Yes, of course I'm in a tobacco field: You guys figured out what?! But how? Of course... with a virus! I'll meet you at the tobaccoratory!
Courtesy Lauras512Yeah, I’ll tell you what it can’t do: it can’t get that stink out of my freakin’ mittens.
But, besides that, tobacco is an interesting plant, and useful for a lot more than giving us cancer and temporary good feelings. Currently, some scientists are thinking that tobacco might be able to give us electricity-producing solar panels too.
It all started one sunny afternoon, when two scientists were lying in an open patch in a tobacco field, holding hands and watching the occasional cloud drift by.
“Isn’t tobacco great?” asked the first scientist.
“Yes,” sighed the second. She had just woven a bracelet from tobacco leaves, and was feeling like there couldn’t be a better plant in the world.
“But, really,” the first continued. “It’s really great.”
“Yes…” said the second, wondering where her colleague was going with the thought.
“Like, it sits here all day, just being tobacco…” started the first scientist.
“Which is great,” interrupted the second scientist.
“Which is great,” agreed the first scientist. Then she went on. “And it’s so good at sitting here, absorbing the sun… I wonder… I wonder…”
“Wonder what?” asked the second scientist, propping herself up on one elbow to look at the other scientist.
“Well, I wonder if we couldn’t use tobacco’s sunlight-gathering abilities to make, you know, solar cells. For electricity.”
The first scientist let herself sink back on to the ground, brushing dirt from the arm of her white lab coat. “You’re drunk,” she said.
“No! Well… maybe a little,” admitted the first scientist. “But I think it could work. Tobacco has evolved to have its chromophores—its sunlight-gathering molecules…”
“I know what a chromophore is,” said the second scientist.
“To have its chromophores very efficiently spaced out in its cells,” the first scientist went on. “If we could just figure out a way to make tobacco produce more chromophores, we could extract them from the plant, and coat solar cells with them. It could be a cheap, environmentally friendly way to make solar panels!”
“But how are we going to entice tobacco to produce more chromophores? By asking politely?” pointed out the second scientist.
“Yeah…” The first scientist frowned. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. Never mind.”
In the warm air of the sunny tobacco patch, the suggestion was soon forgotten, and the first scientist drifted off to sleep. The second scientist played with the new tobacco bracelet on her wrist, and wrinkled her nose as a gentle gust of wind blew dust through the surrounding plants. She sneezed.
“Wait a second!” The second scientist shook the first scientist awake, looking excited. “What if we infected the tobacco with a virus?”
“What?” asked the first scientist sleepily, having all but forgotten about the idea.
“We could engineer a tobacco virus that would cause the plants to make more chromophores!” She gestured at the field around them. “We could just spray it on the field, like… like… like a giant sneeze!”
The first scientist jerked upright and gripped the second scientist’s shoulders tightly, her expression so intense it was frightening. The green of the tobacco all around them reflected in her eyes, giving her a Bruce Banner-ish, pre-hulk out look. The second scientist shivered.
“You,” whispered the first scientist, “are… a… genius!”
And that’s pretty much how it all went down.
This sort of thing takes time, though, so we shouldn’t expect the big tobacco/solar power juggernaut to get off the couch any time soon. Tobacco’s natural chromophore arrangement makes chains of molecules that could be ideal for absorbing light on solar panels, but they haven’t been made to produce electric current just yet. Once that gets figured out, however, it could lead to cheaper solar cells, with some biodegradable components. (On the other hand, they would likely have a shorter lifespan than other types of solar panels, but, hey, who doesn’t like throwing stuff away now and again?)
Tags : What would you do with a grain of sand, salty water, a baby seed, and a blow of hot air?
Create a regeneration of life: POOF. This year calls for hotter, brighter, and drier times – and the more, the better.
The Sahara Forest Project 
Presto: This is the design plan. The project will not necessarily take place in the Sahara desert. The name “Sahara” is Arabic for desert.
Courtesy Courtesy Sahara Forest Project is utilizing arid landscapes such as deserts across the world, direct sunlight, and saltwater in hopes for a change from the global climate crisis.
