Long distance travel and transport in 2057

Great Debates
41

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
I just wonder how much gas savings could be realized by automated highways - computers controlling thousands of cars cruising along at a steady 70mph a few feet apart. I expect that’ll beat rail travel and with the first baby boomers getting into their high-crash seventies, computerized cars may be inevitable anyway.
[/QUOTE]
Despite the statements disputing this savings, it is true. Drafting is a well established technique in racing both auto and cycles. In cycling, for example, a cyclist in the middle of a drafting pack travelling at 20 mph expends 30 - 40% less energy than the leader of the pack. Moreso, the leader of the pack is still better off than a solo cyclist subject to his own drag. Basic aerodynamics. By being tightly bunched (only possible for autos driven by drivers with the skills of pro racers or by computer controls) multiple vehicles behave as one long narrow object with greatly reduced drag. This effect is amplified at greater speeds and would be quite large for a train of say 50 cars travelling bunched behind each other at 60 - 70 mph compared to the same cars traveling independently at the same speeds.

As to Toadspiitle’s question about the relative energy saving using electricty vs gas … amply addressed in Who’s stopping the electric/solar car thread such as in this post in which the main cynic of an efficiency savings came to conclude that even using all coal fired power plants with no sequestation would result in more miles per carbon produced with electricity than with ICE. In this hypothetical, in which the weight of batteries was taken off of the car, and efficiency was added by drafting, the comparison becomes even more skewed. The issue would really be one of the expense (dollars and carbon expended) in building the infrastructure.

42

Solar is the most abundant power source. When solar power is harnessed effectively, there is no more need for other power sources.

Oil will run out, the question is not if, it’s when, it’s a finite resource, either we’ll evolve past it’s necessity or we’ll use it up. That might not be for 200 years, it might be in 20 years, but it isn’t unlimited.

I am waiting to see what nanotech does. There is a lot of interesting stuff coming out. Like little nanotech switches that harness kinetic energy.

I kind of like the idea of maglev monorails where the rails are designed to absorb the inertia so that the ride seems very smooth even though you are going about 300 miles per hour.

Boats like this one might be the future as well.

43

[QUOTE=mswas]
Solar is the most abundant power source. When solar power is harnessed effectively, there is no more need for other power sources.
[/QUOTE]

Sure…and fusion will solve all our problems too. I wouldn’t hold my breath though for either (on the scales we are talking about)…

[QUOTE=mswas]
Oil will run out, the question is not if, it’s when, it’s a finite resource, either we’ll evolve past it’s necessity or we’ll use it up. That might not be for 200 years, it might be in 20 years, but it isn’t unlimited.
[/QUOTE]

Oil will never run out…it will merely become un-affordable and un-viable as a mass energy source. It won’t happen in 20 years though.

[QUOTE=mswas]
I am waiting to see what nanotech does. There is a lot of interesting stuff coming out. Like little nanotech switches that harness kinetic energy.
[/QUOTE]

I wouldn’t hold my breath on this either. Or, IOW, it will hit about the same time practical fusion becomes a reality (in ‘20 years’ :stuck_out_tongue: )…

-XT

44

As travel becomes more difficult and expensive, it will become unpopular, as noted earlier, only the gov’t, their military and the very rich will travle far.

But fear not! Digital; technology is just past the “model T” stage… “Virtual Telepresence” will become a reality as travel becomes m,ore limited…

Imagine a movie star greeting each and every ticket buyer to their new release… by name…

Oh sure it won’t be “Joe Star”, but AI and ubiquitous wiresless terrabyte access will make that “magic” seem easy…

Actually Travelling… well… that seems so mundane… but I suppose if one simply has to do it…

Regards
FML

45

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Sure…and fusion will solve all our problems too. I wouldn’t hold my breath though for either (on the scales we are talking about)…
[/quote]

I think Solar is a better solution than Fusion, though Fusion is probably necessary if we want to leave Earth.

Well it won’t run out in the sense that it will be more expensive to extract the tiny bit that’s left than we get out of it, but it is a finite resource. It’s not inexhaustible.

