![\"\"](\"http:\/\/cafe.foundation\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Things_to_Come_spaceship-528x396.jpg\" "\\"Things_to_Come_spaceship\\"")
<\/a>Not so happy future from 1936 film "Things to Come"<\/p><\/div>\n
This approach would have enormous infrastructure and sociological implications, reducing the need for roads and bridges, built-up core cities, and allowing self-sufficiency in electronic cottages on their own large plots of land.\u00a0 Obviously, from this writer\u2019s perspective, this would require a big change from the current 99-percent\/one-percent economic dichotomy, because such\u00a0alterations would require a
\ngreater prosperity for everyone, or a more layered society much like those in utopian fiction (or dystopian, as some might fear).<\/p>\n
This will come about because navigation and control breakthroughs currently are being developed by the Department of Defense and package delivery companies; and ultralight, motorcycle-like flying machines will enable most to have a safe means of traversing space while avoiding downtowns and malls.\u00a0 These small machines would expand in size to include \u201cCadillac\u201d level transportation and service delivery.<\/p>\n
Bushnell thinks this is possible because the hardware and software Infrastructure involved would be \u201cvastly less expensive than the current ground alternative.\u201d\u00a0 He also foresees a demand for this based on \u201cthe HUGE markets [and] economic benefits,\u201d and \u201cbecause the People want the associated freedom\/convenience\/time savings\/cost reductions\u201d that could come from this visionary breakthrough.<\/p>\n
Of course, these PAVEs will require energy to exploit this new freedom.\u00a0 Bushnell sees four major ways of fueling this future: biofuels, exotic energetics, beamed energy, and electricity \u2013 using either stored or beamed energy.\u00a0 The long electrical cord that is the subject of many wags\u2019 jokes about electric flight, in his view, still exists with the weight and cost optimization of the stored or beamed energy.<\/p>\n
He favors electrical energy for flight because of the lack of emissions, efficiency, cost, safety, freedom from maintenance, the flexibility allowed by electric motors and the lack of noise \u2013 prime considerations\u00a0even today.\u00a0 Reducing fuel use and cutting emissions, including high altitude vapor trails \u2013 even from fuel cells, will be a major cost factor in future flight.<\/p>\n
Making the electricity will be a challenge in the future, with peak oil having occurred in 2008, peak cheap uranium coming in 2025, cheap natural gas in 2030, and cheap coal mid-century.\u00a0 Energy use will grow even while cheap energy diminishes, making for a necessarily inventive future.<\/p>\n
He has big hopes for biofuels, including halophytes, cyano-bacteria, and algae.\u00a0 The use of waste and salt water in wastelands and deserts can solve the CO2 problem without reverting to electric alternative, will have massive capacity, and sequester CO2.\u00a0 Sea water constitutes 97 percent of all water on the planet, and is not likely to run out, has 80 percent of the nutrients needed for agriculture (needing only phosphorus, nitrogen and iron to complete its ability to feed plants).\u00a0 Such use also protects the clean water necessary to human life.<\/p>\n
He listed a promising number of ways to harvest energy, including wind, solar, wave power, geothermal, and biomass, but took them to the next level with suggestions for the extraction of atmospheric CO2<\/sub>, This breadth of technological options, applied to advanced aerodynamics and new materials development, could lead to highly synergistic and extremely powerful aircraft capable of fulfilling as yet undreamed-of missions.\u00a0 Bushnell can envision future aircraft with 40:1 lift-to-drag ratios, burning 70 percent less fuel than our best modern examples, with greater propulsion efficiency and less weight, capable of 250-foot takeoff runs and producing no emissions.\u00a0 This is all part of his \u201cresponsibly imaginable\u201d scenario.<\/p>\n Dennis Bushnell\u2019s breadth of knowledge and his ability to show possible links and combinations of technologies drew an enthusiastic standing ovation from the attendees.\u00a0 Such presentations have a high degree of optimism and enough realistic assessment of costs and potential to give us all hope for a better, more intelligent energy future.<\/p>\n
\nand using engineered microbes to convert the gas to fuel; low energy nuclear reactions (LENR and sometimes erroneously referred to as \u201ccold fusion\u201d); exploitation of energy potential in chemical bonds; and the use of positrons \u2013 the \u201caffordable anti-matter.\u201d<\/p>\n