Some Thoughts on Making Space More Attractive:

In the 1960s, space was special. People eagerly watched for news about the brave astronauts. Today, much of the news about space is a footnote. People often see no advantage in space exploration. The future of space exploration is flickering and not as bright as it once was.

Why has space lost its luster? The old saying “Familiarity breeds contempt.” probably sums up a large part of it. People have become too accustomed to the almost routine nature of the launches. It was easier to get excited when there were only seven astronauts. Today there are hundreds.

Perhaps we should focus our sites on the benefits we receive and will receive from space.

•  Satellite communication allows almost instantaneous communication around the world.
• Survey satellites allow detailed monitoring of such vital information as air temperature, water temperature, natural resources and weather. Using this data we can evaluate the rate of global climate change and potentially undo any damage we have done.
• The GPS network of satellites allow us to know where we are, what time it is, and how fast we are moving.
• Microgravity experiments on the International Space Station are leading to discoveries about living things and are contributing to the development of new materials and drugs that can’t be made on Earth.
• Helium-3 is found on the moon. This is the key to successful fusion power generation. Fusion power using helium-3 produces little to no radioactive waste and a tremendous amount of power with no carbon dioxide emissions. As such, helium-3 is worth more than any substance known to humankind.
• The proposed opening of space to tourism in 2009 by Virgin Galactic will make space travel available to more than the extremely rich.

The benefits of continued space exploration far outweigh the costs. The researches spawned by this venture help us protect the environment and ultimately may lead to the key to our survival.

Richard Moolick
Global Enviroblog

The nutritious protein provided by seafood can be a delicious part of your meal. Before you eat your seafood, take a moment to ask yourself if it is safe to eat for you and for the environment.

You may ask, “How can I tell if my seafood is environmentally safe?”

One must become aware of how the seafood was caught, where it was caught and what health concerns may exist.

Seafood that is farmed is usually better environmentally than wild seafood. The following examples are farm raised or caught in an environmentally sustainable method:[1]

Many of the other fish are overfished, contaminated by heavy metals, or harvested by means that endanger many species. Many of the species reproduce slowly and are prone to overfishing.

Enjoy seafood, but do your part in protecting the environment. By being aware of where your seafood is obtained and whether it is caught or farmed, you can help to keep the diversity of aquatic life necessary for a healthy ecosystem.

Richard Moolick

Global EnviroBlog

Statistics have shown time and again that telework has the effect of increasing productivity, lowering production costs, eliminating commuting costs and drastically reducing absenteeism. Why, then, are employers so resistant to the concept?

The simple truth is employers think employees won’t do their work if they work from home. And employees feel that their job will be exported to Mumbai, India, if they work from home. It is this mutual distrust that has slowed progress on earning our freedom from foreign oil.

There is a simple solution to this stalemate. If work is based on units of production completed instead of hourly wages, people working from home will be more productive than those working on the time clock. Working from home actually reduces the costs of production while increasing the disposable income of Americans. Companies will realize greater production and lower costs. Employees will gain by saving commuting time and eliminating the ever-rising commuting costs.

As to the other half of the equation, employers need to get away from short-sighted cost accounting and move toward strengthening markets. Many companies have fallen into the cost-accounting trap. Management sees the export of American jobs to overseas locations as a quick way to improve the bottom line. Unfortunately, the companies don’t raise the standard of living in the countries to which they export jobs. The long-term result is a lowering of the buying power of the American workforce, their main market.

Really, companies that export American jobs to countries because they can pay $2.50 per hour instead of $12.00 per hour or more are doing immeasurable harm to the United States of America. The American Dream is being ruthlessly denied to most Americans in order to show a temporary and artificial profit. Even the stockholders of these companies face reduced returns on investment. The CEOs and other top executives of these companies reward themselves with astronomical bonuses and walk away from the problems they create. The problems become somebody else’s problems.

It may take federal and state legislation to restore the American Dream to everyone. I believe American jobs must be protected. We must break the addiction to foreign oil, NOW!

Richard Moolick

Global-EnviroBlog

Call 4 Action

The use of Biofuels to reduce our dependence on foreign oil is being deliberately stalled and blocked by special interest groups. Exxon-Mobil, Texaco, the Western States Petroleum Association, the Engine Manufacturers Association, and the Alliance of Automotive Manufacturers have petitioned effectively to ban the sale of B100 (pure biodiesel) American automobile manufacturers have agreed to void the warrantees on any diesel vehicle that is run on biodiesel.

