Larry Brown's

The Heaviside Plan ™

Transportation

Introduction

In
Space Heat we outlined the development of Free Heat ™ units to heat individual rooms. Now we take up the matter of Transportation. Part of our philosophy for using energy extracted from the active vacuum is that we should extract the energy in the form in which we desire to use it. So what form of energy do we really want for transportation? The answer obviously is force. So, for a ground vehicle, we want energy that will cause the vehicle to move along the ground, highway, or railroad track. For an aircraft we want energy that will lift the aircraft off the ground and move it from place to place. For a ship we want energy that will move the ship through the water from port to port. There are two forms of energy that might be used directly for transportation--magnetic and gravitational. Magnetic would require a magnetic monopole which is difficult to build. It is possible to generate gravity (positive and negative). By generating negative gravity a vehicle can be made to levitate and perhaps move laterally. However, to manipulate gravity requires huge amounts of energy that only the Heaviside energy flow can provide. Perhaps someday people will work in the magnetic monopole or/and anti-gravity fields and provide us with some really jazzy transportation vehicles, but in the meantime, we'll stick with what we can do with heat extracted from the active vacuum.

One of the advantages of using Free Heat ™ units for transportation vehicles is that no flammable fluid is required to be carried in the vehicle. This alone gives a huge safety advantage to vehicles powered by heat extracted from the active vacuum.

Development

The first design task is to select the engine for the transportation vehicle. All of our current vehicles use heat engines for motive power. However, except for a jet engine (gas turbine), it is difficult to use Free Heat ™ units in an internal combustion engine. That leaves gas turbines and external combustion engines.

Stirling Engines

The Stirling Engine is an external heat engine conceived by Robert Stirling in 1816 as a rival to the steam engine. As a teenager I tried to build a Stirling Engine, but I could never get it to work--I didn't have access to a machine shop or the neat videos, flash, and animated drawings on the internet. The Stirling Engine is noted for its high efficiency, quiet operation and the ease with which it can utilize what would otherwise be wasted heat. Therefore, a multi-cylinder Stirling Engine is one possibility for motive power in transportation vehicles. However, it doesn't lend itself well to an automobile because it does not start quickly, accelerate fast enough, or change power output fast enough. A multi-cylinder Stirling Engine might be practical as a railroad locomotive, large truck, or a ship engine or to charge the battery in a hybrid automobile. The outstanding advantage of the Stirling Engine is that it is almost totally silent when running. Silence is the natural result of not having an exhaust (or intake for that matter).

Steam Engines

Except for a ship, the steam engine (either reciprocating or turbine) would not be a good choice because they either require a lot of water or a large condenser. Many of the large ships already have steam engines, so for those ships we need only substitute Free Heat ™ units for the current burners that heat the boilers to produce steam.

Gas Turbines

Gas Turbines or Jet Engines work by compressing air from the intake, adding and igniting fuel in a combustion chamber, and pass the compressed and heated combustion products through a turbine. Military Jet Engines frequently have an afterburner (an extra combustion chamber down stream from the turbine). Gas Turbines designed for power output, rather than propulsion, frequently have a second turbine downstream from the turbine for power take-off. The second turbine is designed for a slower shaft speed so no reduction gears will be needed to drive an alternator connected to the 60 Hz. power grid.

Gas Turbines have been adapted to automobiles and trucks, but the fuel consumption during idle made them unacceptable. They also were not as responsive when high acceleration was desired. However, with heat extracted from the active vacuum fuel consumption is not a problem. Moreover, additional Free Heat ™ units could be incorporated between the two turbines. These additional Free Heat ™ units would function like an afterburner to give a boost in power output providing high acceleration when needed. Since Gas Turbines are noted to produce more horsepower per pound of weight, vehicles provided with Gas Turbines using heat extracted from the active vacuum should turn out to be very high performance vehicles.

It may be possible to retrofit an existing Gas Turbine or Jet Engine with Free Heat ™ units thereby replacing the existing fuel system. This may require some tricky modifications to the Gas Turbine to avoid disturbing the flow of air in the combustion chamber.

Economics

As mentioned on the page for Space Heat one of the features of the The Heaviside Plan ™ is that no Government aid will be required. This is, in our opinion, necessary to minimize government interference in the development and marketing of Free Heat ™ transportation vehicles or/and conversion kits for existing transportation vehicles.

We would expect that a wide variety of different engines would be developed and the free market would select the ones that succeed in the market place. Each engine has its own strengths and weaknesses. For transportation companies the new technology has such an advantage (no fuel required) that companies that do not embrace the new technology will be unable to compete with companies that decide to stick with the old technology. So, we may see this new technology spread like wildfire throughout a given industry.

For example, once one airline starts converting its aircraft engines to use Free Heat ™ units instead of fuel, the other airlines will soon follow. Airlines with a fleet of converted aircraft will be able to reduce their rates to, perhaps, half of those who have not converted their aircraft.

The same thing would apply to trucking, railroads, cargo ships, cruise ships, and automobile companies. Then, we have the military. I think we need say no more about transportation.

Summary

Here we have choices all supplied with heat with one or more Free Heat ™ units three of the choices are: Multi-cylinder Stirling Engine, Steam Engine (either reciprocating or turbine), Gas Turbine (Free Heat ™ units would supply heat instead of burning jet engine fuel). One significant advantage of using Free Heat ™ units as the energy source is that no fuel is carried in the vehicle; this allows for larger payloads in a given size vehicle (especially in aircraft).

Updated:  August 7, A.D. 2009

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