[ExI] Dark Matter

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson
Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2013 10:57 AM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] Dark Matter

 

On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 11:09 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

 

Note how empty and how vast and how sunny it is out there.  Note the stark
desert beauty everywhere.  Go across Highway 50 in Nevada is a great
example.  Stop somewhere..

 

While highway 50 is a breathtaking example of loneliness, it's also a great
example of why the government shouldn't be in charge of deciding where roads
go. What a tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars! Any private company that
would have built it as a toll road would have LONG AGO gone out of business.

 

I hate that highways are the example people always bring up of why we need
large government projects. They do it so poorly.

 

-Kelly

 

Kelly I totally agree, so don't interpret the next bit as refuting it in any
way.  Here's our chance to redeem a mistake of the past, to turn a stumbling
block into a stepping stone.

 

Highway 50 had enormous potential as a showcase location for ground based
solar.  It's about 600 km of paved two-lane with a good solid base under it
and very little rain, little cloud cover ever out there in that big old
desert.  What we could do is use all those Chinese PV factories' output,
install ground based PV a km or more either side of the road, collect the
power every km or so, use the power to convert low-grade bituminous coal
from Wyoming and Utah or biomass from California's Central Valley to liquid
hydrocarbon fuel.  Autonomous trucks would haul in water and feedstock, then
haul out Diesel oil.  Since the trucks are autonomous, we could use smaller
trucks to preserve the road, or even do stuff like taking standard tanker
trucks and retrofitting the big Diesel engines with smaller ones so that the
trucks cruise at 80 kph instead of the usual 110-130, so that alone would
nearly double the fuel economy in hauling out synfuel. 

 

The road already exists, and isn't being used for anything, snaking all the
way out thru that lonely desert.  The PV factories in China already exist,
and they are filled with workers who will rise up and kill if they don't
have something to do.  We could use Chinese PVs, American sunshine and coal,
synthesize the fuel in Nevada and ship it all the way back to China if we
wanted.  Time to fire up the old spreadsheet! 

 

There is so much empty land out there, it would be interesting to estimate
what could be done with 1000 square km of ground based PV used for biomass
or coal conversion to liquids.  Highway 50 was built for the wrong reasons,
but if we used that as a showcase for a huge GBPV installation, it would be
an example of using cheap energy now to create an energy source for
expensive energy times in the future.  A successful demonstration of that
would give the world new hope.

 

spike

 

 

 

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