Technology for Luddites
This unconventional sailing boat, named the SailRocket, reached a record speed of 47.35 knots (87.6 km/h or 54.43 mph), on average over a distance of 500 meters. During another run, the boat reached a speed of 52 knots before lifting off
for a spectacular in-the-air wipeout (also caught on video). More below.
Following the intriguing but oversimplified graphic on materials scarcity published by New Scientist (a graphic that turns out to be 2 years old, by the way), this in-depth article at the Oil Drum Europe (original article here) gives a well founded look at the problem of metal minerals scarcity. Especially interesting is the link between energy and minerals:
“In case of unlimited energy supply, metal minerals extraction would only be limited by the total amount of mineral resources. However, due to the scarcity of energy, the extraction rates of most types of metal minerals will cease to follow demand. Probably the only acceptable long-term solution to avoid a global systemic collapse of industrial society, caused by these resource constraints, is a path towards managed austerity. Managed austerity will have to be a combination of changes in technology and changes in both individual and collective human behaviour.“
Related: Historical statistics for mineral and material commodities.
Step-by-step instructions. More tutorials can be found here, here and here.
“If you grow jatropha in marginal conditions, you can expect marginal yields” & “The best outcome might be to slow down the jatropha steamroller and let science sort out whether it can be grown on a mass scale in ways that
make it preferable to food-based biofuels”. Read. Related: Leave the algae alone.
Locomobiel Stoommachine is a Dutch site, but it is worth clicking around because of the quantity and the quality of pictures and drawings of all possible steam engines and their applications. (note 02/2011: site has been moved and renamed).
“The object of the present volume is: to indicate the character and, approximately, the extent of the changes produced by human action in the physical conditions of the globe we inhabit; to point out the dangers of imprudence and the necessity of caution in all operations which, on a large scale, interfere with the spontaneous arrangements of the organic or the inorganic world; to suggest the possibility and the importance of the restoration of disturbed harmonies and the material improvement of waste and exhausted regions; and, incidentally, to illustrate the doctrine, that man is, in both kind and degree, a power of a higher order than any of the other forms of animated life, which, like him, are nourished at the table of bounteous nature.”
Quoted from: Man and nature – physical geography as modified by human action (1864). Full text online.
Found at: The evolution of the conservation movement, 1850-1920.
