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    JOHN WOOD CAMPBELL1910-1971John Wood Campbell, for thirty-four years the editor of this magazine, was an outstanding influence and leader in the development of modern science fiction. As he shaped and guided the growth of Analog into the respected and unique publication it has become, he shaped and guided as well the techniques of science-fiction writing and of many of the field's ablest au­thors.Graduated from Duke University with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics, John Campbell became one of the most popular and memorable writers of science fiction, practicing with utmost distinction the craft he fought, edited, prodded, taught, and praised others into practicing with growing skill.He will be remembered as an innovator, as an exciting writer, as a de­manding editor. He will be remembered best by the uncounted people with whom he worked for the generosity of spirit with which he shared his energy, his ideas, his unstinted friendship, and his great gifts of creative judgment.John Campbell always thought to the future. He wrote to the future. We are grateful that he left three of his provocative editorials for this and the fol­lowing issues of Analog.Antipollution Devicean editorialby John W. CampbellThat I don't hold a high opinion of some of the massive campaigns being launched by Instant Ecology Experts is fairly clear, I think. So that must mean I don't think any­thing should be done, maybe?No—but it does mean I'm against doing useless things at great expense, or doing things that in fact make the situation worse, in the glorious name of improving the situation. Like get­ting rid of lead in gasoline—at the expense of introducing a new source of powerfully carcinogenic sub­stances in automobile exhaust. It's not that I like the danger of lead poi­soning—it's just that I prefer a little lead poisoning—which can be treated effectively—to the danger of cancer-causing substances which cause something we can't treat effectively. Sort of, "Which do you prefer, a bro­ken leg or being attacked by ants?"There are things that could be done—things that need to be done, and do not represent hysterical or political antipollution problems. Most studies have pretty well agreed that the internal combustion engine is the source of most of the most dangerous pollution in the air. Most of the surveys and studies in­dicate that sixty percent of air pollu­tion traces to internal combustion engines—cars, trucks, diesel locomo­tives, road-building machinery, et cetera.The pollution they produce is real, massive, and seems to be politically untouchable. Most of the hysterical antipollution Instant Experts so dearly love their personal wheels that they forgive their dear beasts any nasty stink they may produce.Practically every voting American citizen has his own set of wheels—in­cluding the Welfare recipients.This massive body of voters makes the automotive pollution generator effectively a political untouchable.Here's a magnificent case of a real, massive, dangerous pollution gener­ator that not even the most fanatical Instant Expert Ecologist groups has dared to attack, and attack head-on. It's real pollution, not hysterical or political—and they walk around it carefully avoiding serious attacks.Power plants are favorite attack-points. They're Big Corporation properties and therefore, obvious, automatic fair game for everyone with any grudges.But the fact is that fossil-fuel plants give off relatively harmless fumes; combustion in their furnaces is just as complete as it can be and carried out with an excess of air, and relatively slowly (not millisecond ex­plosive combustion as in internal combustion engines) so that the combustion products are almost completely in equilibrium—CO2, N2, H2O, some SO2 and a little CO.Every one of those compounds is a naturally-present molecular species; you yourself breathe out CO2, N2, H20, a little SO2 and even a little CO. The ecosystem of Earth adapted to those substances aeons ago. Car­bon dioxide is the mainstay of all green plant "diets"; recent studies show that many soil bacteria and fungi are able to metabolize carbon monoxide quite happily. (One vari­ety of the penicillium family likes the stuff!)For ages, volcanoes have been ex­haling stupendous tonnages of those substances—a little SO2 in the air has even been shown to be actively ben­eficial to animals. (Remember that one of the favorite cross-linkage mechanisms in proteins depends on a sulfur linkage.)Automobile exhaust, on the other hand, contains decidedly unnatural compounds—things not found in na­ture, because they're highly unstable products of partial oxidation. When hydrocarbon fuels are forced to burn in a too-limited supply of air, at high temperatures, in thousandths of a second, and are then swept out of the combustion region and cooled very rapidly—against chilled metal walls—substances