7 Mind-blowing technologies the US government has made illegal

As a much more cynical teenager, I decided that it would be impossible in a free society for companies, no matter how large, to suppress powerful technology – especially when you have many companies in the same field dealing with the same technology. Heck, millions of dollars were spent by companies to keep pizzas hot while they delivered them to you.

Then, as an adult, I discovered the real truth – there are plenty of amazing things that are out there that can’t be brought to the market due to simple government over-regulation. Just like MTV killed rock ‘n roll, federal regulations are doing a good job of killing ingenuity.

Give up, just quit, because in this life, you can’t win. Yeah, you can try, but in the end you’re just gonna lose, big time, because the world is run by the Man. The Man, oh, you don’t know the Man. He’s everywhere. In the White House… down the hall… Ms. Mullins, she’s the Man. And the Man ruined the ozone, he’s burning down the Amazon, and he kidnapped Shamu and put her in a chlorine tank! And there used to be a way to stick it to the Man. It was called rock ‘n roll, but guess what, oh no, the Man ruined that, too, with a little thing called MTV! So don’t waste your time trying to make anything cool or pure or awesome ’cause the Man is just gonna call you a fat washed up loser and crush your soul.
Jack Black – School of Rock

So, here is our list of 7amazing technologies that are illegal right here in the U.S.

#7 – Fuel-Efficient Cars

“Oh, come on now, we have fuel efficient cars! My Focus gets 38 miles per gallon!”

That will be the first angry email or comment I get from this entire article. I’ve been told this line by many people about their Focus, Prius or Insight.

Yet somehow, for the most part the United States has seemingly gone backwards in terms of fuel economy for vehicles. Back in the 80s and early 90s, it was possible to find a vehicle that would produce nearly 50mpg in real-world performance. Vehicles like the Metro, Sprinter and CRX. Up until recently, VW still put out a few vehicles that would get over 50mpg, but since the EPA has changed laws against diesel, VW no longer has much interest in producing fuel-efficient diesels here in the US.

The proof of fuel efficient cars built in other countries isn’t too hard to find. VW Makes the Passat 1.6 TDI which blows any US made car out of the water with an average of 76 miles per gallon utilizing the UK’s version of fuel efficiency testing. If this vehicle would be brought to the US and driven, MPG ratings would likely be much higher. The method used in England uses primarily urban driving without any miles given to long distance highways, the kind that 60% of Americans utilize every day. Using some simple fuel saving methods and longer roadway usage, the TDI could get up to 80 or even 90 miles per imperial gallon when in use on this side of the pond.

It isn’t just European automakers. America’s own Ford produces the ECOnetic,which is a variation of the Fiesta for the European market. It boasts a combined MPG rating of 74 to 76 miles per gallon. It, however can not be produced – or even imported to the United States due to strict “environmental laws” (For some reason, using one petroleum distillate like diesel is barbaric, while gasoline somehow is much better).

So, as it stands now, we’re stuck with underwhelming performers like the Prius and other hybrid abominations until someone does something to overturn EPA rules on diesel, or NHTSA rules regarding smaller, light weight cars. Maybe while we’re at it, we could finally let companies use advanced composites to build cars and replace mandated steel.

#6 – Outer Space

We LOVE space (hence the website name). However, as it stands right now, there are absolutely monumental restrictions for private individuals as well as companies to go to space.

Recently, many videos have been appearing on Youtube where people send different things “To Space” by way of hydrogen balloon lifting a cooler. Some examples are here, here and here. They are great examples of the ingenuity of Americans who want to send things to the upper atmosphere and claim some fame.

The sad thing is…Every one of these cases that we can find is illegal. In order to send a cooler to space, you need clearance from the FAA to go above a certain altitude. There are also MANY restrictions on things such as radio wave emission, altitude and many other things. In reality, the vast majority of these civilian balloon ‘space shots’ are illegal. Thankfully the FAA hasn’t fined anyone…Yet, but eventually it will happen, ending everyone’s fun. One great example of someone getting fined by the FAA for this very thing was the man who attached balloons to a chair and flew up to 15,000 feet – Larry Walters. Poor Larry was fined $4,000 for not having the proper permits. Far more than his 15 minutes of fame gained him.

It gets worse though. Not only are civilians not allowed to send things like an Iphone or beer to space, but private space companies are becoming the target of overwhelmingly tough legislation.

The worst example is SpaceX. The company that is in the forefront of commercial space development is coming under more scrutiny by the US government. In the forefront is the odd requirements to “Human Rate” equipment. Based on some recent statements by NASA, they want SpaceX capsules (like the Dragon)  to be 100 to 200 times more reliable than the absolute best space vehicles that NASA can produce. This is quite absurd, and if things don’t change will make it much harder for space to be commercialized. Can you imagine the federal government mandating that all new cars be 100 times safer? It’s practically impossible, and therefore essentially makes such a thing illegal.

