Engine economy

This is my first posting in over two weeks. I just moved to Dallas and my new job is occupying most free time, thus, my posting frequency is going to decline. Since no one has ads on my blog, I feel free to do so.

In prior posts, Volt Full of Trouble, The Inconvenient Electric Car, and The real future energy crisis look into energy issues relating to transportation. I discuss the aspects of what will occur when crude oil supplies are depleted worldwide in the latter post. The former posts investigate why the electric car and hybrid are poor replacements for the current technology. My over all conclusion is we need a liquid alternative to crude oil along with innovative engines.

This post on MSNBC.com is just what the doctor ordered. Researchers at Michigan State University have developed their Wave Disc Generator. According to the authors,

The Wave Disk Generator uses 60 percent of its fuel for propulsion; standard car engines use just 15 percent. As a result, the generator is 3.5 times more fuel efficient than typical combustion engines.

If true, this is quite an improvement over current 100 year-old technology. They even claim that it reduces emissions by 90 percent in comparison to typical internal combustion engines. Double bonus for clean air.

How the engine works creating such high efficiency,

The engine has a rotor that's equipped with wave-like channels that trap and mix oxygen and fuel as the rotor spins. These central inlets are blocked off, building pressure within the chamber, causing a shock wave that ignites the compressed air and fuel to transmit energy.

If claims are true or not, it is going to be new technologies similar to this prototype that is our future, not electric cars.

Flu's days are numbered

This report by the media group UPI has news on a new, universal flu vaccine being developed in England. Unlike the typical flu vaccine we are inoculated with these days which protects against certain strains of flue, this would protect against all strains. The article states,

Current flu vaccines only work against a few kinds of flu and only for a short time, as seasonal flu evolves and changes to get around immunity provided by that year's vaccine, requiring constant research and re-vaccination, NewScientist.com reported Monday.

Several research groups, including one at Oxford University, are attempting to develop a flu vaccine out of proteins that are identical in all flu viruses in the hope this will protect people from all flu once and for all.

If science has enough time and resources dedicated to certain solvable problems, inevitably, many will have solutions appear. The key is dedication. We have this idea that by putting a bunch of smart people in a group and throwing a little money at them they will solve all of the world's problems. It does not work that way. The best example I can think of as a modern marvel is modern computing. We have more computational power on our desktop now than could be housed in 10 city blocks. What people often fail to acknowledge is the 40 years of innovation and billions of dollars invested.

We need to fund research and development in the US if we are to compete with rest of the world.

Next generation space flight takes orbit

I made a previous post on the topic about how dangerous the retiring Space Shuttle is to those who fly the craft. In that same post I mention about the military's potential future workhorse, the X-37, an unmanned orbiter that is launched by a traditional rocket and lands through gliding back in the Earth's atmosphere touching down on a runway just like the space shuttle. If I am correct, this is the idea behind the original Space Shuttle back in the 1970's before NASA's bureaucracy took over and made it the expensive, dangerous, manned orbiter. Good ideas are generally recycled in history, and this is another example.

The Associated Press reports that the X-37 recently took a flight starting in April 2010,

The U.S. Air Force's secrecy-shrouded X-37B unmanned spaceplane returned to Earth early Friday after more than seven months in orbit on a classified mission, officials said.

The winged craft autonomously landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base on the California coast 130 miles northwest of Los Angeles, base spokesman Jeremy Eggers said.

"It's very exciting," Eggers said of the 1:16 a.m. PST landing.

The X-37B was launched by an Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on April 22, 2010, with a maximum mission duration of 270 days.

That is what makes this technology advantageous over the shuttle and traditional rockets. It is launched cheaply (like a rocket), but has the capability of the shuttle in flexibility while in orbit. No need to worry about anyone getting injured or killed during operation either. The X-37 excels in the fact it can remain in orbit for long periods of time. This is a capability neither the rocket or shuttle possess.

Research and development of the system has not been cheap or quick,

The voyage culminated the project's long and expensive journey from NASA to the Pentagon's research and development arm and then on to the secretive Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on the X-37 program, but the current total hasn't been released.

Compare the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the X-37 to the $500 million per Space Shuttle launch, it justifies the capital spent. To be fair, anything hi-tech, new and revolutionary like this craft will be expensive to get from idea to final, successful product. Personally, this is a concept many business and government leaders are missing by not funding significant research and development in our society today.

Fuel cell energy

The vast majority of modern energy sources require fuel combustion in the process. Fossil fuels are the most common fuels using this principle. This inventor, K.R. Sridhar, is supposed to launch his company's, Bloom Energy, new fuel cell based generator called the Bloom box in the next couple of days. The main website is even having a countdown to product launch. What is so spectacular about this new product? I will discuss that below.

