Give RUSNANO a fulcrum...
How Chubais will turn the world around
Nikolai Dzis-Voynarovsky, Slon.ru"Give me a fulcrum, and I will turn the Earth over," said the Greek Archimedes of Syracuse about 2,200 years ago, launching a heavy ship with one movement of his hand.
"We have three projects that will turn the globe upside down," Russian Anatoly Chubais said a week ago on the Dozhd TV channel. However, there is "one last thing" (as another notable innovator, Steve Jobs, says) – unlike the Syracusan, Chubais does not guarantee anything: "We don't know if they will turn out or not."
Nevertheless, in an interview with Dozhd, Anatoly Borisovich mentioned in passing about his megaprojects, and at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum Slon.ru I asked the Rusnano employees about them in more detail. Here they are:
Chubais Light BulbThe world lacks energy.
Danish builders are creating energy-efficient homes, American millionaires are investing in the production of electric cars and solar panels, and the international community has been building a thermonuclear reactor for a long time and so far unsuccessfully. Meanwhile, Rusnano invested in the production of LEDs.
The energy consumption of an LED light bulb is about 10 times less than an incandescent lamp. Of course, if the entire population of the Earth replaces "Edison lamps" with "Chubais lamps", then the Optogan company, which produces LED lamps, will be greatly enriched. But will it change the world? Let's figure it out. Residential buildings consume 11% of the world's energy, and commercial real estate consumes 5%. However, in housing, only 16% of energy is spent on lighting and heating water. In commercial real estate, the share of lighting is somewhat higher, but for our rough estimate we will take 25%. It turns out that LEDs will be able to reduce energy consumption in the world by about 3%. It seems to be a little.
However, in the early 80s, the US economy, reacting to the rise in oil prices, reduced energy consumption by about 15%, which was about 4% of global energy consumption in those years. After that, oil prices collapsed, and the next rise in the price of "black gold" began only 20 years later. Well, the Soviet Union stopped receiving petrodollars, had to get into debt to the West and eventually collapsed. The upheaval of the world is evident.
It is difficult to say what will turn over after the widespread introduction of LED lamps and for what share of this revolution Optogan will be responsible, but the ambitions look reasonable.
The pill of Chubais"I can name areas – starting from what journalists call medicines for old age, but this is not so.
In fact, we are talking about extending active life to biological limits. Maintaining vigor, activity until the time allotted to a person," Chubais told Dozhd.
"At least half of the economic growth over the past 50 years is associated with an increase in life expectancy. By defeating cancer, we will inject $100 trillion into the global economy. Thus, it is possible to make the economy grow by improving health, quality of life and medical care," billionaire Michael Milken is sure.
RUSNANO has a whole package of such projects. Among them are the famous "drops from old age" based on "Skulachev Ions", a microcapsule for introducing radiation sources directly to an organ affected by cancer, as well as nanovaccines against human and avian influenza. The volume of the world economy is now about $60 trillion, so if successful, it is planned not some banal doubling of Russia's GDP, but more than doubling of world GDP!
Quite pulls on the revolution of the world.
Chubais Roll"The basic materials are what the technosphere is based on – metal, cement, plastic.
We are talking about projects that can fundamentally change the configuration of basic materials on the globe," said the head of RUSNANO. The corporation has a package of projects dedicated to the production of various materials (primarily composite). For example, a promising thing is prepregs (composite materials are semi–finished products obtained by impregnating a reinforcing fibrous base with evenly distributed polymer binders – VM).
Flexible, available in rolls, which makes it easier and faster (compared to traditional composites) to produce products of complex shape. Composites with comparable strength can be even a third lighter than metal, so theoretically they can give a huge gain.
Theoretically, the widespread introduction of prepregs can make a revolution not only in technology, but also in a couple of dozen raw materials states. In practice, everything is more complicated. Composites themselves have been known for a very long time (plywood, reinforced concrete, tires with a steel frame), but even modern composites began to be widely used in the middle of the XX century. But as fiberglass was used in the 50s in ballistic missiles, so it is still used in them. Of the relatively mass applications, only the bodies of experimental cars can be recalled.
Why is that? Firstly, there are difficulties with manufacturing: an aluminum sheet is stamped by a machine within a second and a couple of tens of seconds are required to weld the parts into a single whole. The components of the composite part must be put into a mold, filled with filler and "fried" in the oven, in addition, it can not be painted with any paint. These are hours of labor, and partly manual. But let's assume that prepregs are easier and faster to fit into molds, processed, harden, and also painted. But this does not solve the second fundamental disadvantage of composites: gluing or welding a cracked composite part does not return it to its former strength. Now, if the "Chubais rolls" learn to heal holes in themselves on their own, then this will really become a revolution in basic materials!
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru23.06.2011