[ExI] super soldier ants and the tata nano

[Kelly Anderson]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 9:26 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>>... 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:
> 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

You won't catch me in one of those things until something major
changes in terms of highway safety. For example, I would buy one if

A) 99% of all cars and 100% of all long haul Semi tractor trailers
were driven by dependable autonomous systems.

B) My car was also autonomous.

C) Nobody had large vehicles on the roads I was traveling on,
including long haul tractor trailers.

> 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.

And the possibility of damaging said ape goes up. It is pure physics,
and the only thing you could do about it is develop some kind of
restraint system like the Secure Foam employed in Demolition Man
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnyhkBU1yaw

I don't know if this specific thing is possible, but it sure SEEMS
possible. Has anyone seen any work on Secure Foam in the real world?
The specs are pretty simple. Foam up and harden to Styrofoam
consistency in a few hundred milliseconds, then disintegrate within 30
seconds after that (to allow said ape to breathe again)...

> 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.

I was really excited a few years back by the idea that the nano would
be powered by compressed air, but apparently that turned out to be
more difficult technologically than they initially speculated.
Something to do with condensation and freezing if I remember
correctly.

> 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.

You forget that cars are also a part of the American psyche... and
that it's just as important to have a back seat where you can lose
your virginity as get 125 MPG...

>>...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.

I knew you were smarter than me.

-Kelly