Slashdot Mirror
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.)"
And if that doesn't work, we can always use the Lasers to take care of spammers.
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.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
This would have been a nice power plant in simcity. Then again, it would have the same drawbacks as that dish thingy
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
I predict that within 30 minutes, there will be at least two confused posts saying that we should just use solar panels to generate electricity to "crack" the hydrogen from sea water.
I further predict that at least one of these will, after someone posts a brief reply explaining why that's not a workable idea, dissolve into flames.
Any government or corporation that puts anything into orbit that could even potentially be used as a weapon is going to face resistance from the entire world. Even if you went into contortions trying to prove that the tool could never be used for military purposes, the media would get ahold of the term "space lasers" and that would be curtains for the idea.
I don't think that it would be wise to let the Japanese have that much power that they can point anywhere. It would take up valuable government resources to monitor the direction the laser is pointed and its use. And what if they decided to just blow a city away, then what? Sounds shady to me.
"That it takes more energy to make the hydrogen than you gain in using it."
Look, due to the laws of thermodynamics it will ALWAYS take more energy to obtain a resource than to use it. Same applies for oil - once we're out of it, it will be very damn expensive to "make" it. So a lot of these arguments against renewable energy sources are just rubbish. Sure, you don't get as big of an *immediate* payoff, but you get a much steadier, reliable payoff over time. The trick is amortizing the expense of using a certain fuel by using the byproducts in a very efficient way. We waste such vast amounts of energy both in direct use, and in unrecaptured efficiency, that I'm sure any number of energy sources will be totally viable (hydrogen, wind, solar, thermal, hydro, methane). But of course many of these will require social changes that nobody is willing to make. To paraphrase Denis Leary, everybody wants to get themselves a 1967 Cadillac El Dorado convertible, hot pink with whaleskin hub caps and all leather cow interior and big brown baby seal eyes for headlights, drive around in that baby at 115mph getting one mile per gallon, sucking down quarter pounder cheese burgers from McDonald's in the old-fashioned non-biodegradable styrofoam containers and when they're done sucking down those grease ball burgers, wipe their mouths with the American flag and toss the styrofoam container right out the side and there ain't a God damned thing anybody can do about it.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
That crazy Tetsuo kid will probably take control of the orbital laser and start shooting up NeoTokyo.
Such is the infinite Grace of Popeye.
anyways, this could have numorus benifits for science. I do wonder, communication satellites, using laser transmissions could be smaller, more efficient and easier to deploy. I wonder how much this satellite runs.
Now all we need is one to automatically zoom in on thoes -1:TROLL types :)
why does a cheesy Dr. Evil line come to mind?
Mini-me, don't hump the "laser"!
All known solid state laser gain substances have fairly narrowband excitation spectrums. This presents a two fold problem: 1) fairly little power is available in that window (the sun is a blackbody raditator) 2) Energy outside of that window tends to just heat the medium and either cause breakdown or unacceptable thermal lensing.
I've built a solar pumped nd:yvo4 laser, but it was a waste: because of those factors I could have extracted more power and probably energy from a solar electric system.
Without some serious new developments in laser substances with ultra broadband pump inputs, this won't work too well.
"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.)"
Unfortunately in the real world it is impossible to make hydrogen from water that holds more potential energy thany you put in. There are always inefficencies in the conversion process, and this process is likely to lose a lot of the solar energy in transmission through the atmosphere. The thing about hydrogen that people forget is that it is just a store for energy that has to be "charged" as it were by separating it from water, rather than a energy source in itself like traditional fossil fuels. However this hydrogen conversion system is better than most in that the energy source for the conversion process is largely free.
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.)
You always use more energy to store than to take out. This includes petroleum and regular agriculture. If you think about it, almost every stored chemical energy from earth comes from the sun. In the case of petroleum, we are just using a little energy to EXTRACT the energy BANKED underneath for years.
The question becomes what is our desired medium for energy storage? Batteries can't store a lot of energy. Hydrogen stores a lot per weight but takes too much space. Hydrocarbon/gasoline/liquid fuel is good mix of high energy density for a given weight and a given space. If the US finally able to provide Hydrogen fueling infrastructure, this solar technology might make a lot of sense.
