Stand Back, Non-Believers !

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This is another response I made elsewhere:

What is it that still makes you assume that the amount of solar energy hitting a square meter of land and the cost of harvesting it is a constant, like the speed of light ? Why is that a fixed immutable quantity ? Why is it impossible to up the output and lower the cost ? What part of Edison and the light bulb experimentation is invisible to you ? How much experimentation can you buy with 1/10th of the cost of the Iraq War. If we already knew exactly how to do it, we'd be doing it. Now is the time for funded, very well funded, experimentation.

It reminds me of a story about Christopher Columbus. Probably an urban legend, but supposedly when he came back, he went to a dinner at which all the other guys claimed it was obvious, and that they could have done it. Christopher then took a hard boiled egg and asked if anyone could make it stand on its narrow end. The egg was passed around without success until it came back to Columbus. He took it, and crunched it lightly into the table where it stood quite nicely.

When gas hits $9.11/gallon, panels on roofs will be attractive signs of wealth, much as mowed lawns originally indicated plenty of meat. Learn to think outside the oil drums of war.

As for Berkeley city brat, you might guess that my presence here on a WB related website indicates a different locale now 40 years later. 62 acres, Sierra foothills, saving trees by buying land, and clearing non-native plants, among other things. We got tired of having to scramble in February to get camping reservations in August in Yosemite.

The government could make several different sized and powered standardized chassis's and powertrains, which would be available to passenger compartment builders at low rates. As long as the passenger compartment builders (including private individuals), had seat belts and airbags, they could build whatever they wanted. Of course if the government couldn't produce something cheap enough, they'd sell none of them. These could be powered by any form of power that appealed to the NASA like agency. If the agency did not become self sufficient in 15 years, then kill it. If you gave it an initial funding of 10 billion for prototypes in five years, it would cause the majors to consider building more efficient cars.

Another idea, tax cars by weight to pay for suvivors of crashes. Do you have any idea how unsafe our highways will be in 10 years when uninsured motorists who do not maintain their vehicles own all the SUV's of today ?

Third idea, simple to do, stops secondary crashes, instant radio signal from a motor vehicle whose airbag has deployed, containing its GPS location. Couple this with warning indicators in all new cars, that go off in varying degrees, depending on how close the deployed bag is. Avoids coming around the bend at full speed to pile into an existing accident. Added costs ? Probably $100/vehicle.