The Focus Fusion Society Forums Focus Fusion Cafe What can we do with $189 Billion?

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  • #3119
    Breakable
    Keymaster

    Lets think about flying cars instead! 😉

    http://www.moller.com/

    Of course parking is still a problem ;(

    #3121
    Rematog
    Participant

    Another problem with flying cars, besides cost and energy (fuel) useage being inherently greater then automobiles, is the complexity of piloting.

    If a train (one dimensional) only take stop, go and speed, cars (2 dimensions) take that and left/straight/right, i.e square the complexity. Flying is not three, but four dimensions. It is, in this analogy, the fourth power of complexity.

    The third dimension, height, is obvious. Less obvious is energy. Flying is an exercise in energy management. If all you do is push down on the stick, you will go down…..fast. And then a landing is impossible, you will either float over the runway, or crash into it….not a landing by my instructor’s definition.

    Anyone who was lucky enough to see the airshow demonstrations of the great Bob Hoover will have a bit of an understanding of the energy management aspect. Look him up on Wikipedia if you don’t know who he is. The video is great.

    So unless totally automated (yawn), Piloting is a much more demanding skill than driving a car.

    And look how many people insist on talking on cell phones, eating, etc while driving a car. Would you really want them all flying over your house? Some of them seem to need even driving automated……

    #3123
    Breakable
    Keymaster

    Please read a little more about the
    http://www.moller.com/newm400.htm
    Mileage from 20mpg. Somewhat comparable to a normal car.
    And yes, they are trying to fully automate it so you would not need to do anything else, just define the destination.
    And of course you should not need a pilots license, and drunk flying should not be a problem 😉
    at least most of the time for the rest – there are parachutes installed

    #3128
    Rematog
    Participant

    Breakable wrote: Please read a little more about the
    http://www.moller.com/newm400.htm
    Mileage from 20mpg. Somewhat comparable to a normal car.
    And yes, they are trying to fully automate it so you would not need to do anything else, just define the destination.
    And of course you should not need a pilots license, and drunk flying should not be a problem 😉
    at least most of the time for the rest – there are parachutes installed

    I looked at the site you posted a link to and saw nothing about “totally Automated”. What I did see was “you will require a “powered-lift normal (read Helicopter) category pilot’s license”. It goes on to say “our intention that the Volantor will EVENTUALLY EVOLVE into a completely automated…” (my emphsis). This is pie in sky wishing, not any kind of near future capability.

    By the way, while I’m not a helicopter pilot (single engine fixed wing only), I’ve asked fully rated fixed wing and helicopter pilots about how hard it would be for a fixed wing pilot to learn to fly a chopper. He told me it was somewhat different and required good coordination of the controls and more attention to them. Remember, there is an additional control in a helicopter, not present in a fixed wing aircraft, the cyclic, which controls the pitch of the rotor. The air car, as a ducted fan, may not have this, but the tilt of the fans would add some complication.

    The milage figure may be somewhat misleading. That is likely a “cruising” fuel consumption. I read years ago that the P-47 Thunderbolt (a very large World War II pistion engined fighter) got 3 mpg. This was based on fuel use of 100 gallons per hour at 300 mph cruising speed. I would bet that the 20 mpg figure does not include low speed flight, take-off and climbing (uses lots of fuel) or hover/land. Look at the total horsepower, figure a gallons per hour at full power for 10 min say to take-off and reach altitute, then 5 more minutes for landing, for a total of 15 min full power fuel use for no distance traveled, then start thinking of anyting less than city to city travel, at it will amaze you how much fuel it uses.

    But, if you can afford a $500,000 price tag (the web site you linked to gives this as the price of series producion) you can afford the fuel.

    #3129
    belbear42
    Participant

    Rematog wrote: James,

    I’ve had the please to travel to Britain twice in my life, and greatly enjoyed it and the wonderful underground system in London.

    But, as I posted, this type of system only exists in the great metropolises. It may be possible to reduce car usage, and I’m sure that practical electric vehicles are possible in the near term.

    But one thing I’ve noticed is that Europeans are, for the most part, lacking a “gut feel” for the size of the United States, esp. the western half. They can understand it when they look up a distance and make calculations, but their “feel” for the world is just smaller then the reality of the western US.