Let’s take a closer look at biodiesel as a fuel. Biodiesel has been shown to have the following properties:

1.       Biodiesel is not toxic. In fact biodiesel is less toxic than table salt. Petroleum diesel is mildly toxic.

2.       Biodiesel is biodegradable. Biodiesel is broken down and metabolized by soil bacteria faster than sugar. Petroleum diesel is extremely slow to biodegrade. A spill of petroleum diesel takes weeks to decades to break down.

3.       Biodiesel has more energy per gallon than petroleum diesel.

4.       Biodiesel produces forty percent less atmospheric carbon per gallon than petroleum diesel.

5.       Biodiesel lubricates the parts of a diesel engine better than petroleum diesel.

6.       Biodiesel can be made from any vegetable oil or animal fat. Petroleum diesel is made from petroleum, seventy-five percent of which comes from other countries.

7.       Biodiesel has a higher flashpoint than petroleum diesel, making it less explosive.

8.       Biodiesel is significantly cheaper than Petroleum diesel.

With the safety and environmental benefits of biodiesel, why are the above special interest groups trying to block it? The answer to this question is clear when you look at who opposes biodiesel. The widespread use of biodiesel will cut into the record profits of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington, D.C., big oil. Throughout Europe, biodiesel is produced and sold. Automotive manufacturers in Europe have no reservations about the use of biodiesel in their engines.

If you don’t like paying ever higher prices at the pump, or facing the specters of fuel rationing and a vicious and corrupt black market, call or write your Senators, Congressional Representatives and other government officials Federal, State and Local. Demand that biofuels be given a chance to ease the crisis. Big oil should not control the biofuels industry. Biofuels should be emergent from small business, creating new American jobs and restoring energy independence from foreign oil.

Richard Moolick

http://www.Call4Action.info

The way it is: I was very distressed when I learned of the plight of a friend of mine. He complained to his doctor about pain in his extremities. The doctor diagnosed gout. My friend changed his diet eliminating saturated fats and red meat. In fact, he adopted a mostly vegetarian diet. The pain didn’t go away.

Now, I don’t know about you but at this point alarm bells would be going off in my head, especially when the doctor continued to attribute the pain to gout. Gout is caused by uric acid. The reduction of meats and fat that my friend had made should have drastically reduced uric acid production.

A new symptom came to light. The swelling and pain my friend was experiencing in his joints got worse. The doctor said it was nothing to worry about. It was just the gout. Because my friend was on Medicare, the doctor did not run a panel of tests on liver function, kidney function and blood chemistry.

A few weeks later my friend stubbed his toe. It turned black. He rushed to the hospital where doctors were forced to amputate his foot due to an aggressive infection. Tests showed that his kidneys were failing. My friend has been in the hospital for three months.

Why it is this way: Medicare, like so many health insurance programs, is heavily controlled by cost accounting. The first health insurance sector hit by the overwhelming cost accounting influence was the Health Maintenance Organization or HMO. The accountants running HMOs began second-guessing doctors, forcing them to prescribe cheaper medications that were ineffective instead of more costly medications that would cure the situation. To make matters worse, the United States Government has made it impossible to sue HMOs for their wrong doings and drastically reduced benefits for Medicare patients. Additionally, the same cost accountants have reduced coverage and raised premiums at a rate that has left an ever increasing portion of America uninsured or underinsured.

This heavy-handed control of healthcare through cost accounting has created a disparity in health coverage in America. The wealthy can afford the premiums of insurance that provides for quality health care. The middle-class and working poor cannot afford the premiums on insurance plans that provide quality coverage. Employers, in a never-ending search for cost savings have adopted weaker and weaker insurance policies or eliminated them completely.

The way it could be: If a properly formulated universal healthcare insurance system were created by the United States Government, all Americans would receive the same quality healthcare and diagnostic procedures. The wealthy could still buy additional insurance to cover voluntary procedures such as cosmetic surgeries or similar treatments.

If Medicare had not been gutted and universal healthcare insurance was a reality, my friend would have been evaluated with a complete battery of diagnostic tests. The kidney function problems and the factors that caused them would have been caught early enough to begin appropriate medical therapies. My friend would still have his foot!