Fuel cells are nothing new. They are basically electrochemical cells that work similar to batteries. The main difference is fuel consumption occurs in the fuel cell creating exchangeable electrons and protons for the anode and cathode, respectively. Several issues with fuels cells have prevented their widespread use:
1) The catalyst are expensive making electricity production cost prohibitive.
2) Hydrocarbon fuels (carbon based) foul the cathode leaving hydrogen as the only source of fuel. Hydrogen is not found in elemental form in nature. Significant amounts of energy is required to obtain hydrogen even before the fuel cell has energy output.
3) The low energy density often makes the exercise a mute point in practical terms.

The inventor claims one of these boxes (however big that may be) can power a house? I am skeptical. The inventor once worked for NASA where he developed an oxygen generator that was scrapped from space flights. My guess is this oxygen generator is being used to increase the production efficiency of the best currently available fuel cell technology. This is in comparison to more traditional fuel cells obtaining oxygen from the surrounding environment. The new fuel cells would work better with pure oxygen, but the technology still faces the three hurdles above.

I am skeptical. It seems like a bunch of hype. Unless other significant improvements were engineered into the box, this is going to be a flop. What is driving the coming out party is the $400 million investment by venture capitalists. Time to deliver goods or lose the funding.

Space travel in the 21st Century

Our best known and really only truly operating space agency currently in the world is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA. NASA is funded by the United States government through taxpayer money. The organization is well respected for its many achievements including its crown jewel, the Apollo program landing astronauts on the moon.

NASA's main orbital launch vehicle for satellites and humans at the moment is the Space Shuttle. The space shuttle was designed and developed during the 1970's with what is now 30+ year old technology. During the Space Shuttle's inception, the concept of a reusable craft capable of reaching orbit was revolutionary. Original plans called for a reusable unmanned orbiter utilized as a satellite launch vehicle. After several rounds of politics, an area was added that would support humans. This increased the overall project costs twofold through:
1) Building a larger spacecraft
2) Increased amount of fuel and supplies during launches.
Currently, it costs $450 million per launch. The Space Shuttle's large price tag annuls the original purpose of a cheap, reusable space craft intended for launching satellites.

The other serious issue the space shuttle faces is the overall reliability and safety. Within the 28 year Space Shuttle mission span, the Challenger and Columbia both failed with disastrous results taking all honorable lives on board. To put this in prospective, here are approximate probabilities of dying over a span of 1 year using various transportation methods from Reason Magazine:
Airlines crash = 1 in 400,000 or 0.00045 %
Walking across street = 1 in 48,500 or 0.0021 %
Automobile crash = 1 in 6,500 or 0.015 %
Space Shuttle crash = 1 in 1800 or 0.06 %.
Yes, to date an astronaut has an extremely high chance of dying if routinely flying shuttle missions.

The numbers speak for themselves, the space shuttle is both expensive and dangerous. Space flight is a relatively new phenomenon being around for little over 50 years. Loading multi-million dollar satellites and really brave souls onto oversize candles was at one time patriotic in the Cold War, but the Berlin Wall fell and it is time to move on. This is why the Obama Administration is reconsidering the program's future.

It looks like the future may not be NASA's (NASA is involved through), but through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and US Air Force as the X-37B. The exact details are being kept secret due to the military aspect, but some details have slipped out.

The vehicle itself is about 29 feet long with a roughly 15-foot wingspan and weighs in at over five tons at liftoff. Speeding down from space, the craft would likely make use of Runway 12/30 — 15,000 feet long by 200 feet wide — at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. This vague description is more in line with the original idea behind the Space Shuttle. That was to build a cheap, reliable spacecraft. As with all X-class aircraft, they tend to be experimental in nature with technology development as the main intent.

Just last month, a U.S. Air Force fact sheet noted that the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO), located in Washington, D.C. "is working on the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle to demonstrate a reliable, reusable, unmanned space platform for the United States Air Force."

It looks like the military is stepping into the forefront here. Hopefully, the technology will make its way into civilian hands through NASA.

"NASA has a long history of involvement with the X-37 program. We continue to monitor and share information on technology developments," said Gary Wentz, chief engineer Science and Missions Systems Office at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. "We are looking forward to a successful first flight and to receiving data from some advanced technologies of interest to us, such as thermal protection systems, guidance, navigation and control, and materials for autonomous re-entry and landing."

I truly believe the ability to reliably launch satellites cheaply into orbit would prove to be extremely profitable. This may not be too far away. Other ventures such as economically practical research and human space flight for the masses could then follow.