GM still working on fuel cells

From http://wardsauto.com/ar/gm_fuel_cell_090924/

With all the trouble GM has had in the last year its good to know that they are looking to the future still. Their second generation fuel cell technology was unvailed yesterday to lawmakers in Washington. Why there? They are trying to get more funds to further their research.

And this isn't a bad thing in my opinion. If the US government really wants to get off fossil fuels and away from foreign sources of energy then this is the way to do it. GM claims this technology will be ready for the market by 2015. While the article doesn't say exactly how many miles the new vehicles get on a tank of fuel the common standard is 300 and that is basically what the last one got. So by making the new equipment cheaper and smaller it cuts the weight of the vehicle and the cost while giving the same performance.

Hydrogen as a fuel is still anywhere from $4 to $8 a gallon when compared with gas so it isn't cheap. But a recent news article says that in order to cut carbon emissions in the US that the government and other countries should stop subsidizing fossil fuels. If they did that gas prices would easily go back to the 2008 levels or above here in the US making hydrogen a good option. Now we just need a fueling infrastructure to support it.

More mileage testing

My gas mileage experiment continues. I had to fill up this morning and amazing the Sunfire took more than it ever has, 13.1 gallons. Total miles was 332.2 for 25 miles per gallon this time. That was pretty much all city style driving. I did take I-35 for a short trip from 152 to the hospital exit just to see what RPM I would run at 65 and 70 mph. The RPM were over 2500 to 3000. Yet drop to 55 and RPM is only about 1800. Obviously this car was meant to run at 55 even though it is a 2000 model. I have come to the conclusion that car makers are screwing us on the gearing of their vehicles. I should be able to cruise along at 70 mph with the RPM at 1500. I know there are vehicles out there now with 7 speed automatics and what not, but they are usually mated to a gas guzzling V-8. Plus they don't do much for saving gas. It used to be that in a 4 speed, the 4th gear was an overdrive gear, usually about .87 ratio. Now, in this Mercedes 7 speed, gears 6 and 7 are over drive. One at .82 and the other at .73. I don't think that is good enough. To me I think they are holding back. Give us a .5 ratio final gear for cruising and it doesn't have to be a 8 or 9 speed gear box that they are talking about putting out now. I know, they put more accelerating gears in there so you don't use so much RPM when you floor it, the thing is you don't have too.

So how about this for a solution. A hybrid transmission. No not that type of hybrid with mechanical and electric motors, no I mean a conventional one mated with a CVT. CVTs are a great idea, I had the idea years before they actually came on market (although they were certainly already being developed). I usually have great ideas for something only to see it on the market a year later. Anyway, this transmission would have 3 or 4 accelerating gears so that high torque motors could use it too (currently a high torque motor will tear apart a CVT). The final "gear" would be a CVG (continuously variable gear) allowing for a range of cruising speeds at a certain RPM. I think this would be more beneficial than a 10 speed transmission.

*NOTE: I don't have a patent on this and don't plan getting one, there might already be one, but I haven't checked. I don't believe patents should be approved without a working prototype being created. An idea patent would be ok, but in a very limited time frame, say a year for them to build the prototype. I really dislike people that sit on patents waiting for someone else to build something and then suing the person that actually worked to bring the product to life.

What was it?

I've been meaning to post this for a couple of weeks. On the night of August 21, 2009 we were camping at Clinton Lake in Kansas (near Lawrence), the night was unbelievably clear with no city lights ruining the view of the night sky. No moon was out, it wouldn't rise for sometime. The Milky Way was clearly visible stretching from one side of the sky to the other. I was looking for shooting stars even there wasn't a forecasted shower (that was the week before). While telling my family about the different stars and where they were and showing them different constellations I happened to glace toward the southwest sky when up above a bright single point of light got really bright then vanished. It lasted only a couple of seconds. The time was about 10:30pm. I have been trying to figure out what it was since then. I thought I had seen a star at that point earlier, but am not 100% on that. It could have been a meteor that would have been coming straight at us. But the way it acted was strange. While I watched it, it started small although very bright (it hadn't been there a few seconds before at that brightness) and grow in size and brightness until it disappeared. I did see 3 meteorites that evening and they were small short streaks in the sky. There was no plane in the area of the light and nothing moved from that point after the flash. My only guess and I am not sure on this is that it was a nova or super nova. Although I wonder if a pulsar would do the same? What ever it was, it was cool.

The coordinates that we were at when we saw it are as follows: Latitude  38°54'22.22"N  Longitude  95°22'26.18"W

My main reason for posting this is for any one else that saw it and is searching for information on it.

Pic from Hubble

A browser issue delayed this a little, apparently Firefox 3.5 doesn't like the new blog tools.

These images are some of the first from the newly refurbished Hubble Telescope. Truely unbelievable images of space.

This first image shows a gas cloud that is a birth place of new stars, the split image show on top the real light image and the bottom shows what is going on in the cloud. The star in the middle of the cloud with the white jets coming out of it is possibly a young planetary system forming.

 

This one they say is a star exploding, nick named the Butterfly nebula.

The image reveals a small region inside the massive globular cluster Omega Centauri, which boasts nearly 10 million stars. The red stars are the coolest of the stars, while the blue are the hottest.

These are a cluster of galaxies. The 3 golden ones are actually fairly close together and will probably all collide someday. The upper left one is no where near the others, it is actually closer to earth than the others hence the reason you can see more defined stars.

This image was one of the very first after maintenance, it is NGC 6217. The detail is amazing.

All images and info were obtained from nasa.gov.

Hubble Briefing

Just an update, the Hubble Briefing is going on right now, you can see it at www.nasa.gov.

They showed the pictures already and are explaining them now. Once the pictures are posted I will get them up here.