Someone I don't know bought me a userhead. So now I can be cowboy_r. How odd... and thanks!

I'm bored, so it's time to examine something. Specifically, let's talk about high-speed rail (HSR). I recently lamented that Saudi Arabia was talking about building HSR between its "holy" cities, Mecca and Medina, while the US has atrocious train service.

In fact, as an example of the atrocious train service in the US, let me mention that, while at Nursing School in Flagstaff, Arizona, I had clinical practicals in Kingman, Arizona, a drive of some two and a half hours. Being ecologically minded, I investigated the possibility of taking AmTrak between Flagstaff and Kingman, which do in fact both lie on the same line of track. I discovered that not only would the cost be approximately three times the cost of driving, the passenger trains only ran at supremely inconvenient times, with only one passenger train in twenty-four hours making the trip in either direction.

According to the Wikipedia entry about High Speed Rail the Japanese high-speed trains, the Shinkansen, travel at speeds of approximately 162 miles per hour. If we were to build HSR capability between Los Angeles and, say, Tucson, and that train moved at the same speed as the listed average for Sinkansen, that would make the trip between Tucson and Los Angeles (485 miles, based on hardly any research whatsoever) a not-quite three hour trip. Certainly faster than driving, though slower than flying... unless you factor in the TSA-mediated delays at the airport.

Let's say we built a maglev HSR instead. Again, according to that Wikipedia article, Maglev trains have an average speed of about 250 miles per hour, making the trip from LA to Tucson not quite two hours... and now we're pushing into the realm of real airplane trip times.

Now here's the kicker... how much would it cost? MARTA, the Metropolitan Atlanta Transit Authority, claims it will cost $200 million per mile to build new heavy track... but LA's Red Line cost a staggering $700 million per mile ($11,000 per inch) to build. Now, I don't know how much of that is because they're building in metropolitan areas, where real estate is more expensive, but that seems like a lot of money to me, and not likely to be made back anytime soon, particularly in an America where people would, by and large, rather drive their own cars than public transportation.

But... what if you could build maglev track for $20 million per mile? A Georgia firm thinks they can. Of course, the fact that that article is two years old, and no one is riding the maglev around Atlanta today argues against the accuracy of their prediction.

But let's say they're right, and the relatively flat stretch between Tucson and LA were the pilot project. That maglev line would cost nearly eight billion dollars... and that's a price tag I don't see people being willing to pay, unless gas gets a lot more expensive, and no alternative fuels really take hold in the American marketplace.

I guess we'll see... but I'm not holding my breath for HSR solutions in America anytime soon.

Damn it.

One of the things bleaknimue and I have been talking a lot about is transportation. As previously mentioned, we're planning to live in my parents' hand-me-down caravan, which has a fifth wheel coupling for trailing it. My parents had a Dodge truck which they used to trail the caravan, but the truck has been sold on.

Initially, bleaknimue and I will simply be parking the caravan in a local caravanserai and living in it, so this should not be too horrendous a problem. Eventually, however, we will want to be mobile, and for that, we will need a way to haul the caravan about. At this point, the two of us have discussed just about everything short of horses... and probably not them only because the size and weight of our caravan would require a prohibitive number of them, besides not having been built for their employment.

We would require a relatively large truck. My parents used a 0.75-ton truck, and my mother says they would have benefited from having a 1-ton truck. I've done some research, and the truck that most appeals to us as a new truck is the GMC Sierra with the bio-diesel compatible engine and the Allison automatic transmission with the enhanced towing thingies. Which truck, depending on options packages, would cost us approximately US$30k-$40k if purchased new.

In the middle of these discussions, Miss bleaknimue and I went to see the movie Real Steel, the which we found fabulous. The main characters of the movie, Charlie and his son Max, spend a great deal of the film in and around their truck, an International Harvester Sightliner. We loved that truck, and started talking about getting one to haul our caravan.

We quickly ran into some things that made us think twice about that, though. For one thing, it seems the Sightliner was only built by IH for a period of four years, and natural attrition means that they'll be very rare. Also, having been in this movie means that those which do still exist will now be desirable and sought-after. Also, once we started thinking about it, I noticed that Charlie Kenton had some difficulty scrambling in and out of the cab at times, and I thought about the fact that we forty-somethings aren't getting any younger....

But we still liked the idea of restoring an old truck, and maybe putting a modern drive train in it. This wouldn't be a daily commuter, but a haul the caravan around truck, so while good gas mileage is a plus, it's not as vital as if we were going to be driving it all the time. We started poking around on the web, and found what I believe to be the perfect goal truck: the White 3000 Cab Over Engine (COE). The oldest I've seen cited for one of these is 1934, and the youngest is 1964... some thirty years of manufacturing, which implies there should still be a few of them out there in junk yards in relatively decent shape.

And, indeed, a web search has found a couple I could purchase today, from US$2k-$5k, depending on year and condition. Now, I don't have that money at the moment, but that's not (I earnestly hope!) a condition which will persist. And it occurs to me that if we got the rolling body, put it in a storage place, and worked on it... maybe putting in a modern, bio-diesel-compatible engine, or a fuel cell, or a hybrid truck engine, or whatever, coupled to an automatic transmission, we could probably have a nice caravan hauler for less than the price of a new truck, while also getting something unique on the road.

And that sounds like fun, to me.

So, my desert-living friends... if you happen to see one of these in a junkyard, let me know please?

Stuff is happening in space. Yay!

I have to wonder if the Great East Japan Earthquake (also known as the Sendai earthquake and the Tōhoku earthquake) and its resultant nuclear disaster at the Fukushima daiichi plant isn't lighting a fire under the Japanese plan to build solar power stations in space.

If it is or isn't, an American company has signed a contract with Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E)to provide space-based solar power at a cost equivalent to terrestrial generation. They say they could be in production as soon as 2016, which seems very ambitious to me, but hey... if they think they can make it, more power to 'em.

In other news, NASA is going ahead with a material return mission to a near-Earth asteroid, and one of the missions the European Space Agency is considering would do the same. (As a vanity note, I notice that the University of Arizona is prominently mentioned in the article. We do a lot of cutting edge space science in Arizona).

And in the United Kingdom, The "Skylon" single-stage-to-orbit craft passed an important design review this week. If the vehicle is successful, it could lower payload costs to orbit substantially, which is one of the things standing in the way of successful development of space resources.

I continue to think that a space elevator is a goal worth pursuing in that direction, and no doubt many attendees of the 2011 Space Elevator Conference agree. Their discussion goal for this year? A 30 mega-Yuri cable.

Of course, Japan has said that they intend to build one... but I can't find any updates since 2009, when they hosted the Space Elevator Conference. It's entirely possible they'll get sidetracked with the clean-up from the earthquake and tsunami.

As it happens, the best place to build a space elevator is on the equator, and the United States owns three islands -- Howland Island, Baker Island and Jarvis Island -- within a degree of the equator. Baker is the closest. All three are wildlife refuges, but the technology certainly exists to build off-shore structures which would serve as down-ports for a space elevator while having minimal impact on the island ecosystems.

Anyone out there in reader land got a google music invite they'd be up for sharing my way?

• Vertical Farms
  
• Seasteading
  
• Space Elevators