Reality Askew

All cars produce excess power while operating.  How about putting a tesla type coil on the roof and have a receptor cable over freeways?  In this way the cars excess power could be directly transferred to adjacent communities.  I honestly think the return would be phenomenal.

Update:  On further thought, with the popularity of electric vehicles how about a system that could zap a quick power charge as they drove past.  In this way modern gas guzzlers could contribute something back to the more environmentally friendly cars.

What if I told you that I know where gold mines are?  Not only that but they are in almost every city, in every country.  Ok, they aren’t exactly gold mines yet but they will be in the not so distant future.

The future I’m speaking of is one where resources on the planet are all but exhausted.  We all know that we can not continue to use metals, plastics, etc. and then throw them away without some day those resources literally being depleted.  Sure we have recycling programs but those are only scratching the surface.

So this is where the gold mines come from.  They are the byproducts of looting of the worlds resources, and they are what we call garbage dumps.

That’s right, in the future I predict that we will be forced to open up these vast areas and mine out the resources.  Of course doing so might also expose us to serious hazardous materials that were dumped there as well, but the need for resources will make this a necessity.

I will go a step further and predict that around the same time, we will not have the luxury of having multiple items in our homes.  EVERYTHING will be monitored and controlled.  Take for instance cups.  You might have 30 in your cupboards now, but in the future you will only be allowed to own one per person and those will have a bar code for tracking.  Say you drop it?  Now you would just throw it away.  In the future you will throw away almost nothing.  Instead you will be forced to turn it in for a new one.  Paper napkins, plastic water bottles, all a thing of the past.  In the future you will likely see garbage cans completely eliminated as we are forced to reuse 100% of our resources.

Introduction:  I originally wrote this back in 2006 and have since learned they are in fact developing something along these lines to propel ships into orbit using some form of magnetism.

*** Original Follows ***

I’m not sure what or how and I will likely update this idea as time goes by, but I’m convinced that we are still in the dark ages with the propulsion systems we use today for space travel.  Take for instance the space shuttle.  I was watching some random Discovery channel show the other day and they showed the space shuttle being rocketed into space.  Now don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful site to see, but honestly I was stuck by the sudden impression that it was as barbaric as a cave man rubbing two sticks together to make fire.  Sure his friends think it’s great, but today it’s considered basic.

There has to be more!  Blasting people into space using a controlled explosion in flames is not progress.  I’ve tried to wrap my mind around what an alternative would be, but don’t really have the education to reach a reasonable hypothesis.  Of course that hasn’t stopped me in the past, so here goes.

Idea #1 – Magnets.  Honestly I think magnetism is so under rated.  Yes I said UNDER rated.  I still find it amazing that we don’t use the hell out of magnets in transportation.  Take a magnet and put two plus sides together and you have magical levitation.  Put these under a vehicle and it would have almost no friction, other than air holding it back.  Right?  So what happens if we learn how this works and have it apply to some sort of propulsion system for launch things into space.  Take a cylinder and put magnets all along it’s sides.  The magnets would have to be the kind that are energized and de-energized by electricity, so that they could be switched on and off.  Now lower a rocket into the cylinder.  On the cylinder you have the same sort of magnetic film or metal covering.  Now you should be able to basically turn on the magnets in such a way that you shoot the rocket out at decent speeds.

Ok after writing this I now see several problems with it.  One, is the velocity needed to escape orbit would tear the rocket apart after it left the launch cylinder.  Second, is how the heck do you maintain the required speed over the vast distance between earth and space?

Maybe the answer is a projected magnetic field that sort of pushes the rocket even after it has left the launch cylinder.  Like say, a particle beam accelerator thing.

Idea #2 – Giant rubber bands.  Ok, this one is a joke, but it’s almost as pathetic as the solid fuel rockets we use today.

Idea #3 – anti gravity?  I know this one is even crazier than the rubber bands, but honestly I think this will happen.

I woke up the other day and this idea was the driving force behind me creating this website.  That and the fact that I have a thousand little ideas cluttering the limited space between my ears.  Hopefully writing them down will help clear out the cobwebs in my mind.

We have lasers that can tell us the distance to a target but to me that seems incredibly limited given modern technology.  Why not a laser beam combined with a small built-in computer that can calculate all of the other variables that go into a successful first hit?  Here are the things this hypothetical scope could do:

•  Calculate wind speed the entire distance of the projectile.  It’s one thing to have a wind measurement at the location of the rifle but quite another to contemplate the whole distance.  So how to do this?  My thought is to have maybe multiple beams (4-6) in very close proximity to the others.  The center beam would likely not be a beam at all but some sort of other invisible projection that would be susceptible to wind and those the change in position could be registered by the other beams.
• The multiple beams hitting the target could measure speed, direction, etc.
• All of the extra data would be calculated by the scope and a red dot would be placed on the target when the elevation and lead were appropriate for a first shot hit.
• As a bonus if you could somehow “paint” the target with a fluorescence that other scopes could pickup then you could literally paint codes on them that would identify different targets for each shooter.  This would allow multiple first shot kills simultaneously.

How many times have you taken the last little piece of soap and thrown it away?  How about a device that takes all of the little soap pieces and combines them.  Something like a playdoh toy that you put different color playdoh into and out pops a new piece but combined.  I’ve tried doing this with my hands an all it takes is a little water and moderate pressure to combine the scraps.  Waste not want not, right?

After doing dishes and cleaning up in the kitchen there’s really no place to hang wet towels that we use to cleanup.  What would be nice is if we had a lightweight towel rack that would go in the sink.  I’m imaging something that is like clothes hanger metal thickness with a rubber coating.

Ok this one is bizarre I know but trust me there are more where this came from. :)  Heck I even made a category for bizarre ideas just so this would have a home.

This was an original idea I came up with around 2005.  I’ve since learned that several companies are actually doing something along these lines.

Solar energy machine – imagine a lot of tubes in a rectangular structure.  Then position thousands of small magnifying lenses over top of the tubes with the sun focused on the tubes through them.  The tubes would be filled with a liquid and the concentrated rays would create steam.  The steam would power a generator and then the liquid would be cooled and returned to the tubes.  This would effectively create clean energy with zero emissions.  A setup like this in the deserts of Arizona could be very effective.

I think that the possibilities around “green” energy are very fascinating and I find a lot of my ideas center around the ways we can limit our use of finite resources.

Follow-up:  Can a beam of light be focused twice? What I mean is can a beam of light that’s been passed through a magnifying glass be passed through another to enhance/amplify it somehow?