Science, Engineering, & Technology in the News

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rockbysea

New member
The Berean said:
I'm surprised the founders and key personnel of this company haven't accidently died in some freak acident or died of natural cause like a stroke.
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Maybe it's the base price of $109,000 compared to the price for one quart of tap water that might have something to do with it.
 
K

koban

New member
rockbysea said:
Tango T600: From 0-60 in 4 secs top speed 140mph and it shovels your driveway

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=uhGCLnAPG88&feature=related
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Tango T600, costing roughly US$108,000.

Range: 60–80 miles (96–128 km) (Lead-acid batteries)

Batteries: 12 V * 19 Hawker Odyssey's or 25 Exide Orbital XCD's or Optima Yellow Tops.

25 Exide Orbital XCD's @$237.50 each = $5937.50

Now, I get about three years out of a battery up here in winter country. Does this mean that every three years or so I have to pop another six grand for batteries for my little toy that will only get me a third of the way up to my cottage?




I've said it before and I'll say it again - when somebody makes available an electric vehicle that will haul a load, pull a trailer, go 400 miles on a charge and charge in the time it takes me to go to the can and grab another coffee - and be as affordable as the pick-up or van that it will replace - they'll put the big three out of business.

Until then, they're rich guy's toys that do two or three things well while sacrificing capability in other areas.

And I don't see anything on the Tango's website about how fast the heater draws down the batteries - experience tells me pretty darn fast.
 
The Berean

The Berean

Well-known member
rockbysea said:
Maybe it's the base price of $109,000 compared to the price for one quart of tap water that might have something to do with it.
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Sure the original Roadster is expensive. It was meant to be expensive to tap into the high price market. This was done to fund future models. Telsa Motors is working on a coupe to be in the $50-$60,000 range and then a sedan in the $25-$30,000 range.
 
The Berean

The Berean

Well-known member
The Berean

The Berean

Well-known member
rockbysea said:
Ya..I know where you're coming from. And so do those who seek truth.
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Yes, I'm coming from a perspective of a mehanical engineer with almost 10 years experience in various semiconductor, defense, and aerospace companies. Do you just accept these "inventions" without any critical analysis? Let's take your original "invention" by Daniel Dingel. He claims that he's had his water reactor working for several decades now yet he has yet to allow anyone analyze his device. Why do you think that is? :think: Dingel actually had an investor who believed in him. But after $380,000 in funding the investor got suspicious and sued Dingel. :rolleyes:
 
The Berean

The Berean

Well-known member
rockbysea said:
Water car in Japan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrxfMz2eDME
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:yawn:

Here is Popular Mechanics' take on this Japanese water car.

The Truth About Water-Powered Cars: Mechanic's Diary

By Mike Allen
Published on: July 3, 2008

From a startup snagging headlines to DIYers posting plans, water-powered cars have been all over the Web recently—not to mention stuffing my email inbox.

Yes, you can run your car on water. All it takes is to build a “water-burning hybrid” is the installation of a simple, often home-made electrolysis cell under the hood of your vehicle. The key is to take electricity from the car’s electrical system to electrolyze water into a gaseous mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, often referred to as Brown’s Gas or HHO or oxyhydrogen. Typically, the mixture is in a ratio of 2:1 hydrogen atoms to oxygen atoms. This is then immediately piped into the intake manifold to replace some of the expensive gasoline you’ve been paying through the nose for these last couple of months. These simple “kits” will increase your fuel economy and decrease your bills and dependence on foreign petroleum by anywhere from 15 to 300 percent.

There’s even a Japanese company, Genepax, showing off a prototype that runs on nothing but water. On June 13 Reuters published a report on the prototype, complete with a now much-blogged-about video even showing an innocuous gray box in the Genepax vehicle'strunk supplying all the power to drive the car. All you have to do is add an occasional bottle of Evian (or tea, or whatever aqueous fluid is handy), then drive all over without ever needing gasoline.

So what do I think about all of this? Why haven’t I tested and written about this stuff? It’s certain to Change the World As We Know It ... right?

Rubbish.

The only real definitive claim Genepax makes on its Web site is that its process is going to save the world from global warming. (A request for comment was not returned at press time.) Their Water Energy System (WES) appears to be nothing more than a fuel cell converting the hydrogen and oxygen back into electricity, which is used to run to a motor that drives the wheels. Fuel cell technology is well-understood and pretty efficient at changing hydrogen and oxygen into electricity and water, which is where we came in, right? Except the hydrogen came from water in the first place—something doesn’t add up here.

