Back to H cars. There was an article in the WSJ today about a company/man that has been singing the song of the PV future. For decades. He has trouble keeping up with orders now. But he has sucked millions of dollars from investors over the years. They have not made money but he still is singing. His company would be making money except for his investments in H production. It sounds like he MIGHT have been able to get the cost of PV to go lower and lower but only time will tell. IF one could spend a small sum of money on PV to generate H at home then maybe H power cars would be interesting. But short of Nuke generation of H said:
Honda hydrogen car??
- Thread starter coffeeman
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BobRip
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coffeeman said:
Competition is wonderful. You don't have to total replace oil based products to have an impact. Just have alternatives. Stuff is happening, it seems real (at least some of it) and that will drive future products.
ccsial
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coffeeman said:
Can anyone in their wildest dreams imagine the EPA approving these plants for home use? not to mention local fire and city codes.
They would probably have to be operated illegally. I'm sure Honda wouldn't advocate that.
What we really need is a "Mr. Fusion" like the DOC had in Back to the Future.
BobRip
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ccsial said:
I don't think it would be an EPA issue. Pretty clean operation generating hydrogen from electrolysis. The waste would by oxygen. Safety issues must be addressed, but the EPA does not care if you die, as long as you don't pollute while doing so.
Mr. Fusion would be great. I think a home unit is a long way off. At least 10 years.
Every time I say something like that I find it happens earlier that I could dream possible.
ccsial
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I'm not a chemistry expert but I would think there must be some hazerdous waste in the process of making hydrogen. Maybe someone who knows how it is done will respond.
patrick_g
Elite Member
Caution electrolosis experimenters! Beware of excess O2 contamination!!!!!!!!!!
Coffeeman, Maybe I have been reading those mags (PopSci, Pop Mechs, Mechs Illustrated, remember Mimi?) longer than you can remember. I recall that by now we would all be flying automobile/airplanes to work or gyrocopters and all menial labor in the home would be fully automated and roboticized.
There are gyrocopters and there are automobile/aircraft but few or none in everyday commutes. If I had a $ for every wave of the future that was heralded as right around the corner in some Pop X magazine, I would have retired way sooner.
The high pressure tanks are for holding hydrogen gas (fuel.)
When is the last time you saw hydrogen as one of the selections at the pump?
There are precious few hydrogen fueling stations in existance and they are mostly spaced too far apart to allow you to fill up and then drive to another. Of course this was true for gasoline at one time but there is an order of magnitude or more in difficulty dispensing hydrogen compared to gasoline and until the infrastructure is standardized and widely distributed hydrogen cars will be conversation pieces and political footballs but not mass accepted transportation.
Pat
Coffeeman, Maybe I have been reading those mags (PopSci, Pop Mechs, Mechs Illustrated, remember Mimi?) longer than you can remember. I recall that by now we would all be flying automobile/airplanes to work or gyrocopters and all menial labor in the home would be fully automated and roboticized.
There are gyrocopters and there are automobile/aircraft but few or none in everyday commutes. If I had a $ for every wave of the future that was heralded as right around the corner in some Pop X magazine, I would have retired way sooner.
The high pressure tanks are for holding hydrogen gas (fuel.)
When is the last time you saw hydrogen as one of the selections at the pump?
There are precious few hydrogen fueling stations in existance and they are mostly spaced too far apart to allow you to fill up and then drive to another. Of course this was true for gasoline at one time but there is an order of magnitude or more in difficulty dispensing hydrogen compared to gasoline and until the infrastructure is standardized and widely distributed hydrogen cars will be conversation pieces and political footballs but not mass accepted transportation.
Pat
Good point. It is the nature of the beast. On an even more serious note, I recall when my son got diabetes at nine years old. I watched news, read everything I could find and talked to many doctors over the next 22 years of his life. It was always positive thoughts from most. Something is right down the road to cure disease. He's gone now and no cure yet. But, you know what? I still believe a cure will be found. You have to keep up hope. As far as disease cures or fuel inventions, it might be something that has never been considered yet.
One PM article flashback noted a story about computers. I guess it was in the 50s. They predicted that powerfull computers will someday be small enough to only take up the space of one good sized room. As I recall, computers in the early days would take up a whole floor of a big building. There's one PM missed in reverse.
Think about the first hand held calculaters. We paid hundreds for some of those little units and they didn't really do that much. A slide rule might have been better in some cases. Slide rule??? What's that? I can just see the folks that first learned of the abacus. They were probably shaking their heads saying, " What will they think of next?"
It's more a question of how much pain we can take. The pain being the cost, in $$, of fuel. I believe the more the oil guys skin us for our dollars the sooner there will be something designed to ease the pain.
Cheers....Coffeeman
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One PM article flashback noted a story about computers. I guess it was in the 50s. They predicted that powerfull computers will someday be small enough to only take up the space of one good sized room. As I recall, computers in the early days would take up a whole floor of a big building. There's one PM missed in reverse.
Think about the first hand held calculaters. We paid hundreds for some of those little units and they didn't really do that much. A slide rule might have been better in some cases. Slide rule??? What's that? I can just see the folks that first learned of the abacus. They were probably shaking their heads saying, " What will they think of next?"
