Atlas City Project

I came across this interesting article today about vertical farming design for algae. This can be used as a food supply or bio mass fuel.

www.tuvie.com/eco-pods-architectural-design-with-robotic-arms/

i am just curious what the comparison between bio-diesel and electric/hydrogen is for efficiency, cleanliness, and scalability.

That would be a good thing to look into. I definitely can't say off the top of my head and most of what you hear is just trash talk from the competitors. I'll see what I can dig up, if I don't forget . The general consensus is biodiesel gives off more carbon and doesn't work in cold weather well (same with current diesel), fuel cells are costly to make and fill (lack of fueling stations) and dangerous in crashes.

we can just use compressed air cars
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_car

very environmentally friendly

I posted this on the vehicle section a while back.
theaircar.com was the old site and seems to now be
www.mdi.lu/english/. You can also find more info at
www.popularmechanics.com/cars/news/preview-concept/4251491

It's a great vehicle, but manufacturers have been holding them back for a few years now due to it. It would be perfect for Atlas, they are just expensive because they are made completely of light weight aluminum. They can't carry much weight though so electric would be a better alternative for hauling and medical I think.

This looks amazing. If only from the visualisations.

The pods look very scalable. I prefer this design much more than the other vertical farms.
Mainly because a Pod can be mass produced.
The dead load of each pod as you go more vertical of course means the pods have to be stronger OR they all must be supported on a super structure make of steel. The super structure can be very cheap though.

The idea of Ai based arms doing the pick and placement is interesting.
Reminds me of how the semi conductor industry works and so i see much possibility here.
www.flickr.com/photos/amagill/3449765030/

The robotic arms need tags to drive their movement logic. The vision based computing has come along way though. is possible to use genetic logic to allow them to see what plants are ready to be pulled and what pods are ready for replanting.


The best part about this robot is design however is that its not monolithic.
As better pods designs happen the robots can be reprogrammed.
Or as different plant farming cycles are needed (which is often the case) they can be reprogrammed.
So it allow evolutionary progress without having to physically retool.

I sure does remind me of that scene in the original Matrix film though. Human in Pods acting as Duracell batteries

Chase,

Air cars have been discounted because of the energy costs of pumping the air into the tanks. I believe however that they would act as fantastic batteries. That is take any electrical power (from you PV cells) and dump any exces into a compressed air tank.

you coudl have large underground tanks ( shipping containers that have been air sealed). Underground to cope with the pressure on the structure.

then you knwo have your own "Petrol station". You just roll up with an air car, fill up and take off.

From an ecconomic and energy point of view they are so far ahead of anything else.
The cost of batteries is sky high, and its going to be many years before they come down. Just look at the crazy cost of the battery pack for Volt and Tesla.

So i really beleive that air cars are cheap and the fuel storage makes allot of sense.

i think this wont work from the phsycis of it.

another of reasons
1. the air tank holds the thermodynamic equivalent of 1 liter of gasoline.
2. so the weight is 500 kg to mitigate that issues

also the track record is bad. they have been promising to deliver for almost 8 years.
they wont allow any independent testing or even media journalist to ride the prototypes.

I think this one is a dead horse.

From my research on HHO and what is going on around that area i feel that has much more promise. They have been great strides recently.
See "peswiki" for all the stuff going on around HHo and watr based car.e Its "spooky" science but there seems to be allot of promising implementations.
Is also free of patent control

One difference to consider. When all of our power needs are being produced through free, renewable energy it's no longer an issue to power air cars. Plus, no exhaust.

Chase,

I see your point. But what your saying is that its highly energy inefficient, but it does not matter because the energy is free anyway ?

we could make a less complicated pod system which would be really good for sorting crops, because you know that everything growing in said pod is a certain ways along its growth path. i like this the more i think about it the better it gets.

I just want to elaborate here.

In looking at systems for optimisation and new builds you always see that conversation of energy is much cheaper than generating more energy.

This is why new houses are all very insulated, rather than having large geo thermal, air to water heat pumps.

that my experiences anyway.

So i key criteria is:
1. efficiency ( COP or Carnot Cycle)
2. cost
3. performance
4. adaptability