Re:The Crazy Genius Behind Solar Roadways
by danpat on Monday May 26, 2014 @12:29AM
(#7798700)
The key word is "supposed". If glass tiles were a good choice for road surfaces, I'd expect we'd have seen them in use by now. If it's just economics that have stopped glass tile use in roadways, I'm still dubious that the energy production from these units will come close to offsetting the additional expense.
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Re:The Crazy Genius Behind Solar Roadways
by joelrunyon on Monday May 26, 2014 @02:08AM
(#7798882)
> If glass tiles were a good choice for road surfaces, I'd expect we'd have seen them in use by now.
These types of attitudes don't help push forward innovation.
Re:The Crazy Genius Behind Solar Roadways
by MichaelApproved on Monday May 26, 2014 @12:44AM
(#7798728)
This is what R&D is for.
Re:The Crazy Genius Behind Solar Roadways
by TTPrograms on Monday May 26, 2014 @01:08AM
(#7798769)
The first part of R&D is research, implying "research if this is even possible". The point people are making it's far from clear that this will work, so it's silly to assume that it will work a priori given the obvious engineering challenges.
Humans have been researching and developing road surfaces for a few millennia now. It's going to be very expensive to find plausible materials that haven't already been tried.
Especially clear ones.