The Development of Ecologically Sound Jet Fuel 210
Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers at Princeton University are currently working on two projects to reduce jet travel's role in global warming. The first one, a major project funded by the U.S. Air Force with $7.5 million, is focused on developing computational models that accurately simulate the burning of jet fuel, a complex process not well understood today. The second one, funded by NetJets, a company providing business jets, will help to develop new jet fuels with near-zero net greenhouse gas emissions."
global dimming (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And Totally Illegal to use. (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly! I agree 100%! It's hard to do, so why even try?
Re:New Computational Models? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And Totally Illegal to use. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hopefully this works. (Score:4, Insightful)
If they're using 50% coal and 50% biomass won't the result will still be a hydrocarbon? In which case their actual CO2 emissions will be pretty much as normal, with around 50% of those emissions theoretically offset in the process of growing the biomass in the first place.
It's certainly not going to be anywhere near zero emissions unless they're proposing some way to filter the CO2 out of the jet exhaust.
Even a 50% reduction in net warming using this method seems unfeasible, because emitting greenhouse gases up in the stratosphere causes more net warming than emitting them on the ground, i forget the exact factor, I thinks it's estimated to be around 50% more. And that's still ignoring the fact that putting human beings and industry into competition for limited arable land resources is a horrible idea in the first place.
Maybe this is serious research and I'm just missing some important point, but it sounds horribly like airline industry FUD to me...
Re:New Computational Models? (Score:3, Insightful)
And I raise you an artery and two lymph nodes.
Sheesh, and YOU of all people throwing out the whole "dumb people" line. Hah!
Let's not forget this Super Genius (ala Wile E. Coyote) line of yours:
"I'd sure they could do something about those people (possibly involving gasses) and really make the world a better place."
'I'd sure they..." WTF? Where did you learn Engrish? 'All your base belong to us!' style of 'Skool of Interweb Riting'?
As for the gassing these dumb people to make the world a better place-BZZZZT!! Wrong answer! You are courting Godwin's law with that- this specific thing has been tried before, and after the courts got finished with the whole War Crimes deal in the latter 1940's, the MASSAD made a huge impact on the survivors of the trials and those not actually brought to trial.
There was prior art though, so also check out the Spanish Inquisition, most Jihads, etc.- there are many, many more. ( Idi Amin just came to mind- how could we forget him!)
Genocide and massive homicide ALWAYS results in mistrust of 'The Authorities' wherever it occurs, and rightfully so. Who;s next? Me? Why? WTF is going on?
So yeh, crawl back in your Mom's basement and terrorise the spiders or something, you dull troll. Who knows, maybe you can poke around in the basement long enough to find that argoyle sock the dryer ate 4 years ago!
Also, your sig: that may work for you with your narrow point of view, but there may not be enough alcohol for the rest of us to see you as interesting.
I'm only replying because I currently don't have mod points, so I can't mod you -1 Troll. Flamebait, Asshat Clown, or whatever seemed appropriate depending on how much I had been drinking! From painful experience, I already know I can not drink enough to make your post interesting, insightful, or knowledgeable...my first thought about you and your post was actually "kill it before it can breed!"
Re:global dimming (Score:1, Insightful)
Nice "Straw Man" Argument! (Score:3, Insightful)
I made a valid point. Don't be an ass.
Airport Security (Score:2, Insightful)
I can think of some problems (Score:5, Insightful)
(1) I can't easily believe it's more efficient. Granted, you use a fair amount of energy raising a jetliner to 40,000 feet, but it can't be that much, compared to what you need to use to keep it levitated and push air out of the way at 600 knots for hours and hours -- and a maglev train needs to do that, too. Indeed, air resistance is surely much higher on the maglev train, which has to operate near sea level instead of at the significantly lower air pressures in the stratosphere.
(2) You've got an incredible infrastructure problem. Essentially, you've got to build the entire Interstate highway system over again -- only this time it can't be just smooth concrete, it's got to be ultrasmooth, ultrastraight rails kept in alignment to the nearest micrometer along thousands of miles, in rain or shine, snow or mud or hurricane or flood, and with marvelous superconducting magnet windings all along them that have to be kept in absolutely perfect working order all the time, because you can't afford one small booboo in your levitation when you're flying along near the speed of sound 1.5 inches off the ground. I can't even imagine how you're going to switch maglev trains from one track to another while they're blistering along at 600 MPH. Those are going to be some very, very expensive switches.
Thing is, with airplanes you only need to build airports, and that's really only just laying down a big long strip of concrete and installing radar. You don't need to build much stuff between destination cities. You also don't need to lay down power along the entire route of every route they fly, because the motor goes along with the carriage.
(3) You've got an amazing safety issue. In the stratosphere there's not much you can run into at jet speeds, fortunately. But on the ground? Say a 50 pound rock falls off a rock face and dings the marvelous superconducting track, so that when the maglev train comes along 20 minutes later it hits a "dry spot" and the carriage dips down 3 inches and hits the ground at 600 knots. BOOM. You'd have to identify the passengers by DNA analysis of tiny bone fragments.
(4) Noise? I live next to a major rail line, and those things are noisy enough at 60-80 MPH. If they came by at 600, it wouldn't be possible to live within half a mile of the track. How does that square with the fact that most of the travel would be to and through major urban areas? Thing about airplanes is, except for within a few miles of the airport, you can't hear them because they fly two miles or more above us.
Re:I can think of some problems (Score:3, Insightful)
If the train levitates, there is no interaction between rail and train, and thus no noise except for the wind.
Imagine how much noise a tornado makes. And that's a mere 300 MPH wind. Now imagine a 600 MPH tornado. How close could you stand without losing your hearing?
Also this:
Subterrenean infrastructure usually costs a magnitude (if that is enough)
Not even a hair's breadth of a smidgen of close enough, when you are talking subterranean evacuated infrastructure. You might as well be talking about constructing stuff in orbit. At least as a starting point, imagine the cost of building tunnels underwater, where your tunnel only has to be water-tight, not gas-tight. The tunnel under the English Channel cost about $15 billion for 32 miles, or about $0.5 billion per mile. That's probably a good starting estimate.