...hydrogen than what you get using it?
We're mere miles (precisely, an average of just under 1.01 AU's) from a source of fusion sending out more energy in one hour than our current electricity needs add up to in a billion years.
The problem? The Sun doesn't fit nicely in a portable fuel cell.
Hydrogen, on the other hand, does.
Therefore, if we can use a bunch of solar energy that isn't useful right now, to make a little clean-clean-clean hydrogen power, all the better! The ONLY question is, "If we add up the cost to the environment and the cost of labor and materials required to produce a plant (or in this case, an orbiting laser) that gives us X amount of hydrogen, how does that compare to X amount of hydrogen as seen on Ebay?"
We should just use solar panels to generate electricity to crack the hydrogen from sea water!
Let's hope the aiming technology doesn't fail on this one.
...and you thought your car got hot sitting in a sunny parking lot.
------
Today's Top Deals
And here I was just reading about how Unreal Tournament 2 was going to have a way of firing an orbiting laser at your opponents.
Cool.
Preface: I have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm just proposing a theory to provoke thought, that's all.
This whole idea sounds really cool and I'd love to live in a world of hydrogen energy, but I've thought for a long time that alternate energy sources have been developed more extensively than we are allowed to know. The political ties between OPEC, car manufacturers, governments around the world, power plants, etc. seem to me to be so entangling that they could easily, and in my opinion have easily, squashed new ideas for alternate power sources. I've heard of everything from water powered cars to solar panel arrays that are 50 times more effecient than those in use today... yet none of these technologies has been allowed to flourish, and I suspect it has something to do with the trillions of dollars that are hauled in by oil companies and any company associated with them. When you think about it in terms of history, oil is the gold of the modern day. People who have it want to make money off of it, so they want to keep supply down (just enough to get by) and demand up, way up. I have no doubts that the people in the oil industry would do anything and everything to keep it the most valuable substance today, just look at some of the evil that came out of the pursuit of gold.
"NASDA and the Institute for Laser Technology in Tokyo set about joint research development of this system. And it is under application for a patent in cooperation with NASDA, ILT and Mitsubishi Research Institute Inc, which is a private think tank company," Dr. Mori wrote SPACE.com in an email interview.
Now, doesn't it strike you as odd that Mitsubishi has their hands in this? OK so it says "a private think tank company," but really, I think this "private" think tank company named "Mitsubishi" wouldn't resist some "inspiration" by the automotive industry (heavily linked to Big Oil) and somehow sabotage or discredit this research.
Anyway, I'll stop ranting, but I'd like to know if anyone has any facts that go along with what I'm saying or if I've just been reading the Drudge Report too much.
~ now you know
Ok Im not a tree hugger, BUT what are the long term effects say on the Ozone of pumping a laser of this magnitude though the atmosphere not to mention ionizing radiation effects while it travels through the air ?
:)
...
My understanding is it REQUIES VERY HIGH temperatures to Dissacociate water on the order of 3500 degreesf plus (PS Dont ever try to quelch a thermite reaction with water
Ok so were using Ti02 as a catalyst, what my question is what about thermal evnviormental pollution, hell in some cases its worse than chemical pollution. Hmm were encountering a greenhouse effect globally lets fire oh say 50 or so 10+ megawat lasers at earth. (Its only one until it works)
If this is going to be succesfull youll see a commercial proliferation of these without regard for saftey, No dont think so , look at the oil companies and their rigs , then consider again when Oil companies see this as the next big thing ?
Hell with all that free hydrogen you could manufacture your own hydrocarbons CHEAP, aka GAS
Nice big vicious cycle Gotta Love Science
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
Two borthers share everything.. and when it comes to it, there is 1 hydrogen atom left.. what to do now? And one got the idea... Hey, lets split it!
