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On Feb 1, 2010, at 3:45 PM, S. Artesian wrote: > > Fossil fuels provide 98% of the energy for transportation-- now we can > certainly reduce that by knocking down the usage of automobiles-- > but unless you envision mini-reactors, or solar-sails, on board > every locomotive, every container ship, ever cargo plane, ever > tractor-trailer, we are not going to eliminate fossil fuels in the > near, and probably distant, future. This is unduly pessimistic, because it doesn't consider the (since 1937) unutilized transport technology of the past and the future: the airship. But consider the degree of change in heavier-than-air technology since 1937, and imagine for instance what modern aviation technology (lightweight ultrastrong carbon-fiber materials for example) offers to lighter-than-air ships. The (300m long) Hindenburg's hydrogen unit had less than 700,000 cubic meters displacement. A 500x125x125m cylindrical unit would have ten times as much displacement and could achieve more than proportionally greater lift even with its hydrogen at a much greater pressure. Several of them would fit on every modern jet runway. The airships would be driven by engines powered by fuel cells feeding on the ship's own hydrogen (to be repressurized when necessary from fueling tanks at each airport) as well as by solar cells on its upper surface during daytime flights. The hydrogen would be produced through electrolysis driven by local wind farms located relatively nearby, and by a massive single-purpose wind farm located near the primary manufacturing facility (a factory on the scale of River Run, which fortuitously is entirely disposable for such a purpose!). The gondolas of the airships could carry 1,000 or more tons (the Hindenburg supported 90). A gondola one/fifth the length of the airship could carry 500 passengers and crew with 6 m.sq. (65 square feet) per person--the change would be from traveling in a sardine can to traveling in a spacious lounge (of course all the components of an airship are scalable, so they can be almost as small or large as desired). A dirigible undoubtedly will fly much less fast than a jumbo jet but the stress on every passenger would be less by an even greater magnitude (and in the age of the internet--that is right now-- who except a contract killer or the child of a dying parent really *needs* to get from Moscow to Los Angeles inside of one day?) And as with passengers, likewise with freight. So everything needed for medium and long distance transport can be supplied with no absolutely no need for fossil fuel or nuclear power at all. And since automobiles and trucks can all be made electric (hydrogen fuel cells and batteries charged with wind-farm electricity) the residual share of fossil and nuclear fuel in transportation would eventually look like 2, not 98 percent. Is this futurism a utopia? Of course, *exactly* as much a utopia as socialism itself. Because capitalism of any sort will never make the massive investment needed, nor will it write off the humungous amount of capital now invested in the--obsolescent--transportation industries. But I do dream of the day when the first of the great airships (called, of course, the Humanity) makes its maiden round-the-world voyage and people everywhere look up and exclaim Oh! the Humanity! Shane Mage > This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it > always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, > kindling in measures and going out in measures." > > Herakleitos of Ephesos > ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