The project is essentially a gigantic greenhouse. It uses hot desert air and cool seawater to make fresh water for growing crops, solar energy to generate power, planting trees to capture greenhouse gases and restore natural forest canopy, and algae pools to offer renewable biomass fuels. The ultimate goal is to replicate nature in reforestation and revegetation by using desert land to aid in the production of food, water, energy, and new jobs you and your coconscious can feel good about.
The mission is created by scientists, engineers, and research experts from Exploration Architecture, Seawater Greenhouse, Max Fordham Consulting Engineers and the Bellona Foundation. The final proposal was presented at the United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen in 2009, and is under construction for 2010 across multiple demonstration centers. The Sahara Forest Project was also chosen out of 300 projects for presentation at The Clinton Global Initiative. So far these magnificent designs are anticipated to build demonstration facilities in arid regions ranging from the United States to Australia, Africa, and the Middle East.
Why?
Threats on the stability of our ecosystems, natural resources, and human survival for generations to come have pushed science harder than ever. Here are some of the environmental crises we face:
• Freshwater shortage
• Climbing greenhouse gas emissions
• Non-renewable energy decay
• Non-sustainable food production
• Biomass fuel for non-renewable (i.e. fossil fuels) energy shortages
A Connection to Minnesotans
The University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment is tackling a much related and pressing climate issue of our time: “The Global Crisis in Agriculture.” The agriculture crisis investigates solutions for population growth, food consumption, energy costs, and biomass production. The Institute’s top researchers, faculty, and students are calling for collaboration and communication initiatives across all sectors – from agribusinesses to experts, students to farmers, policy makers to you.
The Institute’s magazine Momentum, published three times a year at the University of Minnesota, holds articles on emerging research being held at the Institute, as well as interconnected studies from scientists and experts. In the latest issue for fall 2009, the Institute addresses the big question: how do we feed a growing population at the expense of future human survival? It all boils down to the impact we humans have on our natural resources. Perhaps the Sahara project sheds some light.
Here’s how it works:
Seawater to freshwater:
Greenhouses use hot desert air and saltwater to create freshwater. The process mimics a natural process. Sun-cooked seawater evaporates, cools to form clouds, and then falls as precipitation:
1) Hot, bone-dry air goes into the greenhouse.
2) It is first cooled and dampened by seawater.
(This moist air nourishes crops growing inside the greenhouse)
3) The air then passes through an evaporator, where sun-roasted saltwater flows. The warm, wet air meets a series of tubes containing cool seawater, it evaporates into fresh water squeezes as droplets on the outsides of the tubes and can be stored.
Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction:
Engineers plan for only 10 to 15 percent of the moist air in the “seawater to freshwater” period gets condensed into fresh water. The rest goes outside to water surrounding, planted trees.
Solar Power Energy:
1) Mirrors are constructed to focus sunlight on water pipes and boilers.
2) The intense sunlight creates superhot vapor inside the pipes that can power conventional steam turbines to generate electricity.
3) Any excess power will be used in local communities.
Standing Ovation: The center will heavily concentrate solar power.
Courtesy National Geographic
Algae Ponds into Biomass Fuel:
1) Open saltwater ponds cultivate algae through photosynthesis.
2) The algae's fat oils are then be harvested as energy-rich biomass fuel.
Gobble Gobble: "Lab-grown algae have been shown to generate up to 30 times more oil per acre than other plants used to make biofuels,” according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Courtesy Courtesy National GeographicPlus, the foundation’s engineers and creator stress that this biomass-based fuel from the center's photonic energy would be potentially easy to export. (Unlike current biomass fuel production, the great science predicament is how to mobilize and store the biofuels). What has been created is a micro-climate that is nourishing for food and biomass production.
Sustaining Local Communities:
The Sahara Forest Project is also necessitating the use of local community. The project would rely on local people to maintain the complexes.
Altogether, it's a pretty huge deal. Of course there are apprehensions and counter-perspectives. Some say this will be very limiting. Others advocate for the fact that at least we're thinking of new alternatives. It's sustainable. It's restorative. What harm can come from this?
You can also find additional articles about the Sahara Forest Project on their website, National Geographic, Bellona Foundation, or simply by Google search.
Eureka!: At last! The world will be mine!