Exsqueeze me? First, all that oil infrastructure CAN be adapted to refine other hydrocarbon sources like bio fuels. Second, turning asteroids and lunar rock into lasers is probably going to cost a LOT more than a trillion dollars, and take a few decades. And what is all this "colonizing the galaxy" drivel?
I'm quite interested in radical ideas for H2 creation, and improving efficiency of conversion, and making hydrogen infrastructure work economically. Fusion would be nice, if they'd drop more than lunch money into the pot. But do we need to be focusing on building stuff in orbit to make something to put in the car?
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
Not quite correct on using less power to produce hydrogen than you gain consuming it - fundamentally that's against thermodynamics, and a source of infinite energy
Burn hydrogen, use energy produced to make more, sell surplus, repeat.
It is quite an old concept, that of an orbiting solar power plant. The medium for energy transferrence is slightly different, but the idea is the same (I seem to recall the early forms of the idea used microwaves beamed down from orbit. Shudder).
Nothing new and revolutionary, but if they can get it working we have tapped another energy source (yes, I know we already have solar power, but an orbital power station doesn't have the limits on size that a ground based one does.)
Would this "laser" sent to earth have destructive powers? I'm guessing yes. Someone who knows about this stuff... what would be similar to this beam of light hitting a target? A hand grenade? A stick of TNT?
~ now you know
"let them"?
When did we become their mommy and daddy?
It's science, and something like this would undoubtabley be monitored and studied world-wide. They can't exactly just sneak around with it, and vaporize L.A.
If we were doing this, you wouldn't want Japan contimplating "letting us".
http://wsulug.org
...my "Death Star" (air quotations) and I will use my "Death Star" (air quotations) to blackmail the world for ONE MILLION DOLLARS!
Muhahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
etc.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Masahiro Mori? It's a trick, It's Dr. Evil... that's just a mask
*pulling Mori's hair*
Oops, sorry my mistake.
I think a good extension of this would be to attach a large enough solar collector to a spacecraft which could convert water into fuel in-flight. It's probqably easier to focus a laser through space anyway... How about a moon orbiting collector that can power a station whose only fuel source is ice?
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
While I'm sure the scientist in question was utterly serious and that this is a flat-out spiffy idea, I'm kind of curious if I'm the only one who lets loose a secret chuckle at every article mentioning giant orbiting lasers?
OK, maybe that's just me.
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
Problem is that solar cells are _really_ inefficient. Well, as I recall they had an efficiency rating of 10-30% or so. Lasers are also pretty inefficient (I think they're about the 10% mark too, but I'm sure someone with the appropriate knowlege can correct me), so you'd be wasting an awful lot of power, not to mention probably melting the solar cell. (10% efficient means that almost 90% of that energy turns into heat on the cell) :)
Using it to boil water for a steam engine might work. Or just powertrip and kill everyone else using the energy of the world and then you don't have to worry about conservation anymore
1 word.
Inflation.
Why not submit this as an RFE to slashcode?
Its the name of the song!!! Really!!
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Instead of using energy from burning hydrogen from the sun, to power a laser, to separate more hydrogen to burn it again, what we _really_ need is a giant space vacuum cleaner, and suck up all the hydrogen from the sun directly.
Far more efficient.
combined with this article, you could be right... Goldeneye, anyone?
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
What happens when birds fly under this thing? Wait! We could put one at every KFC and a funnel on the roof...
Free cell phone tracking
One problem when comparing plans like this for producing fuel, to other more traditional fuels is that the cost of crude oil or whatever does not reflect the value of the oil.
That is if we had to reproduce the oil rather than just extracting it from the ground we'd probably find other more "green" methods of energy production much less of an investment.
The fact that something that is renewable cost more than something that is irreplaceable is a pointer to the shortcomings of our economic system, not to problems with solar, wind, or other alternative energy sources.
Most of the "conventional" space solar power ideas (not this one, of course) are based on that. Big-assed focusing mirror (can be very, very thin and very, very cheap in orbit, since you don't have to worry about it collapsing under its own weight) aimed at a boiler. Steam spins turbines, turbines produce electricity, electricity generates microwaves, microwaves beamed to earth. Way more efficient than photovoltaics.