come out that could not be produced in nature except in a lightning bolt. There, too, substances are heated to enormous tempera­tures in an exceedingly short time, and then abruptly cooled as the heat-source is withdrawn.The IC engines—diesel or gas-op­erated—produce nitrogen oxides, just as lightning flashes do—but not in the middle of a rainstorm at high al­titude, where they're diluted and washed away to enrich the soil or waters below. Even in great dilution, nitric oxides are poisonous. Hydro­gen cyanide gas is deadly at 5 parts per million in air; nitrogen oxides are about one fifth as poisonous—25 ppm—as that favorite killer of detec­tive-story fame.The partially burned hydro­carbons are bad—and they get worse when the sun and air goes to work on them; the complex organic sub­stances tend to be far more toxic than inorganic poisons, and a com­bination of solar ultraviolet, partially oxidized hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, atmospheric oxygen and nit­rogen, a little ozone and who-knows-­what odd other things—like lead bro­mide, for instance—combine to pro­duce "photochemical smog."Those compounds are not things Earth's life forms have grown up with for the last billion or so years.So how can we attack the un­touchable problem of mobile smog-generators?A fundamental aspect is that (1) manufacturers won't make a product people don't want, and (2) will strive to continue to produce a product people do like.There is no production electric ve­hicle available in America today—except golf carts!—that the public could buy if they wanted to. Manu­facturers don't produce something for which there's no demand.Electric cars that we could manu­facture today would have a max­imum range-between-charges of about 75 to 100 miles, would be small, relatively light-bodied, would have a maximum speed of about 60 miles an hour, and definitely would not give zero-to-60 in 6 seconds per­formance. They'd be low horse­power, and, therefore, acceleration would be moderate. No rubber-burning jackrabbit starts!They would, however, make ideal commuter and in-city transportation; they'd be perfect for the housewife's shopping and social calls.They would be, that is, if she could buy one, which she can't.And they produce no pollution. The nuclear power reactors that fueled them with electricity via the power lines would produce no pollu­tion in the biosphere.* (*And if you insist on "thermal pollution" being a prob­lem. remember that because big power plants are far more efficient than automotive engines, the net thermal outpouring of a power plant would be far less than that of all the IC automobiles the electrics would displace! The next time your engine overheats, consider its contri­bution to thermal pollution!). The service life would be many years, reducing the scrap-automobile problem.The major reasons the electrics are unwanted in the market—and, therefore, not manufactured for sale—are that the public (1) is unfamiliar with what they can do, (2) is accustomed to high performance, high horse­power, large size and (3) holds the big, long, low varOOOm type car as a High Status Symbol.Some sweet day we may have really good energy storage devices; as of now batteries simply aren't ca­pable of supplying the 400 kilowatt power surges required to match top-performance internal combustion­—IC—engines. They can not supply 80-­mile-per-hour speed to a three-ton automobile for four hours continuously without recharge, as a gaso­line tank can.On the other hand, electrics are in­trinsically nonpolluting; their ex­haust emissions simply don't exist, and, therefore, do not have to be cleaned up. While IC engines are, by their inherent characteristics, ex­tremely dangerous polluters.That difference is relevant, impor­tant, and crucial—whatever "in" terms may currently be accepted as meaning "Something's got to be done, and soon!"It's been demonstrated—in that low-pollution car race a year or so ago—that extremely low-pollution emissions can be achieved with stan­dard piston engines. That laboratory experiment type operation, however, neglected to make clear the two most important factors; such cars have to employ some $800 to $1200 worth of platinum-metal catalytic exhaust oxidizers, and those catalytic devices have to be replaced—at a cost of sev­eral hundred dollars—because they become "poisoned" by various chemicals inhaled with the air or present as trace impurities in the fuel.Turbine engines have been devel­oped for automotive use; these, be­cause they can burn their fuel in an excess of air, and burn it instead of exploding it, can have very much lower inherent pollution. Large ones using large air bypass ratios, as in modern aircraft jet engines, can nearly eliminate dangerous pollution inherently, not as tacked-on patches to make up for intrinsic fau... [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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