Courtesy SaperaudLooking for a winter “project”? Why not invent something during your hibernation. You might make a million dollars! Or, in the case of an Amsterdam artist slash space engineer, who must enjoy a good laugh, you could invent a wacky mirror and convince the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences to give you 80,000 Euros for your amazing “scientific instrument”! Called the Cyclops Mirror, when you look through it, your right eye sees your left eye and vice versa. As you get closer your reflection turns into a single cycloptic eye. Cool. But 80,000 Euro cool? Haven’t I seen this at the House of Mirrors at the carnival?
For the more ambitious, you could invent something practical or even wacky and sell it online. For the environmentally friendly scientist, how about inventing a wooden cell phone? Too late. Check out this biodegradable wood phone that even has a camera. How about solar power technology? What soccer fan wouldn’t want a solar powered soccer ball shaped mini fan for those heated summer games. Or for those cold winter days, how about solar powered hat and mittens (I might have to get a set of these)!
Want to get rich quick in two ways? Invent some metal detector sandals and then go find some ancient treasures! Just strap on these groovy shoes and keep your hands free for carrying your treasure hoard. The detecting device strapped to your ankle is discretely hidden under your trousers so the neighbors don’t think you are on house arrest!
Treasure Island: If only Jim Hawkins had the handy new metal detector shoes, he wouldn't have ran into trouble with those pirates!
Courtesy Wittkowsky
Check out these websites for more invention fun, get started on your next great creation and take over the world!
http://www.ideaconnection.com/new-inventions/
http://www.inventionreaction.com/
http://www.livescience.com/inventions/
JGordon visits the future, where houses are small, sustainable, and expensive
A solar home and a rainy day DC: This is the University of Minnesota's "ICON" solar home. Even beyond MN solidarity, ICON was one of my favorites. It ended up getting the top scores in the engineering and lighting competition, and 5th place over all.
Courtesy JGordonAhoy, Buzzketeers. Sorry, it’s been a few days since I’ve posted, but, see, I’ve been traveling… to the future.
By the way, I consider the east coast to be the future, because, you know, whatever time it is here… it’s an hour later there! I often call my friends in New York just to ask what I should expect in the next hour. “Loneliness,” they say.
But this weekend I too got to see the future with my own eyes. And I will tell you this: the weather is awful, but the houses are pretty sweet.
I attended the final two days of the Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon in Washington DC. Art did a post on the Decathlon last week, but here’s a quick refresher: the Solar Decathlon is an architecture, design and engineering challenge, sponsored by the US Department of Energy, in which colleges and universities from around the world (mostly from the United States) compete to build the best solar-powered home. The houses are judged in ten categories: architecture, engineering, market viability, lighting design, communications, comfort zone (temperature and humidity), hot water, appliances, home entertainment and net metering. The intention is to build a home excelling in those categories that gets all its energy (and more, sometimes) from the sun. The houses in this competition were all approximately 800 square feet, and designed accommodate one couple each.
Obtaining and using solar energy (through both photovoltaics, for turning light into electricity, and solar thermal, for gathering heat from solar radiation) is, of course, a major focus in the houses, but there was a lot more to the houses’ innovations than the arrays of solar panels. Everything is engineered to use as little electricity as possible, so windows are placed to get the maximum amount of light during the day, hot water is used to heat the house and (in the case of Minnesota’s house) dehumidify the air (see the picture and caption), and everything was carefully insulated according to the environment the house was designed for. In Arizona’s house, for instance, the windows on the southern wall were filled with water, which would absorb heat during the day, and radiate it back off during the cool night, while the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign insulated their home so thoroughly that they claim it could be heated with a handheld hair dryer. Many of the houses used energy so efficiently that they would—over the course of a full year—produce more energy than they used, and could feed the surplus electricity back into the grid, essentially selling it to the power company.
Team Germany's house took first place: I didn't get to go inside this one, but the outside was very... cubey. But, located even further east, Germany is far in the future, so naturally things would be a little different there.
Courtesy JGordon
I was able to get into 19 of the 20 houses (the line to the house that took first place, Germany’s, was just too long), and they were all quite nice. None of them had the feeling that I think is sometimes associated with “green” products—that is, that they won’t do whatever they’re supposed to do as well as the products we’re used to. The things that seemed “off” to me were design decisions that weren’t necessarily associated with energy use (I’m just not into wet bathrooms, I wouldn’t want an exterior door opening into my bedroom—that sort of thing). The problem I had with most of the houses was, ironically, that they were too nice.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: The second place house. Not a great picture. Imagine the rest as looking like this, but stretched into a rectangle. This was the only certified "passive house." Its insulation and air exchange system make the house extremely efficient to heat and cool.
