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Defense Industry Booming at Raytheon With Radar Contracts |
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Commentary & Perspective...
It's All About the KidsJuly 11, 2005...In the blazing heat of early July in Texas, a herd of brilliant high school students representing schools from USA and Mexico drove their experimental solar powered cars through the quiet roadways of the Texas Hill Country. They spent the first night of an eight day cross country race to California in the tiny backroads cowboy town of Brady, Texas which is very near Legacy Ranch in Placid, home of our founding editor, Jo Ann McDonald, author of The McDonald Report. She reports on this extraordinary invasion..... I was thrilled when 180 extremely bright teenagers descended on Brady, Texas Friday evening, July 8th because they spoke my language: Advanced Technology. (They were a bit surprised to find a veteran technology journalist there too). Dialog in that language isn't heard much in small town Texas, where the only sport thought of when you say the word "team" is football. They stayed in Brady for the first night of their trek and were treated to a hamburger supper by the town's service clubs. The kids proudly showed off their entries to an admiring town. These extraordinary teens were following their dream for a better future by harnessing the sun to travel across the highways and byways of Mother Earth. There were teams from USA high schools in New York, California, Minnesota, Colorado, Arizona, Texas and Mississippi, and Chihuahua, Mexico. One of the teams (the one with the most elaborate rig and most cool car, actually) was from the Choctaw Nation of Native Americans in Mississippi. Brady had never seen anything like it. Some of the cars looked more like satellites than automobiles while others were simply modified golf carts. All sported large areas of solar arrays, of course. Excellent still photos and videos of the event were taken and are accessible via this link. The kids knew all about silicon solar cells and some of them had actually heard about the more efficient multijunction cells made of our industry's compound semi materials used to power spacecraft. Unfortunately, the rules require the use of silicon cells only, but CS cells are definitely on their drawing boards. The teams couldn't wait to reach their final destination in Pasadena, California where scientists at JPL know a great deal about multijunction cells. While the kids were following their dreams, after talking to these budding scientists and technologists and looking at their solar car creations, what I dreamed of--once again-- was a world no longer hooked on oil, with humans driving solar power cars that used our more advanced, environmentally benign technologies. Mother Earth would like that. The eight day USA driving event is called the Dell-Winston Solar Challenge. Lead sponsor is Dell Computers of Round Rock, Texas (an Austin suburb) where the race began, and the organizer is the Winston School in Dallas. I didn't see one name in the sponsorship list, or promoted on the cars, from our industry. Hopefully, after reading this column, that will change. The Dell-Winston Solar Challenge is an ideal opportunity for companies in the compound semi and solid state lighting industries to sign on with the real shakers and movers in our fields: the kids that design, create, and drive these cars of the future. I envision a demonstration vehicle that not only uses multijunction CS solar cells, but one that also utilizes high brightness LEDs. If you sign on to support one of the teams, I promise I'll sign on to publicize the blazes out of your participation. Why? I believe passionately in promoting alternative energy solutions. And it's about time we all did something to make that happen. The sooner we get off this dependency on oil as the source of cheap fuel (yes, even at just over $2/gallon in the USA, it's still "cheap" compared to what other countries pay) the sooner the USA might quit invading countries just for their oil. Did you know that electric cars were once all the rage? According to the Solar Challenge literature, by 1900 38% of all pleasure cars sold in the USA were electrically powered. 22% were gas-driven and 40% steam. 1912 was the high point for electric vehicles with almost 34,000 cars, truck and buses registered for road use. When did we start to steer in the wrong direction? When power-hungry vehicles (and humans) took over. Speed soon meant everything and resource wars for oil and gas ensued... and haven't yet stopped. In 1967, when people like me were marching in the streets to change the overall mentality--pushing for wind, solar and anything other than oil wars or nuclear solutions (for power or bombs), General Motors was busy making electric car history. GM worked with NASA to develop a means of using a non-liquid membrane and platinum electrodes which acted as a catalyst in the presence of hydrogen and oxygen. Electric vehicles even made it to the moon, but are they being taken seriously on our roads today? Not yet. But that could change, with your help, and following the lead of these Solar Challenge kids. The cars they're driving only go about 20-30 miles per hour, but it's a beginning. I looked from their silicon-heavy cell laden demo vehicles over to my white GM Buick and thought to myself... "Couldn't we somehow simply put some Emcore multijunction cells on the roof of the Buick and off we go? I wouldn't have to go 70 mph on the backroads of Texas. The speed limit when I get to Brady is only 30 anyway!" I envisioned driving an electric version of my comfy Buick in a separate lane, like a bike lane, until I reached the busy interstate to one of the big cities, where I'd hop on some kind of mass transit to the airport, etc. When away from the interstate, all travel would be electric. Just imagine the cleaner air in suburban towns if its population signed on to such a concept. We seriously tried to shift to precisely that type thinking in the 60s. Yet here we are, 40 years later, with little or no progress. Now all we have is more people on earth and most of them in a hurry and hungry for speed. We've gotten ourselves in such a mess that it'll obviously take the brilliant kids of today, like the 180 that invaded Brady, to change things for the better. While too many teens are being pressured into signing up for the military to fight yet another insane resource war for politicians indebted to oil companies, these Solar Challenge kids are taking another route. They're investing in a sane future and putting all their resources into getting scholarships to colleges to major in things like solar science. Are you helping? Is your company helping? The kids of today don't need to be taught how to be kids. They have that part knocked. What we need to do is help them become well educated, caring, responsible adults. Visit the Dell-Winston Solar Challenge site and see for yourself what you're missing. Or call me and I'll help talk you into doing something really good for a change. If you have news or
views to share about the compound semiconductor, LED or solid
state lighting industries |
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