Nois fopro toa sutafo

 I have read quite a bit about the water ice found on Mars.  I have read a lot about the prospects of life on Mars, but not much about something that immediately struck me when I heard it… Fuel to go!

As I have blogged about elsewhere, a big problem with distant space travel is carrying enough reaction mass to propel the craft.  It takes an incredible amount of O2 and H2 to get our big payloads off this planet, so we must keep the amount of fuel we carry to a minimum.  On the other hand there is a big difference between carrying fuel and carrying energy.  A lot of energy can be carried by using nuclear sources, but what can you do with that energy if there is nothing on board to use the energy to throw out the back – ya know?

Enter ICE.  Yep, good old ice.  You can get several kinds of ice on Mars including water ice and “dry” ice (CO2).  So, one of the really important aspects of finding ice on Mars is that we do not need to schlep our reaction mass up there for the return flight!  All we need to do is take the energy!  Actually, we could even capture some of the energy while we were on Mars by using solar panels.

How could we use the ice?  Well I know of a couple of ways.  One would be to  melt the ice, then use hydrolysis to split the water into H2 and O2 (or Brown’s gas).  That could go into standard rocket engines to blast off and return.  Other folks are working on ways to use high energy fission products to heat gas for use in rockets.  In that case, all you have to do is start the fission, then throw in either kind of ice and ZOOM!

I suppose reaction mass is not as sexy as finding life, but I think it could get us boots on the ground a lot faster if we did not have to lift fuel for the return flight.  What do you think?

Mars colony mining ice.  http://www.redcolony.com/art.php?id=0401070

americium-242m high energy fission products for space travel:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/01/010103073253.htm

I have an amazing ability… I can fall asleep from being wide awake in just a few seconds… but only if I am driving.  ugh.

You can imagine that this skill has created some interesting times on long driving trips and even occasionally on my short commute to work.  What’s a guy to do???  I had a sleep study done and found out that I have sleep apnea.  I got a CPAP and that helped tremendously with my daytime sleepiness… except as soon as I touch a steering wheel!

Driving sleepiness is a big problem.   http://www.drowsydriving.org/ is a site devoted to helping people be more aware of the dangers.  It is a dangerous as driving drunk! Here are a few highlights from the drowsy driving site:

• The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that at least 100,000 police-  reported crashes each year are the direct result of driver fatigue. (NHTSA)

• Each year drowsy driving crashes result in at least 1,550 deaths, 71,000 injuries and $12.5 billion in monetary losses. (NHTSA)

• Approximately 11 million drivers admit they have had a crash or near crash because they dozed  off or were too tired to drive. (2005 Sleep in America poll)

• According to NSF surveys, half of Americans consistently report that they have driven drowsy and approximately 20% admit that they have actually fallen asleep at the wheel in the previous year.

So, I am not alone.  Some states have moved toward serious consequences for sleepy drivers.  In Massachusetts in 2007, Senator Richard Moore pushed for a law to make it vehicular homicide if a sleepy driver causes a fatal accident.  If passed they would join with New Jersey in charging sleepy drivers.

I “got my wake up call” in a little nicer manner.  One year as we were loading up the car to start a long trip my wife set a cold spray bottle on the console between us.  She looked me in the eye and said “go ahead, make my day”.  The fear of having my ear filled with icy spray was enough to keep me awake!  It also reminded me of a Japanese invention I read about that I can not find by searching the internet… weird.  It was a pair of glasses that had a small refrigeration unit – possibly electrothermal cooling – that cooled the g-jo acupressure points (http://www.g-jo.com/) on the forehead to reduce sleepiness.  Try as I did, I could not find anything about the right g-jo points either!  ..maybe I was dreaming…  (Now the Japanese have a new thing with glasses.  They sense the tilt of the head and if you nod off they vibrate in your ear!  It interrupts the sleep inducing alpha waves!  They say it tickles too!  If I get sleepy in a meeting, I crunch on carrots! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/1522985/How-the-Japanese-are-getting-a-buzz-out-of-falling-asleep-at-work.html, http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/30/mydo-bururu-glasses-vibrate-your-dome-to-prevent-sleep/)

Anyway, here is what I did to significantly reduce my drowsiness – after working on my sleep problems of course!  I decided that I did not need some fancy glasses to cool my pate!  Instead, I would use a swamp cooler!  That is how I cool my house, so why not my head?

I got a cheap, light brown terry cloth towel and cut it into a long rectangle about 4″ by 12″.  I folded the short edges in to the middle, then folded it in half again.  Now, I had a nice neat 4″ x 3″ terry pad.  I got the pad wet and let evaporation do the cooling.  I put the pad on my head and enjoyed a very awake and comfortable trip — no spray in the ear!

I sometimes put ice in the upper fold to jump start the cooling, but usually it is not necessary.  I keep the pad quite wet – just short of it dripping.  I now carry a pad and a re-filled bottle of water in my car at all times.  I think it has saved my life!  If I see a sleepy driver on the road, I want to roll down my window and tell him about the no-nap-cap, or maybe grab a spray bottle.  : )?

btw… One person was bugging me at work about my cap idea and how it would not work for him.  I agreed.  He had a very thick head of hair!  I told him that memories are processed during sleep and that the more intelligent you are, the more your brain heats up and wants to sleep.  That is why God gave older and wiser men a bald pate to help keep their brains cool.  In some cases, the intelligence was so extreme that even the bald pate was not enough to cool the brain, so it takes a little help from a moist pad.  He just walked away.  I suppose it beats slapping someone.

