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- What Has the US EV Tax Credit Cost?
- The Carboniferous and the Anti-Carboniferous Eras
- Mad Science #6: Nazi Fusion Fraud
- GM Abandons Green Cars, And Blue Staters
- A Heinlein Meme Started the Space Race
- Space Is Not That Big
- MIT On Climate Change
- Is “The Biggest Little Farm” For Real?
- Mad Science #5: Fluorine-Based Rocket Fuels
- “Big Lonely Doug” – An Alien Stranded on Humanity’s Earth
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Author Archives: jlredford
What Has the US EV Tax Credit Cost?
Last month the US EV tax credit expired completely for Tesla. I happened to get my Model 3 lease just under the wire, and actually saved something. The dealership was really busy in the credit’s last few days! The credit … Continue reading
The Carboniferous and the Anti-Carboniferous Eras
Here’s a cool recent discovery – the reason the earth has so much coal is that it took fungi 60 million years to figure out how to digest lignin, the compound that gives wood its strength. Before that the trees … Continue reading
Mad Science #6: Nazi Fusion Fraud
I can’t believe I’ve never come across this story. An actual Nazi scientist, Ronald Richter, was working on an actual super-technology, lithium-hydrogen nuclear fusion, in an actual secret lair, the island of Huemul, surrounded by razor wire, machine guns, and … Continue reading
GM Abandons Green Cars, And Blue Staters
I’ve been a pretty satisfied customer of the Chevy Volt for three years now. It’s a plug-in hybrid, meaning that it will go for about 50 miles on battery power and then switch over to a gas engine. It’s quiet, … Continue reading
A Heinlein Meme Started the Space Race
… according to the excellent Washington Post podcast Moonrise. It’s an account of what led up to the Apollo 11 moon landing, starting with Robert Goddard, John W. Campbell, Sergei Korolev, and Wernher von Braun in the 1920s and 30s, … Continue reading
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Tagged movie-ish, sf-ish, space-ish, tech-culture, tech-history
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Space Is Not That Big
So we just had the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, and there’s renewed interest in doing another landing on the Moon. That got me thinking about space as the final frontier. How much is there out there really? I added … Continue reading
MIT On Climate Change
Every year MIT has a Technology Day on its alumni reunion weekend where faculty discuss what they’re working on. These are consistently interesting, and I’ve written about them before: The Oceans Are Dissolved Information and Print Your House and … Continue reading
