
Originally Posted by
Robittybob1
Were you exaggerating? Tell us what they are please?
Ideas that we can't implement yet? Sure. Off the top of my head:
Pipelines carrying seawater to people's homes, with small solar desalinators at everyone's home and business. The "waste" water gets used to flush toilets and cool power plants. If you want to get fancy, the pipe is double walled and transparent, and the pipe itself functions as the desalinator. Minimal new technology needed, just refinements on current technology.
Embedded cables that transfer power from said cable to an electric car/bus inductively. We lack the magnetic materials (high mu, low mu'') to do this cheaply, so the systems that can do this now are large and very expensive.
"Rent a ride" long haul trucks who let you get a ride from them. Your electric vehicle docks on the back and gets a free ride from the truck's engine. Almost no additional power used since the car is in the truck's burble. You pay the trucker rent, and your car's motor also helps him climb hills and brake while descending. Technology needed - intelligent dynamic vehicle controller (like self driving but different kinematics.)
Capacitor based batteries for electric vehicles. Last forever and charge almost instantly. We lack the dielectric materials needed to make this a reality. Alternatively superconducting current storage batteries. We lack the room temperature superconductors needed for this.
Dynamic real time pricing for grid power combined with smart agents to control consumption and generation. Could eliminate our problems with storing solar power. We're pretty close to this, just need more intelligence in the agents themselves.
These are all near term. Some longer term ideas:
Alpha emitter reaction rockets for launching payloads into orbit. You prepare an alpha emitter element, shove it in a rocket nozzle and the reaction drives you into orbit. Thrust decays due to natural half-live of the element until your thrust goes almost to zero. At that point you detach from the booster and the residual thrust parks the booster in a distant orbit. A new way of catalyzing alpha decay reactions would be needed since no existing material can do this.
Beta emitter energy sources. A pure beta emitter gives you almost pure electrical current out of a chunk of radioactive (but easily shielded) material. Existing beta emitters generate very little power, so a fundamental change in how to catalyze beta decay is needed.