• Digit@lemmy.wtf
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    30 days ago

    Y’know we could have had spaceships each since the 1930s, right?

    Or even just running our cars on seed oils, like hempseed oil, or plant derived ethanol.

    Or even just running our cars on water.

    … If they’d stop killing inventors and stop abusing the patent system to secretize emancipatory technologies.

    • EvilHankVenture@lemmy.world
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      30 days ago

      I believe they crush technologies, but most of the things you mentioned aren’t true. There were no spaceships possible in the 1930s. Why crush that technology when they could have conquered the world with it? It’s not possible to run cars on water. The thermodynamics just doesn’t make sense. We have cars that run on biofuel, but mass-converting vehicles to that would drive up costs of food. Ethanol for fuel already does that by using farmland that could grow food.

      • justme@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        30 days ago

        the last point are just the current status. there are various approaches to solve those issues, which could be explored more.

        one examples that comes to mind is ethanol from algae, which live in salty water. i remember seeing a documentary about it, staying that you could just place them in big tanks in the desert. there they wouldn’t compete with food for land.

        I’m not saying that this example solves everything, just that there could definitely be more research.

    • Starya67@lemmy.world
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      30 days ago

      Bingo. I used to work for Shell. This is exactly what they do. And whenever I tell people I get told I’m a conspiracy theorist.

      • Digit@lemmy.wtf
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        30 days ago

        Heeh! :D I’ve just had effectively the exact same thing, except for advertising. “Mind control does not exist” they said, to the face of one saying they used to be one of those doing it!

    • Digit@lemmy.wtf
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      29 days ago

      A lot of the replies to this, in rough grok analysis of epistemics at play, to be fair, remind me more of those who kept insisting blue LED were impossible, and their arguments remind me more of “we cannot have spaceships because the string doors won’t work in space” type arguments, more than they remind me of industry agents intentionally sowing seeds of ignorance squared. [~ Mild confidence. Generously [amidst some redherrings and moved goalposts etc.].]

      … And fun to think of the contrast of those two examples. They’re [/you’re] almost certainly seeing this with blue LED, and blue LED was sought by industry, did not obsolete their industry, but enhanced the demand for their product, while augmenting the appeal and profit margins and all kinds of other features (~ radically different world where we did not yet get blue led… smart phones wouldn’t have happened, for a start). They’re [you’re] almost certainly not seeing this while sat in their [/your] own spaceship, nor even a water powered car… probably not even a car fuelled with hemp oil or ethanol (~ radically different world where we did not get any of those suppressed… far fewer incentive for resource wars, far greater self empowerment and a better educated and empowered populace, resulting in better democracy from that better informed public, with a better practical grasp of energy, utility, facility, society, health and more, on the road to becoming polymaths in the making (~ rather than single-purpose slaves in training)).

      • Digit@lemmy.wtf
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        30 days ago

        I hope the water thing is /s

        Why do you want that to be sarcasm?

        Wouldn’t you prefer that to be true??

        You hope differently to me.

        Water powered car’s been invented more than just that once with the famous Stanley Meyer story. Y’know those blow torch thingies, that use water? Yeah, same basic principle. And remember in that special episode of Top Gear (I think it was maybe the Myanmar episode), where Hammond put a little water in his engine (in with the fuel) to give it more go at altitude? Same principle as many of the "water powered car"s use, where instead of (afaiu) electromagnetic alignment catalyst, they use chemical catalysts (and other starters and combustants etc), to which some eager naysayers throw the baby out with the bathwater and proclaim it all bunk because those designs were not using pure water. … I’m not sure any use entirely pure water, do they? Didn’t even Stanley Meyers design involve some kind of other chemical in the mix too? I’m not looking into it any further than is popularly known. I don’t want to be mistaken for an inventor, attracting the attention of the ruthless unscrupulous sorts with a lot invested in their rentier ride. ;)

        Amusing aside… can haz steam powered car too. ;) Too contrived to call that water powered? Hehe. Even a Stirling engine?

        • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
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          30 days ago

          I’m assuming they were hoping you don’t actually believe it to be possible, not hoping that it’s impossible.

          As far as I know, there’s no viable way to get water out of energy. All the different hydrocarbons we burn tend to produce water as a result of the burning process (CO2 and H2O being the results of a clean burning hydrocarbon).

          The trouble is, you need energy to break bonds between atoms, and energy gets released as bonds are created. H2O has some pretty strong bonds and there’s nothing you can easily make it react with to get more or stronger bonds in there.

          Water can be used in internal combustion engines to cool down the combustion chambers if you’re running super high performance, but that doesn’t meant water injection is adding energy from water, you’d still be burning more fuel to get more power.

        • sculptor0725@sh.itjust.works
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          30 days ago

          They make cars which run on hydrogen which you can get from water but that process is so inefficient they opt to get the hydrogen from natural gas instead thus defeating the entire purpose. Overall we have better tech now than “running a car on water” and doing that doesn’t help the bigger problem of unsustainable use of energy

        • moopet@sh.itjust.works
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          30 days ago

          The only practical way to get power from water is to break it apart and then burn the hydrogen, and it takes more energy to break it apart than you’ll get back.