#5 – Cheap, Reliable Meltdown Proof Nuclear Reactors

Imagine that some day, the world no longer has a need for additional electricity generation. No more brownouts or blackouts, electricity has become immensely cheap to produce. This energy is produced by something extremely clean and abundant, in fact the United States has the capacity to power the world for the next thousand years.

Now , imagine that this technology was almost perfected in the late 1960s and 1970s but put on the shelf due to government regulations.

Unlike a typical nuclear power plant that Utilizes enriched Uranium as its primary fuel source. LFTRs produce almost no hazardous waste and are meltdown proof. Not only do they not produce significant amounts of radioactive waste, they can actually burn the waste generated from current nuclear power plants as the source.  The little amount of waste that is produced has a phenomenally short half life – 30.7 years. This compared to the half life of U-238 which is 24,000 years is an amazing thing. As an added bonus, there is some economic value to the byproducts of LFTRs (Cesium 137 and Strontium 90) that virtually no waste would need to be buried or otherwise disposed of, it could be used for beneficial purposes.

Finally, the most important thing is that thorium is cheap and readily available in the United States. In fact, we’ve got enough to power the world for a very long time. Thorium is so cheap that you can find it at your local WalMart or Harbor Freight. They currently use it as wicking for camp stoves and for welding. The alpha particles it emits are almost harmless (That is unless you readily eat the stuff) so you don’t have to worry about some sort of cancer from exposure.

While LFTRs aren’t completely illegal to build (yet) the government has made them for all purposes impossible to build. Right now, anyone wanting to develop one is likely to spend $10 billion dollars in planning, permits and pre-construction costs before even being approved by the government. Let’s be serious, who would spend that kind of money for a ‘Maybe’ from the federal government?

One article reader provided some great thoughts on the PRISM reactor which is a bit different than the LFTR. Instead of being a thorium-based reactor, it is something called a Integral Fast Reactor. The Clinton administration canceled the IFR project that was underway and left it for “Private companies to accomplish”. Sadly, even though Hitachi has developed a IFR for use in the United States. The NRC is overly dragging their feat on it. Requiring massive, and almost unattainable expenses to build it.

It seems the UK will be deploying one in the near future, but there is no plan to deploy one at any time in the future. From current estimates, the UK reactor will be able to provide 600mw of continual output for OVER 500 years. Running on nothing but nuclear waste.

#4 – Long Range WiFi

Ever get tired of dropped wifi coverage? How about the fact that your wifi router can barely make it through a few walls before the signal is almost useless.

Interestingly enough, with a quick firmware upgrade of most wireless routers, this can be fixed. By increasing power by a reasonable amount, you can get quite a bit more range from your personal wifi router.

Unfortunately, this is quite illegal.

Sadly, WiFi routers in the USA are limited to a total of 1 watt of effective radiated power (ERP).

Sure, it’s important to be safe with microwave energy (which is what all wifi routers emit) however 1 watt ERP is almost nothing. With a $25 amateur radio license, magically the government seems to think that a person is capable of handling 200 times this output.

In some cases, off the shelf, highly effective antennas make a run of the mill router highly illegal. I don’t know about you, but I figure it would be nice if it was legal to have a router that could make it through two or three walls before becoming completely impotent.

#3 – Cheap Drugs That Don’t Kill People

We really don’t want to put on a hemp sweater, wear patchouli cologne or live on a organic farm, but let’s be serious for a minute about drugs in the US.
There are MANY types of medicinal herbs that are illegal in the US that have amazingly great uses that they shouldn’t be ignored. However the government has decided to make as many as illegal as possible.

The number one of course is marijuana.

Naturally occurring, extraordinarily easy to grow marijuana can replace over 150 various prescription drugs.

We could post the whole list here, but the two BIGGEST things ailments that this weed can treat are : Autism and Migraines

Yes, autism can be treated with good ‘ol pot. Maybe Cheech and Chong were on to something, but more and more reports are coming in about the amazing effects of treating severe autism cases with this naturally occurring weed. Take for instance one a well known autism advocate, Mieko Hester-Perez. Her child was near death from severe autism. At age 10, her son was  down to a mere 46 pounds. She had tried every single prescription drug that was available, at a extreme financial cost. Then she tried something radical – marijuana.

She started to feed her child small doses of  marijuana in things like cookies and brownies. Suddenly her severely autistic child started to act normal. Something that no drug on the market (or in trial for that matter) could do. He started to gain weight and started to show amazing intellect. Free of tics and other things that would normally scar a child afflicted with autism.  After a while, her ‘dealer’ was arrested, and her supply of pot dried up. The child quickly went back to severe ticks, becoming completely uncontrollable. The severe proof was there – A few milligrams of pot every 2 to 3 days did more than a bouquet of drugs multiple times per day.

