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This must be a new low for /. submissions, when not even the submitter Reads The Fine Article...

The CNN article nowhere mentions airplane deaths or parachute drops of pods.

What it does mention (in so many words) is that they want to do for air passengers and freight, what Intermodal shipping containers have done for surface freight (sea, rail, trucking) - and yes, with the possibility to extend air networks to other modes of transport e.g. road or rail, like what has happened for shipping containers. Read like that, it makes a lot more sense than the wild hand-waving of the summary and the other comments. Albeit probably not enough sense to make this a reality... I for one am not so sure that passengers would allow for the same sort of dynamics that freight does, once bundled into a bulking container of whatever name.

It also differs from the Airbus design in that the pods are not inside the aircraft, but attached to the aircraft. Less duplication of structural material than the Airbus design? Probably. But perhaps not as much as contemporary aircraft though.

Not quite correct. The law doesn't limit the speed of an electric bicycle; it limits the speed of an electric bicycle that doesn't have the same licensing, registration and insurance requirements as a motorcycle.

In the continuum between non-electric bike and electric motorcycle which happens to have pedals (like this one) there's no sharp dividing line. No matter what speed capability below which you decide not to regulate an e-bike as a motor vehicle, it will always be convenient sometimes to go a little faster.

Wouldn't that be EXCEEDINGLY expensive? Ok so you only use it occasionally, but still! I'd perhaps only activate it in an absolute emergency, like I'm a few miles short of my destination. Ah, here we are: http://www.gizmag.com/dual-car... P.S. how do you do carriage returns in slashdot? My text always runs together after posting.

Only 9EB? That doesn't sound like much...

Indeed. I had an Exabyte tape drive back in the 1980s.

Of course, that "Exabyte" drive could only hold 3.5 GB. You'd have needed some 2.6 trillion cartridges to store 9 EB. With modern tapes you could do it with only 41,000 cartridges.

The only time I see a two-wheel Segway these days is a rent-a-cop cruising around a tech campus. Meh... Now the three-wheel Segway is much cooler (see link below). I'm always tempted to jump on one to take out for a test drive. Lights flashing, of course. :)

http://www.gizmag.com/segway-launches-three-wheeled-se-3-patroller/32167/

The first link in the summary links to a different technique, called "Finger I/O", which uses sonar and is from the University of Washington. The link next to the headline ( http://www.gizmag.com/skintrac... ) properly goes to the thing that the article is about; which is electric & from CMU.

Negative Mass/FTL travel is already being experimented with. Just because you don't think it is possible, or that it is fantasy, doesn't mean you are correct.

http://www.gizmag.com/warp-dri...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The power needed to create a spacecraft that could use a warp drive is well beyond what we can do right now, but it isn't impossible like you are implying.

True, but on the other hand, I would think etching technology certainly has the potential of becoming more efficient than it is now, reducing that current advantage. I recall a story here a while back about some new "5-dimensional" etching techniques (three spacial dimensions plus two additional properties per point) that could show promise in the future regarding improved density:

http://www.gizmag.com/superman...

It is :) Last year Siemens demonstrated an electric motor for aircrafts with a power-to-weight ratio of 5000 W/Kg. The modified C172 i mentioned before used an off the shelf tri-phase motor and they had to place batteries on the front because the aircraft was all of the sudden tail heavy. On top of add, they needed ballast to keep the CG within specs.

I just wish someone came up with an usable power storage solution. Electric engines are a dream come true for aircrafts.

So figure out how to put a projector in the smart watch to project onto your forearm, and then you might have something useful.

Pretty slick! http://www.gizmag.com/cicret-b...

I suspect the time will be sooner, rather than later. The example of Eatsa, is still only on the ordering and delivery end. The production end has already shown to be automatable for an increasingly affordable price for businesses. The example of Momentum Machines custom burger production system is 4 years old, I'm surprised it hasn't been rolled to production somewhere already. . .

Pull a trailer and get back to me.

You mean like this?

http://www.gizmag.com/daimlers...

... and the ArcaBoard is really real.

That could be because of this.

the camera that takes 1.44gb photos is something that I might actually be interested in.

Here it is.

From http://www.gizmag.com/mit-hype...

The MIT team's winning design details a 250 kg (551 lb) passenger pod with an exterior crafted from carbon fiber and polycarbonate sheets. With a passive magnetic levitation system comprising 20 neodymium magnets, the pod is designed to maintain a 15 mm (0.6 in) levitation gap above the track.