Here’s the deal, people: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.

There is energy in water. Chemically, it’s locked up in the atomic bonds between the hydrogen and oxygen atoms. When the hydrogen and oxygen combine, whether it’s in a fuel cell, internal combustion engine running on hydrogen, or a jury-rigged pickup truck with an electrolysis cell in the bed, there’s energy left over in the form of heat or electrons. That’s converted to mechanical energy by the pistons and crankshaft or electrical motors to move the vehicle.

Problem: It takes exactly the same amount of energy to pry those hydrogen and oxygen atoms apart inside the electrolysis cell as you get back when they recombine inside the fuel cell. The laws of thermodynamics haven’t changed, in spite of any hype you read on some blog or news aggregator. Subtract the losses to heat in the engine and alternator and electrolysis cell, and you’re losing energy, not gaining it—period.

But enough about Genepax, which is sort of tangential to my main thesis here, and on to a more common topic in my mail que: HHO as a means of extending the fuel economy of conventional IC engines.

HHO enthusiasts—from hypermilers to Average Joes desperate to save at the pump—suggest that hydrogen changes the way gasoline burns in the combustion chamber, making it burn more efficiently or faster. Okay, there have been a couple of engineering papers that suggest a trace of hydrogen can change the combustion characteristics of ultra-lean-burning stratified-charge engines. Properly managed H2 enrichment seems to increase the burn rate of the hydrocarbons in the cylinder, extracting more energy. However, these studies only suggest increases in fuel economy by a few percentage points and don’t apply unless the engine is running far too lean for decent emissions. That’s a long way from the outrageous claims of as much as 300-percent improvements in economy that I see on the Internet and in my mailbox.

There’s no reason to believe that even more modest increases claimed by some of the ads could be achieved by a conventional, computer-controlled automobile engine running under closed-loop driving—that is, the computer’s ability to sample the oxygen output of the engine’s exhaust in real time and slew the fuel/air ratio for big mpg and small emissions. The combustion chamber events are far different in the type of ultra-lean-burn engines where hydrogen enrichment has been seen to help. Ultra-lean means there’s a lot of extra oxygen around for the hydrogen to have something to react with—far more than the very modest amount we’re sucking in from the typical homebrew hydrogen generator made from a Mason jar. And remember, these studies deal with hydrogen enrichment under closely-controlled lab conditions, not spraying an uncontrolled amount of hydrogen-oxygen mixture into your air cleaner.

I’m building a water-electrolyzer car—right now. The electrolysis cell assembly is on my workbench and ready to install, so stay tuned for the test results soon. If it works, then you can believe the hype.
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The Berean

The Berean

Well-known member
koban said:
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.


What's the science behind the claims?
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Exactly, some Filipino guy working in his garage alone is able to design something that has alluded the finest engineers out in industy and major research universities for decades?
 
Nick M

Nick M

Plymouth Colonist
LIFETIME MEMBER
Hall of Fame
The Berean said:
I design and build commerical geosynchronous telecommunications satellites for a living and I tell you this is unheard of. :jawdrop:
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NASA should have sent the Space Cowboys up to fix it.

I also read the lead for the F-16 jet passed away.

There are no water powered internal combustion machines. Don't pillage wiki for information. Especially for anything important such as facts. Seperating the water is possible. Feasable is something else.
 
The Berean

The Berean

Well-known member
Spacecraft are COOL! :banana:

Bold New Missions to Jupiter and Saturn Planned

Tariq Malik, Senior Editor
SPACE.com
Wed Feb 18, 2009

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are pushing ahead with proposals to send ambitious new missions to explore Jupiter, Saturn and the many moons that circle both planets, the two space agencies announced Wednesday.

The proposed missions call for sending multiple spacecraft to the Jupiter and Saturn systems to explore the gas giant planets and their unique satellites, such as Jupiter's ice-covered Europa and Saturn's shrouded moon Titan.

"It's just a remarkable effort that I see," said Jim Green, director of NASA's planetary science division, in a teleconference with reporters. "The communities have really come together on both sides of the pond."

NASA and ESA officials announced plans for the flagship mission proposals and a rough schedule for the first to fly - the Jupiter-bound expedition - on Wednesday after a meeting between the two space agencies in Washington, D.C., last week. NASA envisions launching its Jupiter and Saturn probes atop expendable Atlas 5 rockets, U.S. space agency officials said.

