Mr. Voyager - Positive blogs about our future

$306 Million in agriculture grants for developing parts of the world

mrvoyager — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 01:36:05 +0000

It’s nothing for most of us to walk into the local supermarket and pick up our weekly household food requirements. In many parts of the world this may not be the case and families starve, this hinders their development. As these developing parts of the world continue to mature it is important that the poverty and hunger come to an end. It is commitments like this from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that bring significant opportunities to these developing parts of the world.

Complete article – http://www.gatesfoundation.org/GlobalDevelopment/Announcements/Announce-070125.htm

This gets me thinking about the transportation of foods back and forth to different areas of the world on a global scale right down to the transportation of food locally to smaller regions. As I write this what comes to mind is how we need to map and document our food distributions and consumption. As we understand the data better we will see a clear picture as to where we should focus our attention to improve the deliver of foods to various parts of the world. Now I’m not necessarily talking about specialty chocolates and frozen pizza’s, what I am talking about are a determined set of foods that are determined to be critical to health of humanity. In some cases that may mean to open new processing plants or distribution centers and in other cases increase the workload of various farms to grow more fruits or vegetables. Sometimes I get the impression looking down at the whole situation that we are not thinking when it comes to delivery of these foods and in some cases it is more about profitability than sustainability. I am certainly not trying to indicate that the companies that take part in this do it for free. It is understood that there are associated costs.

More to come 2/18/2009

World Future Energy Summit held in Abu Dhabi

mrvoyager — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:57:49 +0000

Presenting the opening ceremony of the World Energy Summit to various large oil companies and world leaders Prince Charles appeared on stage as a life size walking talking hologram presenting to 2500 delegates from around the world. Indicating “common actions are needed in every country to protect the common inheritance that has been given to us by our creator” It was also announced that Abu Dhabi would make significant investments into various alternative energy solutions ranging from wind and solar to carbon capture technologies. This further pushes the fact that this world needs to and is coming together to reduce our dependencies on oil and gas while supporting the ever growing world economies.

The complete article that sparked my interest can be found here. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/21/energy.renewableenergy?gusrc=rss&feed=environment

Tesla Motors – Changing perceptions (Electric Roadster)

mrvoyager — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 01:32:28 +0000

I was introduced to this site from a fellow employee, it really caught my attention. Tesla Motors introduces an all electric vehicle with about 220 miles between charges it offers an acceleration time from 0-60 in less than 4 seconds. More information about the Energy Storage System (ESS), Motor, Transmission and Power Electronics Module (PEM) can be found on the Tesla Motors website http://www.teslamotors.com. Sure with a price tag of just under $100,000 it may not be an auto for the average driver. Just another example of the changes the auto industry is going through.

The comforting sounds of wind farms

mrvoyager — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 13:20:50 +0000

I’ve been thinking more and more about the potential of wind power over the last couple of weeks almost to the point where I am going to investigate any wind farms in the area and make a trip just to take a closer look. Having only seen pictures on the web of what these farms look like I sense a comforting feeling when being near a wind farm in action. Just imagine for a moment the soothing sound those giant propellers would make as the natural movement of the earth causes them to rotate.

Responding to future disasters on earth

mrvoyager — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 02:51:21 +0000

We all understand to some extent what Global Warming is. To some of us we may think that it is a due to human activity while others might think Global Warming is just nature taking its course. What’s real about it is the fact that disasters are happening on this planet that are impacting significant amounts of people and areas in negative ways. We will take into consideration the impact that human activity has had on the earth. Combined with our ever so growing advances in technologies or ability to now take advantage of technology that may have been around for some time and begin to correct what impact we are making. What will be important though is how we as humans respond to the various disasters that do occur.

It is important to consider that although the goverments around the world must play a key role in responding to the various disasters that occur, we can not point the finger when the repsonses are not adequate for a particular situation. This will continue to be a learning process for all of us. As we deal with the different sitiuations our knowledge of how to improve on our last response will evolve.

British scientist called it a solar revolution

mrvoyager — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 03:41:02 +0000

I am so excited about this. A Silicon Valley company called Nanosolar is manufacturing or printing solar panels on rolls of foil. They are shooting for a price of 99 cents a watt with the first panels they produce for large scale solar plants. It was also mentioned in the article that the Earth Policy Institute suggests that solar electricity generation is the fastest growing electricity source and attracting government and venture capital money on an unprecedented scale.