    Rematog

    For every problem there can be a suitable solution, as long as we dare to leave the paved roads of thinking about transportation AND there is the political will to build it. We have the technology for maglev trains, that can transport passengers long-distance at half the speed of an airliner. We have computers that could drive cars fully automatic on suitable roads and people who love the freedom that comes with individual transport. But why think only of maglev as public transport?

    Why not combine the two and design a car-like vehicle that can both use existing roads, new auto-drive roads and even maglev tracks. The latter would also solve that battery problem for long distance travel since the car is essentially powered by the maglev track and can charge up its battery in the meanwhile. On-track your car will be driven automatically, by the same central control that also drives the big trains and smaller buses you share the track with.

    Think of the idea of sitting in your very own car, driving itself at over 400 km/h while you can read a book or surf the web instead of doing such a boring but dangerous activity as hand-driving. You get off the track near your destination and drive your car the last mile or so over existing roads. It would be a real challenge to do this but hey, if we could get a man on the moon using only 1960’s technology, we can build this using only 2000’s technology and make it affordable for anyone who can now afford a brand-new big SUV.

    Chris

    #3131
    Duke Leto
    Participant

    Well, lemme take another tack:

    “What would I do with the Focus Fusion profits?”

    Since we’d be looking at $100 Billion per year for the first few years for a centralized Corporate profit driven system. (Which I think Eric wants to avoid.) Plus maybe an additional $200 Billion in productivity increase injected into the general economy and consequently ~ $120 Billion falling into the Federal Revenues.

    The profits will exist, it’s simply a question of who controls them. If Focus Fusion is rolled out as a publicly licensed technology with the local governments and consuming owning the generators and licensing their operation to consortiums of skilled contractors, that is somewhat nice overall, but it effects no political changes. In fact it seems more likely that a network of small profiteers would appear competing to deploy and operate the generators in an oligopolistic fashion. In either case, the US profits will mostly end up in the hands of Republicans and will thus contribute to the political status quo. Perhaps Global Warming will slip onto the GOP party plank since there is no point in placating the now dead coal interest. But that’s all.

    De facto institutionalized racism will continue because there will be no need to address it in a booming economy. Evangelicalism will retain its stranglehold on the national political dialogue. Media will continue to have its agenda set by Murdoch. Worst of all, the current Bush Taxation system will not be fixed because it will be perceived as not broken. Some — will even credit as being instrumental in the development of Focus Fusion.

    Things will certainly improve, yes. But it might take a few generations to right the US away from Reaganism.

    That’s why I think Focus Fusion should adopt a “Stalinist Model”. A single company licensing the operation of the generators and selling the power worldwide at a uniform rate of 2 cents the kwh, drawing down 1 or 2 mils in price every year, aiming for full deployment of the tech in 5 years or less, working in close harmony with a Democratic government. (ie. Obama). Effectively take the place of Big Oil as political force.

    That means something on the order of a trillion dollars to play around with in developing industries, jobs, research, etc. So my list is, what would I do with that? Fix the big environmental issues and try and leverage towards the “Open Society”. Some of these will be helped along by a friendly political party in symbiotic dominance of the Federal System.

    1.) Shrimp and Fish in tanks on land. Since you can now grow as much Algae as you like on a 24 hr artificial sun cycle, and fish are the ultimate livestock in that they reproduce in huge numbers, I’d start making massive tanks in the inner cities to provide clean and regular seafood to the masses and terminate commercial fishing, which is one of the most serious environmental hazards going on right now. Cheap and healthy meat, relief to a huge portion of the ecosystem, lots of city manufacturing jobs. (A few angry Newfoundlanders, but omlettes and eggs…)

    2.) Synthetic wood pulp and/or wood. At least one can graft some heavy cellulose producing DNA onto a fast growing fungus or algae and eliminate the connection between forests and paper supply. Preferably a synthetic process to make construction grade boards, even if contour crafting ends up running the roost in terms of construction. Trees are vital to combat Global Warming, but they also help prevent flooding by locking in ground moisture, and thus contribute to cutting soil erosion in their watersheds and help ensure a more regular supply of fresh water.

    3.) Blue Revolution. Put all coastal cities on a desalinized water supply, break up the old aquaducts and reallow their fresh water to the rural areas. This will bring a large area of Southern California back under cultivation, for a start.

    4.) Work on getting Carbon Nanotube synthesis from atmospheric CO2 or coal down to a precise science. (Preferably CO2 with carbon tax subsidies.) This should provide a more stable long term system for concrete construction in preference to the corrodable steel reinforcements, as well as hopefully enabling space elevators.