It doesn’t have to be this way: Contact your Congressional Representatives and Senators (Congressional Email Directory) and tell them to support a fair and equitable universal healthcare insurance program. Insist that all Americans deserve quality healthcare. Write the Presidential candidates and demand universal healthcare.

Richard Moolick

www.call4action.info

On a drive through the Midwest, a familiar aroma announces that a feedlot is nearby. Wouldn’t it be nice if the aroma of a feedlot could be reduced without using a lot of resources to do it?

A biological remediation of this problem can be done so that useful and valuable products are created by the same processes that reduce the odors. In fact the processes I am discussing can make the reduction in odors profitable.

The semi-liquid excrement that cattle in feedlots and cows in dairies deposit is the main source of the odor. Let me describe a system that will effectively turn this odoriferous problem into valuable products.

STAGE 1: Using timed jets of water, the excrement is flushed into a sump where it is pumped into a large anaerobic fermenter. The methanogenic bacteria naturally occurring in the manure ferment the manure, producing methane.

STAGE 2: The methane produced in the first stage is fed, as fuel, into either a boiler or a gas turbine. The steam from the boiler and the torque from the gas turbine spin a generator. The resulting electricity is usually more than enough to handle the energy needs of the dairy or feedlot with power to spare.

STAGE 3: The sludge that sinks to the bottom of the fermenter can be used as fertilizer or as a biomass fuel that can be burned for additional energy. The anaerobic fermentation destroys the bacteria that produce the strong odors in manure, leaving the fertilizer less odoriferous.

Figure 1 shows a simplified layout of this process. The use of this system to handle the solid waste generated by the cattle accomplishes several things. First, it helps to significantly reduce the odors of the feedlot. Second, it generates enough energy to supply the entire feedlot. And, third, the biomass produced in the process can be used as a reduced odor fertilizer or burned in a boiler to produce more energy.

It is easy to see how this process has the potential of paying for itself in a relatively short period. I would love to consult with any such facility that chooses to employ this biological solution to their challenges.

Richard T. Moolick

Chemical Engineer

We’ve seen the ads on television and heard the ads on radio recommending the use of CFLs (Coiled Fluorescent Lights) instead of incandescent bulbs. While it is true that CFLs use less power and usually last longer than incandescent bulbs, it is not as green as it sounds.

A 60W incandescent bulb puts out about 800 lumens and uses about 216kWh for each hour it is on and lasts an average of 1,000 hours. A comparable 15W CFL puts out about 800 lumens and uses about 54kWh for each hour it is on and lasts an average of 5,000 to 10,000 hours. Switching to CFLs, therefore, would appear to save 162kWh for each hour of use. So why then am I not convinced that CFLs are the best energy-saving replacements for incandescent bulbs?

The light emitting diode is another alternative. Light bulb-sized LED arrays producing about 800 lumens use about 12W or around 43kWh for each hour of operation and lasts an average of 60,000 hours. This amounts to a savings of 173kWh over incandescent or 11kWh per hour over CFLs. So why should we spend the extra money up front (LEDs cost about 10 time as much as CFLs.) for LEDs when we get almost the same economy with CFLs?

The reason is in how they work. An incandescent light works by running current through a filament in a sealed argon bulb. The resistance of the filament to the flow of electricity causes the filament to heat up and glow. A fluorescent light works by ionizing a small amount of mercury vapor so that it emits ultraviolet light. A phosphor coating on the inside of the tube glows in response to the UV light. An LED electrically stimulates molecules in the solid state chip to high energy levels. As the molecules drop back to their normal state, light is emitted.

LEDs make more sense to use than CFLs due to the fact that a “burned out” CFL is hazardous waste and must be disposed of as hazardous waste. Throwing CFLs in the trash can ultimately lead to contaminating ground water with mercury, a potentially deadly toxic metal. LEDs don’t contain such toxic residues.

Richard T. Moolick

The United States is facing a major crisis that threatens its freedoms and its future. The runaway prices of petroleum fuels are causing great damage to the American Dream. Many Americans have felt the onset of this destructive influence. This is a crisis with real consequences and real solutions. Let’s examine the possible solutions and methods by which we can reduce the impacts of our addiction to petroleum.

