This morning I was going over Feeds on Twitter when I saw a video with the former Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson in the thumbnail. Upon clicking the video to play, I was immediately impressed by what Clarkson appeared to say. I mean who wouldn’t?
In the video, there was this gigantic machine by NASA which supposedly was spewing out artificial clouds. The said cloud rose high up into the sky and later started falling down as rainfall.
Immediately I saw it’s potential benefits around the world. NASA in partnership with the African governments could place these ‘rainmaker’ machines around the Sahara and Namib desert to produce rainfall. That way, human suffering brought by famine could be a thing of the past.
Forget about Lil Wayne, NASA can really make it rain – literally making the raindrops fall out of the sky. This technology should be spread around the #Sahara Desert something for the @AfDB_Group @AfricanUnionUN @_AfricanUnion to think about @StateHouseKenya #africa #tech pic.twitter.com/PFHF073xfT
— Felix Omondi (@flexxmosh) May 23, 2019
Yes, that tweet above was made rather too quickly, but here is the real thing. I will make it a quick explanation so as not to bore you with the geeky facts and figures. In the video, Clarkson is attending a NASA test of a new engine that uses Hydrogen and Oxygen as fuel. The two elements are burned inside the engine and emit out steam at very high temperature.
The engine is used to propel the Space Shuttle on its way to space. That was the information I came across after doing a little research online, and it got me into thinking. For any engine that can propel a behemoth vehicle like the space shuttle, lifting it off the ground and into space. It must be a very powerful engine.
The fact it uses hydrogen and oxygen means the engine’s waste emission is actually hot steam. That later making clouds in the sky, and if it happens to emit just enough, the cloud will then fall down as rain.
Some of the biggest air pollutant and contributors to global warming are aircraft, vehicles, and heavy-duty machines, whose fossil fuels based engine cannot be practically substituted with electric motors. However, the engine being tested by NASA can propel an entire Space Shuttle vertically upwards into the sky until it escapes gravity.
A miniature version of that engine should be adapted for use in aircraft, vehicles, and heavy-duty machines. Electric cars are good, but they are not practical in most instances. There are not enough charge points even in the very industrialized nations.
Not to mention they are putting extra demand on the national grid, which in developing nations is overstretched to capacity hence the high cost of electricity. Before big companies like Tesla, Google, Mercedez Benz put a lot of money into electric cars manufacture. They should first consider hydrogen and oxygen gas-propelled vehicles.
I understand these elements in their pure gaseous forms are quite volatile and could make cars powered by them a driving bomb. Perhaps more money should be put towards coming up with high armored engine systems to reduce chances of cars powered by these fuel from bursting into flames.
If NASA pulled that off on such a gigantic engine, they can certainly make a smaller version of it that will fit into cars. The side effects of it could be more rainfall, and we can encourage as many aircraft and vehicles as possible to travel over arid and semi-arid areas to create artificial rainfall.
Hydrogen Fuel Cells not Hydrogen-combustion Engines
Upon further research, I have discovered that Hydrogen fuel cells are more efficient than Hydrogen-combustion engines. The latter also produces Nitrogen Oxide as a by-product, which can be dangerous to your health. So I would advocate for the use of Hydrogen propelled vehicles but in the form of Hydrogen fuel cells, not Hydrogen-combustion engines.