Hydrogen Power: Economical at Last?

Science has long known that the best all-around source of energy is hydrogen. It produces great amounts of energy, produces only pure water as waste, and is abundant. But extracting hydrogen via electrolysis requires as much energy from traditional sources (i.e., fossil fuels) as it creates.

Now, at long last, researchers have discovered a novel new way to create hydrogen.

Perhaps the solution to mankind’s energy woes and our salvation from dwindling fossil fuel supplies will come in the form of the oldest living organisms on earth — bacteria.

Read the whole article for the fascinating details.

Now, if we can only solve the storage problem.

Mars Rovers Hobble On

The rovers Opportunity and Spirit were designed to function for only 90 days when they landed on Mars four years ago. They are still creaking along, but just barely. Engineers are using the space age version of baling wire and bubble gum to keep the little rovers functioning.

Both rovers have at least one defective wheel, which limits their maneuverability. Scientists have Spirit moving in reverse, dragging its useless wheel behind it. Both have problems with their robotic arms, and the two grinding tools still work only because of software patches and shortcuts implemented by the creative teams who maintain them.

I fully appreciate what the NASA scientists are having to do to keep their babies going. Over the years, I’ve had to perform similar gymnastics to keep my old cars running.  Just a few more miles, a few more . . . . .

Introducing the Islamic Car

Iran is pushing a plan to build an “Islamic car,” complete with a compass that points to Mecca, and special compartments to hold the Koran and prayer scarves. The car will likely be built in Malaysia.

No word yet on whether the car will come with the suicide bomber option, pre-wired for easy detonation and maximum explosive effect.

Oh, and the new car is warrantied for 24 months, 24,000 miles, or 24 infidel deaths, whichever comes first.

The A380 Takes Off, At Last

The first commercial flight of the Airbus A380 took place today. A Singapore Airlines A380 officially entered service with a flight from Singapore to Sydney, Australia, carrying 455 passengers. The new jumbo jet, which can carry up to 853 people in an all-economy configuration, has displaced the Boeing 747 as the world’s largest commercial airplane.

Even so, Boeing probably doesn’t have much to worry about: “Orders for the [Boeing] 787 have exceeded 700. The A380 has received 165 orders to date.”

We earlier posted a link to a video of a test evacuation of an A380. Pretty impressive.

How to Evacuate an Airplane

Think 873 people can evacuate an airplane in 77 seconds? They can, if the airplane is an Airbus A380, and the evacuation is a controlled test.

Hubble’s Successor

When the Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990 (and after its design flaws were corrected in 1993), it gave mankind our first really sharp images of what’s out there in deep space. The pictures it has sent back in the years since have been nothing short of spectacular.

Now NASA is preparing the successor to the Hubble — the James Webb Space Telescope. The Webb Telescope uses an advanced multi-mirror design that can be finely calibrated to produce images six times more clear than Hubble could provide.

Tests are underway, but the finished product won’t launch until 2013.  I can hardly wait.

Computers in the Movies

A few months ago usability guru Jacob Neilsen wrote a great piece on the Top Ten Usability Bloopers in the Movies — basically, a list of the most common unrealistic computer features that show up in the movies. Like the hero instantly recognizing and using the interface on a strange computer system; or the huge blinking fonts that shout “Access Denied.”

The whole article is a hoot, but even better was a follow-up article detailing the corny computer action in the 1996 film Independence Day. The highlight of incredulity occurs when Jeff Goldbloom reaches the alien mothership with his trusty laptop, instantly connects with the alien network, and uploads a virus that destroys the ship and saves planet Earth. I rolled my eyes when I first saw that scene, but Neilsen and his readers really have fun with it. For example:

If the interface was wireless – was that 802.11a/b/c/g/n/whatever, some WiMax variation, some cellular platform etc. and how nice that the FCC allocated a compatible frequency range to the aliens.

Also:

Did the aliens really design their APIs with a call to blowUpTheShipAsSoonAsTheGoodGuysGetFarEnoughAway(), as an easy-to-get-to routine? (sadly the answer is probably yes)

One reader notes that the aliens obviously failed to protect their network with “Norton Anti-virus, Alien Mothership Edition.” But another reader counters that

They disabled Norton Mothership Edition – it kept on pestering them to get updates and to upgrade. It’s difficult to get new antivirus signatures when the nearest MotherShip Software Authorized Retailer is 100 light-years away.

Only computer geeks will really get the humor in all this, but it amply illustrates the license that scriptwriters take with technology when the scene calls for a computer.

Energy Breakthrough?

Here’s a video about a garage workshop inventor who has discovered a novel new source of power: salt water. It appears to be legit.

UPDATE: Some critics explain that the system this guy rigged up to ignite the salt water consumes more energy than it produces. Still, this is an intriguing development that could open doors hitherto unknown.

Harnessing the Wind

On my way back from Colorado, I passed by the Spearville Wind Energy Facility, just east of Dodge City. The picture below doesn’t capture the immense size of these gargantuan wind turbines. There are 67 of them scattered over 5,000 acres, producing over 100 megawatts of clean, renewable power for Kansas City Power & Light. (See an album of much better photos here.)

Kansas is doing its part to reduce our carbon footprint on the planet. Hey, Teddy Kennedy — what are you doing to reduce yours?

Two-Dollar Fill-up?

