Can you ride your motor scooter, Billy Boy, Billy Boy

7/11/25:

 

The scooter came, I saw, but it did not conquer me. Not yet, anyway. There was some assembly required--for the scooter, that is. The cursed thing arrived late afternoon. I got the bright idea to take it out of the box while outside in the sun. By the time I got it out of the box, I knew I was in for a battle.

 

I fought this thing for the rest of the day, and retired for the evening in a very tired state. In theory, the assembly should have been easy. Among the issues were that the handle bars "quick disconnect" mechanism would not go on properly. Fortunately, this feature is not necessary. The status of the assembly was mostly finished by bedtime. But I was still in the fight.

 

First thing this morning, the battle raged on. The parts of this scooter have a very annoying tendency to want to fall to the floor. I have a strong tendency not to want to bend over and pick things up off the friggin' floor all the time. So I battled this thing for another hour before finishing up the assembly. That is, what I could do of it. A part went missing when it hit the floor. I spent another hour looking for it with no luck.

 

The original idea was to build it outside because I wanted to store it in the van. But it is too hot to store it outside, says the manual. So I have to keep it in-friggin'-side. So that is the current state of this adventure. The question being, how to I store this thing inside, and move it outside where it can be useful when I want it to be? I will build a ramp. There's some stairs to traverse in order to get it back down to ground level.

 

More assembly required. I'm getting too old for this shit.

 

7/10/25:

 

Amazon and UPS needs to get their heads wired up to their asses. They are giving conflicting information. It's not a problem so far. We'll see.

 

7/9/25:

 

The scooter is still on its way. Not due for a couple more days.

 

I tested the battery by using it to power the weed eater. The weed eater pulls about 700-800 watts estimated. It will drain a battery of this type in a relatively short time. It will run a dehumidifier for 3 hours continuous if it is in as good a shape as last year. It has seen little use since I stopped that experiment. Now there's this experiment.

 

There's always something, said Rose Ann Rosanna Dana.

 

7/8/25:

 

The repairs are complete, but there may be some tweaking ahead. Still in testing phase, but it appears to be working as intended.

 

Still waiting on the scooter to arrive.

 

7/7/25:

 

The solar panel system has been acting up. When I moved the trailer recently, I may have pulled a wire loose. I forgot to unplug everything, and while pulling the trailer, I notice something was being dragged along behind me. Oopsie.

 

It's been a slog to figure out what got messed up. It's charging the battery again, so that's good. I want the switches to shut it off and on to work, but these aren't cooperating at the moment. No biggie. I'll figure it out.

 

7/5/25:

 

Awaiting my moto scooter, and it is no ring-tail tooter. (Ref: Slick Willy Update of the Rush Limbaugh show dating back to 1992's election campaign ) Getting my stuff ready, as preparations are needed.

 

The following video is a little closer to the update version, but it isn't quite there. I can't find it on YouTube.

 

 

 

 

07/03/2025:

 

Got an idea about buying a mobility scooter. The one that would seem most handy would cost over $3k, and can be obtained on Amazon.

 

It is electric, and would have a 30 mile range, or so it says.

 

Having experimented with an electric scooter before, the range would seem be inflated. It all depends upon battery capacity. This one has a 48 V, 20 AH electrical setup. That's about 1 Kwh. If it is anything like autos, it may get 4 miles.

 

Even so, it would be sufficient for ample mobility.

 

The price is high, but not beyond me. What about a golf cart?

 

07/04/2025:

 

Here's what I did: I got an electric scooter. It is pretty much the same thing I had before, so it won't cost much, and it can't do all that much, but it can do a few things ( I hope ).

 

Back in 2003, I bought one for $150. It is now $450 on Amazon. Now that is what I call "progress". Free delivery! Like wow, man.

 

I'll use my solar panels to provide electricity for charging the thing. Maybe this idea will actually work. Most of my ideas don't work worth a sheet, main.

 

 

Crazy idea has a certain charm to it

There's at least a couple videos like this one on the subject of the inland sea down under. Now they've got me thinking about it!

 

What if you could use the natural tidal action and siphoning effect to move massive amounts of water for long distances?

Here's the other video:

Interesting concept to use nuclear pulse propulsion

It was studied for many years, and then abandoned after the adoption of the nuclear test ban treaty in 1963.

 

The idea is discussed in the following video.

Not all of the technical challenges could be overcome at that time. The sticking point seemed to be with the pusher plate. There wasn't any way to model it, so that it could be developed. In order to do the tests, real nuclear bombs would have to be used. Such a testing procedure was deemed to be infeasible. After the treaty, it became illegal.

