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Top of the page  Oh, my. I really should have known a comment intended to be tongue in cheek was going to create a debate that would be better served in D and D. Severe effort post coming. I'll go ahead and preface this by saying I'm a smug rear end in a top hat who does not care what your opinion is, and this allows me to delude myself into thinking I'm right, and you're wrong (which, is, ironically, actually the certifiable case). mitztronic posted:Words. Thanks for you opinion, but you're underinformed on this topic. Each power source comes with its own caveats that need to be considered, and each are economically weighted, and of which coal is the supreme victor. Coal is obviously dangerous when viewed in the extreme senses (UBB, Crandall Canyon, Black Lung) but if you want to pull the employee safety card I can pull many more that counteract your point. Construction, waste collection, and even driving a taxi are all recognized as more dangerous than coal mining. I would dollars to donuts take the mining job, especially with the financial incentives offered to mining employees. "...burning it kills more people and the planet"---Than what exactly? The alternative of not providing economic growth in the industrial revolution, and allowing families to grow---the antitheses of killing? The alternative of not being able to cost effectively provide warmth to a family in a frigid winter? As KetTarma already brought up: Solar panels do not really do much in winter, rain, and the other renewables are also very intermittent. Sure, you could build huge battery backups to supply the grid in times of need (as some metropolitan areas that have outgrown their peak grid capacity have already done---such as in Charleston, WV) but then you're opening the area up to the dangers of a costly, humongous battery with waning lifespans that need to be replaced, disposed. Good luck doing that for every moderately populated area in the US. Why do you think Germany and Japan are notably backing away from Nuclear and heading back into coal? Because they were scared shitless of the potential effects of earthquakes and nuclear meltdown. Coal is manageable with the current scrubber technology, and while some deaths may be attributable to prolonged coal burning exposure, its far from the amount that would be seen in a massive failure such as Cherynobl (though, this is a horrid example by my own admission). On top of those concerns, you need to then think about the disposal of nuclear waste. Literally no one wants to touch that stuff. The US can't even get approval to dump under Yucca Mountain, a barren wasteland of a place 100 miles away from any city of note (Vegas). Good luck fueling one of the world's largest economies without a place to put its waste. In addition, just because countries have renewable options doesn't mean the mining will cease. Germany is one of the largest exporters of EU coal, even with one of the larger Nuke programs in the world. Why do you think this is? Its because they can export it to countries in need for a) cheap power b) steel production (which you need for your prius, btw). Developing nations can't afford nuclear plants, and coal is often the most inexpensive & easiest solution to their power needs. Good luck telling them not to use coal. They are just as deserving of power as we are---and if the US won't use it, we'll sure as hell mine it for India, China, etc. Why raise our energy costs and export it to China for them to burn? Do you think their plants operate any more efficiently than ours? Do you think their atmospheric pollutants stay over there in asia-land? spwrozek posted:You can do it, Norway does. Just flood a ton of land and make massive amounts of pumped storage. You just need a good head difference and lots of water and land. Use the solar and wind power to fill the pond and run it for additional power. I'm glad you qualified this comment by saying its not attainable. This is literally impossible. Norway is the size of New Mexico with 1/7 the people, and such a feat will never scale to the USA. Hydro and Nuke power can simply not supply 350MM Americans spread across the area of the US the amount of power they currently receive with the loss in transmission from condensed renewable plants. We're simply too spread out. BeefofAges posted:Maybe they'll play a role, but that role should be minimized as much as possible, with a long term goal of 100% renewable energy. Anything else is just irresponsible and therefore bad engineering/public policy. Bad engineering and public policy is not understanding the terms of variables at play for the economy. No one in their right mind would seriously propose axing coal 100%, increasing our electrical costs exponentially, and proposing that we would be able to keep on chugging along. You can kiss manufacturing goodbye (steel, auto, tires, whatever pittance we have remaining---goodbye). Corla Plankun posted:Its nice to see someone talking sense in here! I was really surprised at the number of people working in petroleum/coal in this thread, and how unaware they seem to the fact that their job literally entails making earth worse for everyone. Making the world worse for everyone? Give me a break. Ask those in India, China that have power for the first time due to coal generated power. Let me know if you think the world is worse from it. Though, I too am glad we can share the illusions we're under due to hearsay