Of course the envirowhackos are going to throw a clot if this idea ever looks like it might take off.
"Wasting power" Uh... Okay this is a satellite sitting in space. The solar energy it would be using is stuff that would either miss earth totally or get mostly dispersed in the atmosphere. It is already being wasted. 10% that we get out of it, is 10% than we are currently using.
This isn't like stealing money out of your own wallet.
"Unlike in the States"?
Come on now. Large companies here have many areas of interest also. GE makes more than washing machines. Motorola (yes, that's an American company) makes a lot more than just Cell phones. Most of the Fortune 500 companies here deal in many different industries.
~ now you know
Let's see 504 billion killowatt hours needed.
Each laser is capable of 10 megawatt hours.
Someone correct my math because that leads me
to conclude that we need 50 million orbiting
lasers...
To quote the article "Hydrogen can be produced on Earth by water electrolysis. This process may be very efficient (in excess of 80%) I think it would be safer and more realistic to produce hydrogen on earth with a large array of solar cells. Many of the countries in the Middle East that currently rely on oil also have plenty of sunlight and border the ocean. Now would be the time to convert to a hydrogen economy before the oil runs out.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
here. Basically build a satellite that beams down microwave radiation (yeah, yeah, through the ozone layer...heating up the atmosphere) to ground based stations that are set up tp collect it.
http://radio.weblogs.com/0103443/
I call it the Alan Parson's Project
Why would they want to build solar array in space? They could just use ground solar arrays, wind mills, tital power genrators. They can then generate hydrogen the good old fashion way of sticking few iron poles into the water, and cranking up the juice.
It'll Saves the cost of launching satelites. The sun can't be that much weaker on earth. And the cost of transporting the solar cells up to space should allow many more times the same solar cells on earth. Not to mention all the other alternative ways to generate electicity from renewable sources on earth.
Also satelites can't be over the same spot of the earth all the time, and the more of an angle it is to the island, the more atmosphere the laser will have to travel through, and the more energy will be dissipated in the atmosphere.
I think this scientist is a quack. Unless this is a ploy a Japanese company who's headed by a mastermind CEO to have giant lasers in orbit to fry things on earth. Then I can see the point. It'll be like a typical Final Fantasy story line.
N
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!
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Maybe you should have read the article. One, I believe your efficiency rating is incorrect, and two, the design in question does not use solar cells.
The article mentions that these satelites would be in low earth orbit, yet have a stationary generation plant on the surface. Would you not require a geostationary orbit at 36K km in order to do this? And the best place to put your generation plant would probably be on the equator to reduce atmospheric effects.
My 2c.
I remember about plans to win energy from the sun by solar panels in low orbit and then emiting this energy to relay stations on earth by way of a narrow focus ion beam or something -- sorry, I ain't no rocket scientist.
I also distincly remember this being a bad idea because the chance of failure and was too high -- the thought of a high power beam coursing it's destructive path along the earth ad random would make you think twice even about the lowest chances of failure.
Wouldn't this system be prone to the same kind of risks?
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
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 [ouc.bc.ca].
You're playing with the words. The dilemna of the hydrogen economy is that the inefficiencies of conversion cause more energy to be wasted (from the point of view of human users, natch) than is the case with other, less friendly (environmentally, renewability) fuels (like petroleum).
Yeah but what happens when Dr Evil gets ahold of this "giant laser" and holds the earth hostage for ONE MILLION dollars?
Gojira!
A weapon system that's PROFITABLE when not in use! Just imagine how the economic numbers on this thing look better if the DOD covers, say 25% of operating costs for the right to commender it during wartime.
Those lasers won't be very easy to defend, unlike oilfields and power stations. Well, ok, you can drop a few nukes to take out the powerstations but the country woulnd't be habitable afterwards.
It seems to me that relying on this tech for power makes you a hell of a lot more vunerable.
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
A giant orbital laser that fires to the ground into a giant salt water swimmingpool.
What is the impact of fried birds dropping onto this pool?
