OT: how far we've come?, 35 years of non-progress Options

[lapuwali]

Hybrids are the buzzword now, and people marvel at how the latest Civic hybrid gets 50mpg.

Autoweek had a short article on the early Civics, which got 55mpg with a carb. 1.2L, 50hp, 1500lbs. Sure, they were slow, but they were described as still being fun to drive. The way most people drive modern Civics, I doubt they'd notice if they suddenly only had 50hp.

(yes, I know emissions are much better, it's quieter, it crashes better, yada, yada...)

[riverman]

QUOTE (kwales @ Mar 8 2006, 05:16 PM)

Here is a wild one. When in college, one of my professors was big on the Powersat poposal. This was a proposal to build a satellite with about 25 square miles of solar cells, collect solar energy and beam it down to the earth via microwaves. Microwave power transmission/reception efficiency has improved to where it is quite feasable to do this. Dr. A suggested beaming the microwave beam down to someplace where it could do no harm- say a imddle eastern desert near the sea and use the power to seperate hydrogen and oxygen from seawater. Release the oxygen and liquify the hydrogen. Use the port facillities already in existance and use the liquid natural gas tankers to transport the liqid hydrogen to burn. Dr. A was a nuclear physicist, one of Dr. Teller's 12 disciples, and on the shuttle review board. He always said they were gonna lose at least one shuttle. Burn one hydrogen with two oxygens produces..... water vapor... (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/idea.gif) Ken

Sounds good on paper. But wouldn't we be adding energy to the earth's atmosphere by doing this?

The solar energy collected and then beamed to earth would be solar energy that would have missed the earth anyway. But by collecting it and then transporting it into our environment it has to go somewhere. Since energy can not be created or destroyed and we would be importing this energy from outside earth's own energy cycle, would not the end effect be further global warming and increased environmental damage?