Through the years I've crossed my fingers and held high hopes that the same thing would occur with the logical replacement for the internal combustion engine (IMO) : the small gas turbine. If large gas turbines can operate at 80% efficiency and piston combustion engines are limited to a maximum of 23% by the physics of the otto cycle - then what's achievable is better than what we got! And with composites, ceramics and the brains for real-time digital automation control becoming cheaper than a cup of coffee - I still am wondering why are such engines not available (well, except for $200,000 replacement turbine powerplants for when the six cylinder horizontally opposed, air-cooled 520 cu inch engine in your Cessna 185 wears out). Also there is a new alternate powerplant available for small aircraft which uses jet fuel, but is a two-stroke piston engine - it's more efficient than a Continental aircraft engine - it costs $75,000. Progress, sure. A little. Digital control of the gasoline engine does a WHOLE lot to improve efficiency of the old standard truck or car motor. But powerplant technology seems really pushed to the cutting edge in building humongous airliner-moving jet engines - not small affordable mass-produced engines.
I like to imagine a nice little car that is an absolutely true hybrid and runs on a small generator powered by a tiny fuel efficient gasoline/diesel/alcohol/LNG turbine. It would cost millions to build one, but if millions were built - I'd bet they'd be affordable. -WaV. Boycotting the limited selection, and keeping alive the obsolete dinosaurs I already have. On Dec 7, 2007 1:33 PM, Mixon Bill <bmixon...@austin.rr.com> wrote: > I could bore everybody to tears with oldtime computer stories. When I > started out as a programmer, memory cost a dollar (a 1960 dollar) a > byte. Of course back then there was no such thing as a megabyte of > memory. IBM mainframes had a quarter of a megabyte. >