That’s what it will cost to fill up the tank of the world’s first air-powered car. The Air Car was designed by a former Formula One racing engineer, and is being manufacturered in India. The car runs on compressed air — and at 4350 psi, it must have a pretty solid “fuel” tank. It can hit 68 mph, with a range of 125 miles. Unlike electric cars, it can be filled up (at a properly equipped refueling station, of course) in just a few minutes. Or it can be refueled in a few hours by the car’s own compressor pump. The car’s cost? $12,700.

Sound too good to be true? Unfortunately, it is, at least for Americans. The car’s body is glued together, so safety concerns will limit its market. But a number of other countries are lining up to get this vehicle into their fleets. Also, one reader commented that since the engine produces no heat or electricity, there is no simple way to produce onboard heat. Folks in Minnesota won’t like that.

Still, this has exciting possibilities for the future of automotive technology.

Read more about the Air Car here and here.

How Not to Release a New OS

David LaGesse, technology writer at U.S. News & World Report, has compiled a list of lessons learned from Microsoft’s handling of its release of its new flagship operating system, Vista. One lesson: Listen to the blogs.

New versions of Windows have always drawn gripes, but this time the volume of sneering is amplified, partly because of blogs and Internet forums that hardly existed when Windows XP appeared five years ago.

. . . The Web’s blogs and forums give new transparency to anecdotal problems; Microsoft must cut down on the anecdotes.

Elsewhere, LaGesse describes the five biggest problems associated with Vista upgrades.

XP is still working just fine for me, thank you.

A Replacement for Light Bulbs

And we’re not talking about compact fluorescents (CFLs) either. LED technology has already made a big impact in the flashlight market, and could be challenging standard household lighting within a few years.

Mission to Mars and Medical Emergencies

AP reporter Mike Schneider considers some of the scary “what if” scenarios of a long-term space flight to Mars. How would a flight crew deal with a medical emergency millions of miles from the nearest hospital? How long would the crew try to save a fellow astronaut’s life before simply pulling the plug? Should crew selection resort to genetic testing and elective appendectomies to reduce the chance of medical emergencies in space?

All I can say is, it would take some mighty brave people to commit to such an expedition.

Next Generation Aircraft

First, there were airplanes, then dirigibles, then helicopters. Make way for the next completely different kind of aircraft: the Aeroscraft. So far, this fourth-generation craft is more conceptual than real, but if the science and the economics work out, this could revolutionize air travel.

To get a sense of the enormous size of this behemoth, check out this animated video of an Aeroscraft cruiser. (It’s a big file, so be patient.)

Death by Email

According to a survey of personal assistants in the UK, the avalanche of emails choking our inboxes may actually be hurting productivity in the work place.

I have come to the same conclusion in my own work, as I struggle to manage a growing flood of email. It’s ironic that the convenience of electronic communication — which was supposed to make our jobs more productive — may actually have the opposite effect.

It’s not the medium itself that is at fault. It’s our misuse of it, as we rely on email to document the most trivial exchanges. Whatever happened to just picking up the phone and chatting? Or using instant messaging, which does not leave behind a trail of worthless messages to dispose of.

Faster + Cheaper – Better = Spectacular Failures

In September 2004, a probe from the Genesis space mission returned to earth in what was supposed to be a controlled parachute descent. However, the parachutes never opened, and the probe crashed into the Utah desert, destroying most of the space dust specimens it had collected during its 27 months in space.

An investigation into the malfunction blamed NASA’s new emphasis on a “Faster, Better, Cheaper” design process.  In this case, apparently, they got the Faster and Cheaper part, but neglected the Better. It turns out that four deceleration sensors had been  designed  backwards. The probe was doomed before it was ever launched.

And now it turns out that the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft that suddenly died in November 2006, after ten years of extraordinary work circling the red planet, was the victim of a bungled software patch that was uploaded to the spacecraft prior to the failure.  The patch caused both batteries on the spacecraft to completely discharge, and temporarily blinded ground controllers to the problem until it was too late.

These failures do not inspire confidence in the ability of NASA to advance the frontiers of space exploration.

The Disposable Gender

Scientists have figured out a way to turn human bone marrow tissue into primitive sperm cells. There are a number of technical and ethical issues to sort out, but this development could provide a way for infertile men to father children. Or lesbian couples to have their own biological offspring (which would be only females). Feminists, naturally, are ecstatic. Finally, men are no longer necessary in any sense of the word.

But as Kevin McCollough points out, this brave new world puts the feminists on the defensive. Now we will find out how many women really do want a world without men.

The feminist jig is up. Women like men – real men that is. Women love a man who will provide economic security for them. They want a man who will be their rock and shield in a time of crisis or attack. And women prefer the joy of being sexually complete in the intimate bodily embrace and the emotional, spiritual, and physical connection to a man as God designed it.

Check the Oil in My PC, Please

A company in the UK plans to start selling oil-based cooling systems for PC processors next year.

Aside from the low-brow image of having a radiator in my computer, the idea seems to be attacking the wrong problem. As one critic suggested, “Reducing the power consumption of processors and other components is more desirable than exotic cooling.”

Eureka! Oh, Wait a Minute . . .

A few years ago, a small upstart company made waves by claiming to have mastered a process for turning turkey parts and used tires into oil and distillates using heat and pressure — cheaply and with no foul emissions. It sounded too good to be true.

Apparently it was too good to be true. A recent report summarizes the technical challenges, high costs, and neighborhood complaints that have plagued the company.

At least they’re trying. Maybe someday somebody will get it right.