US Navy and the Technology to Turn Seawater into Fuel

[KC]

Awesome:

The Navy just found a way to reduce its dependence on possible adversaries for oil — it’s converted seawater into jet fuel.


Navy researchers have announced a major technological breakthrough, saying that they have been able to convert seawater into CO2 and hydrogen, Defense One reported. By successfully clearing the chemical hurdle, scientists can now use another series of chemical processes to create a seawater-based fuel.

Although:

The process is extremely energy intensive at the moment (Defense One reported that it takes “twice as much electricity to convert the water into fuel components as the process yields in terms of power”), but scientists believe that within the next decade the process will become much more efficient.

Even so:

Even with the current cost, the Navy sees benefits from the breakthrough.

The idea is really from a logistics standpoint, you’re no longer dependent on foreign fossil fuel,” said Ms. Willauer, Defense One reported. “You can make fuel where and when you need so you can stay on station, and it elevates that burden cost of fuel, of carrying it to different parts of the world.”

It makes sense to me given that ships would potentially be able to stay operational 100% of the time.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...water-jet-fue/

[Peter1469]

Yes, we have known about this possibility for a long time. The space program has always planed that any Mars base would do this. And now that we know the moon has water, a moon base as well.

This is what the government should be doing. Once it becomes cost effective, the free market will grab onto it.

[Cigar]

Government Bad