What can this concentrated energy do to some of the earths outer layers that are important for climate? Atmosphere, stratosphere, and so on.
Impact on the ozone layer, which is already (by definition, not by human interaction) quite thin and easy to disturb?
What are they going to do with all the Oxygenium? Since the air we breathe consists to more than 70 percent of Nitrogen, not Oxygene, simply freeing large volumes could be problematic. (And can be quite a risk for the installation itself. Think of "no smoking".)
What if a mislead plane happens to fly into the beam? A weather balloon?
Impact on clouds? Hitting them (and the H2O within them) will also split the H2O, and then Ozone will react from the Oxygenium radicals. And: Ozone is only good in exactly the right height over ground. Every Ozone lower than that is poisonous and, in the volumes we're talking about, could lead to quite interesting weather effects within these clouds.
Don't talk about what happens if this cloud of ozone happens to drift over some city. In cities, we usually call this "smog" and try to avoid it.
Sulfur dioxide, raising up in clouds from big cities or other things that burn fuel (oil plants?) is known to react to Sulfur Acid in the athmospere, with the help of the power of sunlight. A while after, we call this "sour rain" or "acid rain". What amount of acid could react if a cloud like this is hit by this _very_ strong artificial sun?
Nice idea, but done by company scientists for company scientists. IMHO, this could cause far too many things to be implemented.
And, remember: "They" are not fiddling with a x square miles big sector of air above their installation. They're fiddling with the atmosphere that is shared by some billion of people. There is hardly a thing like local effects with wind, clouds, and weather. Ask your European friend if he sometimes finds a thin layer of very fine sand outside his house or on his windows. This comes straight from the Sahara desert in Africa. (No, I'm not kidding.)
When the reactor in Tchernobyl went "blob", the radioactive dirt was distributed over half of Europe, 1000s of kilometres, which still ended up with enough dirt to have them throw away every vegetable in their gardens.
And: Science doesn't have any data about what happens to the very highest layers above us when hit by a concentrated stream of energy on a single point that is several times stronger than the strong rays of the real sun around it. It might well cause something or, doing this several months in a row, burn a hole into a layer of gases that we not even know about yet. We Just Don't Know.
Fiddling with this is just stupid.
42. Easy. What is 32 + 8 + 2?
Flames! I'm dissolving in flames!
Taking hydrogen from seawater doesn't sound too smart to
me. Doesn't life on earth depend on the ocean?
When Masahiro Mori sees international petroleum supertankers groan into Japan's Chiba, it must strike him, like many other energy visionaries, as an absurd image: a hazardous product being hauled thousands of miles across a potentially superior and cleaner fuel, hydrogen.
So he proposes using an "orbital death ray"? Someone please send this guy a copy of Star Wars.
'Same speed C but faster'
And on the plus side, we'd get to laugh at California being blacked out every time the US went to war.
I agree! I like to browse at -1, but don't want to hear from AC's or foes. Being able to completly cut these spastics from loop is the only way to make them stop- after all we all know they only carry on with this kind of cos nobody wants to look at them, let alone communicate with them in the real world. Also is it too much to ask that posts contain the goatse.cx link be diverted to the round file?
Of course submitting all this to the RFE means all that signing up, which I'm not happy to do...
J-aims
--
Yo, whatever happened to peas? Join T( H)GS
The original story is at Space.com and is a much better story there than the very condensed version republished by Yahoo. You should have pointed everyone to the story at Space.com instead of yahoo.
Every time there's a Slashdot article about putting a laser (on the moon | in orbit | on another satellite), someone says, "Ooooh, but what about its use as a weapon? The rest of the world ain't gonna go for this!"
The truth of the matter is that the amount of energy needed by an "outer-space laser" to be an effective weapon would be so great, and the cost of this outerspace weapon so great, that it would not be feasible. Why on earth would a government put an unquestionably more expensive space-laser-weapon in orbit if conventional weapons ("daisycutter", anyone?) are already so very effective?
Aside from the practical reasons, the political fallout of using a orbiting laser weapon would be astronomical.
