Who remembers Dick Tracy's "wrist - radio"?

[SoCalDem]

People of that era thought it was fantasy...and now we have eyeglass cameras & screens within lenses, we have iPods, & satellite radio in cars & laptops & so many things no one could have imagined..even a few decades ago.

When we used to have World's Fairs & Expositions, inventors and designers had whole pavilions devoted to forward-thinking and ideas of how we would live in the future..

We have refrigerators that can "order" their own food, GPS that talks to us in our cars, tractors that can plant crops in the shape of artwork or photographs..

and yet..

when it comes to automobiles & energy, we still drag our feet and have to be pulled, screaming & hollering, into the "next new way"..

Every time I see a parking-lot full of cars, each heating up to 150degrees+ inside, while their owners camp out in air-conditioned offices for 8+ hours, I think of all that potential energy wasted..never collected.

Why not have an underground facility that collects energy from those dormant vehicles? Perhaps a "plug" device at each parking space, and a solar-blanket placed atop each parked car, that plugs into it.. the energy created could be hooked into the building(s) served by the parking lot.. For the cars that are "re-chargeable", it could go to that purpose first, with the extra going into the "reserve" below ground.

or..

in arid places that don't get much rain (like where I live), instead of the massive run-off that happens when it DOES rain, why not have underground collection "cisterns" that collect/purify the water, and store it for irrigation/landscaping purposes..

Big changes always cost a lot of money, but NOT making changes costs a lot too.. I'm sure a cross-country railroad, back in the 1860's was a costly project, but we still did it.,,and we still use it:)

[tangent90]

1. Not sure what you mean with solar blanket...do you mean solar cells that make electricity?

How would that work, just drape 'em over the cars? What about when the wind blows?
:shrug:

As to the cistern idea - well, they wouldn't collect enough in arid places to make them worthwhile.

edit...as to the Dick Tracy thing, sure I remember that. I used to collect the little "crimestoppers textbook" hints that were at the start of each strip...and I still chuckle at this: one time it said to alternate the hangers in your closet so a robber can't grab them all at once and run off...a couple years later it said be sure your hangers all face the same way in case you need
to get them out quick in case of fire. :rofl:

[SoCalDem]

2. how about a tab on each side that the windows secure?

or magnetic ? I'm no scientist:)

But for every "how about", people have always figured it out, if they wanted to:)

[tangent90]

3. I guess that would be doable but I don't think many people would want to mess with it.

I wouldn't...

[SoCalDem]

5. In places that charge for parking, the fee could be waived

Maybe free parking would make it more do-able:)

[Politicalboi]

10. It could be doable

Just make sun roofs that when parked slide a solar panel in the place of roof. You would be able to drive with it too because it would be under the roof. And if you want the see the sky just push a button and the solar panel moves back.

[tangent90]

12. Not to rain on a parade or anything but there are still problems

(I love innovation and technology but try to stay realistic)---a solar panel the size of a car's roof would be about, what, a square meter, roughly?...okay typically in mid latitudes and a clear daly the sun shines about 150 watts worth of energy on that
area. So far so good, but now we have to look at efficiencies and the average price of electricity which is a dime per kilowatt-hour so the car parked in the sun for 8 hours would produce somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 * 150 * .9 (that's giving the gadget a 90% efficiency), or 1080 watt-hours...about 11 cents worth. They probably charge more for parking.
:-)

[SoCalDem]

13. All ideas some with built-in naysayers.. But every invention/innovation

eventually overcomes the hurdles.. There was probably a caveman who said.."why on earth are you rolling that giant rock, with a hole in the middle?...just lay it on its side & drag it.. that's what we've always done"

[tangent90]

14. Well I hope you are right...however the cave man didn't violate any physical laws

when he made the wheel, just overcame ignorance. :-)

[Motown_Johnny]

4. I agree, internal combustion engine and incandescent light bulbs are both 100+ year old tech

and we need to replace them both

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_internal_combustion_engine

1854: The Italians Eugenio Barsanti and Felice Matteucci patented the first working efficient internal combustion engine in London (pt. Num. 1072) but did not go into production with it.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb

Thomas Edison's creation of the first commercially practical incandescent lamp in 1879

(OK, there have been improvements in both but they are still pretty much the same they were a century ago, I stand by my original statement.)

[global1]

6. We're Really Only Limited By Our Imagination.......

where are the Thomas Edison's and Henry Ford's of today? Are they only in the computer business? I think those are excellent ideas. Maybe we should encourage President Obama to have a clearing house for ideas like these on his website. Even if many are pipe dreams today even if one idea is good and takes hold - it would be fantastic. I like the way you think.

[angrycarpenter]

7. Decentralized power generation

is a threat to power companies, they would do anything to stop it. Water running off of a parking lot could never be purified to drinking water quality on a cost effective basis because of the chemicals and heavy metals that leak from cars but it could be used to water plants.

[SoCalDem]

11. Not for Drinking water... n/t

[Obamanaut]

8. I have a neighbor who recently built a house "elderly friendly" so

his 80+ year old mom will be comfortable. He took me on a tour just prior to completion, and we exclaimed over the washer/dryer that "talk" to each other. This was amazing to me - we don't have teevee, and we hang our clothes on the line to dry. Now, don't I feel old and out of touch.

[asjr]

9. We've come a long way, baby.

[ThoughtCriminal]

15. Still no Space Coupes or Air Cars yet

Diet Smith Industries has let us down!