The team says with the lowest available tube pressure available of 140 Pa, the pod should be accelerated at 2.4 G and have 2 N aerodynamic drag when traveling at 110 m/s. The design also features a fail-safe braking system that automatically brings the pod to a halt should the actuators or computers fail, and low speed drive wheels that can move the pod forwards or backwards at 1 m/s in an emergency situation.

I don't disagree with that, but the OP was implying quite strongly that it's ambiguous whether the government actually set up the 9-11 attacks: "Is it possible to convince a few loonies to get on a plane and fly it into buildings so there are no leaks" "I've never seen a forensic investigation of the crime scene that was 9/11 so I doubt that we will ever know for sure on this one."

The OP was saying that the US Government is competent enough to set up such a scenario. Since there has been no forensic investigation everyone is welcome to make up their own theory about what happened and it is no less valid than anyone else's.

His first couple paragraphs (which I didn't quote for length reasons) are actually a variety of scenarios by which he claims the US government could have taken down the buildings "with no leaks."

The US Government could do what it wanted. Insert scenario here. It's irrelevant how it happened, that doesn't even matter. You only need one piece of evidence for a conspiracy: NO FORENSIC INVESTIGATION

One of the scenarios involved specifically designing a new class of drone with a huge fuel tank (and nobody would have noticed that they weren't passenger aircraft with hundreds of people aboard), another was that we could have used a missile battery and then killed the entire crew (without anyone noticing a missile crew was dead).

No one said anything about designing a tanker drone, just deploying the control systems to an existing tanker aircraft. Such a situation is plausible if you think those capabilities existed in 2001.

Bad shit happens. Generally the government uses the bad shit to try to justify more powers. That does not mean the government actually directs 100% of the bad shit.

So how much% do you think they control? Geeks with knowledge of how telephony systems and computers worked told us back in the 90's how modern surveillance had evolved from Stalin's era. They were told they were being paranoid and wore tin foil hats by people who didn't even know what Echelon, SIGINT or five eyes was even called. Turns out it worked how they said it did, but was a lot larger than anyone thought.

Thinking the US Government is incompetent, is incompetent because it generalises something that has many highly competent and motivated entities. Ask yourself if the US population is controlling it, answer, no one gives a shit.

After NO FORENSIC INVESTIGATION, due process was removed with the stroke of a pen and nobody even batted an eyelid turning the US constitution into a parody of all democracies everywhere so yeah, we can agree, bad shit happens. It's happening, remain glued to the TV for further updates about a sale at Macy's.

Like this?
http://www.gizmag.com/tape-gun...

Google is your friend: http://www.gizmag.com/telomera...
http://www.gizmag.com/telomere...
http://blogs.scientificamerica...

Google is your friend: http://www.gizmag.com/telomera...
http://www.gizmag.com/telomere...
http://blogs.scientificamerica...

http://www.gizmag.com/stronger...
http://www.gizmag.com/flash-ba...

There is a patent application from 2008:

https://patents.google.com/pat...

But then there is a .mil evaluation:

http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc...

http://www.gizmag.com/stronger...
http://www.gizmag.com/flash-ba...

There is a patent application from 2008:

https://patents.google.com/pat...

But then there is a .mil evaluation:

http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc...

Earlier reports came out in 2011
http://www.gizmag.com/stronger...

Claims less energy inputs, less expensive equipment to make and shape and stronger results.
If the money savings and benefits are there I would have expected it to have been scooped up and monetized by now. Unless there are real IP issues preventing it from getting accepted.

There's a cost trade-off between the expense of a launch, and the expense of building a bigger mirror. That is, for the same price, you can have a really big telescope on land, or a small telescope in space.

Adaptive optics have advanced enough that ground-based telescopes have surpassed Hubble in resolution. The drawbacks of AO are that it's limited in wavelength (different wavelengths get refracted by different amounts by the atmosphere, so you can't simultaneously correct for all of them), it only works for a narrow field of view (so you can't take majestic shots of the entire Orion nebula), and the atmosphere completely blocks certain wavelengths from even reaching the ground making space the ideal place for far infrared or ultraviolet astronomy. If those constraints don't affect the type of astronomy you plan to do with the telescope, then there's little point paying a lot more to launch it into space.

http://www.gizmag.com/audi-cre...

So how do you feel about burning carbon made from electricity and CO2 ?

Beating test cycles by engineering to the test is hardly a new phenomenon, and it is the bulk of why current EU tests are being replaced by new standards currently in development that are harder to game. Even with this improvement, expect some level of optimization for test conditions while either ignoring or even harming real world performance.

