Ethanol/Methanol

Well, the case of Zubrin is also mostly sound for me too. Specially
the part where he says something like "the hydrogen economy is a
stinking heap of bullshit". ;-)

As a Brazilian, I can give further details on the biofuels stuff. Our
alcohol program was created during the Brazilian military dictatorship
(1964-1986) because the generals in command considered "strategic" to
have an alternative to oil after the 70s oil shocks. Well, it turns
out that their idea was sound and there have been alcohol cars here
for the last 25 years or so. Sometimes alcohol gets more expensive
than gasoline, sometimes cheaper, and so in the last few years FFVs
(which we call simply "flex cars") started to be mass-produced, so
that consumers can use the cheapest fuel at hand. In the last year
flex cars were the preferred choice for people buying new cars. There
is also much talk now of using "exotic" fuels that given enough
incentive can be produced here, like the biodiesel made from dend,
babau, pequi, macaba (some native plants with oily seeds that we
have around) as well as more conventional plants like corn, cotton and
soy (major Brazilian exports). One can see pics of two biodiesel
prototypes being studied at
http://www.usp.br/agen/repgs/2003/pags/280.htm . It has been argued
that biodiesel-fueled cars would be more efficient and in average
cheaper to run than flex cars or pure alcohol-powered cars.

However, our relative success with biofuels should be taken with a
grain of salt. I think that in part that was possible due to our
steamy-hot, sun-scorched and rain-soaked climate that makes many
plants grow like weeds and allows for more than one crop per year
(often three crops a year) with minimal artificial energy inputs. The
soil in many regions also helps at least for many tropical crops. As
Pero Vaz de Caminha - the scribe of Pedro lvares Cabral's sea
expedition that discovered Brazil in year 1500 - wrote in his letter
to King Manuel I the Fortunate relating the discovery, "in this land,
anything that is seeded will grow", in a rather rough translation from
the Arcaic Potuguese to English.

So, I am kind of doubtful that in cooler countries like the U.S. one
could mass-produce biofuels with a significant energetic gain (i.e.,
perhaps the energy input would almost equals the energy output of the
process). If that is the case, than the U.S. would just exchange fuel
dependency on Middle East countries for dependency on tropical
countries. (Although this situation could still be advantageous
politically. The equatorial zone of Earth is enormous and has lots of
countries with very different kinds of cultures across four continents
that would never act in unison, while in the Middle East I see a
homogeneous Muslim civilization that somehow became homogeneously
hostile to Westerners.)

On 1/30/06, Combs, Mike wrote:
(...)
> An Energy Revolution
> By Robert Zubrin
> http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleID.18976/article_detail.asp
>
> I'm well known as a critic of some of Zubrin's reasoning on the Mars vs.
> O'Neills debate. But I have to say that I didn't put much stock in
> Ethanol/Methanol until about an hour again. Zubrin's convinced me this
> is a direction we should be heading in.
(...)