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The Cost Of Car
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grufty jim
grufty jim
1978 posts

personal transportation
Feb 26, 2002, 18:34
We do indeed need to reconsider the whole issue of transportation from the ground up. The way we currently go about it is ludicrously wasteful and - to use a technical term - "does me 'ead in".

Wind engines won't cut it, i'm afraid. On an average day if you jump into the air, about how far forward does the wind push you? You have to see it in terms of "energy-systems".

There's a certain amount of energy in the motion of the wind. In order to use that energy to move the mass of your body (plus the mass of whatever vehicle you're in - including it's wind-propulsion device), you need to harness *enough* of the wind to do so. There's no way of doing that without a physical interaction with that wind (i.e. the large surface-area of a sail). And sails just ain't practical on a large scale (firstly they need to be higher than the surrounding buildings; secondly they need to be far enough apart so that they don't block each other's air flow; thirdly the technology required to make a vehicle even remotely maneuverable under sail is a long way off - the world's best yachtsmen and women would still find it difficult to parallel-park their boats).

being generous, we can probably solve the technological issues (though sail technology has been around for centuries, and one would imagine that we've already squeezed a lot of technological progress out of it). but we can't solve the basic "energy-systems" obstacles of physically accessing enough moving wind to provide the energy to move millions of us around every day... and what the hell would THAT do to the climate? Removing that amount of energy out of the wind? Could have disastrous consequences (or not... i suspect no one's ever run the numbers).

i wish i was proposing a solution here - but i really do think that the "personal motorized vehicle" will have to go the way of the dodo pretty soon. It'll be mass transit - or on yer bike... except for the wealthy of course.
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