The energy price of transportation includes the drama involved

Yesterday I had mentioned in email to a friend that the use of a 1 or 2 ton lump of steel to go get a sack of groceries a mile away was grossly inefficient in transportation energy terms, the ratio of the weight of the sack of groceries to the weight of the 1 or 2 ton vehicle that transported a mile over to the grocery store and back home again, lots of consumed energy for no net movement of anything but the sack of groceries; and that process was about as inefficient as the use of rockets to reach space.

But this morning laying awake, I had the insight that that missing energy cost, that I considered waste, actually does something: it powers an immense amount of human drama.

In the case of the sack of groceries, it is Mama taking little Suzy along to teach Suzy how to shop; the hustle and bustle of shopping in the store, lots of people interactions to stir up Mama's drama soup pot; the drama of the grocery line, who else is in there; and the negotiating back out to the big SUV and being seen getting into that big status symbol, and then the driving through the streets, avoiding this and that along the way and happening to see so-and-so doing whatever along the way; then back home, unloading little Suzy and the grocery sack and carrying it back into the house.

Similarly, the use of rockets being chosen over the use of an electrically powered space transportation structure to reach space from the ground, is because the whole complex of rocket industry and academics was where all the prep had gone and was screen-played already for getting a huge amount of human drama for those energy dollars, drama preferentially going to those particular ones already awaiting it, instead of newcomers of the potential transportation structure field.

Clearly the huge amount of extra energy is used for powering human drama, for the vastly greater part; and only a tiny amount to the actual delivery of a penny's worth of energy given to the sack of groceries, or the 73 cents per pound of energy given to mass delivered from the ground up into GEO, the other $9,999.27 per pound going to power the enormous human drama involved.

It may be analogous to the delivery of a football from over in one part of a football field to across the goal line on the other side of the field; the transportation efficiency of the football is not the point, it is all about the human drama that went into that delivery.

Thoughts about balancing the U.S. economy in the world

20100620 JEDCline

Thoughts about balancing the U.S. economy in the world

Ref: "U.S. once again cast as world's consumer of last resort" article

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-global-economy-20100620,0,1603901.story

Since Americans use 20% of world's oil energy and produce only 2% of it, the $1 billion a day going offshore to buy oil is a major waste. Much of that oil goes to push our behemoth vehicles around to move us around everyday.

So it seems to me that if We Americans would focus on innovative ways to have much greater time, convenience, and energy efficiency in our movements, this would be an effective effort to improve our economy and reduce the trade deficit. Think changing 20% down to 2%: that is a big change; this is serious innovation, instead of incremental improvements just to keep "business as usual" going along to supply routine dividends rolling in.

While it would be nice to drag around a 4 bedroom house on wheels everywhere we go, having the luxuries and safety of home wherever we go, it is not really addressing the basic need to occasionally move ourselves and purchases around. Even moving the typical 3,000 pound car's mass simply to move our 165 pound weight to the job and back each day, clearly is not efficient. Yet the car provides a way to get to work 20 times faster than walking, and occasionally keeps the rain off and ruffians from assaulting along the way. So innovate how to do those functions without the 3,000 pounds to haul around too, that is all. View the bigger picture, how things interact, will help.

Another major item is the "stimulus money" which has gone to help create jobs, such as road construction, improving needed infrastructure. But we ought to equally use that stimulus money, as so many other nations did to jump-start their economies in the past, to focus on producing goods and services to be provided as exports, producing goods and services that efficiently compete in the world economy, as well as be useful at home.

And, in the process, it needs to increase people's being conscious of being productive and contributing to the American economy in the world system, an increased busyness including some that is paid time. This overall ideally could bring in the 10% of us who are not adequately employed, too, as well as adding some productivity even for retired folks.

Keep a notebook at hand: how much gas did you save when walking to the corner store to get a small sack of goodies, instead of firing up the big gas buggy to do it today? What was that experience like? Can you imagine some other way to have made it even more interesting, efficient and convenient?

