So humans can invent a fleet of autonomous solar-powered, sea-swarm robots made “with ultra-light nanowire mesh that can absorb up to 20 times its weight in oil” and use these to clean up an oil spill in 30 days but we can’t figure out a way to actually use solar power to meet our energy needs, create any sort of alternate lubricant or fertilizer, nor can we stop spilling oil all over the ocean?
Okay. Gotcha. Makes perfect sense.
Haven’t heard anything this rational since geoengineering to solve global warming.
4 comments
Brian Dunbar
August 30, 2010 at 2:14 pm (UTC -5)
but we can’t figure out a way to actually use solar power to meet our energy needs,
We know _how_ to use solar power, it’s called SPS.
Solar Power from Space. Build solar arrays in orbit. Collect the energy the sun is throwing around without pesky clouds getting in the way. Transmit the energy to the ground as microwaves. Receive on the ground with rectennas, transmit where needed.
We’ll never be able to use solar for all of our needs. But that’s why good invented nuclear reactors.
The fly in the ointment is it’s just not economical to do this. Oil is cheap and a very good energy source.
Ryan Oakley
August 30, 2010 at 3:16 pm (UTC -5)
“The fly in the ointment is it’s just not economical to do this.”
That’s one helluva fly. A bit like saying to a starving hobo, the solution to your hunger is to go to Chez Lucien and buy dinner there every night.
Brian Dunbar
August 30, 2010 at 3:39 pm (UTC -5)
Hey, I just work here, man, I don’t make the rules. If it’s cheaper to use oil, then oil is gonna be used. Wanting things to be pretty won’t make it happen.
If it were up to me, we’d have nuclear power everywhere, SPS, cheap access to space, one Hilton each at L5 and Luna, colonists in the Belt, and farming on the moon to feed a growing base of settlers and workers in the Earth-Luna system.
This future is nice and all – and it’s sure better than what I thought it would be in 1985, what with no nuclear wars and stuff. But I want my spaceships.
Ryan Oakley
August 31, 2010 at 7:46 am (UTC -5)
Yeah, I want those spaceships too.
As far as nuclear power goes, I’m not wild on it. Putting aside the waste I dislike the centralization. ((Same problem with windfarms.) Ideally, I’d like to see power generated by the user and distributed along a scale free network.
When I said “actually usable” I was thinking mainly along economic lines. I know the tech is there. I’d like to see it actually used.
How it can still be cheaper to mine a relatively rare resource –compared to sunlight– and one that causes so much political instability with all those intangible costs in lives and secret (hoarded) military research, when there are obvious technical solutions is beyond me. Unless you bring bribery, subsidy and corruption into the picture.
(I’m aware that oil produces much more energy than sunlight but the price of it is still continually rising while the price of sunlight would -I’d assume- be continually lowering.)
The problem has stopped being a research one a long time ago. Figuring out how to get this stuff, whether SPS, hydrogen cell, alage, nuclear or, better yet, a combination on the market *is* the problem of actual usability.
Thing is, I don’t see much solar powered anything coming out but when the oil companies have a problem, BAM – there’s a fleet of SF robots ready to go clean up the mess. So they can power these things on sunlight but a roomba still needs to be plugged in and powered by coal? That’s bullshit, if you ask me.