Courtesy JGordon
In ensuring that the houses would be both very energy efficient and very comfortable, almost all of the teams ended up with pretty expensive projects, even though the contest limited the houses to a footprint of about 800 square feet. This site lists estimates of construction costs of the homes, and as steep as they are, I’m not sure they’re totally accurate—maybe it was just gossip, but some of the architects were saying that a couple teams’ projects ran up to and over a million dollars, which doesn’t seem to be reflected on the Solar Decathlon’s official page. Only Rice University’s house, built for a lower income couple, was less than $200,000 dollars. Most of the homes cost several times that.
Team California walked away with 3rd place: A man wearing a garbage bag admires the elegant $450,000-$650,000 home from outside.
Courtesy JGordon
I understand that these are prototype structures, and that their costs would be significantly reduced if they were mass produced, but even dropping $100,000 off a $600,000, 800 square foot house still leaves you with an awfully expensive house that most people (including the designers) would consider too small for an average family. The homes were built with particular markets in mind, and those markets were generally young, professional couples (with money) or retiring couples (with money), but if the point of the competition was to make progress in sustainable design… well, that doesn’t make much sense. Sustainable solar architecture has to be something that most of the people in the world could afford to take advantage of. Even if everybody in the world who could afford to buy a very small, half a million dollar solar powered house did, I don’t think it would make much difference to the planet’s consumption of non-renewable resources. It would be interesting to see family-sized solar homes built, or systems that could power an apartment complex… something like that. I’m sure the architects and engineers involved would be totally capable of that, but it wasn’t the nature of this competition.
ICON's desiccant dehumidifier: A chemical solution (basically road salt and water) sucks moisture out of the air as it passes through the clear tube. Heat from the solar thermal panels "recharges" the solution when it gets too saturated. Way more efficient than compressor dehumidifiers
Courtesy JGordon
It was still all very cool, and it’s neat to see what people come up with when they aren’t really bound by the above practicalities. Maybe seeing new, innovative features in beautiful little luxury homes will get people excited about using them on a larger scale, or implementing them into their older houses.
The ICON home's solar array: On the far left are solar thermal panels, in the middle are regular photovoltaic panels, and on the right are glass photovoltaic panels that can absorb light from both sides. The latter form a wall for the mudroom, and part of the awning above the deck.
Courtesy JGordon
I’ll toss some pictures of the event up with this post, but then I need to get back to trying to adjust back to the present time. I mean, for most of y’all, it’s like 3:00. But for me it’s like 4:00. I’ve got to get out and buy some lottery tickets before this wears off.
Well, Japan probably doesn't say "Go" exactly, because I don't think it means the same thing in Japanese. But the country is prepared to shell out $21 billion for a space-based, energy-beaming solar power plant.
The same sort of thing was talked about in this post, but that project was being lead by an upstart company, which kinda makes me think that their satellite power plant is a long way off. Japan wants the technology ready inside of four years. (They don't expect the plant to be operating until about twenty or thirty years from now, though.)
The plan is for the satellite to produce about 1 gigawatt. From my super-lazy internet searches, it looks like that's about the same output as a nuclear power plant. Nuclear power plants are cheaper to build (this site says the cost can be around $10 or $15 billion per station), and you don't have to go into space to fix them. But then there's also the cost of obtaining and processing nuclear fuel, and then dealing with it afterwards. Apples and oranges, maybe.
But it's kind of an interesting project, I think.
A Forest of Fuel: Coming soon, to your gas tank!
Courtesy Stef Maruch
Move over, old, lame bio-fuels!
Algae! The wondrous plants that can grow easily in controlled conditions and whose needs are very basic for rapid growth is now being tested for use in bio-fuels. ExxonMobil, looking to expand and diversify their alternative fuel options will team up with Venter's Synthetic Genomics Inc. to conduct research on different types of algae to test their effectiveness as biofuels.
The so-called "first generation" bio-fuels caused problems globally when the price of corn (for corn ethanol) sky rocketed when it was being used for food and fuel . Though a small percent of corn (or other) ethanol is added to gasoline, it still has a huge effect on the market, and is therefore not the best long term solution to eliminating our addiction to oil.