I disagree. You clearly have been looking at some Fusion porn recently. :stuck_out_tongue: Nanotechnology will change how materials are assembled. Manufacturing processes will change in very big ways. Fusion requires a breakthrough in understanding the physics of how to make it work. Power sources such as solar are proven and understood, the only thing holding them back is efficiency, which can be improved by better materials. Lay out solar panels along the entire track of the train line, or little windmills that gather miniscule amounts of energy but cost pennies to produce. Every time that train goes by at 300mph it’ll be reclaiming some of the energy it is expending.

It’s important to draw a distinction between some sort of Eschatonian Holy Grail tech like fusion, as opposed to existing technologies that merely need to be improved. We always like to look toward the horizon the thing that gives us that warm fuzzy feeling deep in our soul/mind or whatever gives us a glimpse of the singularity of the universe and makes us feel like gods, but in the meantime there are lots of technologies that are less sexy that are on the verge of being really effective, yet are underfunded.

However, in about 20 years how we look at energy will be vastly different. Right now we still have a bit of the ‘energy efficiency is for hippies’ mindset, but that’ll be anachronistic by that point. The money being poured into improved energy will change things vastly, but another big driver of it will be corporate space programs. There are something like 10 commercial spaceports being built in the United States alone. Blue Origin in Van Horn Texas is already online. When competition for these ramps up the dollars will be pouring into getting the maximum amount of joules from the minimum amount of matter, the byproducts of course will be cheaper consumer energy sources, cheap enough to put into land vehicles, iPhones and what have you. There are two things holding the iPhone back from being great, one is that they made the bone-head move of wedding themselves to AT&Ts slowass network, and the other being that the battery is unremovable and degrades over time. Those problems need to be fixed to make hardware like that viable. Energy efficiency is the bottleneck on advancement in so many sectors. Don’t be surprised if proven technologies start coming into their own before Dr. Galahad perfects Cold Fusion.

Just wait until they start building nanofactories in orbit. That’ll start driving the cost of fossil fuels on a whole new level, making this that much more important. At that point we’ll have to start asking questions about taking material resources offworld, and how it depletes the Earth in a zero sum way. Sure it’s negligible now, but how will people feel about it when we’re building a moon colony? Getting the most from the least is very important.

I think Solar is the most viable tech in that regard at the moment. Someone should offer a Solar energy X-Prize.

46

[QUOTE=mswas]
I think Solar is a better solution than Fusion, though Fusion is probably necessary if we want to leave Earth.
[/QUOTE]

The point was the NEITHER is either a short term or even medium term solution to the problem. Solar (like fusion) is not anywhere close to ready on the scales we are talking about.

[QUOT=mswas]Well it won’t run out in the sense that it will be more expensive to extract the tiny bit that’s left than we get out of it, but it is a finite resource. It’s not inexhaustible.
[/QUOTE]

We will never run out of oil…and there will be much more than a ‘tiny bit’ left when we switch over to whatever energy source replaces hydrocarbons (it probably won’t be solar :stuck_out_tongue: ). That was the point I was making. From a practical standpoint the resource IS inexhaustible…its only from an economic standpoint that it will become un-viable (and probably not even that…most likely we will halt using it not for economic reasons but for social or environmental ones).

[QUOTE=mswas]
I disagree. You clearly have been looking at some Fusion porn recently.
[/QUOTE]

It was a joke…folks have been saying that fusion would be ready in ‘20 years’ (note the quotes I used?) for about 50 years now…and they still give the same answer today.

[QUOTE=mswas]
Nanotechnology will change how materials are assembled.
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, it will…in a few decades or a century or so (if it ever happens). The point being that like solar and fusion its not ready for prime time…and won’t be any time soon.

Certainly it won’t be ready in the way you are talking about by 2057 (unless some MAJOR breakthroughs happen fairly soon). Same with fusion…same with solar. They are not going to replace how we generate power (or how we power our vehicles) in that time frame. Solar WITH wind, geothermal and probably fission (most likely fission doing the major lifting) MIGHT do it in that time frame.

-XT

47

[QUOTE=xtisme]
The point was the NEITHER is either a short term or even medium term solution to the problem. Solar (like fusion) is not anywhere close to ready on the scales we are talking about.
[/quote]

I am not so sure about that. I hear wildly conflicting reports on it. One guy I know working on solar in Arizona says it’s really just a commitment issue, that if people would commit to making it work and devote the resources necessary to the research it could be ready fairly quickly.