 

A question: What if it were to be developed in deep space? It couldn't do much harm way out there. If such could be developed successfully, would it not be better to send large numbers of people to another planet, like Mars, using a few bombs? Such a system could be used instead of the Starship. Indeed, the Starship could be used to send up the large amount of mass needed to construct such an ark, and send it on its way.

Focus Fusion video

 

Ingenious Construction Tech

 

Focus Fusion Update

Disclosure:  I own (1) share. 

Aneutronic fusion would be a game-changer.

Quote:

Imagine the world in which power is cheap, pollution is gone and people are enjoying affordable housing, locally produced foods, and cheap healthcare. With fusion energy, everything can change for the better – in a heartbeat.

A 2-cycle ICE hybrid

5/27/25:

 

You could make them out of superwood! 80% lighter than steel, and moldable into shapes fitting for an automobile, superwood could make the cars that much more efficient.

 

5/25/25:

 

The engine described on the main blog may be useful in several ways. It is a powerful engine in a small package. Therefore, it would not need a massive frame to hold it. It could be optimized to make just enough power to keep the batteries charged in a hybrid engine.

 

The engine in the video was about half a liter, with a power output of 200 hp. You could get away with a much smaller engine. Let's say 1/2 the size and output. That would mean a 250 cc engine with 100 hp. That 100 hp engine could power a generator, which in turn, would power an electric engine.

You wouldn't have to run it all the time. Just long enough to charge the batteries. With the new batteries coming out soon, you wouldn't need much weight on them either. They could also be charged an indefinite number of times, since they would actually operate more like a capacitor than a battery.

The engine would be quite versatile, since it could run on a variety of fuels. The ones mentioned in the video include hydrogen. Perhaps it could run on ammonia? In that case, if ammonia could be synthesized economically, it could replace carbon based fuels. Not that I would think that important, but some people believe in the global warming theory.

Anyway, I would speculate that a super efficient ICE hybrid may be feasible in the near future. Question is, will it ever be built?

Potentially revolutionary propulsion system.

 

Seems like I've heard about this design before somewhere. Once you acquire enough speed, the sky is the limit. Imagine a single stage to orbit aircraft that can take off from a runway. It would be air breathing, which could remove the need to carry oxygen. Oxygen could represent the lion's share of the mass needed to get to orbit.

Venus Aerospace Completes Historic U.S. Hypersonic Engine Flight Test https://t.co/ev3zNEcllQ --- Uses a rotating detonation ramjet engine concept. It is claimed to be scalable. Goal is to produce aircraft that can sustain Mach 4. Doesn't require rocket engine boosts.

— BootsandOil (@BootsandO6892) May 20, 2025

JP Aerospace tests their home-made submarine

 

The video below was published just prior to a test of the sub...

... and afterwards a post on the blog about it. Not many details, but those may be forthcoming.

Installation of Fedora Linux distro

5/16/25, 6:34 PM::

 

I'm going to suspend this for awhile. Reason being that there's not good enough reason to add yet another distro to the collection. If Mint craps out again, maybe...

 

Just added a restore version on Mint, so if it does crap out, then at least I can try a restore option. Didn't have that the first go round.

 

2:39 PM:

 

Note to self: Installing Fedora via Live Environment installation disk will not work. Insufficient disk space. Well, duh.

 

So I had to do a real install of Mint, which is always an adventure. As of this writing, Mint is now re-installed. What happened to the first install?

 

Just say it got discombobulated and there was no backup or restore capabilitity. So I did without it for awhile until now, when I decided I might need it again. Trouble is, I forgot how I got the thing installed the first time. Always a fun time to rediscover how all of this was a pain in the arse.

 

Maybe I can install Fedora now. This post is made in the Mint environment, so that's poof proof. The last time I tried this, I was in the mint install environment, and google yanked the post.

 

5/15/25,6:50 PM:

Fedora may be simpler, but getting Linux Mint installed again is a bit of a tussle. Spent the better part of today working on this.

Why did I ever start bothering with computers???? Seemed like a good idea at the time.

This is a video which shows how to install the Fedora Linux distro. I've used this YouTube Channel (AgileDevArt) for videos on how to install other Linux distros, among which is Zorin OS. My impression of the video is that the installation of Fedora seems relatively simple in comparision with Zorin or any other Linux distro that I've installed. Perhaps this is a good sign. As of yet, I'm only considering this new (to me) distro.

P.S., 11:11 AM:

This video isn't the SilverBlue distro mentioned on the other blog. AgileDevArt installed it via Windows. I'm contemplating doing it through Mint. That's a difference.

POGO oscillation theory as to cause of Starship's recent RUDs

An unofficial explanation for what's going wrong with the Starship's recent flights.

 

Floating to orbit on Mars?

JP discusses a tandem airship. However, there's a better idea with his airship to orbit concept employed on Mars. However, there's nothing wrong with idea of using the tandem airship to launch a rocket with Mars samples to a waiting spacecraft for a return to Earth.