Read the whole article. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/dec/29/solarpower.renewableenergy?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

Space travel and tourism

mrvoyager — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 02:26:14 +0000

As these new opportunities of travel and tourism take shape this will now open the doors for different types of job opportunities. As the regular trips to outer space begin to increase so do many of the things that come along with it. When the space hotels open up in outer space you better believe that workers will be there to maintain the various systems to keep the hotels running. Sure maybe its still a number of years out but the opportunities are going to be endless. Even for those of us that may not decide to travel to outer space.

Construction has already started for Spaceport America in New Mexico. Those are jobs that have already been introduced to us in support of space travel. It has already begun and will only continue to grow. More info on Spaceport America can be found on thier website http://www.spaceportamerica.com/

Transportation in and out of the future

mrvoyager — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 01:36:08 +0000

Imagine for a few moments that you find yourself in the year 2030. Just the thought alone of that year makes me think back to a science fiction book or movie in which cities and the buildings with in those cities are very large. You might imagine for a moment that there are transportation systems that fly or hover through out the cities taking people from one destination to another. Maybe there are spaceships that fly in and out of space down to the spaceports around carious cities. The year 2030 is not too far off, at the time of this writing it will be about 23 years away which is not too far away at all.

Energy consumption and generation

mrvoyager — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 15:10:57 +0000

In this ever evolving world of technology we take some things for granted. Let’s discuss for a minute the future of Energy, Energy consumption and Energy generation. As we continue to pay increased prices for Energy (fuel, electricity ect…) we have to take some things into consideration. Now let me remind you that I am not an expert by any means in any of the content that I blog about, I simply have thoughts on how and why things are happening the way they are and at the time they are happening.

We often hear about how we have known for some time about how hydrogen power systems. How the electric vehicles have been around for some time. Solar power is way too expensive for the average home owner to install on their house. If we have known about some of this for a while then why have we not implemented it into the main stream quicker?

Many countries depend on oil from other parts of the world. These countries that sell the oil depend on that sale of oil for their economy. If changes to the worlds dependency on oil happens at a sharp rate it could result in a negative economic impact. The rate at which the world backs off its dependency on oil needs to happen in a controlled manor so that negative affects are avoided as much as possible. Solar power is great, I hear so many good things about it. If solar systems were so cheap to install everyone would do it in a heartbeat. Right? Well, if everyone went out and installed solar panels on their home and eliminated the need for oil and coal power over night, that drastic dependency change on the oil and coal would have negative effects for those economies depending on the sale. In turn the individuals that work in those industries would experience a sudden change and maybe lose their jobs in addition to many other factors.

Hybrid / Hydrogen vehicles are making a big hit and will continue to increase in popularity for years to come. If we made such a sudden change to the automotive industry where as over a short period of time we no longer required the volume of fuel that we currently do, that change would also have an impact on other economies around the world. It simply cannot happen overnight if you think about ever aspect of the industry. The thought might occur that gas stations around the world would no longer be required. What would happen if all these gas stations went away over night? They couldn’t. Maybe you’re thinking that these gas stations should be converted to hydrogen filling stations? Not a bad idea but again, a conversion to hydrogen could not happen over night. Now switch it around a bit and think about this from the perspective of the mechanics that work on the vehicles. We have new technology in these vehicles that will require the technicians that perform maintenance and work on the vehicles. These mechanics will require a skill set that allows them to work on the hybrid or hydrogen powered vehicles, which will come over time.

What we will see continue to happen will be various solutions used to generate energy deployed through out the world. From large wind farm systems that may power cities and vertical farms in rural areas to solar towers that provide power to cities and homes closer to desert areas. It makes sense to implement a larger number of smaller scale systems so that we are no longer dependant on a one type of energy. The systems implemented in the different areas will vary depending on the environment. All of this will bring new job opportunities for the communities surrounding. Now keep in mind that I am not only talking about the US here, but all countries around the world. If you consider that scale then the work opportunities only increase as engineers, R&D, training as well as many other skill-sets will be required.

I did allot of rambling on in this one, I’ll circle back to this later run spell check and all that good stuff…

The Internet

mrvoyager — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 14:43:51 +0000

I don’t want to get into the history of the Internet, feel free to google “The Internet” if you want some history on it. With out this interconnected network we call the Internet you would likely not be reading this blog. Public use of the Internet has only been around for a short period of time. With in this short period of time it has enabled us as humans to communicate and interact with each other at the blink of an eye. As individuals and businesses from around the world continue to interact, collaborate and do business with each other at this level we will continue to form a well run globalized economy. We are all contributing to this so if you see an area that could stand for some improvement then jump right in.