Let's be serious, okay?
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
Laser efficiency
Apparantly a 'really efficient' laser is 30%, of course this may be a little out of date.
For solar cell efficiency
Looking at the tables 30% ish is about the maximum on a solar cell too.
I was a bit out.
I think an AC also responded to the fact that my post wasn't a reply to the main article either, so I'll leave that one.
Have a nice day.
Funnily enough, I did send this idea in the other day for the same reasons...and it was rejected pretty quickly by CmdrTaco. Said something like "I don't really plan on that. I just fundamentally think of -1 as the trash heap."
Oh well.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
Ok, my mistake. Guess I watched Austin Powers one too many times. Anyway, I was referring to the missile defency system the US is developing, which is indeed not located in space.
Still, my point stands; why should Japan worry about what what the world thinks, if the US does not (both specific and generic). And no, contrary to what the US government wants people to think, I'm not a terrorist because I don't agree with the US government.
Like science? Comics? Wicked...
Funny By Nature
The problem is that they aren't that effective. The turnaround time from intel collection to a conventional bombing run is usally far too long. You need to have bombers in the area, bombs in the arsenal, and generally have a static target that won't move from the time of intel collection to bomb run; generally pointless for taking out personnel; much more effective for equipment. With a space based weapon system (such as lasers), you could more or less pin-point any area under the satellite within a few momements of getting the intel. Throw enough of them above the earth in a geo-synchronous orbit and you could cover all the inhabited portions of the planet. Yes, yes, I'm completing ignoring the political ramifications of a space based assassination system. Remember Real Genius? Well, the movie was quite fantastical, but the theory is sound. Two years ago, a predator drone had a live video feed of Bin Laden in a training camp, sadly they were unarmed and could do nothing but watch him wander about. Any wonder why they are all armed now?
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
Heck, how can you possibly go wrong with giant orbiting lasers? Let's do it!
Maybe I'm crazy, but it seems to me that instead of a Buck Rogers-style solution to cracking H2O into H2, why not use fission power to do the same thing? Fission power is a well-known source of energy - no R&D involved - and the plants used to crack H2O into H2 can be located far from any populated area, to minimize risk in case of an accident. A question for the chemists in the /. audience: would it be feasible to use fission power to combine atmospheric CO2 with H2O to make methane? If so, it would be possible to port the methane via the nation's natural-gas pipelines to power home fuel-cell units to generate electricity. In effect, you could transmit nuclear-generated energy thousands of miles with minimal transmission loss. Just a thought.
In any event, I was delighted to read about the fuel-cell initiative. I'll be buying one of those home units as soon I can afford one.
[this
... the Alan Parsons project.
Karma: Professionally Doomed (mostly affected by inability to keep opinions to self)
In order to have a useable car with H2 fuel cells, you would need to have either a cryogenic system for liquid H2 or tanks of highly compressed H2 gas in your car. To me, given the frequency of auto crashes, this would result in accidents that are much more hazardous than they are now. Refueling your car would require handling materials much more hazardous than gasoline on a routine basis. Can Aunt Minnie handle cryo fluid transfers or deal with high pressure gas couplings? I didn't think so.
As for using H2 in existing pipelines, the stoppers used to be the fact that H2 will seep out of cracks that natural gas won't (creating an explosion/fire hazard) and H2 tends to make metals more brittle over time as it invades cracks in the metals.
It still seems that using microwave transmission from orbit is the best solution at the present time. It is efficient, has a way to use the existing electrical grid, and can't be directly used as a weapon. Now if we can just get the cost to orbit down to reasonable levels ......
George W. Bush thinks he can get all sorts of weapons on earth or in space, and has rescinded agreements to achieve this. /. no tipo!
And doesn't even need a power generating (or energy redirecting - if the thermo-nerds prefer) excuse.
look
All this discussion on ways to produce hydrogen makes me wonder. Did anything ever materialize in the research being done on the hydrogen producing algae?
C'mon people! All I want is some frickin' sharks with lasers on their heads! Is that too much to ask?