 

But there won't be any takers, unfortunately. There's nobody who would fund this, in my opinion.

Construction ideas

 

Drill technology for geothermal heat pump

The device enables the use of pretty stable temperatures below ground level. Such a "heat pump" will only take the relatively constant temperature below ground, and move it into ground level structures in order to facilitate climate control. A heat exchanger and air pump is about all that would be needed, but that really isn't discussed in this video. The video is about the drill tech.

 

I like the concept.(the drill tech)

The Mosquito Coast reference deserves some discussion...

 

The Mosquito Coast reference is mentioned on the main blog here.

The idea for this post began with the basic idea from this link: "There's no such things as clean energy".

There's no comment upon the clean energy assertion, because there may well be an almost totally clean energy solution being developed right under our noses. It's called Focus Fusion. Focus Fusion is aneutronic, which mean that no neutrons are emitted. This is clean because there's no destabilizing neutrons that will cause succeptible atoms to go radioactive. This means virtually no waste. There may be SOME, but hardly enough for anybody to worry about, but purists undoubtedly will complain about ANYTHING.

It may be true that there's no totally clean energy source, but this one is about as close as it gets in the real world. All radioactive emissions are put to use, and there's no waste. Only helium molecules will be produced. The results will be limitless "clean" energy for millenia or even into perpetuity.

Of course, the technology is still under development and may not pan out. But the latest results are quite promising. We'll see.

With respect to the The Mosquito Coast scenario, we've already had refrigeration since before widespread usage of electricity. An energy source applied to a Stirling Engine will produce cryogenically cooling power. A Stirling Engine only requires energy. It could use sunlight, fire, or basic animal power to drive the device. Stirling Engines have been around longer than steam engines. They can be used without any "greenhouse" emissions whatever.

Or they could be power with an aneutronic fusion device like Focus Fusion. It would be very, very clean; and very, very efficient. Better than solar, but that would be faint praise.

Focus Fusion has a fundraiser going... If you want to invest, remember this: this could be a trillion dollar invention if it works. Disclosure: I own 1 share.

How to get stuff off the moon

Scott Manley discusses some lunar base ideas. He posed the question that I thought up myself awhile back.

This is what you call a "good question". It seems that I had a conversation with the gas gun guy who responded to my query about how to get stuff off the moon, and he said that you wouldn't even have to heat hydrogen that hot in order to reach escape velocity.

So a hydrogen gas gun would be better than a rail gun. By the way, you could recover electricity by having some brakes to slow down the accelerator device. The way it would work is that you would need to heat up a chamber full of sealed hydrogen. It wouldn't have to be all that hot. The expansion of the gas would create the push needed to get the sled up to escape velocity. The hydrogen gas can be re-compressed and liquified for storage for the next shot.

Focus Fusion is doing more fundraising

 

This is a shoe-string type operation. Small timers can invest here. It is like a lottery ticket. The thing to remember about lottery tickets is that they payoff. They have to.

But it is a hit or miss proposition. If it doesn't hit, you lose it all. Therefore, a small investment of funds that could be lost without wanting to jump off a high building--- may be all that is needed. Therefore, I have been invested in exactly one share of this "investment" that I call a lottery ticket. If you can spare it, and you can afford it, one share might be available for as low as $100. Incidentally, most of my posts on Focus Fusion is on the other blog. It goes here now because it is a speculation. That's where I try to divide between what could be, and what actually is.

And invest in LPPFusion! https://t.co/c8sCdNunBk

— LPPFusion (@LPPFusion) March 18, 2025

Forbidden Technologies and The Silencing of Their Inventors

 

Universe Inside You YouTube Channel

A name from the past resurfaces

 

Aptera? Well, they're baaaaaack. These two guys seem to be a bit skeptical of Aptera's claims. These claims may be inflated, as there's no penalty yet, for lying. Just as long as you don't do it when it is against the law, such as marketing a product through the use of false claims.

Anyway, all of that aside, the design is highly efficient in terms of aerodynamics. It may also be highly efficient in terms of its friction against the surface. In other words, in order to roll down the highway, it may not take all that much power to keep it going. This has many advantages, and it is the reason why I think electric cars are too darned heavy.

It DOES appear that better ultra-capacitors are in the works, so if these could be employed in this kind of car, they could get something special out of it. The video also mentions that people in the Aptera community are quite devoted to it. That explains why they are back, I suppose.

Graphene capacitors here and now

This tech is better than the tech described in the AI dialogues. I don't know if these are available for installation in autos, but they are indeed being used in other applications. However, not as I envisioned it. To put together a package that could work the way I envision could take awhile to figure out and write it up. This short ditty will have to do for now.