from those as un-informed as we are without investigating any form of underlying factors that may be present or relevant to the conversation! My hippie girlfriend heard from a guy on CNN that food makes you obese, why can't you guys just see, there's not other way...we must quit eating. There is not a balanced option! I've already spent too much time dicking around with this tit for tat. If you're convicted and truly feel as though coal is killing everything around you, I openly invite you to reduce your consumption of electricity by 40%, the coal contribution of US generation. Go ahead and turn off your phones, computers, xboxs. Turn the lights out, but call me when you turn them back on. Coal makes your affordable electricity largely possible, not just in the US and developed nations worldwide, but for those attempting to grow and support their own people and economies. If there were another, more cost effective way, that provides as many people as much power as we all consume, we'd be doing it already. KetTarma posted:I might be a little biased because I spent the last 10 years in nuclear plants but I think the ideal power grid would be entirely nuclear with supplemental gas fired plants with hydroelectric in as many places as possible utilizing pumped-storage hydroelectricity everywhere we can afford it. I agree thoroughly, though with liquified coal in addition to NG Senor P. posted:Right now nuclear is more or less dead in the U.S. Sure they're building 4 new reactors (2 at Vogtle and 2 at Sumner). However no ones is mentioning that the people who were working on these things 20-30 years ago are still working on them. I really don't see a big push to replace the current fleet any time soon. Little known fact, Virginia actually has one of the largest, highest grade uranium deposits in the world. Thanks to misled public opinion, a moratorium has been placed on uranium mining in VA. The kicker? The local population opposing the plant will effect their fresh water supply. That's a fine concern, if the town wasn't above the deposit location, and is water flowed uphill... Tell me more about your anti-mining sentiments, those against the limestone, which is baked into lime---which allows for chemical refining, water purification, steel production, and agricultural growth and more, but bakes off 1/2 of its weight into CO2. Tell me about how that gold that helps your electronics operate, but is leached by cyanide, is bad and kills babies. Tell me, I'd love to hear how literally every extracted mineral makes the world worse for literally everyone, too. Dead Pressed fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Mar 12, 2014 |
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Mar 12, 2014 22:54
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Dead Pressed posted:On top of those concerns, you need to then think about the disposal of nuclear waste. Literally no one wants to touch that stuff. The US can't even get approval to dump under Yucca Mountain, a barren wasteland of a place 100 miles away from any city of note (Vegas). Dead Pressed posted:I'm glad you qualified this comment by saying its not attainable. This is literally impossible. Norway is the size of New Mexico with 1/7 the people, and such a feat will never scale to the USA. Hydro and Nuke power can simply not supply 350MM Americans spread across the area of the US the amount of power they currently receive with the loss in transmission from condensed renewable plants. We're simply too spread out. Hydro and nuke alone? Maybe not. However, Hydro, nuclear, and natural gas could certainly do the job. Apart from initial cost, why couldnt large coal power plants across the country be replaced by nuclear units? Dead Pressed posted:Making the world worse for everyone? Give me a break. Ask those in India, China that have power for the first time due to coal generated power. Let me know if you think the world is worse from it. Though, I too am glad we can share the illusions we're under due to hearsay from those as un-informed as we are without investigating any form of underlying factors that may be present or relevant to the conversation! My hippie girlfriend heard from a guy on CNN that food makes you obese, why can't you guys just see, there's not other way...we must quit eating. There is not a balanced option!  the lovely air?If you want to talk about affordability, per the EIA combined cycle plants are cheaper to build. See table 1. Now that does not represent the third world, but you get a general idea.
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Mar 12, 2014 23:33
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KetTarma posted:Think that this might be a decent class to take for my cross-discipline elective if I can get my department head to buy off on it? I'm an EE. If I don't take this, I'll probably take something like engineering management or a class on algorithm optimization. Not a ton of options with my schedule, unfortunately. This is mostly an 'Intro' to image processing, it doesn't look deep at all but sort of the in thing with sensor research is data fusion from multiple types of sensors, so being familiar with the concepts is probably a good thing. A lot of the image processing people are completely helpless when it comes to hardware too, so an EE with knowledge about that is an advantage, and if you're trying to focus on aerospace its directly applicable. Especially if you've gone through any radar or lidar stuff.
