YOU CAN HELP*
“I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.”
HAL, 9000, computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Our planet Earth’s supply of fossil energy will only last so long. We’ll need a new “Energy Source”.
What about hydrogen? Unfortunately hydrogen does not occur separately in nature so it cannot be a primary “Energy Source”.
Although hydrogen must first be separated from water and super cooled to a liquid, it has proven to be a superior, high energy density “Energy Transfer” fuel with more energy than gasoline. Thus to begin using hydrogen instead of gasoline we’ll need to refine it from water as gasoline is refined from oil.
What about water as a primary “Energy Source”? Every molecule of water contains two atoms of hydrogen.
In the time we have left we humans must learn to safely convert some of our consumption, e.g. for transportation, to liquid hydrogen. It contains more energy per pound than gasoline and we already use it for space travel.
Why not use nuclear energy to create the electrical energy needed to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen? In time we could, perhaps, do this on our Moon and rocket spent radioactive nuclear fuel into our star, the Sun.
When we use the hydrogen energy here on Earth we oxidize it using oxygen from Earth’s atmosphere reproducing the water that was previously depleted from the atmosphere to produce the hydrogen. This means that the only resource being used up is the nuclear energy used to separate the water. And, perhaps, we’ll eventually learn how to get nuclear energy from more than just uranium.
*YOU CAN HELP: Send this to anyone who has the power to get things done.
Note: I’ll be sending copies to Thomas L. Freidman, the author of “The World is Flat”; Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush and to the CEO Offices of GE, IBM, GM and several other corporations.
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