Ok, well I am not going to fight over the semantic difference. I think we are essentially in agreement on the ultimate practical outcome on this one.

Yeah, and I just wanted to make a fusion porn joke. :wink: It can’t be helped it’s such a semenal technology. :wink:

I don’t agree with you at all. I think your timeline is way too short. The rate of advancement is progressing too quickly to think in terms that long. Solar is not even in the same league as Fusion in terms of difficulty of implementation. In my understanding solar panels inefficiency is in terms of size, surface area and cost, all things that can be driven down by working with the material at the nanoscale.

I think nanotech is coming down the pipe right now in terms of perfecting the materials. When the materials are perfected its a matter of creative application, which I think will be the economic book in the teens or the twenties. Think of how fast we went from Wright Brothers to international corporate air travel. Less than 40 years. The rail infrastructure had only been laid for about 80 years when GM started convincing municipalities to rip it out. I have a picture from the mid-nineties of the Jersey City skyline, it was like two skyscrapers. Now it has one of the most impressive skylines in the United States with a couple dozen buildings that exceed 30 stories.

When nano materials hit primetime, which I would say is really this year, all it will require is some major crisis with the right politician in place at the right time to get the dream of being an Eisenhower or Robert Moses, and totally remake the infrastructure of the whole country. Go to an Apple store tomorrow, look at an iPhone, and imagine what kind of phone and what kind of computer you were using in 1992. Think of how fast your connection was. My computer in 1992 was an XT laptop with no internet connection. My first computer to have a dialup connection at 2400 baud was a 286 with about 80 megs of Hard Drive space. The iPhone has 8 gigs of memory. FiOS is rolling out with like 30mb connections to your home. This all works on infrastructure that has replaced the infrastructure that replaced the infrastructure that I was using to get online in 94.

48

Just as promisingly, I’ve read some articles about superconducting power cables that can carry 500,000 amps of DC and whatnot, opening the tantalizing possibility of eliminating the vast transmission waste in the existing grid and allowing for “reactor farms” in isolated areas 100 miles or more from the cities they serve and hopefully below the radar of nimby-inspired obstructionist legal challenges.

The technology will also encourage the spread of 61-word sentences, I hope.

49

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Just as promisingly, I’ve read some articles about superconducting power cables that can carry 500,000 amps of DC and whatnot, opening the tantalizing possibility of eliminating the vast transmission waste in the existing grid and allowing for “reactor farms” in isolated areas 100 miles or more from the cities they serve and hopefully below the radar of nimby-inspired legal obstructionist challenges.

The technology will also encourage the spread of 61-word sentences, I hope.
[/QUOTE]

Heh, I am all about decentralized models. Getting it so that one’s home produces all of its energy needs.

50

[QUOTE=mswas]
Heh, I am all about decentralized models. Getting it so that one’s home produces all of its energy needs.
[/QUOTE]

Well, that’s nice and ideallistic, but I don’t see an office building being powered by solar panels on the roof and a compost heap out back. Maybe the subway cars could have pedals installed so the passengers can all contribute.

51

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/RT1999/5000/5410hepp.html

There are a lot of ways to reclaim energy. What about putting little coils on the bottom of the subway tracks that absorb the vibration and conduct it back into the electrical system?

I don’t see the answer as being one single holy grail fix, but a lot of little finetunings that reduce consumption and claim energy from the environment.

52

Here’s what I wonder: there are many, many, MANY small islands who depend on two things to survive: (a) tourism and (b) imports over large distances. Heck, one group of 'em is even part of the United States!

What happens to them? Mass exodus or die-off, until only the agriculturally subsistent remain? Even if that happens to small nations, I cannot concieve the U.S. letting such a thing happen to one of their own states, and doing anything about that in a scenario like those in many of the posts here would be a HUGE drain on taxpayers. Quite a dilemma.

53

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Well, that’s nice and ideallistic, but I don’t see an office building being powered by solar panels on the roof and a compost heap out back. Maybe the subway cars could have pedals installed so the passengers can all contribute.
[/QUOTE]

How about giant hamster wheels for joggers in the gym?