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Mar 13, 2014 01:03
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Dead Pressed posted:engineer.txt While I am aware the world is not black and white, it's 2014 and we should be making more intelligent decisions for the future of our species rather than what costs the least now - you lean heavily on economic factors here to make most (if not all?) of your points. Just to keep things in perspective, my post was in response to (essentially) complaining about Obama for making changes to our (USA) energy policy. I think it's good to make progress. It's 2014. It's time to start moving forward with something more intelligent than coal. I care what's good for this planet, the only one we get, which we are destroying at an alarming rate. We're at a place technologically where we can start making these kinds of changes - the technology is here, right now -, they're obviously going to take a long, long time to implement and make any real change happen. I don't give a gently caress what will save us a few dollars now if there's nothing left later. I am well aware you are probably going to disagree with this sentiment, so let's just agree to disagree. Progress takes time, and needs to start now, not in 10 years, not in 5 years. Ideally it should have a decade or two ago (i.e. my comments on the EU). I had to say the above just so the context of my original post was clear, because your entire response was worded like you didn't understand. Moving on: quote:Each power source comes with its own caveats that need to be considered, and each are economically weighted, and of which coal is the supreme victor. Coal is obviously dangerous when viewed in the extreme senses (UBB, Crandall Canyon, Black Lung) but if you want to pull the employee safety card I can pull many more that counteract your point. Construction, waste collection, and even driving a taxi are all recognized as more dangerous than coal mining. I would dollars to donuts take the mining job, especially with the financial incentives offered to mining employees. Irrelevant to the discussion at hand, see my above comments regarding cost. What is cheapest now shouldn't influence our decisions for the future. You can argue this all you want, but I'd sure as hell like for this planet to be habitable in 10 or 15 generations or however long it will be until we destroy the ability to live here (if we havent done so already). You then focus on the minor issue here, which is mining employee risk, and not the major issue, which is destroying the climate. quote:"...burning it kills more people and the planet"---Than what exactly? The alternative of not providing economic growth in the industrial revolution, and allowing families to grow---the antitheses of killing? The alternative of not being able to cost effectively provide warmth to a family in a frigid winter? As KetTarma already brought up: Solar panels do not really do much in winter, rain, and the other renewables are also very intermittent. Sure, you could build huge battery backups to supply the grid in times of need (as some metropolitan areas that have outgrown their peak grid capacity have already done---such as in Charleston, WV) but then you're opening the area up to the dangers of a costly, humongous battery with waning lifespans that need to be replaced, disposed. Good luck doing that for every moderately populated area in the US. Sounds like you're saying there's some real engineering challenges here to make a change to clean energy work. Guess we'd better just give up? You're also inferring that I am trying to say this should happen overnight, or that the energy should come from just one technology (solar)? I have no problems with using coal for some of our energy. I do have problems with how much we use (both the US and planet-wide). There's no reason at this point to be getting as much power as we do from coal, there are far better alternatives to the majority of our energy usage. Such as solar. quote:Why do you think Germany and Japan are notably backing away from Nuclear and heading back into coal? Because they were scared shitless of the potential effects of earthquakes and nuclear meltdown. Coal is manageable with the current scrubber technology, and while some deaths may be attributable to prolonged coal burning exposure, its far from the amount that would be seen in a massive failure such as Cherynobl (though, this is a horrid example by my own admission). On top of those concerns, you need to then think about the disposal of nuclear waste. Literally no one wants to touch that stuff. The US can't even get approval to dump under Yucca Mountain, a barren wasteland of a place 100 miles away from any city of note (Vegas). Good luck fueling one of the world's largest economies without a place to put its waste. not sure what your point is here or how it relates to anything I was talking about, because I was referring to the fact that some EU countries started moving towards solar years ago and have made great strides with the technology and usage. as a side note, you bring up a good point. fear of nuclear power is absurd and it's a real problem. It's something we're going to have to tackle as a species and I wouldn't even know where to begin, nor is it's discussion appropriate here. quote:In addition, just because countries have renewable options doesn't mean the mining will cease. Germany is one of the largest exporters of EU coal, even with one of the larger Nuke programs in the world. Why do you think this is? Its because they can export it to countries in need for a) cheap power b) steel production (which you need for your prius, btw). Developing nations can't afford nuclear plants, and coal is often the most inexpensive & easiest solution to their power needs. Good luck telling them not to use coal. They are just as deserving of power as we are---and if the US won't use it, we'll sure as hell mine it for India, China, etc. Why raise our energy costs and export it to China for them to burn? Do you think their plants operate any more efficiently than ours? Do you think their atmospheric pollutants stay over there in asia-land? Where did I ever suggest tell anyone else to stop using coal? This was about US policy and moving forward to use less. You also, again, seem to think that I was suggestion this happen overnight. Obviously these countries are going to use coal but that doesnt mean the US shouldnt start moving to cleaner energy. Again, this is going to take time so I'm not sure why you're arguing against policy change to do that. quote:Severe effort post coming. I'll go ahead and preface this by saying I'm a smug rear end in a top hat who does not care what your opinion is, and this allows me to delude myself into thinking I'm right, and you're wrong (which, is, ironically, actually the certifiable case). I'd love to hear some arguments for not moving towards more sustainable energy sources for the general future of humanity.