The relentless cycle beating has had a myriad of harmful effects beyond just not accomplishing the purpose.

• * Regulators start to believe their emissions goals can actually be met, even when they realistically cannot while maintaining adequate driving performance. People just don't baby the throttle the way the NEDC does.
• * Somehow, the problems the controls were intended to alleviate aren't getting any better, so they crank them down tighter. The engineering gets even more optimized for the test. The cars get nice "green" certifications, and everyone wonders where the smog is coming from.
• * Often, this engineering means smaller engines and turbos, which inevitably don't last as long as the larger displacement engines they replace. It also means increased mechanical complexity. Guess who picks up the tab for this? Us.
• * The smaller, boosted engines may do just fine in emissions testing, and even performance testing on the dyno, but often they are not as good as the larger, naturally aspirated engines they replace for real-world tasks. This is particularly true with trucks, where you'll see V-8s being replaced by turbo-4s. They may still have the same or even better power on paper, but they now have spool-up lag and have to operate in a higher RPM range to haul cargo and/or passengers, and really can struggle with towing loads due to the lesser torque.

It remains to be seen that diesels with urea injection "cannot realistically meet emissions goals". VW wanted to avoid that system on these cars for various reasons.
Meanwhile, it's immensely clear that emissions are hugely cleaner than they were pre1970; performance is as good as or better; and today's little engines working hard last 200k easily while the big lazy v8s of the day would be lucky to hit 100K.
And big rig diesels have always been mainstays of turbocharging, other than the GM Rootes blowers, precisely because they are driven more on highways and run at a narrow range of rpms for long periods of time compared to passenger cars and turbo lag isn't encountered very often, and the increase in efficiency is worth big bucks, and diesels are more efficient that gasoline engines which are not direct injected. http://forums.anandtech.com/sh... And torque is not less with a turbocharger, http://www.blogcdn.com/www.aut... http://image.fourwheeler.com/f... http://www.gizmag.com/bmw-adds...

The moon has one interesting feature, and it's not colonization. Aluminum has about the same concentration there as on Earth, but the gravity is significantly lower. Iron has a slightly higher concentration than aluminum.

A railgun can achieve lunar orbital speed (2.4km/sec). We have the technology. General Dynamics has a gun that can shoot at 2.55 km/sec.

This technology is more commonly known as a mass driver.

The thought is that a mining operation could use the 14-day light cycle to orbit refined metal or construction components. Since very little propellant would be necessary, a lot of material is attainable. Metal is the heaviest and therefore costliest material to move out of a gravity well.

Proposals like this show a profound misunderstanding of space flight costs. The two principal costs in space flight are the costs of making the space flight hardware, and the cost of maintaining and managing the vast ground-based infrastructure of a space flight program. Launch costs are relatively unimportant, and the focus on launch and orbital velocity changes is completely misplaced.

Currently, with SpaceX, we are at point where we can project $1000/lb launch costs. At that price point, space exploration would be essentially unchanged in its cost structure if launches were free. Any type of aerospace hardware costs several thousand dollars a pound to build. Look at an undemanding commercial system like the Boeing Dreamliner. Here you have a competitive marketplace, well proven technologies and designs, a benign operating environment, and the cost the plane is $1000/lb. Any spaceflight hardware costs an order of magnitude (or more) more than this. The SpaceX Dragon capsule for example weighs 7000 lb, and is expected to have a unit cost around $140 million, of $20,000/lb.

The aluminum on the moon would be extremely expensive aluminum, considering the cost of the fully automated factory that would have to be designed from scratch, built on Earth, launched to the Moon, and installed there. Yet, even if the aluminum produced there were free, it would do little to reduce the real costs of spaceflight.

The moon has one interesting feature, and it's not colonization.
Aluminum has about the same concentration there as on Earth, but the gravity is significantly lower.
Iron has a slightly higher concentration than aluminum.

A railgun can achieve lunar orbital speed (2.4km/sec).
We have the technology. General Dynamics has a gun that can shoot at 2.55 km/sec.

This technology is more commonly known as a mass driver.

The thought is that a mining operation could use the 14-day light cycle to orbit refined metal or construction components. Since very little propellant would be necessary, a lot of material is attainable. Metal is the heaviest and therefore costliest material to move out of a gravity well.

How about a 4-person electric car with solar panels on the roof that produces more energy than it uses by average per day use* ?
http://www.gizmag.com/stella-l...