54

[QUOTE=Siam Sam]
How about giant hamster wheels for joggers in the gym?
[/QUOTE]

or for certain web sites with message boards that are a little too slow sometimes…

(sorry, but somebody had to say it…)

55

[QUOTE=Siam Sam]
How about giant hamster wheels for joggers in the gym?
[/QUOTE]

Treadmills used to be mechanically run by your own power with tension settings for resistance. They could use the stairmasters to power the treadmills. :wink:

Or people could just go outside and run.

56

Thing is, jets can be run on vegetable oil. Sure, perhaps vegetable oil will be more expensive in the future due to lack of cheap petroleum to use in fertillizing, harvesting and transporting agricultural products, and due to increased demand, but vegetable oil is the absolute limit for how expensive jet fuel–or diesel automobile fuel–can get. If vegetable oil is $10 per gallon or less, our transportation infrastructure won’t look radically different, it will just be a different mix…a lot more small efficient cars, a lot more busses, a lot more trains, a lot more telecommuting. But we’ll still have highways, we’ll still have personal vehicles, we’ll still have transcontinental air travel.

The concern that we need petroleum as a feedstock for plastics is silly. Petroleum is only used as a feedstock because it is cheap, cheap, cheap compared to other feedstocks.

57

[QUOTE=Lemur866]
Thing is, jets can be run on vegetable oil. Sure, perhaps vegetable oil will be more expensive in the future due to lack of cheap petroleum to use in fertillizing, harvesting and transporting agricultural products, and due to increased demand, but vegetable oil is the absolute limit for how expensive jet fuel–or diesel automobile fuel–can get. If vegetable oil is $10 per gallon or less, our transportation infrastructure won’t look radically different, it will just be a different mix…a lot more small efficient cars, a lot more busses, a lot more trains, a lot more telecommuting. But we’ll still have highways, we’ll still have personal vehicles, we’ll still have transcontinental air travel.

The concern that we need petroleum as a feedstock for plastics is silly. Petroleum is only used as a feedstock because it is cheap, cheap, cheap compared to other feedstocks.
[/QUOTE]

You can’t use vegetable oil for jets. It gels at altitude. However they are working on biojetfuel.

FWIW,
Rob

58

[QUOTE=sweeteviljesus]
You can’t use vegetable oil for jets. It gels at altitude. However they are working on biojetfuel.

FWIW,
Rob
[/QUOTE]

Which will only make farmland a greater commodity driving up the price of food.

59

Why is there such a focus on using biomass for conversion into liquid fuel? Seems to me that that adds a few steps of inefficiency into the process. Use biomass to generate electrical energy at a plant and use that for powering most things (okay, not jets, but most of the rest of the transportation system). Biomass used for such a purpose could include crops grown in areas not suitable for most foodcrops and parts of plants not suitable for food use. See, for example, here

A strategy of co-burning such biofuels with coal would be expected to benefit the carbon balance, leave land arable for food production available for food production, and perhaps even help aid in food agriculture productivity if co-planted with food crop by providing habitat for food crop pollinators. No silver bullet but more effective in this form than diverting food crop to ethanol production.

60

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Just as promisingly, I’ve read some articles about superconducting power cables that can carry 500,000 amps of DC and whatnot, opening the tantalizing possibility of eliminating the vast transmission waste in the existing grid…
[/QUOTE]

Where is this “vast transmission waste” that you see? Take a look at this Sankey diagram from the EIA, page 221:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/pdf/pages/sec8.pdf

T&D losses, while making up 1.31/13.83 Quads of net generation, also only make up 1.31/41.27 Quads of the raw energy input. So it’s significant from a net standpoint, but not really “vast” compared to the potential savings that could be had from such categories as, say, the 26.71 Quads of conversion losses, where just a 5% improvement there gets about 1.3 Quads. Of course, it’s possible that the low-hanging fruit is got in some places, but I can attest that there are an enormous number of power plants out there which could have a 5% efficiency improvement by just spending a reasonable amount of extra money.

Somehow, this whole conversation seems familiar…