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Mar 13, 2014 01:38
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But what about antimatter?  Seriously, you guys should take your own advice and take it to D&D.
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Mar 13, 2014 01:48
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KetTarma posted:Think that this might be a decent class to take for my cross-discipline elective if I can get my department head to buy off on it? I'm an EE. If I don't take this, I'll probably take something like engineering management or a class on algorithm optimization. Not a ton of options with my schedule, unfortunately. They may also teach a similar course in the CS department. This one looks like an intro class but I think it has some utility in teaching signal processing concepts from a slightly different angle. For instance, using i instead of j. In all seriousness, it'll probably be a fun class and useful too. If there are machine vision things you want to work on, come up with some projects beforehand and ask the prof to sub out your neat project for generic_enhancement_tool_final. Hed fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Mar 13, 2014 |
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Mar 13, 2014 01:52
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For a final project I recommend implementing something that doesn't come built into an academic version of Matlab, and utilizing those built-in function to accomplish it. But yeah the matrix heavy notation can be a bit different than EE stuff, which is good to see and grasp.
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Mar 13, 2014 02:44
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resident posted:But what about antimatter? This pretty much is completely in line with a tell me about being an engineer thread. I was literally in CPCN meetings today discussing power lines and the fuel source they are connected to. Policy is a huge part of engineering, as well as ethics, and personal beliefs. If you take this to d&d we get the joy of people (rear end hats) who know nothing about power and how we fuel society. This is basically an engineering discussion and what people wanting to be an engineer need to be prepared for. Mitztronic do you mind if I ask what you do in engineering and how you tie into the industry?
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Mar 13, 2014 03:32
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Uncle Jam posted:For a final project I recommend implementing something that doesn't come built into an academic version of Matlab, and utilizing those built-in function to accomplish it. Hopefully the half semester of linear algebra that EEs take here will help. For some reason, they break our diffeq into two semesters with half a semester of linear algebra in the front and half a semester of transforms at the end with ODEs and PDEs in the middle. I'll definitely try to get an EE-related project. Maybe I can make robot-eyes to filter out everything that isnt a pretty girl or something. KetTarma fucked around with this message at 03:59 on Mar 13, 2014 |
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Mar 13, 2014 03:56
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KetTarma posted:For some reason, they break our diffeq into two semesters with half a semester of linear algebra and half a semester of transforms.