A company in Australia is trying to make a car you can buy, even if it's still very expensive:
http://www.gizmag.com/immortus...

* in the Netherlands, which is in't the US. The average car owner in the US drivers more miles.

How about a 4-person electric car with solar panels on the roof that produces more energy than it uses by average per day use* ?
http://www.gizmag.com/stella-l...

A company in Australia is trying to make a car you can buy, even if it's still very expensive:
http://www.gizmag.com/immortus...

* in the Netherlands, which is in't the US. The average car owner in the US drivers more miles.

They are already here... http://www.gizmag.com/immortus...

Electrically stimulating taste buds is a work in progress. I could imagine that electrically stimulating the olfactory would also be possible.

What every bloodthirsty news consumer fails to see is that car emissions hardly matter, globally speaking, compared to other air pollution sources. One supertanker produces more emissions than 50 million cars. Shipping and energy production produces the vast majority of air pollution. VW was perhaps dishonest, but shrewd when you realize that US emissions regulations and checking on cars is bullshit, putting too much emphasis on a pollution source that is insignificant next to shipping, enegy, and the BIG POLLUTORS. This is a distraction. This is only going to serve to make people rich by devaluing VW stock temporarily, while at the same time allow the real polluters to go unniticed and unreported. And if the air seems stale, idiots will blame car manufacturers and traffic. Whatever this story is, it simply doesn't matter to our air and lungs, but we will exaggerate its importance anyway.

Now point to the "computer" in this photo.

OK OK, and this is the last (much more recent) one. Point to the computer in this photo.

So what happens when the capsule springs a leak and you cannot bre . .a..

I think it is long past time someone addressed the problem of evacuation seriously.

The passenger mask aboard an aircraft has a ten minute supply of oxygen. The Time of Useful Consciousness (TUC) in a near-vacuum is measured in seconds. Oxygen Use in Aviation

Death comes quickly.

As originally conceived, a Hyperloop capsule would pack in 28 people in a space about four feet wide and four feet tall. Beyond the hype of Hyperloop: An analysis of Elon Musk's proposed transit system

It would be difficult to imagine a space more claustrophobic and an invitation to panic and offering less room for maneuver this side of the Hunley .

Give it some time.

As any AI researcher will tell you, we know how the brain works and Geoffrey Hinton's recent paper is nothing short of a breakthrough, and will lead to us having strong AI programs real soon.

We have IBM's Watson, a program that actually understands the information it's processing and will be used to augment medical diagnosis, SIRI, a personal assistant application that actually learns, and MAKO, a program who can do anything on a PC!

IBM is already making neural network chips that implement the way the brain really works, a program the learns the same way that a child learns, and many, many more!

We have courses that teach you AI, and ... it's easy!

Give it some time! We need to let the AI mature like a fine wine, and filter down into consumer devices.

It's coming soon - it really is!

It's not Musk's fault if you have been unable to popularize your hundreds of grade school designs.
There are differences between vactrains & Hyperloop, which you can read about on various sites.
Here's one: http://www.gizmag.com/hyperloo...

Proper credit for reduced pressure transport or vactrains should go to rocket genius Robert Goddard who, like Musk, dreamed of going to Mars.

One of the problems with traditional street lights is they take a while to warm up. If street lights are replaced with LED based ones, would having them fitted with movement sensors be practical, such that they only stay on while they sense movement and then after that either dim down or turn off?

There is certainly research going into this: http://www.gizmag.com/motion-s...

I would be curious whether there are any off the shelf solutions, for retrofitting existing light sockets? This would be useful for apartment buildings and court yards, such that they don't need a complete overhaul.

About that... http://www.gizmag.com/syntheti...
Also, what makes you think that that larger objects do not experience a "cosmic wind" of ionized particles while they travel through space like our plant does and other larger magnetic fields?

Scientific discourse has become religious indoctrination these days. Any time someone poses an alternate idea of how something could work they get shouted out of the conversation, their career ruined, and the idea is never even considered, much less tested.

Load up a bunch on a truck and then use smaller vehicles to transport them out to the various sites. If they were built at different sizes, perhaps for a size for an EV freight-hauling vehicle, then those would likely be larger generators and maybe could handle powering a small store, a nursing home, etc... That might be a good bonus.

If you're 'loading them up on a trailer' to take to an emergency site, you're better off just taking cage-style generators. The stores, nursing homes, and such should already have them. It's one of the reasons I'm against anti-gouging laws. If a store spends the money to have generation systems so it can stay in business even with the power outage, it should be able to raise it's prices to cover the generators*, overtime/hazard pay for employees, etc...

