DITTY FOR 2014

 As a believer that half the members of Congress should be women, I am placing this little ditty in the public domain. 


Women, wise up!
Women, rise up!
In two oh one four,
Show Congress MEN the door!


It has mileage, too. In 2018 "door" becomes "gate"

EVERYMAN'S ELECTRIC CAR

by Edward Hujsak

   
    To date, no one has designed, built and marketed a stand-alone electric car of merit; not General Motors, not Ford, not Chrysler, not Toyota, not Nissan, not Hundai, not Daimler Benz, not Audi, not BMW, not Tesla Motors, not anyone. Amazing, but also understandable when considering that automobile design is the product of a blend of marketing assessment and company management, in contrast to sound and practical design engineering and systems engineering with consumer needs paramount in establishing design requirements and specifications.

    Tesla comes close with its all-electric design, a triumph of artistry and technology. But overall it is seriously flawed.
a. It is either electric “clean” or electric “dirty” depending on whether the origin of its energy is, say, clean geothermal or coal fired power plants.
b. It is a niche vehicle because of its high cost. Not many can afford a $100,000 car, including taxes, license and insurance, or even the lower performance models at around $70,000.
c. Waiting time at charge stations is additive to time wasted in heavy traffic. A problem unless one enjoys wasting time, especially in mid-winter.
d. A new”fret/stress problem for drivers, worrying about mileage remaining vs. where the next charge station is.
e. Issues regarding lowered performance in cold weather.

    Designers of Everyman’s Electric Car would accept none of the above shortcomings. Everyman’s Electric Car is a stand-alone vehicle and plugs into nothing, except, perhaps, an occasional "top-off" when preparing for an extended trip, or due to an unintended depletion of battery charge.

    Everyman’s Electric Car can carry five to six passengers and has adequate cargo space. It weighs less than 3500 pounds and costs less than $30,000. Everyman’s Electric car is as carbon neutral as one can get. It has a minimum range of 500 miles.

    Everyman’s Electric Car carries a modest complement of ordinary batteries, as it is not range dependent on batteries. Batteries are of a type that end up in established recovery systems when their operating life has expired.

    Batteries are kept charged by an on-board, advanced Diesel engine that operates on a variety of biofuels. It operates at a constant speed at its most efficient operating point and drives a generator that keeps the batteries charged. Such advanced Diesels are in development at companies like Eco-Motors and Pinnacle Engines.

    Everyman’s Electric Car is powered by electric motors on two wheels, on four wheels, or by a single motor powering two wheels through a differential. Trade studies would determine preferred arrangements, which may be affected by regional preferences, i.e. North East USA versus Southwest.

     This design concept provides for the high torque requirements for coming up to speed and passing, and the modest hp requirement for normal cruising.
    
    The travelling range of Everyman’s Electric Car is established by the fuel tank capacity. Should one run out of fuel, battery capacity is enough to travel to the next available biofuel station. In a pinch, that quart bottle of olive oil in the grocery bag will get you an extra twenty miles.

    Utilities such as air conditioning can be powered by the Diesel engine. Others, like power steering, could be electric, depending on how trade studies reveal performance and cost advantages for one or the other.

    Who will be the first to design a stand-alone electric car that meets both consumer requirements and is fully compliant with the best ideas about how to mitigate climate change, and conserve fossil fuels? Who will be the first to let engineers do the job right? Everyman’s Electric Car is hardly a technological challenge. We know how to do it.

LUCKY ME

      Lucky me, blessed with a caring, brilliant, conversational son. Some years ago, in what was in retrospect an overly-ambitious move, we founded the Interstellar Propulsion Society, on the idea that once we get the propulsion problem solved, everything else will come together to make interstellar travel possible. It got to be much too ambitious an effort and soon faltered, but fortunately NASA picked up on the idea and funded Marc Millis of  Glenn Research Center to carry out further studies. That soon ran out of money, but Marc went on to  organize the Tau Zero Foundation, which operates toward the same general objectives. That is not the only thing in play. Recently DARPA funded what is called the “100 Year Starship Study” to examine some of the issues related to interstellar travel.
         
    The other night Jon and I were discussing the desperate plight of the countless fifty-year old engineers who have lost their jobs and cannot find a similar one even after searching and interviewing for years, finally ending up in occupations paying a third or less of their former salaries. This is a tragedy in work for individuals and their families, as well as for the nation. These people represent an enormous collective talent, with thirty or more years of experience, far along on the learning curve, possessing a historical knowledge of what works and what doesn’t, and in all likelihood would return  steady and faithful performance to anyone hiring them.

     We ended up speculating on what we would do were we to start up a new company. We concluded that our best chance at success would be to hire no one under fifty years of age.  Imagine...... starting up a company of twenty employees with 600 years of experience under their belts. How could you lose?

UNTITLED POEM

When did my story end?
It is now an unravelled rope,
its frayed strands
at the mercy of the wind.
It happens, on occasion,
I catch a thread
and follow it.
Sometimes it surprises me -
an adventure I hadn’t thought of,
a memory steeped in passion,
colors and fragrance.
A few lines, perhaps,
I might use some day.