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Mar 13, 2014 03:59
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Dead Pressed posted:Why do you think Germany and Japan are notably backing away from Nuclear and heading back into coal? Because they were scared shitless of the potential effects of earthquakes and nuclear meltdown. Coal is manageable with the current scrubber technology, and while some deaths may be attributable to prolonged coal burning exposure, its far from the amount that would be seen in a massive failure such as Cherynobl (though, this is a horrid example by my own admission). On top of those concerns, you need to then think about the disposal of nuclear waste. Literally no one wants to touch that stuff. The US can't even get approval to dump under Yucca Mountain, a barren wasteland of a place 100 miles away from any city of note (Vegas). Good luck fueling one of the world's largest economies without a place to put its waste. I'm not really objective on this topic, and I'm cherry picking the portions of your post I feel like I can address. I'm a nuke, neutronics specifically. First point. Chernobyl, the "worst" nuclear disaster ever (except those bomb things, and various other incidents with medical isotope sources, etc) killed less than 100 people as of 2005. Total. Coal kills more people than that every month. I don't think you get to tout your portion of the energy sector as better than any other, especially without knowing the actual facts. Nuclear is scary to the general public, they don't want anything to do with it unless they've been educated about it, and accidents are very very very expensive to clean up. But they don't kill people the way coal does. Nuke certainly can provide power for the entire US, spread out or not. We just aren't willing to have it done. Argentina is pouring concrete for the world's first SMR right now. Huge power plants benefit from economy of scale, but without investment in the grid they won't help remote places. The solution, without dumping billions into the grid (honestly we should probably do this anyway) is to build SMRs as demand requires it. The issue here, again, is cost. It's expensive to build a nuclear power plant. Doubly so for new designs because the NRC review process is a herculean task at best. Once they're up and running, though, the cost per kilowatt hour for nuclear is comparable to coal (slightly less I think, but it's been a minute since I've seen the figures). They basically just print money forever after the initial cost (which is loving huge). Nuclear has almost no cost fluctuations either, a majority of the cost is operations and maintenance so fuel price increases don't have massive impacts on generation costs like it does with natural gas. Waste disposal is a big deal for us. Yucca mountain is ready to go and essentially has NRC and DOE approval to open if it ever comes to that. Technically it's a great facility albeit too small to handle our current inventory anyway. If it opened tomorrow we could fill it entirely and have to start looking for a new site. The problem is that we won't open it. Harry Reid took it pretty personally when some other senators pushed through an amendment to the nuclear waste policy act that pulled two other states off the candidate list for repositories, leaving only Nevada, the same year he got elected. It's essentially been his personal mission for the last 27 years to make sure that yucca mountain never opens. He has enough political clout to make this happen but he can't kill it in full, just delay it indefinitely. Meanwhile the actual law was amended so the DOE legally cannot consider another site for a repository at all. Honestly we'll probably develop fast reactors that can burn actinides before he gives up the ghost on this business. Ultimately the issues are societal approval and political approval for both the idea and the cost. But if you asked me to make a judgement based on my ethics I can't say that we should be using coal. We know better. As engineers our ultimate responsibility is to the welfare of the general public, even if they don't seem to care about their own welfare.
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Mar 13, 2014 04:48
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Olothreutes posted:The solution, without dumping billions into the grid (honestly we should probably do this anyway) For what it is worth if you are a transmission line engineer worth anything you can get a job in about 2 min right now (been like this for about 8 years, 09-10 being bad years but who didn't have bad years then). The grid investment has been crazy. Where I work we spent $800M two years ago, $1.1B last year, $950M projected this year. It has been happening and I don't see any signs of it slowing down soon. Two years ago lead times double for steel structures and aluminum conductor, wood almost doubled. FERC Order 1000 is going to push a lot of investment and be competitive which will be rather interesting. spwrozek fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Mar 13, 2014 |
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Mar 13, 2014 05:08
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I am thoroughly enjoying the engineering ethics discussion going on here. Keep it up. I intentionally went into the field of consumer electronics, and later pure web software, because I didn't want to be involved in developing anything that could have a real significant negative impact on people's lives. Given that, I still feel guilty about helping companies make products that are probably mostly in landfills by now. If I was involved in the energy/mining industry, even if I knew that fossil fuels are pretty essential right now, I would still be working as hard as possible to eliminate their use as quickly as possible. Yes, they prop up our economy and they're cheaper than everything else, but that's a bullshit excuse. You're engineers. Solve the problem in a way that keeps economies healthy, humans healthy, and the planet healthy. You don't need to solve it NOW. Find a solution that can be phased in over decades or centuries and get on it instead of sitting around whining about solar power and wind power being unreliable. Don't be a bunch of shortsighted babies. BeefofAges fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Mar 13, 2014 |
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Mar 13, 2014 16:21
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I would estimate that consumer electronics and web applications are destroying the social fabric and immediate family social interaction that makes humans great and probably have as large of a negative impact on quality of life as death by global warming. I also find that addicting children to free games that require money to accomplish goals pretty reprehensible. It is all a matter of perspective.