The Future?: Someday...someday. Let's keep 'em crossed for a day when all houses are like this!
Courtesy Bjorn Appel
Many view bio-fuels as only a transitionary solution to the oil problem, hoping that a sustainable energy type (like solar or wind) may soon be widely available. Algae if successful as a bio fuel, it may be used for a longer period than the "first-generation" bio fuels because of how fast it can grow and how easy it can be to care for. It also isn't used for much else, not like corn anyway. Engineers are hoping to develop artificial environments for algae to grow in knowing that this is the only way to produce enough of the green slime to sustain our needs.
It is encouraging, in some ways, that a big business like ExxonMobil is getting involved because research will not be short funded. If there is a will, there is some green slime that can't wait to get in your car!
Megawatts from heaven, fuel from the john
in Earth and Space Science, Energy Transformations, Scientific Enterprise, and Flow of Matter and Energy
Almost everything we'll need, right here: Almost.
Courtesy Stefan ThlesenBTW, Buzzketeers, if I ever catch you using the term “the john” when talking about a toilet, I will erase you from the story of my life. Sure, I just used it, but think I have the right to take possession of that word to divest it of its hurtfulness. Sort of like how ugly people are allowed to call stuff “fugly.”
Anyway, let’s consider the future of energy. We all know that we have to start conserving fossil fuels, so that we can use them with abandon in a dune buggy-filled Mad Max style future. (I like to think of this as “saving it for the party.”) In the mean time, we have to get clever. This week I noticed a couple of stories about people thinking outside the box with regards to energy. In one case, they’re thinking above the box, in the other they’re thinking below the box. (Or maybe they’re thinking in the box. It depends on what you use your boxes for.)
Check it out: a company called Solaren Corp has convinced the largest energy utility in California to purchase 200 megawatts of solar power from them by around 2016. The way they propose getting that power is the interesting thing—they plan on getting it from space.
Wait… that was poorly phrased. All solar power comes from space. What Solaren intends to do is launch a massive array of mirrors (as large as several miles across) into orbit to collect and reflect sunlight onto photoelectric cells. The cells will convert the sunlight into electric power, which will then be converted into radio waves and blasted down to a receiver on Earth. The radio energy will then be turned back into electricity. Solaren claims that the system could eventually generate 1.2 to 4.8 gigawatts of power at a price comparable to that of other alternative energy sources, enough to power 250,000 homes in California. And unlike land-based solar panels, the flow of energy wouldn’t depend on weather, and the orbit would be high enough that the system could provide energy 24 ours a day. They intend to launch it up to about 22,000 miles above the surface of the planet, meaning that it would be just inside of a high Earth orbit, and therefore geosynchronous. (I think.) Pretty neat, huh?
However, getting a couple miles of mirrors up to 22,000 miles above Earth is a little tricky. A little tricky, and super expensive. Building the receiving systems isn’t going to be cheap either. Some folks think that the project is altogether… unlikely. But the California power utility isn’t actually making an investment (i.e., taking a risk) they just promised to buy the power when it’s there (or if). But that commitment is probably comforting for investors.
Solaren says that the radio waves being sent back to Earth will be one sixth the intensity of sunlight. But what kind of radio waves are we talking about here? Visible light is composed of radio waves. So are radio, um, radio waves. Nope, we’re talking about microwaves. Microwaves have the advantage of being pretty high-energy. They have the disadvantage of being a little scary to me. And to other people. But it seems like it’s not all that dangerous; the center of the microwave beam would have an intensity of about 23 milliwatts per square centimeter. The limit for workplace exposure to microwaves in the US is 10 mw/cm2, so obviously 23 mw/cm2 is beyond what the government considers safe, but the area of maximum intensity is relatively small. Near the outside of the receiving array, the intensity would be closer to 1 mw/cm2. Birds flying through the center of the beam could have some trouble, and small aircraft and hot air balloons would do well to avoid it, but the metal shell of conventional planes should protect passengers entirely (the same way that your metal microwave protects you from the forces cooking your food). I suppose a super-villain could always hack into the satellite controls, and re-aim the system at a neighborhood. But that’s assuming that it ever gets built.
