser ablation happens when a strong laser is focused on a target for several hundred nano-seconds, this very short pulse is sufficient to cause microscopic pieces of material to be ejected from the target material, while leaving the remainder of the target seemingly unscathed.  As microscopic pieces are ejected from the target material, they create a small amount of thrust that causes the space junk's orbit to change.  Eventually the changes in orbit caused by the ablation of the space debris are sufficient to send the material back into the Earth's atmosphere, where the remainder of the debris will burn up.  Because ablation is only burning enough material to change the orbit of the debris, the overall energy requirements are drastically lower than vaporization, the tradeoff that it will take more time to clear out materials.

Currently there are proposals for both ground and space based laser platforms that could be used for clearing orbit.  According to this NASA paper, a single space based laser would be massive, where the solar panels alone would need to be over 500 meters in diameter to supply the roughly 108 Megawatts of power the laser would require.  At first glance a massive solar array in orbit would seem prohibitively expensive, such a massive undertaking needs a longer-term perspective.  Early in the life of the Anti-Debris Laser System (ADLS), almost all power generated by the solar arrays would be used to clear debris and maintain orbit.  Over the years the volume of debris would begin to drop off and soon our ADLS would have a power surplus and the ability to transmit that energy over a long distance.  The primary debris clearing laser could be augmented by a collection of smaller energy transmitters.  Much as the International Space Station now serves as energy source and orbital platform for a range of experiments, the ADLS could serve both as platform and power source for countless future scientific projects.

One extreme example of the ADLS being used as a remote power source would be for low Earth orbit satellites proposed by the European Space Agency.  These air breathing ion engines are intended to capture the rarified gases that orbit the Earth and use these materials to supply fuel for their ion engines.  A challenge facing current design proposals is the added drag that their solar panels would supply.  If the satellites were designed with the ability to receive additional energy from a directed energy source they would be able to get by with fewer solar panels, which would both reduce the weight of the space craft and reduce drag, a nice little win win.

Future Scenario

April 12th 2051

A new satellite communications start-up has submitted a power purchasing agreement from the United Nations Space Agency's ADLS division.  According to their filing, they are looking to buy sufficient power to supply a constellation of at least 2500 Ultra Low Orbit communication satellites.  These satellites will have some of the lowest orbits ever authorized to a non-governmental body.  In a press release yesterday their spokesbot said "Fastest Trade is looking forward to working with the United Nations Space Agency to help provide 7G Micro Latency communications to the global market of ideas.  Our technology will allow consumers around the world to shave critical nano-seconds off of their communications."  The press release was positively received by several High Frequency firms.  A researcher from the European Space Agency noted that without the external power provided by the ADLS, the orbits of the Fastest Trade satellites would need to be several kilometers* higher than what they have filed for.**

(Scenario 2)

12 hours ago disaster struck Bigelow Research Station El Dorado, due to a series of software errors the station's on board solar panels stopped orienting towards the Sun.  Seven minutes after the error was confirmed support teams from available ADLS platforms were able to add the El Dorado to the orbital power grid user base.  While investigators try to determine how and why the solar panels ceased to function, researchers were able to continue their various projects.  Currently the software team is pointing fingers at an unauthorized 3rd party addition to the solar control platform.

* yeah the scenario is fictional, but I do want to say its on the hard science side of things and the several kilometers value is basically random.  That being said lower drag with a better engine should mean a lower orbit I just don't know by how much.

** honestly high frequency trading is the only reason I can think of  as a long term use for satellites at a really low orbit, that being said I hope there are more generally beneficial uses of this concept.

I hope this idea was interesting, it was inspired by a friend asking me about the potential for using existing satellites and space debris as a source material for future missions.  If you are interested in ideas around re-using old satellites, feel free to check out this post I did a few years ago

Questions and comments are welcome

Electric Airplanes Continued

Some follow up thoughts on the post "Automatic Refueling..." where we looked into a possible path for extending the range of electric aircraft. 

Battery energy density.  While there is no disputing that electric airplanes will need incredibly high energy densities to allow for sufficient range to be super appealing to consumers (even with range extending support craft).  One thing to keep in mind is that the calculations for energy density are based on the assumption that the batteries are only storing power and doing nothing for the structure of the vehcicle.  If researchers are able to develop a storage mechanism that can improve structural integrity, that would be just fantastic.  While structural batteries would be really cool I don't want to be so naive as to assume that a structural battery would have the same energy density as those that purely store energy.  As they could not readily be removed from the body of the airplane structural batteries would need to have incredibly long life expectancies, most lithium ion batteries will lose something along the lines of 20+% of their energy density after a few thousand full charge discharge cycles.  The Physics World article "Structural supercapacitors take a load on" shows that developments are already underway.

