Good points, Patrick. But something to remember is that if you go from one European capital to another, it may not be much of a drive. But to go to southern Utah and back could be farther. Still, I entirely agree with you. It's not worth crying about the increased gas prices when we spend a lot on astronomy. Best wishes, Joe --- On Wed, 3/9/11, Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> wrote:
From: Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Will the cost of gas change your dark site visits or your attendance at outreach events? To: "Utah Astronomy" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Date: Wednesday, March 9, 2011, 12:51 AM Short answer for me for trips to Harmons and Wheeler Farm is no.
Now to the long answer (but first excuse me while I climb atop my soap box...)
Let's start with a bit of math. It's 40 miles from my house to Wheeler Farm, so 80 round trip. My truck, when I keep the speed down gets 26 MPG, but for this example I'll round that to 30.
With fuel $3.00 per gallon the round trip is going to cost me 80/30*3 = $8.01 for fuel. Bump that up to $4.00 per gallon and the total is $10.68. And moving up to $5.00 per gallon $13.35.
I'm guessing that for many the trip in the opposite direction from SLC to SPOC is going to be about the same.
Somehow an extra $5 once or twice a month just doesn't impress me. Especially considering how much we spend at Denny's afterwards each time. LOL!
But this thread got me thinking of the times I've lived and visited overseas. And that got me poking around the web where I came across a web site asking why American complain so much about fuel prices. Judging from the comments a lot of foreigners think of us as a bunch of crybabies.
So I did a bit of digging and came up with the following current costs of regular gasoline in various countries converted to US dollars per US gallon:
Belgium 7.84 Brazil 5.79 Finland 7.80 Germany 7.46 Greece 7.91 Hong Kong 7.80 Hungary 5.00 Iceland 7.00 Ireland 7.42 Italy 6.97 Japan 6.69 Luxembourg 6.32 Netherlands 9.01 Norway 8.74 Portugal 7.91 Spain 7.12 Sweden 7.19
Granted, a lot of the extra is taxes but still, for the average driver filling their tank it's still a lot of money.
And, just as an aside, having lived in Germany and not remembering ever coming across a pothole on the autobahn I'm thinking they know how to spend their tax dollars to build roads well. But that's another story.
Of course there are other places where fuel is cheaper if you care to live in:
Iran 2.48 Libya 0.64
And then I looked at fuel efficiency. Some of the aforementioned posters commented on our penchant to drive gas guzzling behemoths so I checked on that and came across a number of graphs comparing various countries' average fuel consumption measured in Liters consumed per 100 kilometers driven. France, Germany, Italy and the UK were in the 7 to 8 range with Japan a bit higher. But guess who came out on top with the highest consumption rate on the planet? Yeah, us at 12.
And then one other item. I think most of us on this list know enough physics to know that it takes increased energy to move a given mass at increased velocities. So I looked into that and saw that most cars sold in the US get the best fuel economy when driven in the 50 to 60 MPH range with the efficiency going down considerably and rapidly after that.
I try to keep my speed down to 55 most days but even on those times I do the legal limit I'm always being passed by huge vehicles going way over the limit. And, no doubt those drivers are amongst those complaining the loudest about the cost of driving.
patrick
p.s. I took a friend up flying yesterday. When I landed the cost of aviation gasoline was $6.60 per gallon (another reason you don't hear me complaining about the cost of car gas). _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com