innovations
The Paths of Future Progress
Thursday, May 7th, 2009In the next century, the progress of humanity will proceed on the basis of how successfully we address the following six needs. They are not the typical needs of world peace, ending world hunger, or stopping environmental destruction that so often are vaguely thrown about in the press these days. Those are but [...]
World Metal Consumption and the Path to Space Mining
Friday, March 13th, 2009One of the real driving forces in any human exploration has been intense need. In the initial human migrations around the globe, people explored out of a need for food, and a need to be safe from other potentially hostile bands–there is safety in distance. During the European colonization period the nations and [...]
A First Step Towards the Hydrogen Economy ?
Monday, June 30th, 2008Recent news has highlighted the opening of the first commercial hydrogen fueling station in California. For people who lease hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (the most common user) or some kind of hydrogen combusion engine, they now have one public place in the state of California where they can refuel their vehicles. A few others already [...]
Deep Water Offshore Wind Energy
Monday, June 9th, 2008Drilling for Oil is not the only Potential Energy Producing Activity Offshore
While “green” or renewable energy technologies are often seen as the rival against traditional fossil fuel technologies in some kind of epic battle, they can actually sometimes enhance and support each other. Recent news from wind power companies suggests that they may be able [...]
Space Solar Power, The Next Leapfrog Technology ?
Monday, June 2nd, 2008Recently, this article on CNN.com revisits the idea of collecting solar power in space and beaming it down to Earth. With such a large world demand for energy expected in the next 20 to 50 years, and declining costs for access to space, could this be the time for this science fiction technology to become [...]
Review – Kill-A-Watt Electricity Usage Monitor
Friday, May 16th, 2008With energy costs increasing faster than inflation and much faster than income in the United States, many have a desire to conserve. But, without information, our conservation may be more expensive than it is worth and hardly as effective as it could have been. The kill-a-watt electricity usage monitor provides a useful way to be [...]
Landfills as an Energy Source
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008As landfills which hold municipal solid waste are closed the emissions from decay of the material in the landfill becomes a pollutant. That pollutant can either contribute to smog and the increase in greenhouse gases, or it can be used as an energy source. A free, environmentally friendly fuel, potentially harmful if released, is not [...]
True Progress Releases Free Weibull Reliability Calculator
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008True-Progress.com has released its Free Weibull Reliability Calculator version 1.0.2.
You can download this tool by following this link.
This simple calculator utilizes the Weibull distribution to generate reliability data for your system
Review – IRCMS (Integrated Reliability Centered Maintenance System) by NAVAIR
Monday, April 28th, 2008This review refers to version 6.3 of IRCMS by NAVAIR (Naval Air Systems Command).
IRCMS 6.3 provides users with an aid to perform Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) analysis. RCM is a process by which the life cycle costs of performing maintenance on a system are compared to the consequences of not performing maintenance as well [...]
Landfills, Mines of the Future ?
Friday, April 11th, 2008So, how long will it be before our trash is more valuable than existing iron mines?
The municipal waste collection system in the United States is very efficient at removing whatever materials we place in our trash bag. So much so, that we normally find it difficult to imagine the scale of the operation, and especially [...]
Distributed or Centralized Solar Energy: Costs and Benefits
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008Excuse me, are you going to use all that Sun in one place?
Given present-day concerns about energy independence, pollution control, and energy price stability, solar energy is often touted as one of the (at least partial) solutions to that problem. Solar energy involves making electricity or other useable energy out of light from the [...]