Assistive Take Off and Landing.  While midflight recharging is cool, to ensure maximum range for your electric plane it may be a good idea to have assisted take off and landing, similar to what was described in "Giving Planes an Electric Boost".

Modes of recharging mid flight:  In "Automatic Refueling..." we talked about the need for relatively rapid rates of energy transfer between the primary electric airplane and the support vehicle.  If only one support vehicle at a time is able to transfer power there is a concern as to how quickly it can move that power from one unit to another.  As of now it is hard to say how support vehicles and the primary electric plane will dock with eachother and how frequently, in principal there should be no difference with having one support vehicle or many docking at various times to move energy.  In practice it would most likely be more complicated, if a physical connection is used to transfer power, each docking vehicle will require some degree of additional complexity and wiring.  On the other hand if energy is transferred wirelessly there are concerns about interference in navigation tools and the weight of the reciever, as well as transmission range (basically this is a really hard engineering problem)

Mid-Flight Passenger Transfer  In the future scenario, it was suggested that support aircraft might be designed to carry a small number of passengers.  One big concern for this idea to work is ensuring the safe transfer of passengers mid flight.  For passengers to be able to get into a small transfer vehicle and safely reach their destination there would need to be a way of ensuring that consumers could avoid the disruption of turbulence without them being excessivley jostled by the air all without flying to far from their destination.  One option might be to simply have a clause on every ticket saying that for destinations that are not being visited by the primary electric vehicle, they will only guarntee that they will get you to the closest support vehicl landing pad that they can safely move you to.


Those are my thoughts as of now, if you have any questions or insights of your own please feel free to add them

I will add on that I have been trying to get details about the ranges and capabilities of hydrogen fuel cell airplanes, at this time I can't get solid enough info to say much.  From my perspective I will say I'm more ok with electric aircraft using fuelcell tech than cars, my reasoning is that for electric cars our biggest concern is per person affordability and for ground based vehicles current battery tech is on a good enough trajectory.  The economics of the airline industry are a closer match to the particular characteristics of hydrogen fuelcell tech (as I understand things).

Automatic Refueling of Drones and Developing Electric Airplanes of the Future

Electric Airplanes have a basic physics problem, batteries currently don't hold enough energy to power the vehicle for a long enough flight to be commercially useful on  a large scale.   (the youtube channel Real Engineering does a great overview of the balancing of range of a plane relative to the size of the batteries)  Commercial airplanes like the 737-900 has a range of 5900 kilometers ( a bit more than 3600 miles) current examples of passenger electric airplanes have a range of about 160 kilometers (100 miles).  Flying 100 miles can be helpful, but not many people are going to want to take 25 legs to fly from Seattle to Boston.  For electric aircraft to be able to actually begin to replace more conventional planes on a larger scale range will need to be drastically expanded.  The range of electric airplanes are limited by how much energy can be stored in each gram of battery, this is referred to as the energy density.  Battery energy density will often be listed in watt hours per kilogram, the idea being, under ideal circumstances if you have a battery technology that provides 100 watt hours/kilogram, you should be able to power ten 10 Watt LED bulbs for an hour using a 1 kilogram battery pack.  Modern Lithium Ion batteries currently fall in around 150-190 Whr/kg  impressive, but nowhere close to the 1000 Whrs/kg that you would need to make a commercially competative electric airplane under current paradigms.

The reason I mention current paradigms for electric airplanes is that the 1000 watt hour/kilogram calculation was done under the premise that you are designing an airplane that would have the same parts and components at both take off and landing.  This is a valid assumption. for the last 100 years of the aerospace industry almost all planes have been designed under the impression that a plane will start its trip with everything it needs to complete a journey.  For long haul electric aircraft to be considered a viable alternative, without allowing for revolutionary battery technologies, it may be necessary to look at our design parameters from a different perspective, what happens when you open your design considerations to include recharging in flight?

The United States' Department of Defense has been concerned with the range of its aircraft since they started to use them as part of our strategy for projecting American might around the world.  This desire for extending the range of planes has lead to a littany of strategies and innovations including midflight refueling.  In 2015 the US Navy released news that they had refueled an autonomous aircraft in mid flight.  If an autonomous vehicle can refuel in midflight, would it be possible to do the reverse, have an autonomous aircraft dock with designated vehicle and resupply it.  (At this time I can't find any materials that contradict this general premise so I'm gonna go with it)

Imagine a large electric plane that was designed from the ground up with the understanding that it was only required to carry enough energy for traveling 100-250+ miles while powered, this would provide a reasonable starting point for designers and engineers to work from.  For longer journeys to be appealing to consumers it would be necessary to recharge the plane in mid-flight, one way would be to have small scall aircraft designed to meet planes along their flight path dock and top off onboard energy stores.  These smaller aircraft would need to be able to be quickly charged and discharged so that they could rapidly cycle from their base of operations to charging a cruising plane to returning to their base to recharge and meet the next plane on their list.

