Big Ideas

I have a number of Big Ideas [tm] that have been rattling around in my head for a while now. Mostly they are just idle thoughts, but now I'm thinking I might actually like to pursue one, well, as soon as the new house remodeling project is done and I can divest myself of one of these houses. It's going to take a while to finish. Some people think we might be able to finish up by spring. I'm afraid it may be another year. Whatever. Real estate prices keep climbing and with the way inflation is going I doubt they are going to collapse. They might not continue to increase at the same rapid rate we have seen recently. To coin a really bad phrase - inflation lifts all boats. Unfortunately most people don't have a boat. That's enough economics for today.

Ideas:

Steam Engine

Convert an automobile engine to run on steam. Start with an engine that has one of those variable valve timing set ups. You only need the intake to be open for a short time, maybe 10 or 20 degrees of the crank rotation. Change the cam timing to run at the same speed as the crankshaft. Probably going to need a custom camshaft. Might be a bit of a trick for a custom camshaft house (like Iskendarian) to grind a weird cam, but I am confident they could do it.

I've seen some conversions that other people have done and they typically are using the spark plug holes for the steam inlet. That requires a whole new valve system.

Big problem with letting steam in through the inlet valves is that high pressure steam is going to be trying to push the valves open. However, valves are small, steam pressure is not that high (2 or 300 PSI), and valve springs are strong. You might have to go to stronger racing springs. Automotive speed shops could help you there.

And no boiler. Use a steam generator - hot flame heating a short length of pipe. You have to balance the amount of water being pumped in to the amount you can turn to steam in that short length of pipe. Mount it where the carburetor used to go.

Use the steam engine to turn a generator to provide power for the house. Build a garden shed / shack at the bottom of the hill to house it. Then I'd have a place to hide out when modern life gets to be too much.

Magnetohydrodynamic Generator

It's possible to generate electricity without any moving parts using a magnet, some wire and a flame. To make it practical would take bit of futzing, or maybe a whole lot of futzing, but it's been done before so it should be possible to do it again. I'm thinking if you could make one the size of a Coleman lantern you could use it to supply power when you go camping. It should be quieter than an engine powered generator, should be nearly silent making no more noise than gas lantern or stove, but who knows? Maybe these kind of devices make some unearthly howling which is why no one uses them. Could also be used for sensors in remote locations that need to make intermittent readings and report them via radio. 

Industrial Strength Litter Box

I've been sifting cat turds out of the kitty litter in the litter box since forever. I know the new thing is to train your cat to use the toilet, but I'm not going to try that with our cat. Like me, he is old and set in his ways. I don't know if he could be trained. We bought one of those robotic things when they first came out ten years ago. It did not work out. I would be willing to pay good money for one that worked reliably and didn't need to be cleaned itself, ever. Well, ten years would be good enough, then you can throw it away and buy a new one.

Dirigible Spaceship

If we are going to send people to visit other planets, I think our spaceship needs be built like one of those rotating ring space stations we used to see pictures of in science fiction magazines. If you are going to be gone for years the one thing you do not want to run out of is air, so we make a big balloon, big enough to contain our rotating space station, and fill it with air. Yes, you could compress the air and store it in tanks that would take up much less room, but tanks are heavy and if one gets punctured it will lose all of it's air in hurry. You puncture a balloon and it will leak, but it will leak very slowly. People often shoot a blimps, the bullets make holes and the blimps leak, but the volume is so large and the leak is so slow they never notice. Mind you, they check for holes and patch them when they find them, but it's not a big deal.

Also, we are in space, so making storage compartments smaller doesn't really buy you anything. It's not like there is any wind resistance.

I was thinking about making the balloon out of metal, something strong to resist space debris, but that's pointless. Any debris you encounter is going to be traveling at several miles per second and at that velocity it will punch through anything that gets in its way, and if it's a metal plate, there going to fragments of metal blasting away from the site of the impact causing who knows what kind of mayhem. Better to put up something that will give way without causing massive secondary damage.

Of course, we are likely to encounter numerous bits of debris during our voyage and if we have one big balloon we will end up leaking like a sieve, so we fill our big balloon with a whole bunch of little balloons, balloons the size of a blimp maybe. (I'm imagining our big balloon would be maybe 600 feet in diameter. Our big balloon would be filled with 600 blimps.) Now a routine maintenance task is crawling around in this giant balloon pit, finding holes and patching them. You could use ropes like mountain climbers to force your way through. Need to be careful. Lose contact with your rope are you could easily become lost and / or stuck, then we'd need to send out a rescue party to find you.

And then there are the computer programming projects, but those are going to have to wait.