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Mar 13, 2014 16:46
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Olothreutes posted:First point. Chernobyl, the "worst" nuclear disaster ever (except those bomb things, and various other incidents with medical isotope sources, etc) killed less than 100 people as of 2005. Total. Coal kills more people than that every month. I don't think you get to tout your portion of the energy sector as better than any other, especially without knowing the actual facts. Nuclear is scary to the general public, they don't want anything to do with it unless they've been educated about it, and accidents are very very very expensive to clean up. But they don't kill people the way coal does. Comparing coal and nuclear power based only on direct deaths is absurd. We all know they both have a lot of other environmental side effects, regardless of which one might be worse than the other. Please don't bring us down to the TV news level of bullshit meaningless statistics. BeefofAges fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Mar 14, 2014 |
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Mar 13, 2014 16:56
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Elephanthead posted:I would estimate that consumer electronics and web applications are destroying the social fabric and immediate family social interaction that makes humans great and probably have as large of a negative impact on quality of life as death by global warming. I also find that addicting children to free games that require money to accomplish goals pretty reprehensible. It is all a matter of perspective. Sure, this is a valid perspective, and it's a healthy debate to have, even if you might just be trolling. I don't work in games, but that's mostly because the gaming industry is terrible to its employees, so that's mostly irrelevant.
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Mar 13, 2014 16:57
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spwrozek posted:Mitztronic do you mind if I ask what you do in engineering and how you tie into the industry? I work in SatCom (RF comm systems engineer), so not really related to the energy sector. I did take a bunch of classes in undergrad and grad, so while I am absolutely not an expert, I have had enough education to make a strong opinion about how I feel the energy sector should be moving. If you want to know more about what I do, I have a few posts in the space thread, but am more than willing to field questions here too 
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Mar 13, 2014 17:50
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Dead Pressed posted:Each power source comes with its own caveats that need to be considered, and each are economically weighted, and of which coal is the supreme victor. For the larger issue of engineering ethics, I still don't think that there is a problem with engineers going to work for coal companies or refineries or anything like that. These companies can do a lot more damage with poor engineering practices than they can with good engineers who are constantly looking for ways to reduce waste, loss, accidents and emissions. As long as we rely on certain power sources, we might as well continue to improve the processes as much as possible. For a personal example, I worked for a bit with a start-up that made coatings for down-well oil and gas pipes and also looked into some coated proppants. There are certainly negative environmental effects of drilling and fracking, but as long as we continue to do it we might as well make sure that we aren't constantly replacing hundreds of feet of pipe or re-fracking wells as frequently.
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Mar 13, 2014 19:09
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The current industry trend is to replace coal with natural gas where it makes sense. Natural gas burns cleaner and it is easier to operate the plant (you can actually ramp up and down). As long as we push for more fracking and natural gas exploration I believe you will see this more and more. If the EPA continues to kill coal you will see natural gas conversions instead of adding electronic precipitators and bag houses based on cost. This all means more fracking, drilling, pipelines, etc.
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Mar 13, 2014 19:23
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mitztronic posted:I work in SatCom (RF comm systems engineer), so not really related to the energy sector. I did take a bunch of classes in undergrad and grad, so while I am absolutely not an expert, I have had enough education to make a strong opinion about how I feel the energy sector should be moving. As an RF person, RF comms has more of a direct application towards killing people than energy generation, to be fair.
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Mar 13, 2014 20:55
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Uncle Jam posted:As an RF person, RF comms has more of a direct application towards killing people than energy generation, to be fair. How is that?
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Mar 13, 2014 23:59
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BeefofAges posted:Comparing coal and nuclear power based only on direct deaths is absurd. We all know they both have a lot of other environmental side effects, regardless of which one might be worth than the other. Please don't bring us down to the TV news level of bullshit meaningless statistics. My effort wasn't to reduce us to that level, just to provide some insight on just how (not) bad Chernobyl was. He was claiming that direct deaths from long term coal burning wouldn't be as bad as Chernobyl, which is patently false. There are most definitely more issues that surround both of them.
