Tim_Tex wrote:
I thought of a good invention that would help the coal mining industry, it's a device that would scrape the coal seams and suck the coal out without requiring people to go in the mine shaft themselves, like a vacuum-type device.
In other words, a sort of remote-controlled robotic coal miner? Anything that keeps people out of those hell holes would be an improvement.
I don't know specifically how many miners have died down in the mines in the past three centuries, nor how many have contracted black-lung disease, but I do know it's many times more than have died in the oil or nuclear or any other energy industry.
I think it would be a tough sell, however. Just from the sound of it, one of your machines could replace many miners, so the unions would fight it tooth and nail. Furthermore, there's probably no way the robots would be as efficient as a human miner in terms of coal yield from a given seam, so the mine owners would fight it as well.