I expect it to be expensive (even if artificially and no I do not suspect the market to correct it with any great speed) and something that is not included on lower-end models.

It's about a $3k option. So no, it's not going to be on the cheapest trailers, but it's not 'that' expensive. Especially if U-haul figures out that it saves them money.

Then you get systems like the ford auto-backup. Which IS a vehicle mounted option.

Also, these are people traveling. They are not just people moving. Comparing them to a rental such as U-Haul is intellectually deceiving if not intellectually dishonest.

I'm not comparing people traveling to U-Haul. I'm saying that I see the most common trailer case to be that the trailer is rented, the car is owned, because the people are using the trailer for 1-2% of their driving needs, and don't need the trailer around taking up space and still requiring maintenance when they don't need it.

If they're such an edge case like you, that they'd more or less constantly have the trailer on their vehicle, it's time to ditch the trailer and just buy a hybrid in the first place. Do not mistake me for a 'single solution' type of person, though I will get into the 'weeds' when concentrating on a single topic. Once you remove the people who never go that far(I used to drive from ND to NE to visit my parents. Now that the trip would be from AK to FL, I fly), those that do it relaxed enough that supercharger stations would keep up with them(my parents), those that do it constantly enough that they just buy a hybrid in the first place, etc... There's not a lot of trailers left.

This does not discount the idea of a trailer, it is simply another line of thinking that I have been mulling over since first pondering the trailer idea.

I pondered it myself, but kept hitting a wall at the steering issue. Except for backing, a trailer changing steering less than hanging the weight off the vehicle. Plus, I got 600 pounds by looking up the weight of a 22kW generator. Add in fuel, wiring, etc...

So you're looking at needing a way to lift said attachment to place onto the vehicle - which would not be easy, and moving it around without wheels is a pain. I can move my much larger trailer by hand if necessary when it's unloaded, 600 pounds on wheels is relatively easy.

Some early hybrid designs were to feature a removable motor/secondary battery/storage area, but you run into weight/storage issues there - do you want a motor taking up your trunk space when you're going on a long trip?

As for an example trailer consider this article about one in development. 22kW - right on the money! Barely visible out the rear-view mirror, but yes, wider than I expected.

*which, even discounting purchase costs, fuel costs for the electricity to run the store are going to be substantially higher during the outage.

If they can stay up for 80 hours, they should be able to do a "round-the-world" flight too.

It's going to take several days to fly from Japan to Hawaii. In the process he's beaten the record for longest solo flight ever.

P.S. Are you 12?

Are you asshole? Or do you just play one on the internet?

It's a single person aircraft, travelling at an average speed of 50 to 100 km/h (31 to 62 mph).

Yes, it's not a continuous flight. But it will, nonetheless, be the first time a solar powered aircraft will do it, and every leg is pretty much an epic task.

It's still circumnavigation.

So, boo hoo, you disagree with the terminology. Nobody else gives a damn.

Drones with weapons aren't autonomous.

While not drones per se, there are ground based weapons systems that are capable of automatically engaging human targets. Whether they are deployed in this configuration is probably something that the users aren't advertising.

As to the training, glad we agree.
As to the weapon... you can come up with reasons why people shouldn't have ice cream or reasons why alternating tuesdays should have people standing out side balancing on their hands. Coming up with reasons for things doesn't mean they're good reasons.

In your case, you're saying having a weapons there might create problems. Sure. Giving your passangers sodas can cause problems too. the issue is do they actually matter?

Yeah; I agree with this too. It's all a measure of calculated risk. And yes, the question is: is the risk worth taking?

First, you have the gun be controlled by the pilot when he boards and debarks. The gun does not stay on the plane. It goes with the pilot.

Second, as the to the TSA regs being useless if the pilot can bring a gun through... bullshit. The pilot would have dispensation to do that and you the passanger would not. Air marshals take guns through the TSA lines on to those planes. Or at least I dont' think anyone would really argue the TSA was useless if they flashed their badge and did it.

I think you missed my point here, although the "goes with the pilot" is a good clarification. What I'm saying is that unlike air marshals who are anonymous, pilots carrying guns makes them a target, as everyone knows they're carrying a gun. This means that any attacker can leave their gun at home, and get one off the pilot after they've gone through security. It doesn't even have to be the pilot for the plane they're boarding, as long as they incapacitate the victim pilot for long enough that their plane can get in the air.

