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The Rain System “contains wildfires within 10 minutes of ignition”

rain.aero

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Re: The Rain System “contains wildfires within 10 minutes of ignition”

#151

Post by epmatsw »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #140

It looks like they're just dropping Elide Fire Balls, an existing fire extinguishing product of limited commercial success. I'd wager due to their high cost, they run something like $100 a piece... As much as a good fire extinguisher. Of course if this worked that could be a significant cost savings compared to sending a crew, but the Fire Balls are intended for enclosed environments and require direct fire exposure…

I guess you have think of the cost savings vs an actual fire too. $1.6B worth of property destroyed and a $55m cleanup project after the Boulder fires just now. That can justify a whole lot of $100 fire extinguishers even if they’re only marginally more effective (which it’s not clear that these are, just saying this is a problem you could justifiably throw some serious money at)

Re: The Rain System “contains wildfires within 10 minutes of ignition”

#152

Post by marssaxman »

space_fountain wrote: post #64
CrazyStat wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe we can't ever stop them from happening in the first place perhaps it's more flatten the curve We've been trying to "flatten the curve" for the past century. Turns out that was a bad idea. The only way too get back to a healthy ecosystem at this point is to allow a hundred years of excess built up fuel to burn. California had artificially pleasant (i.e mostly wildfire-free) summers for many years. The next few…

Isn't this a very norm biased idea. I think geo engineering gets too much of a bad rap. It's powerful and thus massive mistakes have and will be made, but we're only going to get better at it. Why resign ourselves. Would logging at sufficient amounts help, could we better smooth the release of water and fix this? I sort of hate the modern environmentalisms insistence that we should just throw up our hands and anythin…

"Our previous attempts at environmental engineering have created bigger problems than we started with, due to unforeseen complexities in the system... what should we do?"

"I know! Let's grab this tiger's tail even harder"

Re: The Rain System “contains wildfires within 10 minutes of ignition”

#153

Post by newbamboo »

mabbo wrote: post #92
dragonsky67 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the biggest problems with managing bushfire in Australia is having the fire "jump the line". Where embers fly ahead of the main fire, starting spot fires that unless dealt with just extend the reach of the fire. Currently a lot of spot fire management is attempted using helicopters with water buckets, but this is both expensive and bloody dangerous. Being able to use semi disposable drones could assist dramati…

Wow, that's a really great point. If we have these sorts of drones helping to contain and manage the allowed fires, in an automated fashion, we can reduce the effort needed to do so, or perhaps even control larger fires. Maybe I was too pessimistic.

Too pessimistic is a great, generous way, to summarize your biases which are those shared by most laypeople and even some self professed experts. Don’t try to turn wild fire into some stupid binary like everything else on tv, where you choose a side “pro-fire” or “anti-fire” and then insist that your way is the only one worthy of consideration.

Controlled burns, which it seem you favor, do not imply an absence of firefighting. It’s not “fire, good or bad?” Even though many seem to want to have that sort of debate. It’s an idiotic way of thinking.

Re: The Rain System “contains wildfires within 10 minutes of ignition”

#154

Post by realslimjd »

svnt wrote: post #26
tobyjsullivan wrote: post #20

This is great! Sounds like they are solving the problem of detecting tiny fires in vast wilderness[0]. Detection seems like 80% of the problem. Immediate response would be a huge improvement over the current strategy. That's a win even if they don't solve the drone scaling/deployment/automation problems. [0] https://www.rain.aero/missions/software-engineer-realtime-fi...

It looks like a practical use-case for drones even if the dropping of suppressive poke-balls probably needs improvement. Rough numbers: 3 million acres of forest in USA, one drone could ultimately cover 500 sq km (13 km radius) 6000ish drones call it 10k for redundancy Even at 10k per drone including base station that’s roughly $100M in hardware to cover the entirety of US forestland. PG&E is your first customer. edi…

There are 750 million acres of forest in the US and each drone can cover 40 acres. That's 18,000,000 drones required.

Re: The Rain System “contains wildfires within 10 minutes of ignition”

#155

Post by sharp11 »

lambdadmitry wrote: post #102
sharp11 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our past forest management practices are a part of it, but climate change is also a huge part: https://www.c2es.org/content/wildfires-and-climate-change/ >

I don't think it meshes well with Spanish wildfire stats [1]. I can't see any serious trend there, definitely nothing like California. The main difference is that they manage their forests and do prescribed burning. [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1265354/area-burned-by-w...

I can't speak to Spain, specifically, but the relationship between climate change and wildfires is well-established. See for instance: https://www.preventionweb.net/files/73797_wildfiresbriefingn...

