British Battleships, Farmtowers, and Cloudboats.

Please, never try to pin me down on political affiliation or religious belief, or anything like that. I honestly believe that my views are unique, but I really don't try to make them so, I just let them be what they are. One minute you'll find me endorsing solar energy, and another, you'll see me pushing for fossil fuels over ethanol; you'll see me disagreeing with a war, but giving the thumbs up to new military technologies.

I was thumbing through one of my older issues of Popular Science from a few months back, and I came across an article that I'd forgotten about - the Brits possibly building a fleet of modular robotic battleships. The same country who used to be a world superpower due to the absolute power of their navy, the one that lost that power steadily after the Napoleonic Wars, may be getting that strength back with a new potency and versatility.

These ships are specially made to operate on a crew that's less than 2% the size of what is currently necessary, with no decrease in ability from the older models. What's more is that these ships are going to be taking advantage of a new technological trend - modularity. Essentially, four to five models of ship are going to be constructed, but with the ability to have all of their weaponry and special equipment switched out at a moments notice to be re-tasked to a radically new job.

Now onto one of my favorite innovations that's come about recently: Vertical Farming. The concept is based on building spiral-shaped towers in urban areas that use hydroponics and nutrioponics (suspending the plants in a jelly substance made of nutrients and reprocessed plants) to grow plants in a very controlled environment. These towers, too, would be modular and able to be stacked and added to later - as well as utilizing solar power to maintain all of the systems.

Locating these tower in urban areas allows for a number of unique advantages over old methods of farming that use land inefficiently and consume massive amounts of fossil fuel to maintain. The increase of jobs, coupled with the CO2 processing abilities of plants and the vicinity to the places the food is to be sold allows an overall increase in economic and environmental health.

Ah. Cloudboats. Wonderful little inventions, they are. Essentially, they break down to being oversized, satellite-controlled catamarans that charge themselves using solar power and use the air around them and ocean under them to help regenerate the atmosphere. They would move about freely, keeping themselves free of shipping lanes and allowing themselves to be lent to a number of other uses (floating wi-fi anyone?).

I'm going to rest for a bit. I might get back to this fun stuff later.

~Mr. Mobius