Governed by a consortium of corporations

With the takeover of Kennedy's seat by the GOP yesterday in Massachusetts, and thus ending the Democrat's majority for being able to get projects done despite the phalanx of the GOP, I once again have been idly and briefly thinking: could the United States really be governed by a consortium of corporations run solely to make maximum profit for least value added? And presumably have the elected government only have the remaining function of interfacing with those that are there for "providing the common defense," in other words, merely for the civilian population to interface with the Pentagon. All else would be privatized.

Government would then no longer function to enable the projects needed for integrating the nation for wholesomeness of the entire American people, in that scenario. For example, such as the nation's transportation system's upkeep and improvement. Such activities, if they continued at all, could only be done by corporations for profit, extracting money from anybody who would want to drive or ride anywhere, extracted on the spot. Toll booths at every interstate border, maybe even at every city limit.

Healthcare would get far worse than it already is, in such a mode; even more businessmen figuring out a way to weasel in to leverage a monetary portion of all healing that went on. It is sick people that would bring in maximum business for such medical-related businessmen; it is not not well people. To make maximum profit for least value added, guess what. Even I can see the game.

New hordes of businessmen of the in-group to get easy money, the easy life, for joining in. Would that really be a way to prevent a tyrant from taking over the government someday?

This kind of scenario seems to me to maybe be the basic vision the GOP party says it promotes. And some indication that some of them believe the ends justifies the means; lots of fear synchronized in the news gets scared people to vote for the GOP, typically, instead of courageously daring to reach for a better life. Is their way the only option against some day a dictator taking over and ruling everybody for selfish purposes, absolute power corrupting absolutely? Is a horde of petty tyrants preferable to one humongous tyrant, in other words. Surely this country has better options than either of those.

Making the assumption that a country could be benevolently run by a group of corporations which are solely ruled by maximizing corporate profits to supply to their investors, maybe that could work, if somehow "maximum profit for least value added" could equate in aggregate to "maximum improvement in life quality for all Americans." Right now, there seems to me to be a very large gap between the two, needing to be bridged.

Additionally, there seems to be a continuing pattern of gamesmanship, for the purpose of making winners by making losers of the other folks. While this fits in the finest of exciting team sports activities, and thereby conditioning the mentalities of enthusiasts, American government "by the people and for the people" does not seem to me to be an appropriate place for that kind of activity. (PS BTW the new law that corporations can spend unlimited advertising and pressure for their narrow interests, as if they were an individual, suggests that the government "by the people and for the people" will soon need to be changed to read "American government by the most powerful corporations for the most powerful corporations."

The GOP has at times in the past been a fine political group that was able to accomplish great things for America. But it has too often been largely taken over by narrow interest groups that are far more for themselves than for America. And some of the current power in the GOP possibly comes from their aggregate guilty feelings about some of what they did in the eight years of the previous administration, and use the tactic of pointing the finger of blame away from themselves furiously so as to prevent having to deal with their own huge errors. Blaming is a dominant mode of some of the psychological types; blaming of others, that is. Yet the only constructive mode is to identify problem origins as problems, seek how to avoid falling into those modes again, and move on to get the job done of making America function optimally for Americans - instead of for powerful narrow interest groups that have expertise in greed, deception, smoke&mirrors and insideously spreading false information about their supposed enemies, yikes! I recently saw a circulating email where they had a long list of public works over the decades initiated by Democrats and saying they were all failures as proven by the assertion that they had not made a profit! Clearly they missed the point of it all; we are all on the same ship together, why can't they see that? Such is the philosophy they have, such tunnel special interest vision. Almost as if they function as mere predators on America and its resources. Winner take all. Making profit instead of making better, basically, seems to be their implied golden standard. Yet there surely are worthy skills among even those who practice such things; American needs to find ways to enable those fine honorable and constructive modes to shine forth in them, as in all Americans.

