Tuesday, June 27, 2006

The sentient beings of Proxima Centauri are laughing at us

In their Hydrogen powered 'lighter than air' aircraft while we here start to worry about
Aircraft Emmissions of the CO2 sort. We are constantly thinking of ways to use Hydrogen on the ground, but still have the taboo against Hydrogen power+levitation of the air. This is singularly attributable to the Hindenberg. Similarly, Hydro power is also taboo at least for green groups that spent decades fighting against them. What green group would suddenly turn araound and say, gee.. if we consider the carbon credits, maybe Gordon-Franklin wasn't such a bad idea! If the first hydrogen powered bus crashed and burst into flames, would we never consider hydrogen power for road vehicles again?

3 comments:

Jenny said...

I think if the ground based vehicle burst into flames, we'd be indifferent. 100 years of being exposed to many many fatal car crashes, including flaming ones, while personally using vehicles constantly has ensured that deep within our minds, we consider this "the cost of doing business and it won't happen to us".

We fly less often however and the Hindenburg happened early the era of flying, so the 'cost of doing business' attitude had not sunk into our cultural psyche. Numbers in planes tend to be higher in one batch too, and no-one thinks they'll be able to survive a plane crash (possibly because they happen at such high speeds), where most people think if there is a car crash, even if there are flames, they may be in good enough nick to bash out a window and stagger away.

Anonymous said...

No, we have made our own mistakes and would not mock you puny earthlings. When Proximans first discovered what you call 'electricity' we decided it was far too dangerous and banned its use for tens of thousands of your years.

Jenny said...

here you go...the beginning

http://www.horizonfuelcell.com/buynow.php