In addition to marijuana, there are several other naturally organic plants that have medicinal value, that are also highly illegal. Some Psychedelic mushrooms can treat OCD and Cluster headaches. Coca extract is a extremely effective Topical Anesthetic as well as a laxative and also treats motion sickness.

To further prove a point about the absurdity of regulations against plants. Another case and point would be the FDA’s attempt to regulate walnuts.

Yes, that’s right, walnuts.

A company called Diamond recently ran a advertising campaign on the health benefits of walnuts. The FDA wasn’t too happy about this and decided that it wanted to regulate walnuts as a drug. If they would have went through with the plan, walnuts would have been highly regulated, requiring permits to sell and made it difficult to buy.

In the end, through massive public outrage, the FDA settled and did not regulate walnuts, instead settling for a massive lawsuit against Diamond which resulted in them being unable to say that “Walnuts are healthy”.

So, why are naturally occurring weeds that could improve life for many people at phenomenally cheap prices illegal? We don’t know, but they are.

#2 – Converting nuclear waste to energy

One of the most regular arguments I see by individuals who hate nuclear energy is “What do we do with the waste!” Common knowledge seems to dictate that all nuclear reactors generate mountains of highly radioactive waste each year, all of which is impossible to deal with and will be toxic for tens of thousands of years.

The thing about this statement is if you truly think about the problem, you’d likely come to a different conclusion than the standard ‘common knowledge’ about nuclear power. If nuclear power plants use enriched, highly radioactive nuclear fuel to make energy, then why is the nuclear waste which is still radioactive not used?

Well, the answer is pretty simple – In the US it’s actually illegal to do anything with nuclear waste other than to bury it. (Thanks Jimmy Carter).

Outside of the US, it isn’t true. France has repeatedly asked for the US to sell them our nuclear fuel. Yes, that’s right, the fuel we’re literally spending billions of dollars on to bury in the ground could be sold to another country. France has much nicer, newer reactors as compared to what the US has, and many of their reactors can use lower quality fuel (The stuff our reactors put out as waste). This results in extraordinarily minimal waste in the nuclear process.

To take it a step further, a company in the US called TerraPower is building something called a traveling-wave reactor. This kind of reactor not only would burn virtually all radioactive waste and convert it to electricity, but it also can take completely un-enriched uranium and plutonium and convert it to power. A truly mindblowing technology when they complete their project. As a side note, Bill Gates is one of their biggest investors as he feels it could supply poor countries with extraordinarily cheap, clean electricity.

There’s just one problem with the wave reactor too. It’s illegal in the US because it could burn the waste too!

#1 – Carbon Nanotubes

Out of all these technologies listed, none would impact every single human being. Not everyone drives a car, not everyone uses wifi and not every person needs access to pot.

CNTs , or Carbon Nano Tubes would radically alter the life of every human being on earth.
What are carbon nano-tubes? They are exactly what the name suggests – Small tubes made of carbon. These little things have a amazingly long laundry list of feats. They can produce batteries that almost never run out, body armor that would never break, real life powered armor (like the kind Ripley used in Aliens) and ships that could never sink. Car bodies that can not be damaged from wrecks, clothes that never wear out and buildings that can be built to any height.

In the forefront of the uses though is the immense ability of CNTs to be utilized to produce batteries. In some early testing, batteries produced by CNTs are so energy dense, that a small 1 cubic foot block battery would store enough energy for a car to drive over TWO THOUSAND MILES on a single charge (Source #1, Source #2,Source #3). On top of that, the batteries can be charged near instantly, taking as much power as can be provided to the batteries.

CNTs would make any renewable technology like wind or solar instantly viable as energy storage is one of the largest hurdles with such technologies.

Sadly, the viability window for CNTs is already 10 to 20 years away. They can be produced, but are immensely expensive (About 20 million dollars for a vehicle battery). However costs every few years decrease by half. In the early 90s, such a battery would have cost nearly 1 billion dollars.

Now, with carbon nano tubes on the horizon, our own EPA is worried that there’s a chance that they could cause cancer (Source #2).

So, before anyone has heard of this world-altering technology, the government is already researching ways that they could make it illegal. Some government bureaucrats want to put it in the same risk category as PCBs and asbestos!

In the end, we’re not against all governmental regulation. We do however feel that the limitations are becoming increasingly absurd and is stifling human growth. To add to this, the United States isn’t the only country who is actively regulating ground breaking technologies or making obscure laws. Recently the EU stated that it is illegal to claim that water can cure dehydration. They have also effectively outlawed incandescent lighting, and the facebook “Like” button.