A "petroleum free" military

I commented before how the US Military has been a good indicator of where our society in general is headed. I used the racial integration and the enlisting of women, both of which preceded the Civil Rights Act, as examples. I forgot one more: they recognize Wicca as an official religion.

The military doesn't want to deal with bullshit. They deal with tons of it anyway, most of it self-generated, but they'd rather avoid it. So if you want to call yourself a witch, they could give a fuck as long as you man the 50 cal when called upon. And despite the don't-ask-don't-tell policy, the vast majority of military folks I've encountered say they know damn well who's gay and who isn't and most of them don't care. "I don't care where you stick your willie as long as you do your job" I believe is the quote I heard.

So anyway, it should please us all to see that DARPA, sweet blessed DARPA, the giver of the internet and duct tape, is pushing for a petroleum free military. It seems transporting all that gas around and carrying a big jug of explosive liquid inside vehicles that are getting shot at is a safety issue, not to mention an expense issue.

Unfortunately this doesn't necessarily mean the environment is going to get lucky. They want to do a couple things like rely on wireless information networks rather than send patrols, which would cut down on gas consumption. But mostly they just want to switch to electric powered vehicles so they can eliminate the need for tankers. And as we all know, that just displaces the pollution.

My main man Tesla comes into play again here as well as they want to use his wireless power transfer ideas to power drones. It's already been proven to work, using lasers. Boeing made a tiny lunar rover that could be powered from Earth with a laser. Cool!

We still need to generate electricity without using fossil fuels in order to go green, but I take these as positive steps. Anything which proves the feasibility of vehicles that don't run on gas is good. And the US Military is a huge lobbying force. If GM/Ford/Chrysler/etc start developing power trains designed around non-gas vehicles, it's easy to port that knowledge to civilian cars.

It's funny isn't it, how the greens and the military could be powerful partners? What a great idea. The greens would get credibility from the red staters, and the military would get respect for leading the way on green cars. Politics always makes for strange bedfellows.

Here's an interesting related tidbit:

The outsize ambitions of power beaming advocates may be one reason that investment in such research has not been steady. From powering a lunar base to providing energy for an ion-engine spacecraft to creating a wireless power grid in the sky, no project has been too mammoth to contemplate.

In the late 1970's, and again in the late 90's, NASA took a look at building a series of satellites that would collect solar power and beam it down to earth. But while ''the science is relatively easy'' for such a project, said John Mankins, the chief technologist for NASA's space flight division, ''the engineering is really, really hard, orders and orders bigger and more challenging than anything anyone's done before.''

So was Apollo NASA, so was Apollo.

That's not to rag on NASA. They have to do what the government wants them to do. If congress doesn't approve the funds for a solar satellite array, it doesn't get built. Which is why I am a huge fan of the nascent private space industry. It'll free up funds.

I'm not talking about when Russia sends some billionaire to the ISS, though I'm for that and it helps raise awareness. I'm talking about Space Ship One. NASA should concentrate on the particulars of science experiments and missions to the Moon and Mars. "Outsource" launching things into orbit to the private industry. They'll get it done faster and cheaper. Spend the saved money on that solar satellite array. Please.

Let's just say that if you care about the environment, safety, and money, launching humans into space on the top of archaic solid fuel spears isn't the best way to go. It works, sure. But it's more or less just slapping people where the nuclear warhead used to be on top of a modified ICBM. It's the maritime equivalent of rotating troops into Iraq on triremes.

Lookout! Greek fire!