Whither the tech?

Factual Questions
1

As someone fascinated by the possibilities of new technology, I read a lot of things like Technology Review, Popular Mechanics, etc. and I often wonder what becomes of some of the technology mentioned. They tend to report on things very early in the game, I think, before the all the issues are fully understood, so it is no wonder that many ideas do not come to fruition. I would like to ask about some ideas that I thought were interesting but seem to have died a quiet death.

  1. Nuclear Piston. This was a large piston faced with spent reactor fuel. It was connected to a crankshaft and reciprocated in a cylinder like an ICE. Water would be introduced into the “combustion” chamber where it would be flashed to steam, the expansion of which would drive the cylinder. I guess the steam would be condensed in a co-generator or something. I believe that it was being proposed for use in ships. I wonder if it would be useful as a way to deal with high-level waste at nuclear facilities. Does anyone know what became of this? It was someone’s dissertation IIRC, so I am sure I didn’t do it justice. If you want to poke holes, don’t use my synopsis.

  2. Ultrasonic Speaker. This was a speaker technology that used an oscillator vibrating at 200 kHz and one vibrating at between 200020 and 220000 Hz. Wave interference would produce a vibration between 20 and 20000 Hz. One of the features was that the sound was directional. Does anyone know what became of this?
    Thanks for your help,
    Rob

2

There was just a thread on these last week: In search of a directional speaker
Audio Spotlight uses the “nonlinear interaction of high-frequency waves to generate low-frequency waves”.

-Nifty, Neato-Skeeto Stuff! :smiley:

3

And where’s my robot butler and flying car?

4

Flying cars have been around since the 1940’s. You could probably buy an old one if you wanted badly enough. Perhaps you are waiting on this flying car which looks cool but has had an unusually long development time. People don’t really need butlers these days. How about this combined with this?

5

Ask these guys.

6

The flying car had a computer glitch and crashed onto the robot butler. Neither survived.

7

There isn’t enough power available in spent fuel to operate a steam engine. What you’re talking about is a method to extract energy from unspent fuel, with a useless “kicker” from spent fuel. The article is here . This method is so impractical that I am embarrassed for his dissertation committee.

8

Like we’re really going to believe a representative of Yoyodyne about the viability of a futuristic technology? Nice try, “John”.
Are you also going to tell us trans-dimensional travel is impossible?

9

I can’t say, it’s a sekrit.

10

I find most of those types of articles ignore the issue of cost. It makes for a more interesting story if you just totally forget about the dollars involved and the fact that few people will be able to afford the latest neato technology.

A flying car isn’t really all that much different than a small helicopter. There is no technical reason we all don’t fly around in small helicopters. The main reason we don’t do that is that they cost too much. Advances in technology and economies of scale help somewhat but there is no getting around the boring fact that most people don’t have the money to buy this stuff, so it eventually just dies a ‘quiet death’.