Zimbabwe railways steam ahead

Zim Online ^ | 24 July 2004

[Clive]

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[U S Army EOD]

By the way, the Germans are developing new coal fired steam engines using todays technology. The results look good so far.

[RightWhale]

Air Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe makes huge strides in steam powered passenger airplanes.

[Ukiapah Heep]

Zimbabwe Railways - Speeding Zimbabwe into the '50's.

[mneville]

Zimbabwe's NASA

Additionally, Zimbabwe has on the drawing board designs for the worlds first steam powered rocket to be used to send Zimbabwe's first astronaut into space. More on this as it develops.

[RightWhale]

Coal is generally underrated. Dept of Energy has done substantial research into coal power plants with excellent results. There ought to be no difference between oil and coal as BTU sources except that coal needs more technology, that's all.

[RightWhale]

Checkout the Boeing Delta launcher. Steam powered and smooth as silk.

[cyborg]

better than ME oil

[mneville]

LOL

[boycottliberalhollywood.com]

Assistance from the Chinese government...

I'm sure the Chinese stole their Steam Technology secrets from us.

[RightWhale]

Coal is more expensive once technology is added to the total cost--oil combustion is relatively simple. But as to ME oil, the cost of regional security ought to be added to the extraction and shipping cost normally. If security is added to imported oil, local coal might turn out to be cheaper.

[cyborg]

Zimbabwe has lots of coal. Necessity is the mother of invention. Last thing they need is getting involved with muslim dominated oil, when it appears the Chinese are moving in.

[RightWhale]

There is a lot of coal on the planet. While we are already at Peak Oil or past, Peak Coal is 50 years off. There is also Peak Natural Gas which is still a few years off. In any case the cost of energy is increasing, even coal has doubled in the past couple of decades.

The cost of extraction of an energy resource can be calculated in units of energy required to extract the resource.

An example is carloads of coal extracted by using one carload of coal. 100 years ago one carload of coal would extract 100 carloads. Now one carload will extract 40 carloads. It shoud be evident that something is running down.

[cyborg]

There's more open space in Zimbabwe for solar panelling. I'm not a fan of wind turbines, but the sun is free :)

[RightWhale]

Look at the cost of solar the same way--the units of energy required to extract a unit of sunshine.

Think of a resource as something useful that can be extracted at less cost than it is worth. It is a good definition of resources.

Solar panels require energy to be made, and they have to be maintained and have a lifetime. Solar is much more expensive than coal or oil right now. Eventually oil and then coal will rise in cost to the level of solar, and probably solar will become somewhat cheaper although it has remained at the same cost for a decade now.

When solar is competitive with oil and coal, energy will have become so expensive that the rest of the industrial economy will be in trouble.

[cyborg]

You're right about the cost of producing the panels. All good points for me to think about.

[Bogey78O]

The 1850s.

[RightWhale]

In the class called Engineering Management or Engineering Economics, probably an upper level course, they go into cost of engineering projects, project lifetime, useful real-life considerations that engineers need to know about to be effective project managers. It is one thing to design a power plant or a locomotive, quite another to design and build something affordable that can be operated economically over a 20 year lifetime. The engineer, after all, has to interface with reality.

[Nowhere Man]

Maybe they will run their scheduling system and track monitoring on their huge, steam powered "Babbage Engine" as it clacks away. B-)

A huge "Steampunk" bump!!!