A while back, Irwin Stelzer had an excellent joke about America’s energy policy:
Funny, that. In the intervening years, we’ve seen a number of theories put forward about how America could achieve energy independence. The most glittering of these was hydrogen power, which promised abundant, cheap, space-age fuel. The problem with hydrogen (or hydrogen fuel cells), is that few non-technical people knew enough chemistry or physics to determine whether or not the theory was plausible on its face. The latest issue of the New Atlantis features an essay by aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin which seems like the final word on the practicality of hydrogen power. The crude summation is: Packaging, distributing, and using hydrogen is too complicated, expensive, and dangerous to ever be a realistic alternative. But even that doesn’t particularly matter, because in order to create the pure, non-oxidized form of hydrogen needed for fuel, you have to expend more energy than you eventually reap. The entire hydrogen dream is basically a hoax. But don’t take my word for it–Zubrin gets into the weeds with the endothermic reactions and enough math to be persuasive.
