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They used Xenon to climb Everest in days – is it the future of mountaineering?

nytimes.com

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Re: They used Xenon to climb Everest in days – is it the future of mountaineering?

#151

Post by throw0101b »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #127
FpUser wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Example here in Canada and Toronto in particular. There were plenty of independent pet clinics and they used to charge somewhat reasonable prices. Now nearly all of those were bought by big companies / investors. Prices went through the roof, competition is down, and the only thing they want to discuss with the customer is how to squeeze the most money disregarding of results. Yes I do want those assholes burned at t…

> Prices went through the roof This is just exhibit 8345346 that this type of "free market" doesn't result in lower prices for consumers, but this grift has been going on for a long time now. Free market now means private investors are free to take over entire markets and monopolize them and bribe/lobby the government regulatory agencies to look the other way at best, or enact regulations that act as moats to defend…

> This is just exhibit 8345346 that this type of "free market" doesn't result in lower prices for consumers […]

I think it's worth asking if you have a free market at the point there's consolidation and it approaches monopoly/oligopoly territory.

Re: They used Xenon to climb Everest in days – is it the future of mountaineering?

#152

Post by pfdietz »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #141
weinzierl wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "no long-lived isotopes"? That fission only produces short lived Xenon isotopes? Then, what use would it be to harvest it from fuel? For applications like in the article you want very long-lived or ideally stable Xe isotopes, which do exist.

The short-lived stuff decays away, leaving the safe stuff. When the isotopes decay away, they become other elements that are easily chemically separated. Or so I'd guess.

That's right. The xenon isotopes that are left are stable.

Another fission product that might be worth recovering is rhodium, although not being a gas the process would be more involved.

Re: They used Xenon to climb Everest in days – is it the future of mountaineering?

#153

Post by datavirtue »

ty6853 wrote: post #119
wat10000 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most business is about providing value by delivering goods or services that people want and are willing to pay for. Visit your local shops, how many of them are convincing people to buy proverbial tulips and leaving their customers holding the bag? Look at the most valuable companies in the world; they all do or make stuff people happily pay for because they actually find value in it. Certainly there are people who s…

But there is a real magic that happens in the process there. When two people make a deal, voluntarily, at least rationally (unless it is charity) both expect to be better off. The magic of the businessman is to connive his way into getting the largest slice of the 'better off'. He generally can't legally make a deal without generating value, but if he can capture it to the point the customer is only one iota better o…

Trade is not a zero sum game.

Re: They used Xenon to climb Everest in days – is it the future of mountaineering?

#154

Post by ty6853 »

throw0101b wrote: post #151
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Prices went through the roof This is just exhibit 8345346 that this type of "free market" doesn't result in lower prices for consumers, but this grift has been going on for a long time now. Free market now means private investors are free to take over entire markets and monopolize them and bribe/lobby the government regulatory agencies to look the other way at best, or enact regulations that act as moats to defend…

> This is just exhibit 8345346 that this type of "free market" doesn't result in lower prices for consumers […] I think it's worth asking if you have a free market at the point there's consolidation and it approaches monopoly/oligopoly territory.

There is nothing even remotely close to a 'free market' in pet clinics.

A free market would be me with a sign in the corner, offering to perform surgery on your dog, with my engineering degree printed on a piece of paper and anesthetics I manufactured in my basement.

North America has severely limited the number of veterinarians and regulated the care, the monopolistic elements are likely largely a result of government intervention.

Re: They used Xenon to climb Everest in days – is it the future of mountaineering?

#155

Post by nradov »

gadders wrote: post #112
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #21

Boss Lowe wrote about doping with xenon gas more than a decade ago: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/another-use-xenon Also, and quite interestingly, xenon isn't the only element that does this. Cobalt does something very similar: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6157393/ Athletic use is probably more common than people think. And I'd be absolutely shocked if Xe gas weren't already being used in race…

I always wondered if the allied forces were giving their elite troops EPO or similar when tracking the Taliban up and down mountains in Afghanistan. If they weren't, I think they should have been.

I don't know about EPO, it probably wouldn't have been that useful. But it was an open secret that a lot of the elite ground troops used illegally purchased performance enhancing steroids to build muscle and accelerate recovery. Long patrols through rough terrain while carrying a heavy load are extremely grueling and a little enhancement was tremendously helpful. Use of those drugs was technically a violation of military regulations. But officers often looked the other way because they didn't want to endanger the mission, and regular urine tests didn't check for steroids.