    5.) Battery/Supercapacitor research. (Almost a requirement anyway for capacitor bank optimization in FF generators.)

    6.) MagLev research and construction if possible.

    7.) Research into using the FF generator as a compact electrolytic power source for existing jetliners. (Both to cusion the transition and make sure the Hawaiians don’t get lonely with all the MagLev traffic.)

    8.) Acquire and direct a media network, probably CBS/Viacom, to counteract Fox. (Forcing The Hills and The Real World off of syndication is a bonus.) Take the unprecedented step of making intelligent entertainment and analytical news. Wait for them to come after building it.

    9.) If necessary, rebuild mountain glaciers syntheticly with pipelined and prefrozen freshwater. (Once the average winter temperature gos back to pre 1900 levels.)

    10.) Massive Ecological/Gaiaforming research. Find ways to kill off alien species in the wild that are threatening local biodiversity. Find alien species as closely analagous as possible to the ones that have gone extinct in areas where biodiversity is severely threatened, and deliberately experiment with introducing them. Get very good at maintaining closed biospheres.

    11.) Force an end to the Israeli-Arab conflict by witholding FF/Blue Revolution technology from all parties that do not agree to a just and equitable treaty. (Give the House of Saud a few villas in Bali for good measure and tell them to get lost.)

    12.) Encourage sodomy, feminism, condoms and abortion to bring down population growth everywhere.

    13.) Build the Space Elevator and start making asteroid mines and self contained orbital colonies. Get a few billion folks OFF Earth.

    #3133
    Brian H
    Participant

    Duke;
    So, FF will fund your Stalinist revolution? Good luck with that.
    😆

    #3134
    Duke Leto
    Participant

    Figure of speech Brian. I was alluding to the organizational paradigm rather than the politics.

    And say what you like about the old bastard, he got those steel plants, electrical plants and T-34 factories up and running FAST. Faster than anything achieved by any other industrializing nation before or since. Sure he wrecked raw materials gathering, destroyed agriculture and killed millions of people doing it, but if your only criteria is to get the FF generators up and running as fast as humanly possible and stop global warming before it becomes irreversible, then that’s unfortunatly the paradigm you have to be looking at.

    Preferably with vastly less killing, naturally.

    #3137
    Rematog
    Participant

    Duke,

    Your cure is WAY worse then the disease.

    FF would solve global warming, very quickly, by replacing fossil fuel use in coal fired plants, and cheap electrical power and high oil prices would push electric vehicles for a very large part of transportation needs.

    History, and the people of the world, have spoken, very loudly. Single party, authoritarian government is NOT a good solution. I would agree, if it was a clear case of life or death, a “When World Collide” situation, that a Stalinist state might be called for. But baring that, no way.

    By the way, I would think Mr. Obama would also shudder at what you propose.

    #3141
    Duke Leto
    Participant

    I do not, at any stage, whatsoever, advocate single party authoritarian government.

    I clearly made a mistake in using the analogy of Stalin’s five year plans.

    I meant only that the makers of FF should use their economic political power to forward environmental causes and political liberalization, NOT assume that in merely making the technology universally available the present political system will automatically reorder itself to eliminate the Big Oil political influence in the US, or that it would automatically focus its resources on solving the most pressing ecological and social problems.

    If anything, I think we can safely say that the delay in implementing FF by the market proves that the market can’t be trusted 100%.

    #3142
    Brian H
    Participant

    Take a look at Freeman Dyson’s review of a book detailing economic projections of AGW “cures” on a cost-benefit basis. Drastic Gore-Stern solutions are disasters. FF-type “low-cost backstop” energy sources are huge net pluses. That’s taking AGW as a given, which I certainly do not. The IPCC modelling is riddled with circular mathematical logic, most notoriously the now-defunct “hockey stick” graph, which was the result of an Al-Gore-ithm which had been tweaked to produce that output no matter what data was fed in.

    Dyson is personally convinced that comparatively inexpensive and easily do-able modifications of agriculture and forestry practices would have overwhelmingly larger impact on CO2 than any “industrial/consumer” fixes, e.g.

    It’s interesting to note, historically, that “Warm Periods” of the historical record (higher than all but the direst predictions currently) were boom times for humanity. Cool periods, like the Little Ice Age, not so much.

