Car runs on water! 5/16/2006 - The Holiest of Holy Grails is apparently on the horizon.  An engine that RUNS ON WATER!  That's right, another inventor who is going to cure us of our addiction to fossil fuels.  The video shows a new gas welding fuel based on some kind electrolysis process using water to produce, what the inventor calls, "HHO gas".  The welder seems pretty cool, literally.  But, as I recall, jewelers have been using "water welders", which burn hydrogen and oxygen separated from using electrolysis, for some time now.  The whole thing seemed a little fishy to me. First, the "too good to be true" flag was flying in all its glory.  The alert forced my skepticism (or is it cynicism?) to latch onto every concept and looked for signs of trouble.  I like the welder idea, but when they said that their prototype "can run exclusively on water, although it currently configured to run as a water and gasoline hybrid."  DING DING DING DING  There went my BS detector. If I had developed a vehicle that could run on water (or any FREE fuel), I wouldn't be caught dead putting gasoline into it.  I wouldn't care if I could go 100 miles on 4 ounces of water, or 1 mile on 40 gallons of water.  And I don't think I could be making my invention fast enough to satisfy demand.  So, what gives?  Why would it need any gasoline at all? My guess, even if the device does produce adequate quantities of hydrogen to actually power the engine in realtime, the amount of energy required to convert the H2O into HHO results in a net loss.  Still, I'm optimistic about the concept.  After all, if such a system can improve fuel economy by 10% with no loss of power or reduced engine life or increase in pollution, then it's still a HUGE breakthrough. So, I found the inventors web page on the vehicle and began going down the list of bullet points.  He focuses less on saving gasoline and more on simply running on HHO.  But as I read the site, another set of flags popped up.  "In the prototype vehicle, it has been estimated that the heavy-duty alternator requires approximately 4 HP of the stock engine's base power load. It has been estimated that the increased energy release of the combustion process utilizing the Aquygen Comments (26)

Mars Rover makes record breaking drive 2/10/2004 - Some of the pictures are incredible.  Seeing another man-made object on Mars in the distance is almost startling. But, today's news is that Spirit broke Sojourner's one-sol distance record of 7 meters, going 21.2 meters.   Comments (0)

Opportunity signals, I Made It !!! 1/25/2004 - Coming to a stop on one of its outer petals, Opportunity sent back a signal notifying NASA/JPL that it has arrived on Mars and everything at this point is A-OK. DSN (Deep Space Network) was able to follow the entry and landing by the series of tone signals transmitted by Opportunity, just as they did with Spirit during it's entry. Although Opportunity over shot it's original mission landing point by 23 or 24 kilometers, it is still on the hematite field that is the main focus of it's scientific tests to be performed later. Pictures are expected to be sent from Opportunity at approximately 1am PST 1/25/2004. At the time of me writing this update, the airbags are in the process of being retracted and the rover pod will attempt to right itself. Future updates will include pictures from both rovers. Comments (1)