xkcd

All chemical propulsion is just controlled explosions that we use to push a thing forward. It's not that different, as long as you don't use it in the atmosphere or near humans.

Ah the 50s, when everything atomic was rad.

It's not uncommon in scifi. Netflix's Three Body Problem also explores such a solution in quite some depth.

It would probably work just fine, but it needs a huge ship. It could get up to a few percent of the speed of light.

FWIW, nuclear test ban treaties are considered to outlaw it. I think we're more likely to solve the technical difficulties of antimatter propulsion than we are to get over the political difficulties of nuclear bomb propulsion.

Read "Footfall" for a hard scifi story featuring such a ship.

I know right, I recently replaced my glasses with transition lenses and it's pretty nice.

Who doesn't want automated sunglasses? Not seeing any downsides yet. Only thing I know they don't work in cars, but I don't generally drive so it's ok

The technology has come a long way since the 90s

Yeah, for people with hemochromatosis (too much iron in the blood) the main treatment is still bloodletting.

Yeah, it's still practiced. But the whole four humors thing is a bit old hat.

I think there's a few of these misplaced. Heelys>transition lens.

I guess because there is no crust to grab. Gotta get grease and maybe sauce on your hands to eat the inner squares.

For some types of bread, the machine can do it much more uniformly and without crushing. This can be difficult for humans.

Transitions are game changing. Sounds like someone who doesn't wear glasses all the time. I even had transition sunglasses before I needed glasses - got tired of taking them off going in/out all day.

Not sure who created this (I kkow, XKCD), but it's mediocre.

Double-ended extension cords belongs in the top ~~left~~ right corner. Sounds bad and is bad.

I love transitions lenses. I have transitions contacts and they are fantastic.

Diverging diamond interchanges are a type of road intersection that appears very chaotic from the outside, but are actually pretty simple and safe to navigate

It's way more effective to collect the solar energy from a station to charge batteries than to cary the whole thing around unless your car is a drone on some remote planet

The sun gives you around 1500W per m2. If sun shines at maximum brightness for 24 hours, you get 36kwh per day. That's enough to fully charge a small EV every day. That's a spherical chicken estimate.

Bringing this to numbers that exist in the real world, the sun will only give you about 20% of that over the course of the day, and the panels are around 20% efficient. You'll get more like 1.4kwh per day per m2. You can double or triple that, depending on how much surface area you can cover. An EV can get around 3 miles per kwh, so tripling that number will get you 12 miles. Considering the extra costs involved (both in buying the panels and adding weight), it's not even worth it as a supplementary source.

There's some possibilities for RVs, which have a lot of roof space for panels, tend to sit in one spot for days or weeks, and have other power usages that are a lot less than driving. Otherwise, put the solar panels over the parking places and roadways, not on the cars.

Solar cells of comparable scale don't provide nearly enough power to propel any kind of useful mass, and their output is only a trickle compared to even the slow-charging current of a classical EV. A solar-powered car would have to save mass everywhere, including safety devices (goodbye, crumple zones), backup propulsion, and batteries. No batteries means that the car would be limited by weather, time of day, and day of the year (winter -> sun at lower angle -> reduced solar cell power). Solar cells would have to be flush with the car's body lest they turn into sails/wings/airbrakes, which makes tracking the sun for better efficiency impossible. Driving through a city, a wooded area, or inside a tunnel would cast shadows on the car, especially at dawn/dusk.

I could go on.

They're not—as long as the PV cells are a supplementary charging solution, in addition to wall charging, to the batteries. You'll get a bit more range out while driving, especially when the car is a lightweight low drag design and PV cells may be the only thing needed to keep the constant 90 km/h speed in a sunny day. And when not driving the cells might be enough to get the 10...20 km or so commuting range back over your 8-hour workday.

But putting PV cells on a 3 ton electric SUV or pickup truck is stupid, it won't do jack all due to the inherent inefficiency of such vehicles.