Profile Information
- Are you interested in becoming an organizer in your area?
- No
- Tell us about your experience with alternative energy:
- Electrical Engineer. Ga Tech '41.
41 years with Westinghouse Electric Corp. Positions included Director of Engineering, Apparatus Products Group, which encompassed electrical power generators, steam and gas turbines, nuclear reactors, tansmission and distribution equipment, large ac and dc motors. Later Assistant Manager Strategic Planning, Power Systems Company.
Have followed with great interest the "peak oil" phenomena first expounded by Marion K Hubbert ('Hubbert's Peak", and maintained keen interest in what would replace conventional crude oil -- particularly the portable liquid fuels (gasoline, diesel oil and aviation fuel refined from it.
- What excites you about this campaign?
- Proposes natural gas for transportable fuel to bridge the gap between the shortages in crude oil which will come with peaking of world oil production (which I am convinced is eminent and which will worsen with each passing year) and development of economically, technically, and environmentally feasible processes for producing large quantities of transportable fuel from such sources as shale oil and tar sands.
Also, I had not fully appreciated the enormity of wind energy potential of the Plain States.
Finally, Picken's Plan -- and similar others that will fillow -- is the first tangible evidence I have seen of the "free enterprise-entrepreneureal-inventive" approach required for the country to make it through the almost unimaginable problems that will surely come with crude oil peaking. Congress and Federal Beauracracies are totally incapable of doing what has to be done. They need to stay the hell out of the way. Anything they come up with -- subsidies, tariffs, taxes (or tax exemptions), regualtions, mandates, whatever -- will in the end do more harm than good.
- What do you want to do to help?
- At age 88, there isn't a great deal I can do -- except to hope for more of the kind of thinking and action plans tthat Boone Pickens has done. I can, and do, keep reminding my yountger acquaintances of problems we and the rest of the world face. And I can, and will, write my Congressman and State Senators -- usually to ask them to bug off.
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Why would you suggest that a transition to ETT would be to REGRESS to using trains first?? How can you advocate tearing up freeways (that carry 60% of all road travel in the US) in favor of installing a railroad that costs more than 10 times as much as a 350mph ETT system????
In 1910, more than 90% of Americans used trains to travel -- many of them electric. Today less than 1% of Americans travel between cities by passenger train, and 90% by road vehicles. You are correct that Europe has progressed slower than the US, in the EU it is "only" 75% car use.
Cars/roads replaced trains because of vastly superior benefit to cost ratio than trains -- even electric trains. ETT greatly improves upon the benefit to cost ratio of cars/roads, and also aircraft.
BTW, virtually all the trains in the US are already electric (except for the few historic steam powered trains). It is well known that modern Diesel engines are just as efficient as coal-fired electric plants. The Diesel-electric is much more cost efficient AND energy efficient because it eliminates the electric wires and their transmission losses. The main reason for the electric train is NOT efficiency or cost improvement -- it is appropriate for use in long tunnels that have inadequate ventilation of fumes -- instead all the fumes are directed up smoke stack at the coal powered electric plant (or nuke waste poisons the ground for a hundred thousand years).
We must electrify transportation to best use renewable sources of hydro, wind, and solar generated electricity. An electric car can accomplish just as much or slightly more transportation per kWh as an electric train, and costs less than 1/10th as much on a per seat basis (and the cost is paid by the user -- not subsidized by government).
ETT can accomplish 50 times more transportation per kW hour as a electric car or electric train, and the cost per seat is about the same as the cost per seat of an automobile -- but ETT saves the most precious comodity of all -- time -- ETT will initially be 350mph, and eventually up to 4000mph on international routes.
Study this file to understand why a 350mph ETT system can be built for less than 1/10th the cost of electric train tracks. ETTvTR_pp.xls
TRANSPORTATION is the master key to basic survival, and the cornerstone of the economy. We all know that transportation presently depends on oil production, and oil production is peaking. We must focus first on transportation – it is the highest priority. The PickensPlan to transition vehicles to natural gas is a great start toward 100% energy independence, but is a stop-gap measure till we can transition to all electric transportation. Electric energy is strained without adding transportation demands; so we must focus on drastic efficiency improvement.
Evacuated Tube Transport (ETT) is a patented technology where travel occurs without air friction or rolling resistance (like “Space Travel on Earth”); ETT can accomplish 50 times more transportation per kWh (or carbon credit) than electric cars or trains. ETT is silent, low cost, safe, faster than jets, less expensive than freeways, and is electric so it can make maximum use of wind or PV power. With your engineering and science experience I thought you might want to learn more about ETT