The effects of the rapidly rising fuel costs are many. Increased fuel costs have raised food prices, electric rates, transportation costs and more. Virtually every price in every sector has increased due to energy costs with the possible exception of housing costs. Speculation by real estate investors artificially drove the values of housing up. Homeowners began refinancing their homes to make improvements and to offset the rapidly increasing energy costs. Unfortunately, the proliferation of sub-prime variable rate loans set many of these homeowners up for a fall. The Federal Reserve in an attempt to curb what they interpreted as inflation due to excess cash flow, raised the interest rates; precipitating a massive increase in foreclosures and a rapid drop in housing prices. The real cause of the inflation was energy costs.

Every day, the price of fuel goes up. It doesn’t have to. Here is my suggested plan to slow the rise in petroleum prices and to restore some confidence in the future of America.

Step 1:  The first step in the plan is to reduce fuel consumption in the most cost-effective manner possible. A very large portion of the population work in a number of jobs that can be performed effectively anywhere. These jobs include data entry, word processing, telephone-based services, and computer-based services. Many Americans commute daily to call centers and other offices where they spend the day talking to customers on the telephone and/or communicating via computer. Others commute to offices to enter information into computers, troubleshoot problems in software, or create using computers. These people can effectively do their jobs from anywhere, even from home.

Even though research and actual experience has shown that, on the average, productivity goes up and personal and corporate costs go down, management is usually reluctant to consider allowing workers to telecommute. The time has come for the government to mandate that any job that can be done through telecommuting must be done through telecommuting. This move would save the employees a bundle of time and money in reduced commutes and would dramatically improve the bottom line for employers. Most important, it would take a huge number of cars off the road, reducing petroleum demand by billions of dollars a year. Best of all, it can be done today!

It is far more effective for the governments to force employers to send employees home to work than to impose gas rationing stimulating, in turn, a black market economy as it did during World War II.

Step 2:  The United States must significantly move away from using fossil fuels for transportation. The vast majority of vehicles on the road run exclusively on gasoline or diesel. This doesn’t have to be so. The internal combustion engine used for gasoline-powered automobiles can, with only very simple adjustments, be run on pure ethanol. Henry Ford designed the Model T to run on ethanol and stated that ethanol should be the fuel of choice because you can make it out of almost anything. In 1925 he said, “The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like that sumac out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust — almost anything. There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There’s enough alcohol in one year’s yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years.”

Much of the bulk movement of goods around the country depends heavily on diesel. Vast freight trains pulled by diesel-electric locomotives cross the country daily carrying millions of tons of goods. Diesel-powered semis haul most of the rest. It is not surprising that the diesel engine is used due to its efficiency. Otto Diesel designed the engine to be efficient and to be able to run on a variety of fuels. “At the Paris Exhibition in 1900 there was shown by the Otto Company a small Diesel engine, which, at the request of the French Government, ran on Arachide (earth-nut or pea-nut) oil, and worked so smoothly that only very few people were aware of it.”

In a very short time, virtually all diesel engines in the United States could be completely independent of petroleum. Biodiesel, a monoester (mono-ester) of a fatty acid and an ethanol, can be used directly or in any mixture with petroleum diesel in any diesel engine, without modification. Biodiesel can be made from any fat such as the oils in grains, vegetables and even weeds. It can be extracted from algae, fish, insects, and any animal. The process of converting used cooking oil into high quality biodiesel fuel is similar to the age-old process for making soap. The biggest drawbacks to the use of biodiesel are the opposition by oil companies to any energy they can’t directly control and the decision by many car companies to void the warrantees on any diesel car using biodiesel.

The government must stimulate the growth of small, independent manufacturers of biodiesel, research into economically attractive sources of the raw materials for making biodiesel and the wide distribution of biodiesel across the United States. One dairy that I know of, XL Dairy Group, Inc. of Vicksburg, Arizona, is taking the corn for the cattle feed and splitting it into starches, oils and proteins. The starches are fermented to make ethanol; the oils are made into biodiesel; and the proteins are fed to the cattle. The whole operation is run by the methane gas from fermenting the manure.

The use of hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered vehicles is another option. Two companies have demonstrated the practicality of running such a vehicle using their technologies for generating hydrogen on demand from water. This type of innovation must be encouraged and new more efficient vehicles can be introduced very rapidly.

Step 3: Research and efforts must be stepped up to move more and more of our energy needs away from fossil fuels. These efforts should include:

1.       Stronger tax credits or other incentives for energy improvements such as solar power, wind power, energy efficient construction techniques or other energy saving changes.

