Mistakes In My First Deal 1 and an Interstellar Spacecraft 3

A look at the MRCOOL HVAC system and Breakthrough Starshot

In the summer of 2022 I was looking to buy my first rental property. I had just spent around 6 months reading every real estate book I could find and listening to every podcast that was related to real estate. I felt confident in my abilities to analyze a deal and follow through on the process. I began looking on the MLS and had found a promising property. A duplex. In my analysis, it cash flowed positively and had the potential to be fixed up, thereby increasing the price through forced appreciation. It was also in an area only an hour from me and seemed to be the best deal that I could find. What followed was several months of headaches and relief, losses and wins. I am going to share the more memorable losses and wins so that you won’t make these same mistakes as me and hopefully, will become inspired by the possibility of the wins.

When the subject of rehab came up, I knew that I wanted to add in an internal HVAC system. The duplex at that time only had window units. Part of my analysis required the rents to be raised, and I knew that if I needed to raise the rents by several hundred dollars, I needed to create value that would be worth several hundred dollars a month more. I had learned from my father about an AC system called MRCOOL. The idea is that it is a do-it-yourself AC system that is cheaper to install than a conventional one with air ducts. It contains the main heater and cooler unit that sits outside, while the indoor portions are attached through the wall on the rooms you want to cool. The main unit and room units are attached through cables and flex hoses. Since the room units are on the outer wall of the house there is no need to run duct thought the whole property. This was where the cost savings come in. I had a guy ready to install the system once the title was given to me. All seemed good until I got some bad news. It seems that Florida has a law about AC systems and you have to be certified in order to install an AC system. The person we were going to use was only certified for Tennessee, not Florida. This immediately halted all plans I had for the AC install. I spent several weeks calling and recalling AC companies in Florida to see if they could install the MRCOOL system. Only one said they might, but at that time, it was too late. I needed it to be installed ASAP. I ended up going with someone that my property manager recommended. It was a lot more expensive then the MRCOOL but it worked out in the end since I would know that if it broke down, the people who installed it would be able to repair it. If I had gone with the property managers original recommendation and not try to save money, then I would have saved myself time. Concerning the law about being certified, that is now something I will have to take into account.

Breakthrough Starshot

The last 2 weeks we have spent time looking at 2 interstellar vehicles that could take humanity to other worlds. However, these spacecraft are very large and would cost an untold number of dollars to build in space. The question after hearing that is, is there a way to create a smaller spacecraft to visit another solar system? Breakthrough Starshot is the answer to this. As part of the Breakthrough initiative, which was founded by Steven Hawking and Yuri Milner, a Russian Billionaire, it seeks to create the technical foundations that could result in a potential mission to the nearest star in our galaxy, Alpha Centauri. The way the spacecraft works is very simple. A spacship will launch into earth orbit, where it will release its payload, hundreds of very small and very thin, paper looking spaceships. Once they release, a group of high powered lasers on earth will fire onto the spaceships where the laser will push the nanoships to 20% the speed of light. One by one they will all be accelerated to our nearest star. In total, the journey will take only 20 years. An astonishing feet of engineering considering that the voyager probes have been exploring for even longer than that. What prevents the spaceship from melting or being vaporized is that the paper aspect of the ship is a solar sail that can reflect almost 100% of the heat. And, since the spaceship’s main core is a tiny microchip, it weighs very little. In the formula {Force = Mass * Acceleration} and solving for acceleration, {Acceleration = Force / Mass}, this allows for a very high acceleration since the mass is so low. While this is one of the most realistic ways to get a ship to Alpha Centauri in the near future, there are still challenges to solve. One such challenge is that the amount of power the lasers would need to be able to output is equivalent to the power of a nuclear reactor. Also, the systems in the nanocraft would need to be able to withstands the vacuum of space micrometeoroid hits and still be able to function after 20 years of travel. However, nothing is a deal breaker yet. Technology we have today would only need to get better.

Concept of the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative