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Hungry? Better turn on your linear induction motor and send a metal capsule through an underground polyethylene tube to retrieve some groceries.
That’s the vision of Foodtubes, a UK program that seeks to reduce carbon emissions by building a pipeline-capsule system to deliver food and freight. A series of tubes could ferry 6-foot-long metal bins among neighborhoods, entire cities or even to different countries, moving goods at 60 mph using linear induction motors and intelligent routing software. Foodtubes says it’s “really fast food,” brought to you by the Internet of Things.
“In the long term, we could see an ostrich slaughtered in Cape Town, and delivered to Edinburgh,” said Noel Hodson, Foodtubes’ CEO, in an interview in EWeek Europe.
But something tells me there’s more to this than saving the planet or expeditiously delivering still-steaming ostrich carcasses to your – umm- foodtube…
The group wants to start in the London suburb of Croydon with a $625 million pilot network connecting all the borough’s food shops, schools and buildings. Such a network would remove diesel trucks from the road, cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 8 percent a year and reducing congestion, the project’s leaders say. [emphasis added]
For some reason, the Simpson’s monorail episode comes to mind.
Assuming it’s not a scam, though, here’s a few reasons off the top of my head why this is a boneheaded idea:
Underground polyethylene tube. 3ft in diameter. Right. So the walls would be how many inches thick to keep their shape? And what would be the carbon footprint associated with producing that much polyethylene?
What sort of bend radius would a tube carrying a metal capsule 3ft in diameter by 6ft long traveling at 60MPH require? And how would practical limits on bend radii affect the capsule itself, in order to prevent its leading or trailing ends from hitting the walls or wedging the capsule at a turn?
Likewise, what sort of shape tolerance would there be on the tube cross-section? And how would it be maintained?
Yes, “new 3-foot-diameter tubes are installed all the time”. True, but these are used for the handling of bulk materials (water, sewage, storm drainage, natural gas, etc.), not as a high-speed track for delivery capsules.
Where is your average apartment dweller or homeowner going to fit a 3ft diameter tube and end “station”? At best, it will be larger than a typical American refrigerator.
How does the system allow for concurrent utilization? It’s the same set of design problems encountered with railroads. Will you need two sets of tubes, one for each direction? How do you launch capsules into the trunk line, and then get them back out again at the end, without either causing congestion at entry and exit points or requiring long acceleration/deceleration spurs to end “stations”?
How much room would the switches for each residence require, if the capsules are traveling at 6oMPH in the trunk tube and must be diverted at full speed into the acceleration/deceleration spur?
How do these “linear induction” motors power the capsules? Are they built into the capsule and continually pushing it? If so, what is their power source, and what happens to the network when one of them runs out of power? How much otherwise usable cargo space do the motors and their associated power system consume?
A 3ft diameter, 6ft long capsule made of metal and capable of moving at 6oMPH for an indefinite number of reuse cycles is going to be fairly heavy. What are the energy requirements associated with accelerating, maintaining at speed, and then decelerating that heavy capsule? How do these energy requirements measure up against the trucks the system is meant to replace?
Do these capsules ride on wheels, or do they (like pneumatic canisters) simply slide through the tube on wipers or “skids” of some sort? If wheels, how much heavier do the capsules now become, and how much space is left over for the cargo they are intended to carry?
If not on wheels, what happens to the polyethylene tubes when friction with the contact surfaces of a passing capsule heats them up? Or worse, when they are repeatedly heated by multiple passing capsules during periods of heavy utilization?
How will the energy requirements be affected if acceleration/deceleration spurs are not used or are limited for practical reasons to very short lengths, but the capsules must still be moving at or near 6oMPH when they enter or exit the trunk tubes?
Likewise, what would the resulting high accelerations/decelerations do to the structure of the capsule and the integrity of the contents? Would they make the capsule even heavier? And would they limit the type of cargo that can be sent via these capsules?
What happens if a capsule approaching a residential “station” fails to decelerate? Or a capsule entering a trunk tube fails to accelerate sufficiently? Or a capsule abruptly stops somewhere along the line in a trunk tube?
How do the economics of this system compare to alternatives? Have the full costs (design, construction, maintenance, emergency repair, etc.) been figured in? Is there an economic benefit significant enough to offset the costs of building and maintaining of a completely new and separate transportation network?
And the big question: have they reviewed Denver International Airport’s experience with automated baggage handling systems?
As an aside, did anyone from the marketing department really think through the choice of name for this project? “Food tubes”? Really?
Just looking at this list, I get the impression that a $625M pilot project to link together an entire suburb might be a bit beyond their technology readiness level at the moment. Perhaps they should start with something smaller…like a hundred-yard straightaway.
This article brings back memories. Many of them bad. My ride in high school and my first quarter in college was a pale green 1971 Chevy Vega, which my folks had bought mainly for us kids in 1980 when my great-aunt decided to spend more of her time in Florida. Said car had IIRC 2000 miles on it at the time.
So, what went wrong with this particular Vega?
The body: as noted in the article, rust was an unfortunate problem (an impressive anecdote later). The car had been garaged every winter of its life, but when it first experienced snow and road salt, it caught up with its siblings in the rust department with impressive speed. By the time it was handed over to me in 1985, futile attempts by my father and my brothers to address the rust had added a few more shades of green to the paint as accent (or highlight) for the assorted shades of dark red they were meant to repair/prevent.
The oil: the author of that article wasn’t kidding about the thing’s oil consumption. While ours didn’t go through a quart with every fill-up, it did go through about a quart every other week. At that point in time, cheap oil change stations had not yet become ubiquitous, so my father changed the oil on all the cars – at some point before I started driving the thing, my father gave up, and just started topping off the Vega with oil drained from the Ford Econoline and Mecury Lynx. (Yes, my family had a history of bad car choices, why do you ask?) I honestly don’t remember the oil being changed once in the two and a half years that I drove the car. And yet, the engine kept going and going and going, and was utterly reliable despite the leakage and mistreatment…well…except for…
The fuel system: the Vega’s problems with rust were not confined to the body panels. Somehow water would get into the gas tank, not enough to disrupt the engine but plenty enough to put copious amounts of rust — both as talcum-like powder and larger flakes — into the gasoline. Luckily, the engine’s fuel filter captured the bulk of it. Unluckily, the thimble filter needed to be changed out about every 6-8 weeks. Sometimes sooner. And it would announce its need to be changed by abruptly stalling the car on any incline greater than a speedbump (and sometimes even speedbumps themselves), which was an ongoing annoyance given that the steepest hill in town was on my usual route home from school.
The cooling system: I can attest to the author’s veracity in describing coolant leaks. While I don’t know if oil leaked into the coolant, boy howdy did coolant leak into the oil. The aforementioned “recycled” oil had the color and consistency of a melted milk chocolate bar due to the coolant mixed in with it, and checking the oil level was quite a tedious affair, requiring several dips and wipes to remove the creamy froth that would accumulate in the dipstick tube while the engine had been running.
The vinyl interior: until I had a long-term rental car with a black (real) leather interior while working in Palmdale some years later, the trauma induced by the Vega’s black vinyl bucket seats turned me off to non-cloth interiors. It turns out that real leather doesn’t stick to you, and while it can occasionally get hot (at least in the Mojave Desert), it generally doesn’t burn the imprint of the faux stitching into your skin. Through your clothes. And through a horseblanket slipcover…which you had to buy after that one particularly cold day when you climbed into the driver’s seat and discovered that yes, it can indeed get below the glass transition temperature of cheap carseat vinyl during winter in Michigan.
And speaking of seats…: the rusted seat slides that locked both front seats permanently into position. Luckily for me, that position was all the way back on the driver’s side. Unfortunately for my often similarly-tall passengers, that position was knees-to-the-steel-panel-where-the-glovebox-should-have-been on the passenger’s side.
The interior details: the attractive and always-something-new splits around the defrost vents in the soft safety cover on the dashboard, the delightfully unpredictable tendency of the passenger’s door panel to spring off, the numerous (and too-close) painted steel surfaces which, being black like the rest of the interior, were a source of trepidation not just for the potential for serious injury in a crash but also the possibility of third degree burns to the inattentive driver or passenger on a particularly sunny day. To this day, I still cannot make myself rest my arm on the windowsill of a car door for (irrational) fear of being incinerated.
The comfort systems: a bad, bad joke. Air conditioning consisted of push-pull vent panels in the front footwells, and the heater would have been better described as a “tepid-at-most-er”. Both systems seemed to have been tied into the exhaust pipe for some strange reason.
In short, it sucked and then some. But on the bright side, I think I was the only one of my friends in high school who had a car of his own, and it was at the same time the type of car that tempered said friends’ temptation to bum rides. And for all its flaws, it was surprisingly reliable as long as I kept a wrench and a couple extra thimble filters in the car.
But one priceless illustration of just how bad the rust problem was happened on my last day of high school. Being a teenager, I had a terrible habit of locking my keys in my car, and did just that on the last day of school. But not to worry — while I was too large to do so myself, I had one of my smaller friends get down on the ground next to the driver’s door, reach up through a hole rusted in the floorboards, push away the piece of plywood and the floormat, and pull the keys out of the ignition. Problem solved!
The Vega limped along until November 1987. Since I couldn’t have a car on campus my first two years at MSU, there was no point keeping the thing around. So, we fired it up (barely, since it had been sitting in the driveway untouched since mid-August) and drove it to the junkyard — where we had to pay the guy $45 to take the thing.
It’s a windless morning at Steamboat Ski Resort, and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” pulses through a bright Gondola Square. Shuffling across the slushy snow, skiers line up to board the Steamboat Gondola, but first they must unzip, de-layer, and turn out their pockets. Like travelers at Denver International Airport, these would-be gondola riders must run through a gauntlet of security checkpoints before taking to the skies.
After ticket scanners confirm that skiers’ lift passes are legit, a panel of uniformed police officers pats everyone down and inspects backpacks for contraband such as alcohol. Refuse the search, and that $97 day-ticket becomes null and void. Still, on this bluebird day, one baby boomer flexes his ’60s-honed flower power and bucks the system. “You don’t have any right to search me!” he shouts. Throughout the loading zone, heads swivel toward the lone renegade. The cops try to respond to him in hushed tones. But he won’t be quieted. “You have no right!” he repeats.
This is one of those rare occasions where I agree with a hippie.
Of course, this isn’t TSA in action, so it’s not really about pantybombers or some illusion of security. Instead, the justification used is that it’s to maintain the family-friendly atmosphere of the ski resorts and to thwart theft. I wonder when malls will start implementing pat-downs and pocket searches under the same justifications — after all, there’s plenty of room for obnoxious behavior at malls, and an ever-present problem with theft.
With every day that passes, I’m more amazed at my virtually hall-monitor-free experience in Iceland. We laughed at the fact that the Land of the Vikings outlawed the sale and private ownership of souvenir swords, of all things, but at least they didn’t have security people on every corner looking for any reason to rifle through your belongings and clothes and feel you up with an invasive touch-search.
John Steakley, author of Armor and Vampire$, has died.
Funny, Armor was one of my favorite science fiction books growing up, and one of the first I read after really getting into the genre (and after consuming everything by Larry Niven I could get my hands on), and I just re-read it about two weeks ago for the first time in probably fifteen years.
The answer is obviously “yes”, it’s just a matter of how. The article primarily discusses soil composition (along with the philosophical question of what, exactly, “soil” is), leaving out hydroponics and aeroponics.
In Labyrinth, we have taken the position that farming on Mars requires some not-insignificant preparation of the raw soil, using modified bacteria to remove undesirable trace elements and other bacteria (along with sewage and such from the settlement) to add biological content to the otherwise sterile dirt. This is partly for plot reasons, but partly based on familiarity with Keweenaw stamp sands.
There were probably more reasons for the cancellation than were publicly admitted to than just the engine difficulties. But if that’s all there was, it’s interesting to note (as others have) that SpaceX’s original Merlin-1 engine is in the same thrust class as Fastrac. And Merlin-1 has actually flown.
Plus, it doesn’t hurt that the Obama administration’s space policy tends to the commercial. Or that Obama and Musk seem to be pals.
I actually don’t expect X-34 to fly (if they haven’t been stored properly for the past ten years, the refurbishment costs will probably be uneconomical). But I sure would like to be pleasantly surprised.
I thought I posted a summary of the novel here, back when we entered it in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. But since I can’t find it in the archives, here’s the description we used for the contest entry:
The world was shocked and saddened by the Space Shuttle Challenger and Columbia disasters. But after the memorials, recovery efforts, and detailed investigations were over and the hard lessons were learned, we moved on.
But what if a spacecraft and its crew simply vanished, with no explanation? What if, years later, you had an opportunity to solve the mystery of this disappearance? And what if someone else knew what happened – and would do anything to stop you?
This is the challenge facing 14-year-old Amber Jacobsen in “Labyrinth of Night”, a mystery set on frontier Mars. Amber is an interplanetary celebrity: ‘the First Kid on Mars’…and so far, the only one. Pioneering on Mars is hardly glamorous, though, and Amber secretly wishes she were an ordinary girl living on Earth.
When their homestead is destroyed in an apparent accident, the Jacobsens relocate to a new settlement located on the northern fringes of Noctis Labyrinthus, a vast and largely unexplored network of canyons. Their new home promises new opportunities, and Amber looks forward to being accepted as a regular member of the community rather than a celebrity. Instead, the settlers treat her as a burdensome child and not the responsible young adult she is.
In order to prove herself, Amber vows to uncover the fate of the Ares III mission, which vanished near Noctis Labyrinthus. As she digs into the disappearance, however, she discovers that those who destroyed her family’s homestead want power over the settlement she now calls home — and ultimately the entire planet. By solving the mystery, she could hand them the tools to destroy a free and prosperous Mars.
After a minor catastrophe forces the Jacobsen family to move to a new settlement, Amber and her mother get a tour of the place. Having spent her whole young life within the cozy spaces of habs, settlement tunnels, rovers, and suits, Amber finds certain parts of her new environment a bit unnerving at first.
Margolis led them down a set of steps to floor level, then to another large bulkhead door. Inside the door was the chamber of an airlock, one large enough to drive a small rover through.
As they entered the airlock into Bubble 1, Margolis muttered something into the small object strapped like a watch to her wrist. Amber only caught a quick glimpse, but was sure Margolis’ MA was a new Holst Informatics Onyx 3. She could only hope her new job paid enough for her to buy one of those.
The door behind them swung shut, and the one in front of them immediately opened — it was pressurized on both sides, so there was no need to pump down or suit up here, but the small difference in pressure made her ears pop. Like the emergency bulkhead at the entrance to Main Street, the airlock was a safety feature against catastrophic depressurization of the bubble above.
Walking up the long ramp into the bubble, Amber thought she knew what to expect. After all, they had had a greenhouse at home…arguably the prototype for this one. This one was bigger, of course, but how much different could it be?
She looked up at the narrow slot of sky visible between the walls lining the ramp. The tint of the translucent membrane overhead gave the sky an alien hue, a pale red-blue, not quite Martian or terrestrial, but somewhere in between. It was far enough above that she didn’t notice at first that anything was there at all — it just appeared to be a strange-colored sky.
But it wasn’t the size or the color of the dome that made Amber look around, slack-jawed. As she reached “ground” level, she stepped into a world she had only imagined before, based on pictures, vids, and her parents’ descriptions. She stopped, astonished. Is this what Earth is like?
The openness made her stomach knot. She had no problem with open spaces while out on the surface, suited, but this was very different. Here she stood unprotected at the edge of a grassy field a hundred meters on a side — larger than any open place she had ever been without a suit. Worse, there was much, much more volume beyond the end of the ramp, where instead of grass there were long ranks of trees and assorted crops stretching into the distance.
She gulped and squeezed her eyes shut. The nausea and unease gradually passed.
Looking up again, she could see the sky for what it was: a multilayered translucent membrane some thirty meters above her, curving down to the waist-high anchorage wall. Just inside the anchorage was a deep recess where the windows of the residential area below were located. Construction details — crisscrossed tension-stay wires, broad light panels, small clusters of sensors here and there — brought the bubble into a manageable but still unsettling scale.
Towards the near end of the bubble, the grassy field was bounded by a concrete trough filled with assorted bushes and flowering plants, sunflowers mostly, carefully arranged and meticulously manicured. Amber looked at the dark green carpet stretched out in front of her. “Is it real?”
Margolis giggled. “The grass? Of course. Try it out.”
She hesitated. “I’m not going to hurt it, am I?”
“No,” her mother laughed, giving her a playful nudge forward.
Amber took a few cautious steps. Even through her slippers, the ground felt strange, spongy. The floor is actually alive! She pulled her slippers off and ran her toes through the soft, slightly moist blades. Imagine a whole planet like this…so full of life you can’t go anywhere without seeing it, touching it…or stepping on it. She closed her eyes as she walked gingerly into the field, imagining she was on that lush planet, instead of a world carved with great effort from a cold, dead wasteland. Opening her eyes again, she felt a fleeting twinge of disappointment. True, the Green was a little spot of paradise in the middle of the barren Martian desert, but no matter how real it looked, it was still only a simulation of the real Earth. The thought tempered her delight…but only slightly.
I’m guessing that that’s why they changed their name to “SyFy” — the channel has about as much to do with science fiction nowadays as MTV has to do with music.
Oh well. I’m sure they’ll make better use of the time slot with another shoddily-produced and worse-acted supernatural show, badly written and wholly derivative fantasy series, or professional wrestling program.
A short, choppy featurette by our neighbors on the press riser on election night. I wish I had thought to do something like this when I had my hands on the big Sony we were using for interviews. (Yes, Michael self-identifies as National Review Online, but he’s still one of us.)
An amusing aside: Bob Zubrin (who is quite active in at least the rank-and-file level in Colorado Republican circles) was at one point examining our setup quite intently. Unfortunately, I had two interviews teed up and by the time I was through, he was gone.