2.       Strong governmental intervention on the exporting of American jobs.(The movement of American jobs overseas has resulted in longer commutes at lower pay for many Americans)

3.       Research into energy generation systems that are more efficient and potentially cost effective.

4.       The implementations of highly effective recycle programs.

In conclusion, the future can be what we make of it. We can take action now to have a bright future or we can sit back and watch our future crumble into a bleak and unrecoverable series of shortages.

Richard T. Moolick

The technology exists today for America to wean itself off foreign oil. There are multiple processes and technologies that don’t use petroleum. Let’s take a look at these technologies and how they can be used to reduce our addiction to foreign oil, today.

Biodiesel is one technology that we can use immediately. I know, you’ve heard how using biodiesel will cause food shortages. Biodiesel doesn’t have to be made from corn. It can be made easily from algae or many other crops that have limited value as food. Diesel engines can run on biodiesel without conversion. Currently, most biodiesel is made from soybeans or corn. A small amount of biodiesel is made from used vegetable oil. Making biodiesel is almost as simple as making soap. And as a fuel, biodiesel is non-toxic and biodegradable.

A third readily available escape from petroleum is the use of hydrogen. The excuse we all hear is that hydrogen refill stations aren’t generally available. There is a way around this dilemma. Two companies I know of exist that have technologies that would let a person with a hydrogen fuel cell car fill up almost anywhere. Ecotality Inc.  and AlGalCo LLC have developed systems that convert water into hydrogen on demand. If these technologies are combined with the Hypercar® technology of Fiberforge and the high output lithium ion batteries being developed by Mitsubishi for its EV program, a car could be produced that has no carbon footprint, can be refueled anywhere, can travel large distances and can be as responsive as a high performance car.

Next time you face the skyrocketing prices at the gas pump, keep in mind that there are ways to enjoy a love of driving without being the victim of astronomical gas prices. Tell your local, state and national lawmakers to help move this country away from foreign oil.

Richard T. Moolick

References:

http://ecotality.com/technologies/hydrality.php

http://news.uns.purdue.edu/x/2007a/070515WoodallHydrogen.html

http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid191.php

http://www.fiberforge.com/index.html

http://www.mitsubishi-motors.com/corporate/about_us/technology/review/e/pdf/2003/15E_10.pdf

With global warming, the rising cost of gasoline and the long commutes to work, a solution exists that can help with all three problems and reduce costs for employees and employers alike. An ever-increasing portion of America’s workforce are employed in jobs that involve pushing “electronic paper” or working exclusively through the computer and/or the telephone. These people could conceivably perform their jobs almost completely by telework. If this were to happen, numerous benefits could be realized immediately or nearly so. The amount of excess carbon dioxide dumped into the atmosphere over the United States would drop sharply. These employees would save a significant amount of money per year off their transportation costs. Employers would see a drop in absenteeism, on-the-job accidents and could reduce the overhead costs of maintaining a large central complex. The congestion on the roads and highways would be significantly reduced. Telework is a win-win situation. Let’s take a look at global warming. While it is true that telework increases energy consumption in the home, the increase is minuscule when compared with the energy consumed commuting to the office.  As reported in PC World on October 4, 2007, the Consumer Electronics Association issued  the results of a survey showing that “there are 3.9 million people in the U.S. who work from home at least one day a week. By avoiding an average 22-mile commute to the place of work, and taking into account the increased power use in the home, this practice saves about 840 million (U.S.) gallons of petrol, equivalent to taking two million cars off the road for a year.”¹ “The Washington-based Employment Policy Foundation reports that 65% of current jobs are amenable to telework.”² If 25% of America’s workforce teleworked at lease three times per week, the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions could be as high as 3.3Tg CO₂ (3.6 billion tons CO₂) per year based on figures from the U.S. EPA’s Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990 – 2005.³ This would be equivalent to a savings of almost 26 billion gallons of gasoline or about $67 billion per year.  

 As can be seen, the workers, companies and governments have little to lose and potentially tremendous gains if every worker who can telework does so the majority of the time. References: 1.      http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/138062/telecommuting_saves_carbon_emissions.html2.      http://www.allbusiness.com/human-resources/employee-development/848230-1.html3.      http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/downloads06/07CR.pdf