Re: The Rain System “contains wildfires within 10 minutes of ignition”

#156

Post by jcrawfordor »

epmatsw wrote: post #151
jcrawfordor wrote: post #140

It looks like they're just dropping Elide Fire Balls, an existing fire extinguishing product of limited commercial success. I'd wager due to their high cost, they run something like $100 a piece... As much as a good fire extinguisher. Of course if this worked that could be a significant cost savings compared to sending a crew, but the Fire Balls are intended for enclosed environments and require direct fire exposure…

I guess you have think of the cost savings vs an actual fire too. $1.6B worth of property destroyed and a $55m cleanup project after the Boulder fires just now. That can justify a whole lot of $100 fire extinguishers even if they’re only marginally more effective (which it’s not clear that these are, just saying this is a problem you could justifiably throw some serious money at)

The comment about price was less about this application and more just to explain why Elide Fire Balls are not at all common in the real world... the company tries very hard to justify their higher cost but the advantages they point to are not especially convincing. Dropping them from above might actually be a pretty convincing use-case, but they're spherical and it takes seconds (Elide likes to say 3-5 but it seems often longer in practice) for them to melt through and activate. That means that in probably 8 cases out of 10 they'll roll away from the fire before activating, making them pretty useless. You can see in the Rain demo that they seem to have built up extra wood around the fire... I think this was to stop the balls from rolling off of the fire before activating.

In a drone system like this you're probably better off dropping the powder suppressant directly from very low. But that would require more complex custom fabrication of a delivery system. I think "Rain" just used the Fire Balls because of the simplicity of building a mechanism to release them, and not really because of any actual analysis of efficacy.

In their intended applications they're supposed to be hard-mounted where a fire is expected, or lobbed at a fire like an old-fashioned fire grenade... but the slow activation time just seems to rule that out as a good option much of the time. The only really compelling use case I see for them is mounting inside of electrical and equipment enclosures for automatic fire suppression, but there are other, cheaper products on the market for that use.

Re: The Rain System “contains wildfires within 10 minutes of ignition”

#157

Post by RC_ITR »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #93
RC_ITR wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we should definitely put out small fires in August and let (or force) bigger ones to burn in March. Wild how little critical thinking gets put behind these meme ideas like 'historic forest management is the only problem and we should let everything burn'.

Instead of snark I'd suggest doing some research. The science on this has been solid for about 50 years now. The political will is the problem.

You think controlled burns during fire season are a good idea?

I agree with you that controlled burns are good, but I'm saying a 'controlled burn' is impossible from Aug-rainfall.

And sure, letting the entire Sierra burn is one solution, but we have the technology to do controlled burns when appropriate and not let wildfires run unfettered. Those are not mutually exclusive.

Hence the 'critical thinking' snark.

The answer to stopping massive wildfires is not to stop fighting them whole cloth, because, surprise California's equilibrium burn pre-contact was probably 4m acres/year anyway!

Re: The Rain System “contains wildfires within 10 minutes of ignition”

#158

Post by space_fountain »

marssaxman wrote: post #152
space_fountain wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this a very norm biased idea. I think geo engineering gets too much of a bad rap. It's powerful and thus massive mistakes have and will be made, but we're only going to get better at it. Why resign ourselves. Would logging at sufficient amounts help, could we better smooth the release of water and fix this? I sort of hate the modern environmentalisms insistence that we should just throw up our hands and anythin…

"Our previous attempts at environmental engineering have created bigger problems than we started with, due to unforeseen complexities in the system... what should we do?" "I know! Let's grab this tiger's tail even harder"

Have they all failed though? We feed billons of people based mostly on massive changes we've made to the growable parts of the world. We've drained most of the Netherlands and they seem pretty happy. England is treeless because of our work and they seem pretty ok. Idk it's more like we got burned and now have decided to never try cooking again. I think it's quite easy to convince me we should try to structure life in a way that minimizes the interventions we need to do and that any particular thing we could do is bad, but just saying it ins't natural or that we've been wrong before won't cut it for me, not when we need to make big changes not when doing nothing doesn't actually mean the world stays the same.

Re: The Rain System “contains wildfires within 10 minutes of ignition”

#159

Post by marssaxman »

space_fountain wrote: post #158
marssaxman wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Our previous attempts at environmental engineering have created bigger problems than we started with, due to unforeseen complexities in the system... what should we do?" "I know! Let's grab this tiger's tail even harder"

Have they all failed though? We feed billons of people based mostly on massive changes we've made to the growable parts of the world. We've drained most of the Netherlands and they seem pretty happy. England is treeless because of our work and they seem pretty ok. Idk it's more like we got burned and now have decided to never try cooking again. I think it's quite easy to convince me we should try to structure life in…

Humanity is not just eating our seed corn, we're burning it for heat. If you think we can get away with that indefinitely, you are far more optimistic than I will ever be.

Re: The Rain System “contains wildfires within 10 minutes of ignition”

#160

Post by space_fountain »

marssaxman wrote: post #159
space_fountain wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have they all failed though? We feed billons of people based mostly on massive changes we've made to the growable parts of the world. We've drained most of the Netherlands and they seem pretty happy. England is treeless because of our work and they seem pretty ok. Idk it's more like we got burned and now have decided to never try cooking again. I think it's quite easy to convince me we should try to structure life in…

Humanity is not just eating our seed corn, we're burning it for heat. If you think we can get away with that indefinitely, you are far more optimistic than I will ever be.

Well it seems like we're going to need some more corn then right? The idea that we can and should go back to the natural carrying capacity of earth would if implemented result in billions dying and we don't make a bigger pie without flexing our muscles a bit
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