Now that the GWOT is over, the peacetime military has been cracking down on steroid use.

Re: They used Xenon to climb Everest in days – is it the future of mountaineering?

#156

Post by ty6853 »

datavirtue wrote: post #153
ty6853 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there is a real magic that happens in the process there. When two people make a deal, voluntarily, at least rationally (unless it is charity) both expect to be better off. The magic of the businessman is to connive his way into getting the largest slice of the 'better off'. He generally can't legally make a deal without generating value, but if he can capture it to the point the customer is only one iota better o…

Trade is not a zero sum game.

I just described a possibility where the businessman is better off and the customer is one iota better off, that is not 'zero-sum'.

Re: They used Xenon to climb Everest in days – is it the future of mountaineering?

#157

Post by cratermoon »

sQL_inject wrote: post #29

Sherpa (local) climbs Everest in eleven hours: national pride Foreigner climbs Everest in three days: "against climbing ethics" Got it.

That Sherpa was born and lived on the mountain his whole life. Everything he is was molded by his life. His ability to make the climb came from years of experience and knowledge.

The foreigner huffed some gas and slept in a high-tech tube a week before the climb.

I'll leave to the reader to decide which one deserves respect and admiration.

Re: They used Xenon to climb Everest in days – is it the future of mountaineering?

#158

Post by username223 »

jmyeet wrote: post #65

I've long held that climbing Everest has become a gross display of wealth and vanity and basically nobody should do it. There's no glory in being the 4000th person to do so. It's not glamorous. You're basically climbing over trash and dead bodies to do it. Often inexperienced people with too much money are putting themselves, their sherpas and other climbers are risk by doing so. Using bottled oxygen already made thi…

100%

I've climbed some mountains, and while I don't know if I would be capable of doing Everest, I do know that I wouldn't want to (unless I could do it like Goran Kropp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göran_Kropp). I guess I could brag if I doped myself, took a helicopter past the Khumbu Icefall, and had servants carrying my stuff the whole way to the summit, but I could never be proud of myself for doing that.

Re: They used Xenon to climb Everest in days – is it the future of mountaineering?

#159

Post by Aurornis »

rtkwe wrote: post #146
Aurornis wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but meta-analyses still doesn't show a real performance bump I wish all of these news articles would discuss the actual studies instead of lazily parroting the claims of the one guy who is trying to sell expensive Xenon-assisted Everest hikes. These articles are always PR pieces for Lukas Furtenbach’s expensive Everest tours. Every single time I see the words “Xenon” and “Everest” in a headline, his name is in the…

> I wish all of these news articles would discuss the actual studies They do, if you read them. > While some doctors have used the gas in the past to “precondition” patients to low oxygen levels — for example, before major heart surgery — the practice hasn’t really caught on because “it hasn’t been as protective as one would hope,” he said. > Mike Shattock, a professor of cellular cardiology at King’s College London,…

> They do, if you read them.

I did read the article, which is how I knew Lukas Furtenbach was involved. Please don’t accuse people of not reading the article when they’re specifically talking about content of the article.

Anyway, my point was that if these articles wanted to be serious about the science, they’d lead with the studies and science.

Instead, they tack on weasel words (literally “some experts say” and “some research” as in your quotes ) in an attempt to make it feel like a both-sides style journalism while leaving Furtenbach’s claims as the headline and the main story.

Re: They used Xenon to climb Everest in days – is it the future of mountaineering?

#160

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

Aurornis wrote: post #132
comrade1234 wrote: post #11

So they slept in hypoxia tents which activates the hypoxia-inducible factor molecule, but they also took xenon which also activates the molecule. So, it's not clear if the xenon actually did anything? Back during the 2000 dot-com boom crash I met a guy who got into a top business school in part by writing about the challenges of climbing Everest. He confessed drunkenly at a party to me that he'd never even left the U…

> Back during the 2000 dot-com boom crash I met a guy who got into a top business school in part by writing about the challenges of climbing Everest I met a startup founder in my local community who would always bring up his ambitions to climb Everest. He made sure everyone knew and made it part of his personality. Except, he was very out of shape and undeniably overweight. He was not doing any type of training or fi…

I have a coworker who talked to me about wanting to climb Everest. I asked him if he does any climbing or even liked to climb. The answer was "No". It's a really weird thing. Everest seems to be a symbol for achievement.
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