Ah, well, there are a huge number of things people do that seem to make little sense to me. To ponder it too much is just another crazymaker. Write a little rant in a blog that others seem to not be able to find, write it off as done. Looks like we the American population are due for more experience in getting our noses rubbed in it, to eventually learn the lesson. Surely there are more interesting and fun ways to get the daily dose of drama, to keep life from being boring. And yes, I know they did not ask me. So, what's new, as it is said.

Another of my comments on human spaceflight

I have recently also opened up a Facebook account, and contributed several of the necessarily very brief items to the ongoing "Human Space Flight Plans Committee" blogging there. While that asociated conference looked like just another business sponsored conference actually only promoting a very specific launch and space enterprise scenario, instead of the titled claim to be promoting space access and utilization itself by any means, I contributed comments anyway.

(Over the past 14 years of space conferences, I have ruefully found that it has been a bit like seeing conferences titled "Transportation in America" and so I take my Ford to participate, but find it is actually a conference put on by GM to promote only their cars, not cars in general; and even resents even bicycles, trains or elevators being mentioned.)

So anyway, here is what I posted this morning as a comment to the departing post of the "Human Space Flight Plans Committee" which asked for comments on human spaceflight:

NASA was born in the cold war space race to the Moon. Yet the then opened opportunity for space utilization for civilization became absolutely tremendous. But compromising with all the special interests bogs NASA down. If NASA were to fully serve the interests of the American people instead of mere political business, then, instead of continuing its suppression, it could truly look into the centrifugal-supported-structure "Space Escalator Carousel" concept, freeing from the limits of rocket launch from the ground, instead letting rockets ply to and from GEO to the solar system sites, with very low cost electrical lift up to GEO from the equatorial ground. SPS construction would be easy then, among many other ways to massively utilize nearby space, to the great benefit of civilization and profit to business. And expeditions to Mars would then be very easy, too. The vision for space utilization thus could become wide indeed, and in our time.

Establishing a big picture responsible national authority

Laying awake this morning, thoughts were something about how to preserve the technological development stimulus of business competition to make a better product for the customer, as proven by what the customer base is buying; while also having a larger governing influence that is making sure that the big picture's resource details are also getting filled in, even if businesses are not taking care of all of the needs for some reason or other.

Also related is how to suppress the use of intense advertising to control the customer's urge choices to buy, such as was being done by the American automotive industry causing customers to buy ever more gigantic gas-guzzling SUV's as their sole means of transportation including commute to work, grocery shopping and soccer-moms taking their urchin to the field to play, all of which could be easier done in a small hatchback using half the gas for the trips and being far less dangerous in traffic accidents; all caused by the giant corporations playing on the public's fears of the other drivers and preparation for mass exodus into the wilderness areas, armed with high power rifles to acquire food in a time of sectarian upheaval in the US, appealing to the "survivalist" mode of thinking too; a man could acquire a woman to have children by providing her with a house and a SUV for protection of the family, thus making more profit for the auto mega-corporations and the gas companies, much of that fuel having to be bought from the middle-east oil fields, paid for somehow in trade by a country increasingly unable to manufacture their own goods, gas only to be merely burned up in the daily job commute and soccer-mom trips, but the payment in real goods still having to somehow be paid in trade to the middle-east.

The "big picture" was clearly lost in that system, causing great stress to the country and the world.

Another example is in the American health care system, where tunnel-visioned guidance has bypassed cost-effective potentials (for example, where is the honest intelligent comparison of the efficacy of the various Rife & HRClark electrohealth devices, so widely and well proven by vast numbers of experimenters around the world now, especially integrated into the many discoveries published by HRClark; or the many holistic whole-person-health methods; these would cut into the business profits of the megapharmaceuticals to a significant extent, thus are suppressed, at the tragedy of the public's health), since corporate R&D is guided toward maximum business profit, not maximum customer need-filling at low cost. The virtual franchise on health care is erroneously enforced by governmental authorities, believing the existing business medical system has done the full science behind their services and no one can do better. But the science was guided by businesses who were guided by the requirement to pay maximum dividends to investors, thus only weakly linked to efficacy in maintaining optimum health for the population. As a result we have a poor health population and enormous national burden in health care; should this be any surprise knowing the system was ever guided in development toward maximizing profit by health-related businesses?

