Motorhead Messiah (a green Kansas mechanic)

[AlecBGreen]

via Kos

Check it out. It's actually a jet engine," says Johnathan Goodwin, with a low whistle. "This thing is gonna be even cooler than I thought." We're hunched on the floor of Goodwin's gleaming workshop in Wichita, Kansas, surrounded by the shards of a wooden packing crate. Inside the wreckage sits his latest toy--a 1985-issue turbine engine originally designed for the military. It can spin at a blistering 60,000 rpm and burn almost any fuel. And Goodwin has some startling plans for this esoteric piece of hardware: He's going to use it to create the most fuel-efficient Hummer in history.

...

"Conservatively," Goodwin muses, scratching his chin, "it'll get 60 miles to the gallon. With 2,000 foot-pounds of torque. You'll be able to smoke the tires. And it's going to be superefficient."

He laughs. "Think about it: a 5,000-pound vehicle that gets 60 miles to the gallon and does zero to 60 in five seconds!"

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/120/motorhead-messiah.html

Read the whole thing - its great. Cool technology and smart ideas ready for application.

[bananas]

1. Do you have a link to kos discussion?

This sounds pretty cool.
Maybe it could be used for boats, trains, and airplanes?

[Bread and Circus]

2. This guy is a genius

One of my favorite lines of his:

Prod him enough on the subject and his mellowness peels away, revealing a guy fired by an almost manic frustration. "Everybody should be driving a plug-in vehicle right now," he complains, in one of his laconic engineering lectures, as we wander through the blistering Kansas heat to a nearby Mexican restaurant. "I can go next door to Ace Hardware and buy a DC electric motor, go out to my four-wheel-drive truck, remove the transmission and engine, bolt the electric motor onto the back of the transfer case, put a series of lead-acid batteries up to 240 volts in the back of the bed, and we're good to go. I guarantee you I could drive all around town and do whatever I need, go home at night, and hook up a couple of battery chargers, plug one into an outlet, and be good to go the next day.

"Detroit could do all this stuff overnight if it wanted to," he adds.

[CRF450]

3. I posted about this in GD

And got nothing but snotty ass comments.

[AlecBGreen]

5. dont take it personally

there is a large segment of the population, GOP and Dem, liberal and conservative, who have the following mindset:

"If its so good, we'd be doing it already."

We need a paradigm shift in this country, and that should-shrugging attitude of indifference is our main obstacle. Get past it, make people believe that change is possible and we'll be well on our way to saving this planet.

[CRF450]

7. Yeah, one poster replied with a "this is way too good to be true!"

And then a "This article wreaks with BS".

Some people:eyes:

[bananas]

4. found the kos link

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/10/30/14161/066
Doing what Detroit says is impossible
by kos
Tue Oct 30, 2007 at 11:50:06 AM PDT

[Greyskye]

6. Brilliant!

So much for the argument that increasing CAFE standards will ruin the American auto companies. :eyes:

Too late for an 'R', but here's a :kick: instead. Thanks for posting!