“unstoppable”
You can’t stop it if it won’t start.
This Is How The Golden Ray Car Carrier Flipped On Its Side And Destroyed 4,067 Hyundais
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YouTuber Brick Immortar just came out with an excruciatingly detailed video not just on what happened to the Golden Ray, but the history of transporting cars in general.
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Sure. Why not. Proof of (technical) concept was established in the late 1950ies with the NS Savannah, and three other vessels later on. They all turned out to be too expensive to run. The Otto Hahn was converted to Diesel engines after 10 years.
Although economic viability won’t be an issue as long as this is a subsidised showcase project of the government.
“molten salt reactor […] that is said to use a thorium fuel cycle” - now this is the bit I’m skeptical about. I don’t think this is even reliably past the prototype/works fine in the lab stage for a mobile system yet. No shortage of cooling water on a ship, though.
They’ll build it, they’ll unveil it with great fanfare to the world, they’ll ship cargo with it… They will also have one technical problem after another and I’d expect that some ports won’t let it dock.
Then, after a while, they’ll quietly discontinue it.
There was a (small) fleet of electric taxicabs in NYC for ~10 years around that turn of the century.
Over 120 years ago. Everything old is new again. Or rather, there are, frustratingly, only very few original ideas in transportation. And those are usually from the 1950ies and involve nuclear power.
This one sold on Bring a trailer earlier in the year
Looks a lot like Grandma Duck’s Detroit Electric.
I love that a back seat driver is an actual feature in its parlor style arrangement!
This electric ambulance was built for the TV series The Knick, set in 1900.
Fun fact: When President William McKinley was assassinated in 1901 he was rushed to the hospital via an electric-powered ambulance. He had become the first U.S. president to ride in a car when he took a demonstration ride in a Stanley Steamer.
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/g43480930/history-of-electric-cars/
It also had a rudder for turns.
Taxpayers will love those, I’m sure.
I learn about those in the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers in the Idiots Abroad.
The (in)famous “Besenporsche” as used by Aachen customs office around 1950 in the coffee wars:
FR = Französisches Rheinland= French occupation zone.
Up until 1953 it was extremely lucrative to smuggle coffee from Belgium and The Netherlands into West Germany.
While most of it came in via old routes like footpaths through the fenns (this had been a border region for centuries) quite a lot was transported by road. Fast cars, hearses with hidden compartments, armoured cars, both homemade like something out of The A-Team or WW II ACPs, you name it. Complete with making smoke and throwing caltraps and whatnot.
Short overview:
Vennbahn-Stories_7_Mützenich_EN.pdf (140.0 KB)
The church that smuggled coffee built:
The original church in the town of Schmidt was destroyed in WW II and reconstruction made very slow progress due to lack of funds. Everybody in Schmidt was involved in smuggling coffee in way or another. The priest dropped a few hints here and there in his sermons about how he was glad that his parishioners were able to rebuild their houses due to showing some initiative, working late at night in the fenns and whatnot, and that it would be quite nice also if some of this newfound prosperity would find its way towards rebuilding the church. A couple of days later there was about one quarter of a million in total in the offering box. In cash, no questions asked.
And that’s why this church became known as St. Mokka.
