Well Steven, did Laberge's "multimillion dollar Vancouver digital imaging technology company" also go under the next year? Probably.
A caution to investors (from recent history): steer-clear of any startup, no matter the field, if they are located in either BC or Calgary. The sad part is that the coastal BC is closer to heaven than W-Va. I luv' the Canucks in general but the real reason that one can hire dozens of PhDs in this area specifically, for a startup with very little to show for itself but hot air - is a legacy of the hydrogen fuel cell debacle in BC a decade ago. This boom-to-bust era has been put under the microscope and it is ugly-ugly, in stark contrast to the surrounding natural beauty. Literally hundreds of millions of private capital was burned through by high-flyers with no accountability- and today there are no viable fuel cells which are competitive with an internal combustion engine in net operating cost, or even in net efficiency at full load! Speaking of 'thermal heads' the highest efficiency heat engine ever tested, far above any fuel cell at high load, was the Laumann ultra high compression diesel over forty years ago at NASA. It was estimated (by an outfit that could put men on the moon) to go OVER the so-called Carnot limitation, but that is fodder for another day of grazing. Fuel cells cannot approach this, even at low loads and they tail off at peak load to about the level of a diesel. How many investors were told that detail at sign-up time? Apologies for veering off the course of "General (con) Fusion", and into a tirade on BC, VC, FC, and the BB - but at least the latter was developed in Silicon Valley, where they do believe in science instead of VC hype. If you figure the ten-year amortized cost, you're going to be better off with a microturbine than a Bloom Box anyway, and Ballard is now a shrunken image of its former self, in full retreat. Hope you did not invest. To tie up the cross-connection: Burnaby was the epicenter of the fuel cell debacle, or scam... so we have to ask ... is this instant-replay time from a seasoned crew who have burned though what they skimmed off during the ballard-boom? -----Original Message----- From: OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson > The story details how Laberge decided to quit his high-profile job > as > senior physicist and principal engineer at > a multimillion dollar Vancouver digital imaging technology company > as he approached his 40th birthday in 2001, because he "didn’t want > to design another thermal head. He wanted to solve the world’s > energy problems."