    #3143
    Duke Leto
    Participant

    Can you please link to the documentation discrediting the hockey stick graph? I know Freeman Dyson is touted by Orson Scott Card as a GW skeptic, but I have extreme doubts about Card’s objectivity on the matter, and frankly namedropping in the sciences is pretty well worthless. Most of the Al Gore bashing I see comes from sources like South Park, and while Parker and Stone are consistently funny, I don’t always find their political or scientific judgement particularly impressive.

    Can’t bloody well win around here. If you say you advocate a “Stalinist Plan” in obvious scarequotes of top down corporate management and deployment of FF to contrast it with the bottom up management method generally advocated by Eric and the FF circle, (Call it Bukaninesque.) then you offend the FF circle by being a greedy corporate scumbag and manage to convince the outsiders that you’re a hardcore Stalinist.

    Fine. Let’s pretend global warming doesn’t pose a grave danger that needs action. Doesn’t Peak Oil necessitate a WWII style Corporate-Government collaboration/mobilization to yank the US (And the world at large) off of Oil and Coal ASAP? Let’s say that I were able to finance the development of FF and were then entitled under the present standards of market capitalism to direct a significant share of the profit capital to whatever endeavors I saw fit. Are the list I enumerated in my first post all such bad ideas? Why has no one responded to that?

    #3146
    Brian H
    Participant

    Hockey stick: “Committee on Energy and Commerce Report (Wegman report)

    A team of statisticians led by Edward Wegman, chair of the National Academy of Sciences’ (NAS) Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, was assembled at the request of U.S. Rep. Joe Barton and U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield . The report primarily focused on the statistical analysis used in the MBH paper, and also considered the personal and professional relationships between Mann et al and other members of the paleoclimate community. Findings presented in this report (commonly known as the “Wegman Report”) at a hearing of the subcommittee on oversight and investigations, chaired by Whitfield, included the following:

    * MBH98 and MBH99 were found to be “somewhat obscure and incomplete” and the criticisms by McIntyre and McKitrick were found to be “valid and compelling”.
    * The report found that MBH method creates a PC1 statistic dominated by bristlecone and foxtail pine tree ring series (closely related species). However there is evidence in the literature, that the use of the bristlecone pine series as a temperature proxy may not be valid (suppressing “warm period” in the hockey stick handle); and that bristlecones do exhibit CO2-fertilized growth over the last 150 years (enhancing warming in the hockey stick blade).
    * It is noted that there is no evidence that Mann or any of the other authors in paleoclimatology studies have had significant interactions with mainstream statisticians.
    * A social network of authorships in temperature reconstruction of at least 43 authors having direct ties to Mann by virtue of coauthored papers with him is described. The findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus ‘independent studies’ may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface.
    * It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to interact with the statistical community. Additionally, the Wegman team judged that the sharing of research materials, data and results was haphazardly and grudgingly done.
    * Overall, the committee believes that Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis.

    Dyson: I mentioned the review (did you read it?) because it is a different take on the question, that of economics. Nordhaus takes AGW as given.

    Gore: The UK education dept. was sued in the UK for using his film, and was allowed to continue only if it was bracketed with warnings about major inaccuracies. Meanwhile, he has taken in over $100 million in royalties and fees. Not bad for a scientific illiterate.

    FF does NOT need AGW to justify itself. It is an order of magnitude leap in energy availability per dollar spent, and will advance human society in innumerable ways.

    #3148
    Duke Leto
    Participant

    I got the conclusion part of Dyson’s review. The principle being that one should gamble on the emergence of a technology suc h as FF.

    With all due respect, that’s the equivalent of buying a lottery ticket on the principle that it is a sound investment. Making long term plans on the assumption of constantly improving technology is lunacy.

    #3149
    Brian H
    Participant

    Duke Leto wrote: I got the conclusion part of Dyson’s review. The principle being that one should gamble on the emergence of a technology suc h as FF.

    With all due respect, that’s the equivalent of buying a lottery ticket on the principle that it is a sound investment. Making long term plans on the assumption of constantly improving technology is lunacy.

    Read more. Even doing nothing is better than implementing Gore’s strategies. Dyson reports Nordhaus’ conclusion: use carbon taxes as the most benign current strategy, but aggressively pursue new energy sources (like FF).

    I find nothing to disagree with, there. Do you?

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