By having the big picture available and in reference, hopefully the nation could begin fixing these major goofs we got ourselves into. Expecting businesses, corporations, to fill in all the needs of the nation with good efficacy is mere fantasy; corporations do not want such a responsibility either, they are just there to get a piece of the action. If a big picture responsible national authority were established, the "action" could be more optimally fulfilled.

How to stop such a big picture authority from becoming taken over by politics and vested interests, lobbyists, corrupting the vision and the responsible governance? That part I don't know, but it seems likely that it needs to be directly accountable to the nation of individuals we are, and on a fairly quick basis.

Attention, our carmakers maybe can finally listen ... no?

A front page item in recent news is calling for loan by the American public to the US automakers, numbers like $25,000,000,000 in loans. Just to re-tool for a tiny increase in fuel efficiency, at that. The foot-dragging of our beloved car industry about much higher fuel efficient vehicles was caused by several factors, not all of which have been mentioned in the news. Some go really deep and are completely missed by management in SOP. This post is not to rehash those things, but instead to propose a modified suggestion I have posted for a couple years, without notice; probably this one will get equal burying, in favor of 25 bn hoopla. Anyway, here goes. First, am going to repeat a post I have made several times, several places, but with a few changes in it:

There are ways to greatly reduce the wastage in use of fossil fuels, that can make a significant difference and pay for itself; but takes some very different ways of looking at things, along with backing off of business egos a bit at times. Transportation is one area that looks quite promising for this approach. If we can look at a 10 year time frame for payback plus profit, some possibilities come to mind. It requires looking at the big picture, to find the solutions; the old narrow picture has lost the game, maybe it is time to include the lateral scenes to make the big picture.

For example, let us imagine that "we America" buy the design rights for the 1990 Honda Civic Hatchback from Honda, along with any tooling and assembly data they have remaining on that now obsolete vehicle, 18 years into history. So it ought to be potentially a cheap design purchase; obtaining working ones around the country ought to still be possible for examples. I owned one of them and it got 42 mpg on the freeway commute in the Los Angeles area, and handled great on the road; had automatic transmission, a/c, cruise control and plenty of room inside; and the engine still did not use oil up at 160,000 miles (although I did use a high quality synthetic oil, only a little more expensive than normal oil per mile) when it was squished in a multi-car wreck from which I walked away. It did have some design flaws in the positioning of the alternator and electrical relays too near the driver, causing long terem EMF risks, which ought to take less than half a million dollars to modify; the only other flaw would be harder and might need living with for now, that is the need to replace the engine timing belt every 70,000 miles. In this scenario the government (state or national) would provide loans and enough guidance for the project to re-create this proven vehicle in the context of the need. If they are produceable in multi-million quantities here in the US, cost probably would be maybe $10,000 each or significantly less if all vehicles were identical. These new vehicles would be offered free in direct exchange for any vehicle which gets less than 18 mpg, regardless of age or condition of the gas hog. Thereafter, for each of these new vehicle's 10,000 miles of commute, at say average of 36 mpg, it has saved the consumption of 555 gallons of refined gasoline; at a cost of $4.00 per gallon, that is $2,220 saved per 10,000 miles driven. If the average vehicle is driven 100,000 miles, that is a savings of $22,200, so the vehicle has long since paid for its $10,000 cost to the nation, and produced a substantial profit of over 120%. Each individual who did the vehicle exchange got a new vehicle free (or remaining payments to yet make on the former old gas hog vehicle) and is saving $2.00 in gas for every 36 miles driven. But more importantly to the world ecosystem's climate, it has saved the use of 5,500 gallons of fuel per vehicle. For each 1,000,000 vehicles thus replaced and utilized, this is a savings of 5,500,000,000 gallons of refined petrochemical fuel to remain in the world's reserves becoming more precious with time for non-fuel uses; along with preventing its enormous amount of CO2 from being dumped into the atmosphere to add to global weather disruption and resultant sea level rise.

