F. Baum wrote:

Jay, Ill try to get things a little more on topic. The airport where I
keep one of my airplanes is run almost entirely on Solar power (There
is a small diesel engine for the well)

This is a brilliant example of the right idea. Germany has turned
solar-cell development into a national project similar to the way they
built metal-skin monowing fighter--I mean, uh, "race"--aircraft when
everbody else was still putzing around in bi-planes.

The multi-wavelength cells are taking solar energy out of the '70s and
back-shelf Radio Shack hobby kits where the rest of the world abandoned
it and turning it into something.

Maybe we'll never get the internal combustion engine out of the general
aviation aircraft or the tractor-trailer, but if we get Guam to stop
burning diesel 24/7 for power (for example) and we find alternative ways
to fuel -other- things where we can, we'll lessen the burden on that
which truly requires oil.

Maybe that will be enough to get us by until we develop a better way to
push a piston. In the meantime, a whole economy can and will be built
around alternative energy including solar, hydrogen, lithium ion, corn,
beets, sugar, uranium, offshore wave energy, etc. It will take a
generation of people willing to think out of the box the way the Wright
Brothers did before we're free again.

-c