geezers – on the topic of free energy, a group is developing fuel cells made from bacteria in soil or waste!
“You can just literally make energy from dirt,” said Aviva Presser, a graduate student at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “And there’s a lot of dirt in Africa.”
I’m reading Rocketeers by Michael Belfiore, and a couple things so far are worth sharing:
The X-Prize was the brainchild of Peter Diamandis, who did not have $10 million of his own money, but inspired others to give to cause for which he was passionate. He was inspired by a biography about Charles Lindbergh, who was motivated to make the first flight across the Atlantic by a $25,000 prize offered in 1919 by Raymond Orteig. And, it was no small measure the consequence of Lindbergh’s fame that catapulted an entire new industry to the forefront of public conciousness.
Diamandis realized that a similar prize could possibly be the catalyst to jump-start a commercial space industry.
You can imagine the skeptics, when he went about trying to raise $10 million!
Arthur C. Clarke said in 1968: “All revolutionary ideas…pass through three stages, which may be summed up by these reactions: 1) It’s crazy – don’t waste my time. 2) It’s possible, but it’s not worth doing. 3) I always said it was a good idea.”
Also interesting is the vision from the book The High Frontier by Gerard O’Neil. Published in 1976, the book promotes a vision where space island colonies that house thousands of people. They are artificial worlds engineered with year-round sunshine, and even lakes and streams. Factories and farms would exist on nearby islands. And, all the energy the earth and the colonies need is generated by the sun. And, all raw materials and metals come from asteroids.
Free energy is available to all, which ends our dependence on fossil fuels, and improves the quality of life for all humans. The industries that cause the most pollution would be moved off of planet earth. And, there is virtually limitless space for the human population to expand.
Free energy for all human-kind is a recurring theme on sharkride:
Clean Free and constant energy.
Clean free energy tapped from the ionosphere.
With free energy and also free, ubiquitous Internet… imagine the possibilities for humans.
We have so much to look forward to!
A Silicon Valley-based startup, Magnetic Air Cars, claims to be inventing nothing less than the future of transportation:
According to the company: A battery starts a magnetic motor… which in turn drives a small but powerful on-board air compressor. The air flow is then tubocharged and multiplied to where the resulting horse-pressure™ smoothly powers the car to incredible speeds… without ever getting hot and without ever having to be stopped for external recharging or refueling.
It seems plausable that magnetic forces could be harnessed.
I’m a member of Palo Alto Green, which means that 100 percent of the electricity I use is from 100 percent renewable sources. The extra cost, to be a member of the program, with my electricity consumption?
2 dollars a month (and the real cost is potentially less, because as a member you get discounts at select Palo Alto merchants).
I also have Terra Pass, to offset the carbon from my car, which costs
5 dollars a month.
So, for $7 a month, the primary sources contributing to my carbon footprint are, in theory, offset. Over time, with efficiency improvements, the total cost would be even less.
If every single American did this, the total cost would be about $27 billion, a fraction of the $700 billion we send a year overseas for oil. Not to mention the value that would be generated in America for technological solutions.
Why does the math not make sense?
Is the inhibiting factor that these programs don’t effectively scale?
Or, are most people not willing to pay an extra ~$12 a month, to save the planet?
Producing cotton for clothing has an incredibly negative environmental impact. It can take more than 5,280 gallons of water to produce a single T-shirt and pair of jeans, and fresh water availability is steadily decreasing worldwide, as demand exceeds supply. Agricultural water use is a significant culprit in the depletion of major aquifers. And, cotton uses approximately 25% of the world’s insecticides and more than 10% of the pesticides (55 million pounds sprayed on 12.8 million acres), and 2.03 billion pounds of synthetic fertilizers.
Seems like this is a pretty big business opportunity for companies like Gap (or an upstart), to make and market organic and sustainably created synthetic clothing, which is currently hard to find outside of the small clothing section of a Whole Foods store. The marketing campaign can include public education, so the brand becomes known for something even more important than style. It becomes synonymous with an important environmental (and potentially also social) cause.
an amphibious city concept to home ecological refugees (click here for more images and information).
The outdoor spaces could also be used for urban farming, and localizing the food supply.
Related post previously on sharkride – farming tower.
and, of course, my tower concept structure with neighborhoods, and classic homes.
