| Author | Message | ||
     Ebutch |
I'll get a Gov. grant to manufacture these.& employ Dreamers.   | ||
| Ebutch |
even buses too  | ||
| Macbuell |
LOFL | ||
| H0gwash |
California lawmaker wants to ban gas car sales after 2040 http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/cap itol-alert/article176030626.html | ||
| Torquehd |
The only reasonable alternative to internal combustion is riding your magical flying unicorn to work. | ||
| Torquehd |
California in 2017:  California in 2040:  | ||
| Ebutch |
Even a demand for trucking Too ! eg{815757,}   | ||
| Teeps |
Looking for a place in the Ozarks... | ||
| Froggy |
It is very possible that in 20 years that most people won't even be buying cars, so it won't even be an issue. 2040 is 23 years from now, a lot can happen between now and then. I'm pretty much done with gasoline engines at this point, my next vehicle is most likely to not run on gas, and that will be in a few years, not a few decades. | ||
| Aesquire |
You did notice in the after picture there are no living humans. In Heinlein's future history series we are Now in The Crazy Years where western civilization loses any sense of proportion. This ends when a charismatic preacher turned politician becomes President and imposes a theocracy that elevates him to The Prophet and he rules with an iron fist with a warrior priesthood and lives like a modern Mohammed with a hareem in the White House. Europe at this point is a radioactive wasteland. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_in_2100 Read the description and marvel at the accurate guesses from 1953. See anything that looks familiar? It's not prophecy. It's a warning. Even the best sci-fi doesn't really predict the future. It asks "what if?" And takes it from there. Heinlein put the first manned Moon landing within a year of real life. He had the method 3/4 correct. Multi stage rockets and razor thin weight requirements. He missed on a few details. He had the launch as a private enterprise with the genius business man going broke and screwed out of his own company, not a government program. He launched from Pikes peak with the rocket thrown with a linear motor up a curved track instead of Florida.( frankly the math works out just as well with the high elevation/less atmosphere vs. Closer to the equator higher rotational boost. ) Heinlein's story on the first atomic power plant used subcritical reactor design that was in danger of massive explosion. That system was never used, maybe in part because of the story, but one very like it was used in the five Hanford atomic piles used to make plutonium from 1941 until they were closed. In fact, there are current proposals to use a safe version of Heinlein's reactor to burn radioactive waste as fuel. We need to build them today. Considering he wrote these stories before and during the Manhattan project based on current knowledge, he was way ahead of his time. And the FBI investigated him, looking for leaks. I'm told he scared the crap out of them, and when they consulted with Los Alamos really got scared. In the end it was decided to ignore the stories to not attract attention to them, & have a quiet word with former Naval Lieutenant Heinlein, known patriot. But not before he'd published "Solution, Unsatisfactory" which is to this day the definitive nuclear war nightmare scenario. ..... | ||
| Aesquire |
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solution_Unsatisfa ctory Published May, 1941. For a different take on The People's Republic of California, see contemporary historian Victor Davis Hanson. ( see some of his work in National Review and his own website ) | ||
| Torquehd |
Froggy I've been interested in EV's for awhile now. Would love to be smart enough to build one. The tech for motors and controllers is there. Batteries just suck. Range and weight just suck. Lithium is cool but it just sucks. California needs to lead the world in nuclear powered vehicles. | ||
| Torquehd |
Maybe California will mandate air-powered vehicles like the Volvo Canyon Carver. I figure it'll roll about 40 feet before the airtank needs to be repressurized.  Or there's hydrogen power. Like the ENV which can't quite hit 50mph and has a range of less than 100mph under optimal conditions. Too bad hydrogen takes more energy to produce, than it produces. I could be wrong about that, please let me know if I am.  You can run ICE vehicles by burning wood, but tree huggers would never allow it, and motorheads would need to get bigger engines as it typically produces about 30% less power. A couple woodgas or gasifier cars Maybe an EXTERNAL combustion engine? Sterlings engines are totally cool. But, you burn a lot of fuel for a little power. I've seen plans for a solar powered sterling. That would be cool, but obviously not have much power. And you could only drive east in the morning and west in the afternoon   There's always human power. Some interesting ideas on that. Human powered monorail?  Streamliners are cool but they aren't very practical. They suck uphill, or in a crosswind, or for carrying groceries.  Human powered flight is a cool concept but i don't know if it will ever take off (ha! get the pun?)   Besides Nuclear which is the obvious answer, what other fuel systems can we fantasize about? | ||
| Tootal |
From my limited knowledge of "nuclear power" I would have to say that it's nothing more than boiling water. So we are to revert back to steam powered vehicles? They were fast, a Stanley Steamer went over 100 mph back in it's heyday! Nuclear plants, subs, etc were all steam powered. They just boiled the water with Nuclear proficiency! | ||
| Torquehd |
Steam power is SICK! I'd LOVE a motorcycle that sounds like a freaking steam train! spewing sparks and ashes all over the road. | ||
| Tootal |
I worked in a coal fired power house for 6 years. I maintained all the equipment to make it work. Rebuilding 5 stage pumps that produced 350 degree water at 700 psi was pretty amazing to me. We produced 600 degree super heated steam that ran turbine generators and provided steam for heating many different things along with the production of beer. I've also seen what damage it can do!! It is nothing to sneeze at! | ||