OK, that is the repeated post, more or less. Further thoughts include:
1) Lots of egos are involved, paticularly those of the "Big Three" automakers. However, it is an even better indication of quality person if admission of error and redirection to adequately solving the problem happens.
2) It is a design of another automaker; an 18 year old design probably has passed teh 17 year limit of patents, but in respect to the original designers, perhaps it could be a joint venture between Honda (Japan) and one of the big-3 US car makers. And the quantities involved would be far greater than suggested in the above referenced post which shows it is a big win-win for everybody to get the gas hogs off the streets, getting a brand new free high quality vehicle for participating, that pays for itself more than twice over in the first 100,000 miles.
3) There are probably similarly proven vehicles in the high gas milage and performance arena than that multipurpose hatchback vehicle was; unbiased research into that would find the answers; the resulting otehr vehicles could be assigned to each of teh other "Big 3" US car makers to convert over for production, based on existing proven designs, like that of the 1990 Honda Civic hatchback.
4) Part of each of the "big 3" manufacturing plants could be converted to refurbishing some of its former produced vehicles, truly re-manufacturing them, from vehicles traded in; this would be to maintain a working transportation system as exists now, while a consciously engineered national transportation system is put into place.
5) Continuing development of a hybrid vehicle would proceed enthusiastically and clear-headed. Part of this design/development activity would be starting from teh ground up to produce a target vehicular performance, not from a jigsaw puzzle of minor changes from the way we do it now. Think time and energy efficiency plus safety and reliability, with a realizable change in the associated infrastructure.
6) get serious about creating a next generation American transportation system, one that provides the personal convenience of privately garaged vehicles at residence, integrated into an automatically controlled system when on the freeway and most surface streets. Does it take a two ton vehicle to take a 165 pound person to work? Why not a 500 pound vehicle? Figure the more frequent refueling stops, vs the higher energy efficiency and mileage of the lower mass being pushed around. And even more effectively develop a national-potential transportation system for non-cargo-carriers, that utilizes a distributed energy system such as the "Pull-Band-Commute" system I proposed decades ago.
7) Overall, each step needs to be done by looking at the wide view overall picture of America and the world. Where there are existing franchises and business territories including technology ones, buy them out from American-pooled-resource-funds for fair prices, instead of struggling with pretzel-like work-around solutions.

OK, there I have made my soapbox noise again to an empty audience, all of them elsewhere to decide to throw zillions of dollars for no defined goals, to pretend they are doing something to solve the problems. Well, maybe a few continue to remain to throw rotten eggs and crash my email and websites, just to prove they are boss.

James E. D. Cline
jedcline1@kestsgeo.com
jedcline@gmail.com

(Ref http://energyideasjedc.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html )

Efficient fast rigid airshipping ideas

Looking at an article in the NYT this morning, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/05/business/worldbusiness/05dirigible.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1215270217-kK5cYYAELURprOcmA7IXZw
reminds me of a former girlfriend's dream (1985-ish) of resuming use of rigid airships, her one technological thought, as far as I knew. It also reminds me of one of the ideas I wrote about in my "Its Down to Earth" novel (2007),
http://www.escalatorhi.com/techscifi/it's%20down%20to%20earth.html where neutral-buoyancy rigid airships could be built in the shape of high speed jet aircraft and travel at those high speeds but not needing to use energy to provide lift. (It also used tracking beam energy from SPS, in the story, instead of carrying fuel to power its flight). And in reading the NYT article, I suddenly had the idea of a form of tethered rigid dirigible type airship, except towed along between a pair of cables alongside, which span between towers much as do current-day high tension power lines; the dirigible would be tethered to the cables, defining its positioning as it floated along, thus enabling it to operate in much more severe weather that can free-flying dirigibles; and if the cables themselves move to provide the tow of the dirigible, it would not even need to carry engines nor fuel except perhaps for emergency detachment and descent safely. Could be a highly efficient added transportation mode especially across rough terrain or above already highly populated areas with little disruption of the terrain below except for pylon footings.