Electrifying a 1950s pickup truck. The work would be fun, and the outcome would be superbly useless with almost no range. But I would do it if I had the resources.
To be fair I could have range with the hella expensive batteries, considering that weight isn’t a consideration (truck made out of steel) you might consider including a basic two speed transmission to keep the motor rpm more in its efficiency sweet spot for highway vs city driving def cool project considered doing something like that with a large boat style car. Plus (and this might just be my justification) if you build it and battery technology progresses it would be a simple matter to swap out the batteries and increase range while keeping the rest of the stuff (modulo maybe charge control) the same
Free EFI conversion for any carbureted vehicle still on the road.
Space mining.
The operation is proceeding as planned sir. We expect to be shipping 300 containers of vacuum per week, within six months
Find a way to live a productive life with more dignity despite my physical disability that will lead me to an ever darker future. I was hit riding a bicycle to work, by a political refugee that had the cognitive capabilities of a third grader. Surviving is so much worse than death in the USA. It is a terrible place to live like this; an inhumane and pathetic disgrace of a country.
I hear the UK makes an honest effort for accessibility
How extensive is this resulting disability? Is there any way for you to exercise? Sounds like you could use some positive neurotransmitters.
It’s complicated. I exercise regularly. I’m a former amateur bicycle racer, and still ride, just nothing like I did in the past. My thoracic portion of my back is neutralized on a bike because I know how to fit professionally.
I’m degrading over time. For instance cooking most of my food for 8-10 days within an hour of being on my feet is getting difficult but is still doable. Interacting with me in the later half of that experience is a no go. I’m too stressed to deal with other people. By the time I am done, I am nonfunctional mentally for the rest of the day due to the pain.
I’m familiar with that mental state. I can keep functioning long after I become too unpleasant for polite company.
I have a disease whose prognosis is that my pain levels will steadily increase for the rest of my life. Currently it’s just elevated pain response, but eventually it will become spontaneous, unconditioned pain throughout my body.
Really depressed the fuck out of me at first.
But then I realized that science is always evolving, and just because that’s the typical course of someone with central sensitization syndrome, doesn’t mean it’s the only possible course.
Heck thirty years ago we didn’t even know nerves grew back. Now everyone knows the term neurogenesis.
In my studies, I’ve had to learn a lot about physiology, neurology, stress response, etc. If you would ever be interested in talking strategies for managing this thing let me know.
Actual high speed rail around North America. Every major metropolitan area connected to minimum 150mph speeds.
All of the idiots who joke and make fun of CHSR and Brightline have never truly seen an actual rail system in practice. I read the Facebook comments, they’re all the same. “It would never work here”, “We’re too big”, “Flights would be faster”, “I just like to drive”, blah blah blah. The fact is that they’ve never been outside of the country (and most of them outside of their immediate state area) to ever see what it’s actually like, and have never seen what we’re desperately missing here in America.
I firmly believe this would help ease a lot of the nation’s major problems.
- Climate Change (obviously)
- Some of the divide this nation is feeling (because it’d be easier to travel around and actually see)
- for example, I live in Seattle, there are a lot of conservatives living just 200 miles away who never come because it’s “too far” and we’re “constantly having violent protests”. Well come and see for yourself then. Take a day trip.
- Housing Crisis (immediately nearby cities and towns become commutable)
- This would also help with income inequality a bit, because all of a sudden you can again commute much farther
This list goes on
How we move around is such a huge part of our daily lives. Most people spend hours a day in their car, burning gas, driving around getting to work, stores, errands, schools, etc. We have made it so damn difficult on ourselves just to move around, and I’m sick of hearing the regurgitated excuses why it “would never work” here.
I love driving. HSR is still super nice, because the worst part about driving is long distance trips. Day trip to the hills to drive fun windy roads? Hell yeah. Trip across the US where I spend 9 hours a day driving straight in Kansas/Oklahoma/Texas? Awful. That section of argument never makes any sense to me. “I love driving. Nothing better than sitting in the right lane for 7 hours on a perfectly flat, straight road”. Morons lol
This is amazing. I already love the train, this would be my dream mode of transportation.
If I were American this would be my absolute priority too. I don’t like driving too much but love being able to get everywhere I want to by train. I don’t even own a car.
Okay, you do the high-speed rail. I was gonna say 15-minute cities, so I’ll do that. We’ll attack the same major problems from complementary angles.
Love it! I’ll work at a national scale, you work at the city scale.
You’re right, double headed problem there, I’d love to see my city really starting to tackle transit
Acela has proven that rail can work in the US. I don’t know the stats but it has made a significant difference in both highway traffic and air traffic, and is a lot more comfortable. It’s also in high demand - people want to use it.
Complaints hear are: not high speed, not frequent enough, too expensive. Victim of its own success (and lack of funding compared to highway and air travel), but never anyone saying it’s not a great choice
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The obsidian orb
Is there something mystical to this?
Not really, it’s just a regular orb that glows with a dark energy and floats in the air due to a hyperspherical extrusion into 4-dimensional space. Nothing crazy.
My list is quite different than the ones currently in the thread.
The boring ones:
Creating a vaccine or other cloaking to make humans invisible to ticks & mosquitoes. A separate project would be to do the same for parasites.
Enacting strict pollution/carbon limits and mandatory circular economy everywhere in the world.
Researching, trialing and Enacting a sustainable post-capitalist system everywhere in the world.
Developing solar energy until covering global energy demands, including a power network that can transport energy from the sunny side and/or orbit everywhere.
The slightly more ambitious:
Establish self-sustainable colonies living on off-earth resources, most probably also situated off-earth.
Create a Dyson swarm with enough energy output for in-system exploration, mining, colonisation, and terraforming.
Perfect matter replicators.
I have some other ideas as well, but those would be a start.
Mandatory circular economy sounds like it means basically mandating that each person break the second rule of thermodynamics. It’s assigning impossibility to people, like making it mandatory to draw a square circle before one can go to recess.
Giant floating island to stay in temperate zone, of course everyone would suffer sea sickness and it is question how would we keep everything in place.
Buying a house in Canada
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator
or Bioshock’s Rapture, one of the two
Ocean Sea elevator. Get whales in space
Douglas Adams did this one. It didn’t turn out well for the whale.
Just looking at compute servers running, Burn the entire Andromeda as power
Starting the horse and dog rehab farm I used to dream of. It was taking horses and dogs that need rehab, and teaching people from a rehab program therapy animal training and animal care.
Fully self-driving capable single person electric vehicles for commuters
Making an MMO
Can I join once you’re done?