My post about the SMOT had several comments.  In one response I mentioned Brown’s Gas and got a request to blog about that… so…

Brown’s gas is the electrolysis output if do not use a partition so that the hydrogen and oxygen are separated.  So, the hh and o are all mixed together… kabOOM!!!   No, not really.  It does take something to ignite the reaction, but still it is highly explosive.

One of the cool things about this explosive mix is that you can make it on the spot with really simple, home made equipment.  A favorite setup I have seen is to buy a bunch (10?) of steel switch plate covers from the hardware store.  You stack them up and clamp them together, then drill one of the hole stacks to about 1/4″.  Next you unclamp them and flip every-other-one around so that the holes are stacked small-big-small-big… Next you assemble the reactor core by using threaded rod or long bolts with insulating 1/16″washers.  So, you screw the bolt through a washer, then the first hole, then a washer, 2nd hole, washer, 3rd hole, etc. finally you put on a washer and nut to finish the stack. After you do both sides you have a stack with each bolt in contact with every-other plate on both sides… does that make sense?

If the right screw touches the first plate it misses the second plate then touches the 3rd, etc.  At the same time on the left, the bolt misses the first, touches the 2nd, misses the 3rd, etc.  If you apply 12v DC with right + and left -, then the plates alternate +, -, + ,- etc.  All you do is put this core into some water with a little baking soda, apply 12 v and you get Brown’s gas!  ( 15 – 20 amps) You should bubble the gas through a water valve so that if it does ever flash back, only the gas in the tube will burn, not the larger amount in the reactor… little boom is good.  Here is an example… there are many… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDpNUtXbz9U

So, what do you do with the stuff?  Some people are making car kits that use the alternator to generate hho near the air intake.  BG creates water when it burns, so you get the cooling and steam expansion benefits of water injection but with the added power of the burning hho.  Some people hope to make the system so efficient that you can drive forever on just water… uh guys… remember it takes energy from the alternator to run the electrolysis core…  One person said that the energy going into the core was just waste energy that would be going to heat.  If that is true then this would be a great advantage indeed.  However, it seems to me that whatever energy being used by the core will put additional drag on the engine – have you ever tried to light a bulb with a hand generator???  The energy to make the gas has to come out of the engine power via the alternator.  I suppose you could charge a deep cycle battery at home, then use it to generate hho to burn.  That can not be as good as just doing an electric drive.  Plus in the electric scenario you could use regenerative breaking to recover a large percent of the kinetic energy you put into the car.  http://www.runyourcaronwater.com/,  http://www.hytechapps.com/, http://aardvark.co.nz/hho_scam.shtml

I am not planning to use hho in my car, but it sure seems like it would be great around the shop!  If you have a small unit on your bench you can use a simple brass tube nozzle with a flow control.  It burns clean and hot.  There are a lot of stories about the unusual properties of the flame.  For example, it seems to only heat certain things, like metal.  You can cut a piece of steel, but not burn yourself if you touch the tube.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKKoU1Fp3gs&feature=related

Near the bottom of the “runyourcarononwater” site there is another very interesting device.  They have some sort of electrolysis catalyst cell.  The unit is about the size of a drip coffee maker.  You buy a “cell” and fill it with any water.  Then, for about a month you can plug in devices up to 270 Watt-Hours!  After that, you return the cell to the store for a replacement for about $20.  (A standard AA battery has about 2.6 WH. http://www.allaboutbatteries.com/Energy-tables.html)  If you buy several cells, you can take them all with you and just swap them out for continuous power. – Very cool!   That would sure be a lot lighter to carry than my 60 lb 105 WH deep cycle battery up to the camp site!  : )?  http://www.horizonfuelcell.com/portable_power.htm

I thought I had found a great resource about EV – Electric Vehicles until I spent some time on their site.  I found a link to EV info in an article at “Popular Science” about capicators for use in EVs  at http://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2008-10/what-comes-after-batteries.  As it turned out they provide reports at a cost, which could be OK except for their criteria for inclusion.  Quite a bit of it was reasonable, but one criteria is not good.  They will not consider EVs that have less than 50 miles of electric-only range.  If you have been keeping up with EVs you know that both Chevy Volt (GM) and ENVI (Chrysler) EVs are due out in 2010.  All of those models have a 40 mile electric only range, so they will be eliminated from the reports!  I think that is poor form indeed because I have great hopes that real products from GM and Chrysler is exactly what we need for our economy, saving the car industry in America, saving our environment, and having new toys!  I would be very happy with an EV that went all electric for 40 miles and would be all electric most days for me.  I tried to find a “contact us” link on their site to give them my-2-cents, but alas, they did not want to hear from me.  I wonder how their customer service is if you buy a report…  In case you are interested, check them out at http://electric-cars-today.com