"Hi, Dr. Nick!"

I'd never let him treat me, but what a sunny disposition and great bedside manner.

Another lovable fictional quack is Dr. Leo Spaceman (speh-chemâ-en) from "30 Rock".

You're looking at this the wrong way around. It's women that do the real work of continuing the human race. It would only take a relatively small fraction of males with a flesh fetish to successfully impregnate the women of the world.

We'll disappear once they invent a handi-bot capable of mowing the lawn, changing a tire, fixing things around the house. Once women don't need men around any longer the human race is done for.

Did you note that 2010 projection was made in 2003? Have we heard anything on Hy-wire in the past five years? The Volt is well beyond concept car stage and is slated for production late next year. It sounds like there will be actual electric cars in major dealer showrooms in just a year or two.

As you point out, an electric car won't be very useful to someone who parks on the street. But I don't see hydrogen available anywhere yet either. I just can't believe the hydrogen car is going to be workable.

More like a lucky few can lease one now. From the wikipedia article: "Honda planned to produce 200 vehicles within 3 years" and "Honda believes it could start mass producing vehicles based on the FCX concept by the year 2018". In other words they don't have a clue how to make an affordable hydrogen fuel cell yet.

GM plans to start mass producing the plug in Volt by the end of next year, assuming they don't go under before then. All the infrastucture a Volt requires is a 120V power outlet in your garage. I've already got my electric infrastructure right now, how many can say the same about hydrogen?

I do not think ultracaps like that exist. At least not yet. Which brings up a problem with battery swapping - technological change. Battery (and ultracap) technology is changing quite rapidly right now. Everyone keeps talking about amazing new formulations being experimented with in the labs. We've gotten to the point where lithium batteries are good enough to put into electric cars and we should start seeing a lot of these popping up in the next few years. It's becoming economically feasible to produce a reasonable electric car with current battery technology. But I don't expect they will be using the exact same battery chemistry five or ten years from now.

How is battery swapping going to cope with the quick changes in battery technology we're likely to see once elecric cars become a multi billion dollar industry? The race to develop a better cheaper battery is going to be intense.

I agree that hydrogen car development is more of a stunt or appeasement than anything else, theyâ(TM)re unlikely to be remotely affordable anytime soon. But I disagree about the Volt being just another stunt. GM seems dedicated to actually producing the car and is currently gearing up to do so. They should be rolling off the assembly line within 18 months. Assuming GM still exists in 18 months. Whether it will be the right car for the times remains to be seen.

The Volt is a different answer to electric car range anxiety. Instead of battery swapping the Volt carries its own gas powered generator for when the batteries run low. That makes it seem like just another hybrid, but itâ(TM)s a much more powerful electric vehicle than standard hybrids. Itâ(TM)s capable of good acceleration, and highway speeds solely on electric power without any need for the gas engine for the first 40 miles on a charge. With a car like that Iâ(TM)d rarely need to use any gas at all, it would be an electric car for 99% of my use.

Which bring us something I'm wondering about a battery swapping system. Surely Iâ(TM)d be able to charge the battery at home and wouldnâ(TM)t be required to swap whenever I ran low on juice. In that case Iâ(TM)d only need to hit the battery swap station if Iâ(TM)m taking a long trip, and that means only a couple times a year. So is this business model built solely around vacationing people? I suppose battery swapping could be a solution for apartment dwellers that donâ(TM)t have access to overnight charging.

The smaller and denser an object is the worse the heat load is on re-entry. Using a ballute to increase the surface area means there is less need for high tech fragile ceramic tiles. Another way to look at it is that the greater area means there is more force to slow down the spacecraft before it gets into denser levels of the atmosphere.

Apparently some plants do grow faster with increased CO2 and some don't. It varies by crop. It would probably work better to use the CO2 to grow masses of algae in tanks. You can supposedly get huge amounts of biomass per acre that way. It's a lot easier to sequester the carbon in biomass by burying it than by trying to hide the gaseous CO2 somewhere. I don't trust these schemes that have huge reservoirs of CO2 somewhere. If it blows out somehow and escapes all it once things get real nasty for anyone addicted to breathing oxygen in the neighborhood.