"The decision means a win, win situation for all parties involved," said Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for science missions at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C. "Although the Jupiter system mission has been chosen to proceed to an earlier flight opportunity, a Saturn system mission clearly remains a high priority for the science community."

Return to Jupiter

Dubbed the Europa Jupiter System Mission, the Jupiter-bound expedition would send two orbiting spacecraft to study the planet and its large moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto in unprecedented detail, NASA officials said.

NASA would build one orbiter, the Jupiter Europa, while ESA would provide the other, Jupiter Ganymede. The spacecraft would launch in 2020 from different spaceports with the goal of reaching Jupiter by 2026 and spending three years studying the planet and its moons, NASA officials said.

NASA's share in the mission could cost up to $3 billion, while Europe has set aside about 850 million euro (about $1 billion) for its next flagship mission. The European Jupiter probe is also known as Laplace at ESA. While neither mission is currently fully funded, NASA is setting aside about $10 million to continue studying design challenges for its Jupiter Europa orbiter, Green said.

NASA's last dedicated mission to Jupiter was Galileo, which spent eight years studying the planet and its moons before intentionally plunging into the gas giant in 2003 to end its flight. The next probe slated to fly to the planet is NASA's Juno, which is scheduled for an August 2011 launch.

"For the Jupiter Europa mission, the overarching goal is to investigate the emergence of potentially habitable worlds around gas giants," said Curt Niebur, NASA's program scientist for the outer planets. "We'll take a close look at Europa, to better define its habitability."

Jupiter's moon Europa is covered with a thick crust of ice that hides what astronomers believe to be a vast liquid ocean beneath its frozen exterior. In addition to studying Jupiter itself and flying by its other large satellites, NASA's Jupiter Europa spacecraft would be able to orbit Europa and build global maps of the moon's surface, topography and composition. A ground-penetrating radar and gravity-measuring sensors would also probe Europa's interior to obtain definitive proof whether the underground ocean exists.

"We all firmly believe that there's an ocean under the ice of Europa," Niebur said. "This mission is going to verify that using three different lines of inquiry."

Europe's Jovian probe would mirror NASA's in-depth scrutiny of Europa at Ganymede, which is the largest of Jupiter's moons, as well as the largest natural satellite in the solar system. The moon is larger than the planet Mercury. While NASA's spacecraft will end its mission in orbit around Europa, Europe's would do so circling Ganymede, NASA officials said.

Sailing to Saturn

Like the proposed Jupiter mission, the Saturn expedition would consist of both NASA and European spacecraft.

Dubbed the Titan Saturn System mission, the flagship flight would include a NASA-built orbiter to study Saturn and its moons, as well as European lander and research balloon to continue the exploration of the planet's cloud-covered moon Titan. Saturn's moon Enceladus, which harbors ice-spewing geysers, is also major target for that mission. ESA officials have referred to their mission to Saturn and Titan as Tandem.

The daunting technical hurdles involved in assembling the mission will require more study and technology development before the flight can go forward, NASA officials said. Those hurdles, which include trying to keep spacecraft trim enough to fit on their rockets, led NASA and ESA officials to propose flying the Jupiter mission first, they added.

"Titan will not be forgotten," Green said.

Under NASA's current plan, the Titan Saturn System mission would take about 10 1/2 years to reach Saturn if it launched in the 2020 timeframe. NASA's orbiter would spend about two years circling Saturn to study the planet, Enceladus and other moons, and then spend about 1 1/2 years in orbit around Titan, Niebur said.

Niebur said Titan's major draw is its chemistry, which appears to have many parallels to what the early Earth may have been like in the ancient past. Images and data from the Cassini orbiter have found evidence of liquid methane lakes and rain on the cloudy Saturnian moon.

"Titan is felt to be a very Earth-like world in terms of the processes going on," Niebur said.

Meanwhile, the Cassini orbiter managed by NASA, ESA and the Italian Space Agency is currently in orbit around Saturn, where it has been studying the planet and its many moons since it arrived in June 2004. The orbiter's European-built Huygens lander successfully touched down on Titan's surface in January 2005.

Mission managers are pushing to extend Cassini's flight by seven years to 2017.

"This joint endeavour is a wonderful new exploration challenge and will be a landmark of 21st century planetary science," said David Southwood, ESA's director of science and robotic exploration. "What I am especially sure of is that the cooperation across the Atlantic that we have had so far and we see in the future, between America and Europe, NASA and ESA, and in our respective science communities is absolutely right. Let's get to work."
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