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Mar 14, 2014 01:57
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(electrical engineering) Does anyone have any experience with going back to do a PhD after being out and earning money for awhile? Or any experience with it at all? I approached a professor last summer about getting some research experience to see if I was interested in going to graduate school and since then I've taken two graduate classes that he teaches in his research area and I've been put on a project with one of his graduate students. The other day he talked to me and wanted me to quit my job and fund me to work full time for him until I graduate with my BSEE two semesters from now, with the idea that it is a trial period for both of us and if it goes well I can begin the PhD in the spring. I've been working full time as a software engineer for 8 years and I am mostly concerned about the money. He was telling me that the stipend is ~$20k and I am currently making 3x this, although I don't have many bills. I own my own apartment building so I effectively pay $0 after all the rent comes in and I am about to finish paying off a brand new car so for the next few years my bills will be almost entirely food and utilities, which helps in the decision. I'm also not sure if there is any room for negotiation in stipend salary because I don't have a position of power at all as I won't be willing to attend any other schools because I really want to stay local and I'm in his research area. I don't really know if this is a typical amount for a stipend or not. I talked to one of his graduate students about what he's like to work with and if he is enjoying his time in the program because it is possible that he treats his actual graduate students differently than someone in his classes that he isn't paying, but the guy I talked to seemed to be very happy with his decision. He also reminded me that the worst that could happen is that if I truly hate it then I could leave with a paid for MS with no obligations to anyone after and just fall right back into the work force. After typing all this out I'm leaning more towards going for it but I'd like to hear any experiences anyone has had. I'll probably crosspost this to SAL to get opinions from people already in graduate school.
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Mar 14, 2014 04:06
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orange sky posted:How is that? Huge amount of defense applications from missile guidance, troop coordination, imaging, intel, remote sensing etc. Like 70% of the ads in the trade mags heavily feature military equipment and so on. Even if you try to stay away from it, designs and IP for peaceful civilian applications can be easily repurposed for defense things. The other bad thing is that you're always right on top of ITAR which is not fun especially in a overseas based company.
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Mar 14, 2014 04:31
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Olothreutes posted:My effort wasn't to reduce us to that level, just to provide some insight on just how (not) bad Chernobyl was. He was claiming that direct deaths from long term coal burning wouldn't be as bad as Chernobyl, which is patently false. There are most definitely more issues that surround both of them. Fair enough.
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Mar 14, 2014 06:23
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Uncle Jam posted:
Can't even imagine. I work in the US in commercial aviation and ITAR/export control has gotten huge in the last year or two. A friend of mine was walked out about a year ago because of UK/US dual citizenship supposedly excluded him from being a US Person. I understand the need for the regulation and I should probably be thankful for the job security, but at times it seems like such a mess of red tape and waste.
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Mar 14, 2014 12:50
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antiga posted:Can't even imagine. I work in the US in commercial aviation and ITAR/export control has gotten huge in the last year or two. A friend of mine was walked out about a year ago because of UK/US dual citizenship supposedly excluded him from being a US Person. Absolutely. Clearly free trade of arms and weapons is not good. It gets annoying when a low power milli wave amp falls on the wrong side, despite it being available worldwide. Its tough enough being a user who intends to comply, but I have a lot of sympathy for vendors who have to deal with buyers who have every intention of exporting illegally (and don't subsist entirely on government contracts.) The worst part is despite all this you know shits getting leaked.
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Mar 14, 2014 14:03
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Uncle Jam posted:Huge amount of defense applications from missile guidance, troop coordination, imaging, intel, remote sensing etc. Like 70% of the ads in the trade mags heavily feature military equipment and so on. Even if you try to stay away from it, designs and IP for peaceful civilian applications can be easily repurposed for defense things. Oh, right. I thought you meant directly as in, high power rf for killing. That makes much more sense.
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Mar 14, 2014 15:16
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IratelyBlank posted:(electrical engineering) Does anyone have any experience with going back to do a PhD after being out and earning money for awhile? Or any experience with it at all? I went back and got my civil engineering PhD after working for about two years. I was looking into part-time terminal masters' programs, but one school offered me a PhD research assistant position on a DoD grant, so I quit my job and took it. Generally you'll be in a better position than other students: more practical experience, better connections, a more stable financial situation (especially since you've got the landlord income). However, you're also going to have to go back and re-learn study skills, time management, academic writing, and so forth. $20k is about typical for a stipend, assuming you're in an area with an average cost of living; there isn't really room to negotiate it, since it's typically a fixed rate set by the college. You may get slightly more later on depending on the grants your research group receives. However, one thing to note about engineering doctorates is that a lot of practicing engineers are suspicious of PhDs at best and outright dismissive of them at worst. You may run into situations further down the line where a company passes you over because they think you're too head-in-the-clouds for practical work (though your 8 years' experience would mitigate that).
