Modular pedal-powered vehicle

Most who have known me for any length of time are aware of this idea: a pedal-powered, solar-boosted, regenerative-braking, lightweight-but-sturdy safe vehicle that you can buy a piece at a time. Young married couple? Just buy the driver-one passengar module. Want to
store stuff, maybe have a basket you can pull off to take through the store? Get the "back boot" or "trunk" - just snaps on. Have a baby, now? Add a rear-seat section. Family of seventeen? Add several rear-seat sections. Any passengers can help pedal; there's another solar panel on each roof, and attaching or detaching sections should be no more difficult or complicated than changing out the seats in a family van. Done properly, these should be much cheaper than conventional cars, and just as safe- given the space-age materials we have now, one should be able to create all the comforts currently available in a luxury car - much more so than previous generations of energy-efficient vehicles.

Energy from children

With all the hubub about the power-generating playground equipment from BYU's engineering department, lately, I have a few ideas to add to the clamour (rough sketches coming soon)- if somebody else decides to pick these up and build them, I only ask that they use it for benefiting those who most need it, rather than lining their own pocketbooks. And so:
- A "water wheel" - something like a cross between a ferris wheel and a slide. (This will probably make more sense when I've learned to upload drawings).
-Put a ratcheting joint in the top of a swing set - so every back-and-forth moves it along a little further
-Capturing the friction energy as children slide down a slide
-A trampoline-like cushion-like toy that has air underneath (many baby toys are built on this principle); whenever you jump down, this could force a piston along a chamber; made of sufficiently springy material it would bounce back on its own
-A dumbwaiter-type device, perhaps two buckets - a child goes down, the other side comes up; the damping device at the top also serves to collect the energy released each time

More, possibly, to come.

An invention idea

Suppose you had a washing machine that attached to - or part of it was - a clothes line. Clothes would go in one at a time, on pegs; this very small machine would wash them in a very small and efficient way, then send them out to dry in the sunshine. One would want a way to use it by itself (without the line) during the winter, or rainstorms, or whatever; but maybe they could be made small enough and cheap enough (not at first, I'm sure, but eventually) that it would be affordable to have a conventional washing-machine as well. Or maybe the laundry line could be inside during those times, as I saw in Europe... NW

The Whys and Wherefores

The Wilson Celestial Pioneering Company is an idea that started in response to the need for something expressing our constant desire to make something better - of the world around us, physically, politically, philosophically - and of ourselves. All of this may provide something of a spiritual nature, as well; whatever it is, this blog should have many contributors - enjoy.