So from pie in the sky (a huge mirror pie), let’s turn our attention to fudge underground. It doesn’t have quite the sunshiny appeal of space mirrors, but it’s a little more feasible at the moment.
Remember how, in Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome, Master Blaster was harvesting methane fuel from pig feces? Well, that works in the real world too, and not just with pig feces.
Consider the following: if you were to safe all of your… solid waste for one year, you could produce an amount of fuel equivalent to about 2.1 gallons of diesel fuel. I know—it doesn’t seem as much a it should, right? But if a city of 250,000 people was converting its waste into fuel, they’d have enough to drive 80 buses 62,000 miles each. If that figure sounds oddly specific, it’s only because that’s what Oslo, Norway intends to do. The city is all set to fuel its public transportation with brown gold. (Or with the biomethane produced by it.)
The cost of producing an amount of biomethane equivalent to a liter of diesel fuel comes to about 98 cents, while a liter of diesel costs about $1.30 at the pumps in Norway. And, unlike some other biofuels we won’t mention, it only gets into your food supply after you’ve eaten it.
Because the fuel comes from recently grown organic materials, it’s supposed to be carbon neutral, which is good. The article doesn’t say how energy intensive the process of making it is, though. Also, methane itself is a pretty bad greenhouse gas, but I suppose if it’s all burned efficiently that shouldn’t be a problem. (Burned methane makes CO2 and water.)
Energy may be plentiful in the future. We’ll just have to watch where we step.
Windpower leader
Courtesy ecstaticist
The United States overtook Germany as the biggest producer of wind power last year, new figures showed, and will likely take the lead in solar power this year, analysts said on Monday. Wind accounted for 42% of all new electricity generation installed last year in the U.S.
Another interesting change:
The wind industry now employs more people than coal mining in the United States. (click links in red to learn more).
Energy for the taking: Wind turbines bask in the sun near Palm Springs, California.
Courtesy Mark RyanA new dual solar and wind-powered charger for personal electronic devices was on display at last weekend’s annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The K2 by Kinesis Industries is a handheld unit that allows you to harvest energy from both the sun and the wind and store it in an internal battery that can then be used to power all your energy-hungry USB-powered electronic gadgets.
You know what? I’m a sucker for this kind of thing. There’s been a few times I’ve lost battery power in my camera or cell phone and wished I had something like this. I’ll probably buy one even if I never use it. The idea is just so cool.
Portable chargers like this have been around for a while. Solio of California produces an array of solar-powered handheld chargers. PowerFilm in Ames, Iowa manufactures foldable thin film solar modules for a number of charging and direct powering applications. They rolled out a new USB and AA charger at this year’s show.
But evidently none match K2’s capacity or versatility. One hour gathering sunlight or wind with the K2 is enough to power 30 minutes of cell phone use or over 300 minutes of mp3 music. A full charge is enough to fully power your cell phone five times over. You can also plug the K2 into an AC outlet and store up power for later use that way.
But what happens if you forget to do that and it’s a cloudy day and the weather is dead calm? What’s a poor techno-weenie to do? Well, not to worry, the K2 also has a nifty side clip so you can attach it to your bicycle and generate your own wind. As of yet there’s no release date for the K2 but when it does come out, it’s expected to retail for about a hundred bucks.
Now, just so we’re clear, I have not personally tried any of the products mentioned in this story, so I can’t endorse or pooh-pooh any of them. You should do your own research before making any purchase of this technology. I just like the idea of being able to charge my gadgets anywhere I go. That way next time I’m stranded out in the middle of Wyoming and my iPod’s battery starts to fizzle during Britney’s latest hit, I’ll be golden.
LINKS
Network World K2 review
Voltaic Systems. (Not at the show but makes cool laptop bags)
Captain Planet review of K2 (with a video)
A Swiss teacher just completed a 17-month trip around the world in a solar-powered car. Louis Palmer made the 32,000 mile trip towing a trailer load of batteries charged by the sun. His journey took him through 38 countries and ended in Poznan, Poland where the United Nation talks on climate change are taking place. the vehicle has a top speed of 55 mph and can travel 180 miles on a single charge. The Solar Taxi's official website has information, updates, photos, and a blog.
Subscribe
I want to learn about
Science Buzz is supported by the National Science Foundation.Copyright © Science Museum of Minnesota, 2004-2010, except where noted.
Add a new comment