Pilot's Log

I saw on Motorweek that Shell is adding compressed natural gas to its fuel offerings. So if I converted Moonshine to run on CNG, I wouldn't need to get a new credit card to pay for refills.

Must ruminate upon the plan. Need more technical information.

Over the weekend was the drawing for a sweepstakes I had entered online (and of course, did not win)...it was from Ford Racing and the prize was a 7-liter V8 race car engine of the latest version.

I had no ready use for such a thing, but it was fun to brainstorm possibilities. What WOULD I do with such an engine? Did I have a tasty recipie for the Secret Ingredient?

Upgrading an existing vehicle is the most basic idea, of course. Mustang, T-Bird, Taurus, Crown Vic, Pickup, Lincoln Mark #, Cougar, whatevs. Sure. Plenty of project cars to be had. Heck, that Mach 1 across the street is still theoretically available.

Early Thirties "rat rod"? I know a local shop that can build one in their sleep.

Replica Cobra roadster or Shelby Mustang? That's practically a cliché for current kit cars. Repro bodies-in-white for Sixties Mustangs are almost a phone call away.

Spec racer? Late model? Road-legal NASCAR stocker? I know where to look for those too.

So where did I wind up going on my train of thought? GTs. Ford had two from my lifetime that I was interested in: the GT70 and the Mustang GTP. The former was a possible follow-on to the GT40 that Ford developed at the end of the Sixties but never put on the track. The latter was run in IMSA in the early 1980s...but never built with a V8 engine, although Roush Racing wanted to build such a machine. A replica of something that never was? A rewrite of motorsports history? Could I have gotten away with it?

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If I use two packets of instant oatmeal at a time, it only uses one cup of boiling water, not a cup and a third like it says in the instructions.

I bet David Willis is yelling, "Damn You, Justin Pierce!"

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My father was Peter Parker a few times so the one end of the argument has its merits. I have never gotten into Green Lantern so I don't know of anything that entails. One superpower that is really seductive to me is the one that Walky had in It's Walky...he could take control of extraterrestrial technology with his mind whenever he came in contact with it. Flying saucers, killer robots, machines of mass destruction, death rays, reincarnation tanks--all obeyed Walky when he put his mind to it.

And yes, I would love to have that power. Besides, who can argue that I don't have it NOW? I haven't encountered any extraterrestrial technology myself yet...

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In a number of ways I think I already am invisible.

Nothing like going back to an old theme to see if it has anything I hadn't discovered the first (or second, or third) time.

In this Previous Commentary I did a look through of the 1981 Book of Predictions to see where we had been in the turn of the 21st Century as opposed to how things looked to happen back then.

Today I found the library's copy to look at predictions for 2010. What I saw in those pages:

* Nationalist "identities" being eroded by the emerging globalized culture. The cyberati/globalati find new ways to define themselves beyond where they live or local social class (or political affiliation).
* Terrorists obtain a nuclear warhead and use it on a major city. The death toll is in the millions and it prompts a global ban on weapons of mass destruction.
* Fusion energy becomes safe and reliable enough for companies to build large-scale fusion powerplants. The order of magnitude of the grid's capacity must be raised by a factor of twenty to thirty to make full use of the advance.
* Artificial Intelligence technology finds its "killer application" and is advanced to the point where AI systems frequently pass Turing Tests.
* The first segment of the first long-term space habitat is launched into orbit. Suborbital spaceflights become available for wealthy space tourists.
* Regional Economic Unions between Third-World nations proliferate as they are seen as a way out of the "continental poverty cycle". Dozens of national currencies get phased out world-wide in favor of regional ones. Where regions come together, some nations adopt two or more as official currencies as a way to reinforce global trading through their territory.
* The Kingdom of Jordan and the Palestinian Authority are merged as the end result of a constitutional crisis in Jordan. The new nation is ceded land from Saudi Arabia and southern Iraq, and this makes a political solution with the State of Israel possible.
* "Superstructures"--massive truss-like building systems--will become the next trend in urban construction.

While there is a lot more in the book, I think more than half of it is "obsolete" because it was either predicted to happen in the years between publication and 2000, or has come to pass/been disproven by events of recent history. And much of the other material is too trivial or silly to bother with.

Just the same, I think I'm having a craving for Convenience Store Pie about now.

FP

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In the book "The Future of Flight", which was written at about the time I left High School, the writers Ing and Myrabo included designs of aircraft that could use laser light to generate thrust, giving them the capability of flying anywhere in the atmosphere, at nearly any airspeed--from hovering off the surface to orbit velocity. A single-stage to orbit vehicle has always been a dream of aerospace engineers--especially an efficient one that didn't need such a huge fuel tank. (And yes, a nice jetpack is possible from the technology...but remember, you'd still have to be pretty physically fit to use one!)

Now, the ideal machine? A flying ship, big enough to live in, with all the comforts of home and the massive operational envelope above. Capable of going everywhere worth going to. And not having to want of anything when you're there. That's the way to travel!

Till then, Moonshine (my Chevy Prizm) will have to do.

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C'mon! What is my LJ handle? No brainer!