There are several major challenges with respect to using support aircraft to keep bigger electric plane up in the air.  The first is challenge is that of the efficiency of the recharging aircraft, if the drone supplying power cannot provide enough power quickly enough to appreciably extend the range of the electric plane the project would be a non-starter.  Ex.  If my parent electric plane has a range of 100 miles and a cruising speed of 300 mph and recharging provides enough power to extend my range by 10 miles and it takes more than 2 minutes to rechage the parent aircraft, the drone isn't helping that much*.  Right after the concern of providing enough power quickly enough, the next big concern for our electric plane system is how much drag the recharging system is adding to the design of the plane.  If the recharge system impedes flight range significantly the design will not be commercially viable.  Infrastructure is another concern, each of the recharge drones will need a base of operations to get its power and be maintained.  Realistically it would make the most sense to have the recharge drone stations near regions with existing grid infrastructure (or at least a low maintenance sustainable energy source) these requirements make water based platforms unlikely in any obvious narrative for a technology approach like this, as a result our electric aircraft would be limited to operating in regions with relatively short water crossings.  Most importantly (and like super outside of the scope of an afternoon's writing and research) is the overall ecological impact of making the infrastructure necessary to make our rechargeable electric airplane viable, if the life cycle emissions of the plane, rechargeable drones, drone base stations, and increased grid supply exceeds that of carbon neutral fuels** then it is unlikely to be a good decision from just a green house gas emissions perspective.


(A possible vision of the future)
The year is 2045 and the eEU (expanded European Union) and the European parliment is celebrating beating their zero emissions goals by 5 years.  Many attribute their success to the Airbus Electric Aircraft Network.  Citizens and visitors are able to travel across the economic zone with mobility once thought impossible.  Electric Heavy Lifters follow set routes connecting the continent's capital cities.  Travelers wishing to quickly go from Budapest to Berlin simply request transit to the nearest Airbus Sky terminal, here they match with a Passenger Certified Recharge Drone, that will dock them with the Electric Heavy Lifter going towards their destination.  Once they dock with their Electric Heavy Lifter they will have space to sit relax, or meet in a cafe for coffee.  Ten minutes before they are set arrive at their target destination they are reminded by the EHL's systems that a smaller plane will be docking to take them to on of Berlin's many Sky Terminals.  As new battery chemistries enter the market there are questions as to whether Airbus will continue to build out the Sky Terminal platform.  Investors across the African Union and Brazil have answered with their wallets investing millions into bringing Sky Terminals into their countries, noting the advantage of standardized components and decade of safe operations.

I hope you enjoyed this post if you have any questions, feedback, would like more details please feel free to comment. 







*to avoid making this more visually messy than it already is I'm moving the math down here, basically the electric plane is moving at 5 miles per minute so if the drone can only provide enough power to add 10 miles of cruising range it needs to dock, top off the batteries and get out of the way before the electric plane has exceeded that range boost, so it would need to be under 2 minutes (pretty darn fast)  (please feel free to ask for clarification)

** so far I'm honestly pretty skeptical of claims of developments in "carbon neutral fuels" and how sustainable they would actually be.  That being said if someone produces a peer reviewed article in nature (that I skim the synopsis of on slashdot) saying that they have developed a carbon neutral fuel that is legitimately sustainable I will be supportive of using that technology in airplanes while we develop better battery technology



random text I didn't use, but I might use if I do a different version of this post


Without a more indepth analysis it would be premature to provide exact specifications on things like flight behavior, size of vehicle


  Your average passenger doesn't care about how their plane gets from point A to point B, so long as they can travel safely and affordibly, if this means that their airplane is recharged midflight. 



There are several ways that an electric airplane can extend its range, wireless charging in flight, recharging in flight, and ejecting useless mass through out fligh.  Ejecting useless mass through out flight is technically feasible, you design a plane with battery packs that can easily be released as their voltage falls below a certain value.  Conceptually straight forward, but not too many people under a flight path would appreciate having massive battery backs rain down from the sky.  The fact that these batteries are expensive would be another mark against tossing discharged batteries overboard through out flight.  Wireless charging has more potential, as outlined in the web comic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, you could build a network of towers (or airships) with lasers on them, as airplanes fly past the laser would aim at the airplane's recharge surface and top off the battery. 
As of today there are no obvious innovations in battery technologies that seem likely to give an aircraft the necessary range at take off to take passenger distances in excess of 1000 miles.