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Mar 14, 2014 15:21
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The Chairman posted:
If you don't mind me asking what do you do, or will you do, with your civil PhD? You're definitely right their is a mindset in the engineering consulting industry that those PhDs are only useful for teaching. I'm seriously considering dropping my 7+ years civil consulting career and pursuing a doctorate, after I finish up my masters of course.
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Mar 14, 2014 18:37
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fishhooked posted:If you don't mind me asking what do you do, or will you do, with your civil PhD? You're definitely right their is a mindset in the engineering consulting industry that those PhDs are only useful for teaching. I'm seriously considering dropping my 7+ years civil consulting career and pursuing a doctorate, after I finish up my masters of course. I'm a structural engineer at an industrial engineering firm, where I mostly do analysis of steel equipment towers and conveyor galleries. I also teach one class a semester at a community college.
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Mar 14, 2014 20:16
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antiga posted:Can't even imagine. I work in the US in commercial aviation and ITAR/export control has gotten huge in the last year or two. A friend of mine was walked out about a year ago because of UK/US dual citizenship supposedly excluded him from being a US Person. ITAR is still around in commercial satellites / spacecraft also; it's kind of irritating because it limits what I can push back to any FOSS projects we are working on. On the other side though, it's cool to have access to the same caliber of hardware that puts missiles on target from a few hundred miles away. 
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Mar 14, 2014 23:49
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I got a free lunch for being able to name the ITAR export restricted countries so ITAR is pretty cool by me.
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Mar 15, 2014 01:16
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gently caress ITAR, gently caress export control. Someone has to do it, but the ones they pick to do it are loving idiot bureaucrats. loving idiots cunts, all of them.
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Mar 15, 2014 05:15
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A DCMA man yelled at us for slapping "ITAR" on our engineering drawings when in reality it's way harder to actually employ ITAR regs. Too bad I don't give no fucks! But we'll probably fix it anyway...
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Mar 17, 2014 20:49
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KetTarma posted:Earlier post about image processing class My department head shot down my waiver request for taking this class on the grounds that going around the course catalog can weaken the accreditation of the degree. Sadness. Looks like my only option is to take this elective since that's all that's offered that I meet the reqs for: Deterministic Methods of Operational Research posted:The theory and applications of deterministic models of operations research. Topics include linear programming and the simplex algorithm, transportation and assignment problems, game theory, graphs and network flows, dynamic programming, and sensitivity analysis. Requires two semesters of calculus and one semester of linear algebra. I'm guessing this would be useful for something like optimizing... something?
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Mar 18, 2014 00:36
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French Canadian posted:A DCMA man yelled at us for slapping "ITAR" on our engineering drawings when in reality it's way harder to actually employ ITAR regs. Don't know if it's company policy government policy, but if I buy a wrench from Walmart and use it to tighten a nut on an ITAR aircraft, that's now an ITAR controlled wrench.
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Mar 18, 2014 14:50
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KetTarma posted:My department head shot down my waiver request for taking this class on the grounds that going around the course catalog can weaken the accreditation of the degree. Ayup. Again the main benefit here is getting used to going from new notation to implementation. Most everything on that list I come into contact with pretty regularly, and I wish I had more exposure in school. In aerospace there is more money so the groups are bigger, and you might be further away from people who implement that stuff. Several MEs in my group work only on that, doing topology optimization for stress, thermal, magnetics, and so on.
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Mar 18, 2014 14:57
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KetTarma posted:My department head shot down my waiver request for taking this class on the grounds that going around the course catalog can weaken the accreditation of the degree.  really? That kind of sounds like crap to me, and laziness in not wanting to do some paperwork...antiga posted:Don't know if it's company policy government policy, but if I buy a wrench from Walmart and use it to tighten a nut on an ITAR aircraft, that's now an ITAR controlled wrench. sounds like company to me, we certainly don't do that...
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Mar 18, 2014 17:59
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Shrug. He said that if I really want to take it, he'll put in the paperwork to have the course evaluated to be added to the catalog next year. I think that if that's the case, there won't be enough people to get the class off the ground. (I go to a small school)
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Mar 18, 2014 23:41
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