[ExI] super soldier ants and the tata nano

[spike]

>... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson
Subject: Re: [ExI] super soldier ants

On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 9:14 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

>> ...  Oilseed is used to make a light oil which can be used for fuel and
could have 
>> plenty of industrial uses in addition to being a food crop.

>...Ah, I'll have to take your word on that one...

I do need to clarify.  Ordinarily burning any kind of food for fuel is a
terrible loss.  It takes so much energy to create food in the way we are
currently doing it, you wouldn't waste good food crops to make anything
else.  There is an important point to make here however.  When I envision
future ape haulers, I see not things like this:

http://www.cadillac.com/escalade-suv.html

But rather, things like this:

http://www.examiner.com/auto-industry-in-san-jose/tata-nano-the-world-s-chea
pest-car-starts-delivery-to-first-customers

Weights engineers will get this every time.  If you scale down the
requirements for top speed, then the weight of an ape-hauler is dramatically
reduced.  One of these Indian companies yesterday announced a plan for an
ape-hauler considerably smaller than the nano, which really caught my
attention, because the specifications were right on what I had calculated
after doing the structural analysis: the thing runs on a 26 kw single
cylinder 200 cc engine, mass 400 kg, top speed about 70 kph (assuming a tail
breeze) gets 83 miles per gallon, cost about 2000 USD.  It would be so much
safer for teenagers and the long-since-retired hordes to be buzzing around
in these things.  Safer for us anyway.  

Our current specifications and expectations for ape-haulers are so absurdly
outdated.  Once we really focus on what an ape-hauler must do, and build
something that does only that, we get something like what the Indians
envision.

>...What about this, you say that the crop works well for one year, then not
so much. So why not rotate it to a different crop that would allow the geese
or ducks to harvest the slugs on the off year? Then go back to oilseed???
-Kelly

Ja, that's what we are doing.  We are experimenting with two consecutive
years with the oilseed, followed by two years of winter rye (very low profit
crop.)  The second year of oilseed was less profitable than the first, but
still better than winter rye.

spike