Third, as to the pilot focusing on the plane and not on the gun. The issue is that the pilot could hurt people on the plane if he jukes the plane all over the place. Lets say there is someone at the door and they some how snuck a pocket blow torch onto the plane. What are you going to do? Juke around? Good luck with that especially if they just hold on back there. You have to keep in mind that in tight spaces you're not that vulnerable to being shook up because you're not going very far in any direction. YOu can wedge yourself into that entry way and just work on the door.

Now what? I'm saying... give the pilot something say "here's Johnny!" to the would be hijacker.

You're worried about the bullets going through the plane and hurting people... again... subsonic rounds are not going to do that. I suggested subsonic rounds. They have less powder in them, the don't go as fast.

If this bothers you... let me suggest at the very least, a taser. A good one. Something you could make the guy really ride the lightning with... is that acceptable? I want some sort of stand off supremacy weapon that a pilot could use to stop an attacker cold.

I think I already covered this one. The pilot can depressurize the cabin. Doing so would not only deprive the attacker of oxygen, it would also deprive the blow torch of oxygen. No need for a gun where the shots could cause more damage. Subsonic rounds are great, but if they hit the wrong person, they're still going to do damage -- and subsonic rounds can actually do MORE damage in some cases, as instead of a clean puncture, they can cause greater internal damage.

Your taser suggestion is actually really good -- Tasers are great for close quarters, and are usually a one-use weapon, which means that the attacker can't then take the taser and turn it on someone else.

This is a weapon that will also be of less use if taken off a pilot who has gone through security but not yet boarded. Good idea all around :)

Another idea I was thinking about was outfitting pilots and cabin crew with these: http://www.gizmag.com/go/2357/ -- 80,000 volts when armed should be enough to deter most attackers.

There is a more detailed article on gizmag:
http://www.gizmag.com/horizon-energy-systems-hycopter-fuel-cell-drone/37585/

They mention that the hydrogen gas will be compressed at 350 bar and that the image only shows a display model, as they are not yet finished with a functional prototype.

It would be a wonderful opportunity to send one up, to see if it actually generates thrust without fuel (in a relatively gravity free environment where it would be most useful).

http://www.gizmag.com/cannae-r...

Although that's a lot of trouble to test the Cannae Drive: just suspend it from a rope, throw the current to it, and see if it deflects from the vertical. (A simple antigravity drive test suggested half a century ago by some well-known science fiction writer.)

In this latest test, which was the first against a maritime target, the disabling of a military-grade boat by puncturing its multiple-layer rubber hull required a sustained laser burst for 30 seconds. It demonstrated the ability of the ADAM system to lock on to a single point of a weaving, bobbing target at a distance of approximately 1.6 km (1 mi) with super-accuracy for sustained periods of time.

I know there are systems that can do trajectory tracking, and systems that can do laser targeting of slower moving objects from a stationary base, but to keep a beam with the accuracy required on a particular spot of the target, from a moving base, to object without a straight trajectory, seems to be something a bit more challenging. You don't have to be very accurate for a missile target.

This Sheerwind Invelox sets off my BS meter as well. The Venturi effect (a special case of the Bernoulli principle) won't magically let you harvest more energy then what was already in the airflow. In a Venturi device, flow velocity increases temporarily in exchange for a pressure drop (to less than atmospheric pressuee). Downstream, the velocity lowers and the kinetic energy exchanged back into pressure, reaching atmospheric pressure. If you were able to harvest the kinetic energy, you would end up with a slow gas velocity and still subatmospheric pressure, which wouldn't be able to flow back into the atmosphere.

This is also worth reading: http://www.gizmag.com/dodgy-wi...

Look you could reduce the pollution from cars to 0 tomorrow and the CO2 emmissions to nothing and you would not put a dent in the CO2 and pollution we produce as humans. Look we can all SEE cars , and diesel trucks and think look at all that stuff it just put in the air. The fact of the matter is one large tanker ship is equal in pollution output as 1 million cars. 1 ship : 1 million cars

the 80's got us looking at the wrong thing and our heads are still stuck looking at the things we can see.

http://www.gizmag.com/shipping...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...

and how does that fit in to this study about how container ships are contributing 260 times the amount of the worlds vehicle fleet I wonder...
http://www.gizmag.com/shipping...

ARES system to put energy storage on the right track.
http://www.gizmag.com/ares-rai...

There you go. Old article but still relevant. Just need to build tracks in your backyard.