Friday, April 13, 2007

297 - Solar Power

Solar Satellites

1. Solar Satellites
Looks like I'm on a hippie run. Marijuana one day, solar power the next. Maybe tomorrow I'll show you how to make those hippie aprons the fat ones love to wear. Anyway, I want to make it clear that I don't smoke weed, I just think I should be free to do so if I choose. I'm also not that sure about the truth of manmade global warming, even though I'm leaning pretty hard in that direction. I just think solar power is cool. Gathering solar power in space is really cool.

Land Area Requirements

2. Land Area Requirements
I've heard a lot about how alternative sources of energy could never produce enough power to compete with fossil fuels. These people have done the math though, and it looks entirely possible using only solar power. Add in wind and tide power and we got a thing going on.

Organic

3. Organic
Of course, building these giant solar arrays would be pretty expensive. But, researchers in New Zealand have developed a solar cell they say can be produced for one tenth of the cost of the current technology. It doesn't seem to be available to the public yet, but hopes are high for the near future.

DIY Solar

4. DIY Solar
If you can't wait for the organic solution, you can build a simple solar setup to run your TV of whatever for around $300 bucks using materials mostly available at your local auto parts store.

Infinity Miles Per Gallon

5. Infinity Miles Per Gallon
Or, if you are totally awesome, you can convince a high school to give you a small staff of free labor that can build a really cool solar car for you.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're correct, in a free country we should have the right to choose if we want to smoke a joint once in a while, but when every city starts adopting State or Federal anti-Tobacco laws, anti-gun laws, anti-freespeech, we can look at the possibility of real freedom as just a glimmer of hope that resides only in (certain) history books (definitely not the majority of books teaching the children in america's public schools in this millenium.) The Patriot Act sure garnered sighs from this camp.

Phew, that being said, it's a great country with the real possibility of change through it's people, not it's governers. I could go on forever about capitalism being subverted and (nearly full on national) socialism being our norm today, but maybe you could just do a top 5 on it and i can shut the hell up. Ha, hint. North American Union anyone?

Anonymous said...

Good for people to know.