| Aesquire |
Too bad hydrogen takes more energy to produce, than it produces. I could be wrong about that, please let me know if I am. Nope, you are correct. Any way you make Hydrogen. Split it from oil or propane or methane, takes power. ( and you'll notice you can burn all those things... because of the hydrogen, mostly ) Split water, takes power. Much more than you get back burning it. Or even burning it in a fuel cell. Hydrogen is an energy storage and transfer system for a power rich world. If you have abundant cheap power from Nuclear, Orbital Solar, or burning politicians, ( there HAS to be a limit on politicians, we just haven't found it ) then you can make Hydrogen, which burns very cleanly, leaving behind only oxides of Nitrogen ( if burned in a high compression IC engine with air ) and one of the most powerful greenhouse gases on Earth, Water vapor. ( which auto-recycles as rain, or just drips out of the exhaust pipe. ) But the first step in a hydrogen economy is abundant cheap power. Put those words together with California? Simply, abundant cheap power is hell on earth for authoritarian regimes that use envy and hate to gain power and stay in power. Since the Greenie movement is a tool of authoritarian men who use envy and hate, expect any proposal to make power cheaper to be called blasphemy, or Capitalist theft, or racist, or whatever the lie of the week or century is. I do wonder if the loons in CA government are ready for external combustion engines? They obviously don't actually understand these things. Burning wood in the boiler of the steam cars sure will change the nature of LA smog, won't it? In 2017, you can see the sun. After? not at Noon. External combustion doesn't have to be very dirty, propane boilers burn fairly clean. But the PURPOSE isn't IC engines. The Purpose is control by making power scarce, and under the control of the elite. Gasoline, fossil fuels, are too easy for the peasants to get, so they are going after it sideways. Whatever they say, however they justify it, be sure that they lie. Pity. Be nice to have a not-puppets-of-evil ecology movement again. ( I remember when we did... ) | ||
| Glitch |
How are they going to produce all this power? Don't they already have problems with their power grid? Or am I remembering wrong? Maybe they'll build a Tesla Tower.  | ||
| Glitch |
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| Midknyte |
EV ranges still sick, but we'd still be so much further along if the players could all just agree on common god damn charging stations. How many times must we re-do VHS and Beta? | ||
| Aesquire |
If you could go back in time, whisper in Henry Ford's ear, and tell him to go alcohol instead of gasoline. You could easily have sold Henry. He "invented" charcoal briquettes to get rid of waste from the wood used in cars in partnership with Edward Kingsford. He'd have gone for vertical alcohol production. ( where he made money off the fuel, too, using biomass ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsford_(charcoal) That would have spun a different world, eh? ( actually the Japanese made charcoal briquettes back in the Edo period, and exported the idea to Korea & China, making charcoal tube sections, remarkably like solid fuel rocket engines, for cooking and home heating. Japan had a fuel crisis Long before a lot of the planet. Mountainous islands. The designed an ingenious underfloor heat system where the entire floor is made of hollow tiles & becomes the exhaust flue for a central stove, burning these charcoal units. Some Roman homes used that technique too. ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briquette | ||
| Gregtonn |
Sterlings engines are totally cool. But, you burn a lot of fuel for a little power. I've seen plans for a solar powered sterling. I put together a solar powered Sterling engine from plans back in the early '60s. It used an 8" headlight reflector as a parabolic mirror. It barely had enough power to keep itself running. G | ||
| Gregtonn |
By the way, California is in the process of committing suicide by stupid. I'm glad I got out of there when I did. G | ||
| Gregtonn |
The human powered monorail reminds me of another idea I was working on when I was in California. It consisted of using 2 to 6 passenger pods on a monorail running down the freeway medians. The commercial aircraft industry was slow at the time so I had some interest from them in helping to design and build it. The bureaucrats in California were interested in it only as a potential cash cow. G | ||
| Torquehd |
The Schweeb monorail was intended to have the pods "click" together so you can have 4 or 6 or 10 people pedalling in a streamlined row.  And, that way you can bake multiple humans at the same time. I'm not getting in one of those unless it has a robust air conditioner. You could do an electric monorail pod system with centralized power hubs. You could have monopod stations every few blocks. Swipe your card, hop in a pod, and tell it which stop you want to get off at. Sell the idea to Trump and Musk. Create American jobs. | ||
| Redra65k |
http://www.lynceans.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12 /USA-60-yrs-of-marine-nuc-power-v2.pdf the most comprehensive look on naval nuclear power..... they spend 25-50 million per "power plant" to get rid of them ... they could have easily tied them to the grid and produced power for at least 10 years with little to no cost of upkeep per kilowatt/hr .... westinghouse files bankruptcy because they can't build a reactor in the U.S. in 2017 .... how in the heck did they do it a hundred times over 60 years ago it's all a bunch of bullshit | ||
| Gregtonn |
Sell the idea to Trump and Musk. Speaking of musk... can you imagine what one of those pods would smell like after a few sweaty peddlers? I imagine the smell at terminals would be something like a high school locker room. G | ||
| Ebutch |
Like riding on a GreyHound bus  | ||
| Aesquire |
Monorail? That seems like a Shelbyville idea. |