It's more a question of how much pain we can take. The pain being the cost, in $$, of fuel. I believe the more the oil guys skin us for our dollars the sooner there will be something designed to ease the pain.
Cheers....Coffeeman
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patrick_g said:
patrick_g
Elite Member
Hey Coffeeman, I like your style. I bill myself as an optimistic realist, I hope for the best and deal with reality.
When I first arrived at Minot AFB North Dakota a computer installation about 1/3 to 1/4 city block square three floors high with full basement in a near miss proof windowless bld was being deinstalled. Some of the tools used to remove cable runs were fire axes. This was a tube type computer! The A/C ducts and plenums had man doors in them and a buddy and I could walk erect two abreast down the ducts. There were several cooling towers to support the A/C installation. Thnk of the multi-megawats of heat produced by all those tubes! Their standby generator system hasd multiple diesel engines that when undergoing inspection the engineer would go inside the engine and ride up and down on the pistons. Lots of power generatioin capacity. More than many small utility installatioins.
This had been the SAGE (Strategic Aerospace Ground Environment) system. It had been replaced with an equivalent system built into an eighteen wheeler trailer.
I don't know what they use now but it may run on a PC. I've been on Navy combatants that had networked PC's running Windows as the means of controlling the vessel and many of its activities.
I too have lost relatives to disease. Some of the diseases now have cures that were not even on the RADAR screen 10-20 years ago.
I am not imune to future shock, I still have to get booster shots. Just recently my technophobe wife asked for and got a new watch. What did she pick? A Casio with an electronic compass, barometer, thermometer, altimiter, and a radio to receive time signals so it stays right on all the time and it is powered by a solar charged battery. IT has a jillion other features I hope she never asks me to program.
She also has a Roomba and a Scooba. I may start callling her Mz. Jetson.
Remember in the famous words of the "Firesign Theater" the future is right around the beforner.
Pat
When I first arrived at Minot AFB North Dakota a computer installation about 1/3 to 1/4 city block square three floors high with full basement in a near miss proof windowless bld was being deinstalled. Some of the tools used to remove cable runs were fire axes. This was a tube type computer! The A/C ducts and plenums had man doors in them and a buddy and I could walk erect two abreast down the ducts. There were several cooling towers to support the A/C installation. Thnk of the multi-megawats of heat produced by all those tubes! Their standby generator system hasd multiple diesel engines that when undergoing inspection the engineer would go inside the engine and ride up and down on the pistons. Lots of power generatioin capacity. More than many small utility installatioins.
This had been the SAGE (Strategic Aerospace Ground Environment) system. It had been replaced with an equivalent system built into an eighteen wheeler trailer.
I don't know what they use now but it may run on a PC. I've been on Navy combatants that had networked PC's running Windows as the means of controlling the vessel and many of its activities.
I too have lost relatives to disease. Some of the diseases now have cures that were not even on the RADAR screen 10-20 years ago.
I am not imune to future shock, I still have to get booster shots. Just recently my technophobe wife asked for and got a new watch. What did she pick? A Casio with an electronic compass, barometer, thermometer, altimiter, and a radio to receive time signals so it stays right on all the time and it is powered by a solar charged battery. IT has a jillion other features I hope she never asks me to program.
She also has a Roomba and a Scooba. I may start callling her Mz. Jetson.
Remember in the famous words of the "Firesign Theater" the future is right around the beforner.
Pat
ccsial
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patrick_g said:
Hey Pat,
I started my life out as a diagnostic programmer for the computer your talking about. It was an ANFSQ7 made by IBM. It had 55000 vacuum tubes. Mean time to failure was about 10 hours. That is why every building had two of them. There was no heat in those buildings, just air conditioning. What memories.
patrick_g
Elite Member
Allen, Far out man, I never met any of the SAGE guys. The bld had been partially stripped when I got there and they were finishing the job ASAP. My duty station (Base Director of Operations, Training Devices Branch) was located in it on the ground floor. I did meet a civil engineering type who toured me through the electric plant and A/C.
Over the years I was there the bld was renamed the PRIDE (Professional Results In Daily Efforts) Bld. and was used mostly for offices of various sorts and some Intel and secure comms spaces. In three years they were never able to satisfactorily throttle down and ballance the A/C system. People froze or sweated while some areas were dead air spaces and others were reqular wind tunnels. I guess it is hard to cram enough folks into that space to emulate 110,000 vacuum tubes!
I can't confirm the numbers but was told the Gov got a few cents per lb for the removed SAGE equipment.
Pat
Over the years I was there the bld was renamed the PRIDE (Professional Results In Daily Efforts) Bld. and was used mostly for offices of various sorts and some Intel and secure comms spaces. In three years they were never able to satisfactorily throttle down and ballance the A/C system. People froze or sweated while some areas were dead air spaces and others were reqular wind tunnels. I guess it is hard to cram enough folks into that space to emulate 110,000 vacuum tubes!
I can't confirm the numbers but was told the Gov got a few cents per lb for the removed SAGE equipment.
Pat
