🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <8145@pt.cs.cmu.edu> vac@sam.cs.cmu.edu (Vincent Cate) writes:
> it would be really neat to use several 
>thousand watts of solar cells on my house to produce gasoline for my car.

Plants make hydrocarbons, so we should be able to bioengineer a plant to
extrude hydrocarbons, much the way maple syrup is tapped from a tree...  If we
get on it right away - we might have it in maybe 50 year's I'd guess.  Could be
much sooner.  How long would a tree take to make a gallon of gas?  We should be
able to figure this out from the known rates of tree growth!  This is a useful
problem for the nanotechnology folks over in sci.nanotech to think about (so I
am cross posting it there also).

  Tom Schneider
  National Cancer Institute
  Laboratory of Mathematical Biology
  Frederick, Maryland  21701-1013
  toms@ncifcrf.gov

[Well, in the case of maple sugar it's an incredibly inefficient way to 
 do it.  By far the best way would be some single-celled creature,
 in tanks.  However, I imagine that nanotech will obviate the whole
 problem by allowing (a) direct, high-efficiency conversion of light
 to electricity, and (b) efficient, high-density storage of electric
 power.  We shouldn't need to burn hydrocarbons in our cars at all.
 --JoSH]