Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Technological innovations are coming from abroad as Americans obsess over race, gender, and preventing people from questioning The Narrative.
This is how empires crumble.
Joe Doakes
If there’s going to be a backlash, let’s get it going. America’s current New Reality sucks.
I wanna know, where is the atomic powered monorail I was promised?
Meanwhile, our bridges crumble while we “invest” in education.
A mature and prosperous economy like ours looks at those flying cars and sees problems. Problems that need laws, policies, and lawyers. And graft, lots of graft.
atomic powered monorail
Oh, crap. Monorails were mentioned.
That means Ken “Avidor” “David Soros” “Oops” Weiner will come sniffing around, dragging on people who don’t support not merely rail, but light rail and only light rail.
Thanks for nothing.
JD, you are wrong again. Last CES I attended was 3 years ago and there were at least half a dozen companies showcasing flying bikes – think a compact quadcopter that can carry a single person. Some prototypes were working and were close to certification. Flying cars were prototyped in the US in the past, way ahead of others. But you are absolutely correct about innovation being put on the backburner to take care of things that matter, and no doubt stymied while elite are trying to figure out, as jdm put it, how to solve problems.
However, last time I checked, Space X and Virign Space are in the US, so while rot is here, death of innovation in the US is greatly exaggerated.
I’m not that worried about flying cars not coming to fruition, as the compromises to make something both airworthy and roadworthy make a bad car and a bad plane.
However, there is a huge issue with the mother’s milk of innovation, electric power, and the left has been systematically destroying power system reliability and capability while simultaneously wondering why companies aren’t building things like new wafer fabs here–which rely on power reliability.
You know, bike, the left can cynically destroy reliable means of producing electrical power and at the same time, stroke their chins thoughtfully and wonder why wafer fab plants aren’t being built. It’s the very thing that gets them off the hook.
the left will also stroke their chins thoughtfully wondering why people are dying because they cannot heat/air condition their homes while they tout how green energy is saving the planet and powering their plugin vehicles. Can you imagine how much juice will be needed to power an electric semi? Surely exponentially more then Tesla. And we already have Amazon delivery vans running around on plug in power.
My grand-niece was confused. “My friend, Jessica, has an electric car. Teacher says that’s more friendly than gas or diesel. She says anybody who doesn’t drive an electric car should ride trains. But this book says the engine pulling the train is diesel-electric. Which is it?”
It’s diesel. They burn diesel to spin a turbine to generate electricity to make the wheels of the train go round and round. It’s the same idea as the old steam engine in the cowboy show except cowboys burned coal and we burn diesel.
The coal, we carry in gondola cars from Montana where coal is mined, to Monticello where coal is burned. In a power plant. To make steam, to turn a turbine, which generates electricity, which runs through the wires to your friend’s garage where they plug in their electric car to make the wheels go round and round.
I don’t think the explanation helped much.
In the early 50s, Both the U.S. Air Force and Russia were toying with concept nuclear powered bombers. They would use fission to run the turbines instead of jet fuel. A Convair B-36 was actually fitted with a small reactor and test flown, without the engines hooked up to it. The problems with radiation exposure to both air and ground crews, caused the U.S. program to be scrapped in 1957 or 58.
Regarding trains, one thing I learned as a child around 1982 was that buses are actually more fuel efficient than trains, and I’ve known for a decade or so that the average fuel economy of a city bus is about 25 passenger miles per gallon of diesel fuel. In terms of gasoline, that’s equivalent to a full size pickup, and of course the pickup has the good sense to go directly to its destination rather than slavishly follow a route and add even more miles.
Perhaps someday we will have far more fuel efficient power generation, whether in power plants, fuel cells, or whatever, but at other times, we will find that older technologies are being used for a reason.