Orbiting Lasers for Hydrogen Power

DerekLyons writes: "Yahoo is carrying a story about a Japanese scientist who plans to use giant orbiting lasers to extract H2 from seawater. The interesting part of the scheme is that design uses solar pumped lasers, which avoid the loss of efficiency (and increased launch weight) from powering the laser with electricity from solar cells. Is the way to finally break the main dilemma of the hydrogen economy? (That it takes more energy to make the hydrogen than you gain in using it.)"

Comments

main dilemma?

[s20451]

Is the way to finally break the main dilemma of the hydrogen economy? (That it takes more energy to make the hydrogen than you gain in using it.)

No. In order to do that, you would have to repeal the laws of thermodynamics.

Interesting idea

[bryan1945]

I first read about something like this is a scifi series by Michael F. Flynn- Rogue Star, Firestar. In those books they used satellites to pump microwaves down to earth to provide electricity.

But you come up with the same type of questions: What thermal effects will it have on the atmosphere? Can it be used as a weapon? What effect will it have on local weather (how cool would it be to have a _stable_, low-scale tornado centered on the warmed air around the laser!)?

Solar energy is nearly a holy grail for energy- it's always there and there is a bunch of it. The only problem is collecting it efficiently and delivering it (ok, 2 probs). Personally, I think it would be better to beam down the power and then crack the water, rather than have a huge ass laser bombarding the ocean. How many seagulls are you going to cook? Of course, you could set up "Fried Seagull Emporium" as a lunch stand for the workers!