Ted Nace test

History of Interstate Highway System
The year of the interstate The origins of the Interstate System go back to studies in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Section 7 of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944 authorized designation of a 65,000-kilometer (40,000-mile) "National System of Interstate Highways." Within that original mileage limitation, the routes were designated in 1947 and 1955, but in the absence of a national program and a Federal commitment to build the roadways, little was accomplished.

In 1956 the pieces finally fell into place. Although the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 contained many provisions affecting the Interstate System, the key legislative phrase in section 108 is breathtakingly simple and direct: "It is hereby declared to be essential to the national interest to provide for the early completion of the 'National System of Interstate Highways,' as authorized and designated in accordance with section 7 of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944."

That simple phrase--"the national interest"--is all the justification the legislators who created the bill thought was needed, perhaps because they believed the interest was obvious, widely understood, and shared. They added only that one component of the national interest was "national defense," so section 108 also changed the name of the new network to the "National System of Interstate and Defense Highways." (In 1990, President George H. W. Bush signed legislation changing the name of the Interstate System to honor President Eisenhower.)

June 29, 1956 - Eisenhower signed.

High Emitter Profile
http://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/smogcheck/july00/iif.pdf

Cost of Interstate Highway System
"Interstate Highway System" Wikipedia Although construction on the Interstate Highway System continues, I-70 through Glenwood Canyon, completed in 1992, is often cited as the completion of the system.[10][11] The initial cost estimate for the system was $25 billion over 12 years; it ended up costing $114 billion (adjusted for inflation, $425 billion in 2006 dollars[12]) and taking 35 years to complete.[13]

Area of System

 * Length: 46,837 miles in 2004 (wikipedia)
 * Width:

Cost of Space Race
Using the Consumer Price Index, it would work out to about $136 billion in contemporary dollars -- but this would not be a very good measure since the CPI does not reflect the cost of rockets and launch pads. Using the broader based Gross Domestic Product deflator gives a present cost of $110 billion. The alternative of using the wage series would be a rough measure of the labor cost in current terms and it would be $149 billion. By using the GDP per capita, we are measuring the cost in terms of average product and would get a number of $237 billion.

A way to consider the "opportunity cost" to society, the best measure might be the cost as a percent of GDP, and that number would be $359 billion. This amount over thirteen years would be $28 billion per year. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_budget

Rooftop Area
Rooftop space is not a constraining factor for solar development. Residential and commercial rooftop space in the U.S. could accommodate up to 710,000 MW of solar electric power (if all rooftops were fully utilized, taking into account proper orientation of buildings, shading from trees, HVAC equipment, and other solar access factors). For comparison, total electricity-generating capacity in the U.S. today is about 950,000 MW. "ENERGY FOUNDATION STUDY FINDS RESIDENTIAL AND COMMERCIAL ROOFTOPS COULD SUPPORT VAST U.S. MARKET FOR SOLAR POWER," Energy Foundation press release, 3/1/05

US annual electricity consumption
US annual electricity consumption is 12.5EJ,or 3,500TWh, production from Nevada Solar One is taken to be 0.130TWh/y, from the link http://www.nevadasolarone.net/press-releases/ACCIONA-Connects-to-the-Nevada-Grid This gives us an area of 3500/0.13*0.43 = 11,600 square miles to replace the US electrical grid. The side length of a square with this area would be 108 miles (174km).
 * Dave Rutledge Hubbert's Peak PowerPoint

The Nevada Solar One solar thermal plant does 116kWh/m^2 per year.
 * Rutledge

"It also appears that this area is comparable to the area we devote to roads. Arnulf Grubler, in the book Technology and Global Change, gives the length of US roads in 1985 as 3.5 million miles.  If we multiply by a width of 30ft (the street in front of my house is 33 feet wide), we get 20,000 square miles, which is twice the area we would need to devote to the solar plants that would generate as much electricity as the grid does.  On page 346, Grubler also gives the area devoted to feed for horses in the US before the coming of cars as 40 million hectares, which is 154,000 square miles (259 hectares per square mile)."
 * Rutledge