Sat, Oct 11, 2008
James examines some ways to tap into alternative, hopefully inexhaustible energy. Solar power can work great based on solar cells, even for a sports car, but a more ambitious solar tower in Andalusia uses reflection from 'heliostats' (mirrors always pointed to the sun by computer-control). Captation in space, well a geostationary station at 32,000 km, is seriously planned, dependent on building a solar-powered space elevator to it. The deary Britis isles are unfit for solar energy, but rich in sea movement. It's used by tidal turbines, basically reversed windmills, and devices converting wave energy. Holland is ideal for windmills, but far more efficient is astronaut Wubbo Ockels' high tech kites project to use the Jet Stream at great height. In New Mexico's desert, petrol is produced synthetically from air using the sun-like heath from a solar oven. Oxford ha a research center for nuclear fusion.
Sat, Oct 4, 2008
James May sets off to discover if his childhood vision of a world populated by robots will ever become a reality. In Japan he is charmed by a woman wearing an electro-mechanical jumpsuit that can double her strength, before encountering a robot that's almost. In the US, he meets the two million dollar bionic woman, and, in the unlikeliest of laboratories, he is astonished by the most sophisticated walking robot in the world. But is James' vision of the future just a little old fashioned? To find out he takes his first nervous step into another world where he becomes a ghost within a machine.
Sat, Sep 27, 2008
James starts his world tour in search of novel modes of (air) transport in Siberia, where a top-secret Soviet research project produced the 'ekranoplane', a hovercraft-like concept which requires vast space. In America he visits suburbs designed for airplane-owners and hybrids between those and cars.