---
Gort! Klatu Barata Nikto!
It stands to reason that if Japan can make solar-pumped lasers and have a few nuclear reactors around, they could make nuke-pumped x-ray lasers.
...so to speak.
A much better idea would be to harness energy from the sea itself in order to crack hydrogen from sea water.
I once read a very interesting book called the Millennial Project, which, in it's first section, describes the construction, through mineral accretion, of sea colonies which exploit the temperature difference between levels of sea water, thus generating the power needed to derive hydrogen from the sea water itself.
Why go into space when the sea gives it up for [almost] free?
http://www.luf.org/bin/view/TMP/ClassicAquarius
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
Ok no more troting out the law of thermodynamics and debating renewables. The fact is that at some point we must give up our beloved hydrocarbons and Hydrogen is the best bet.
Shocking solution => Wind Mills! ooh aah.
Centuries of farmers and most of the residents of Holland will tell you they pump water like nothing else. Hook up a turbine and they also generate shit loads of electricity - already as cheap as coal. (tried to find a reference on cost here - I'm sure pacificorp has the data somewhere on their site but my job is limiting my search time today).
After they are setup and pumping/cracking who the F cares about the energy input. Keep it simple stupid - Lasers in orbit, come on, thats like boiling water with a nuke. Oh I forgot, we do that too. Stupid Humans!
"Smile, listen, agree, and then do whatever the fuck you wanted to do anyway." ~Robert Downey Jr.
The problem is that they aren't that effective. The turnaround time from intel collection to a conventional bombing run is usally far too long. You need to have bombers in the area, bombs in the arsenal, and generally have a static target that won't move from the time of intel collection to bomb run; generally pointless for taking out personnel; much more effective for equipment.
It appears that the millitary has shortened the turnaround time (article describing U.S. infantry using laser designators to hit enemy troops in realtime) for bombing runs.
you could more or less pin-point any area under the satellite within a few momements of getting the intel. Throw enough of them above the earth in a geo-synchronous orbit and you could cover all the inhabited portions of the planet. Yes, yes, I'm completing ignoring the political ramifications of a space based assassination system
It seems like aiming the laser that accurately (within the meter or so you'd have to hit to assasinate someone with it) would be pretty difficult... Besides, how often do you know someone's exact location without having someone present who could just shoot them? (ignoring the unmanned drone situation, which, like you said, was fixed)
--
Benjamin Coates
They currently produce as much as 85 million tons per year.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
Am I the only one that thinks the very idea of "orbiting lasers" is a bit dangerous?
Given a reasonably level playing field, who would win a fight between a bear and a shark?
The main problem of all renewable energy schemes is that fossil fuels are formed by millions of years of solar energy accumulated by the biosphere and millions of years of geological pressure. It isn't that these fuels are more fundamentally efficient - in fact, they are relatively innefficient from many perspectives. It is that nature has done all the work for us - leaving us to liberate the value at our leisure. Convenient, and in the extremely narrow and short-sighted view we've taken of energy, cheap.
The problems, of course, are that we are stuck with relatively dirty fuels like coal and oil, and that these fuels are not renewable in the short term. Hence, any renewable fuel will face us with a cost-benefits problem: it will cost more to produce than an equivalent unit of coal or oil. Until we start measuring the environmental, political and future stability/planning impacts as part of the cost of burning fossil fuels, it will always seem economically preferable to stick with our old standbys.
The real issue of hydrogen or any alternative fuels (biomass derived, ethanol, etc.) is to find the most efficient way to use a renewable or sustainable energy source. Hydrogen has the convenience and benefit of being a fuel: useful from points of view of storage and self-containment.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Because Japan is aware there are other countries in the world and plans their foreign policy accordingly.
The majority of the United States, however, thinks everything beyond the border (any border!) is some big territorial mass called "Mexico" whose population will speak perfect if slightly accented English when pressed with slower, louder sentences by the tourists, just like in the movies.
Sometimes, someone belonging to that majority will be elected for some public office, and that along with the pressure from the voters who think Asia is part of the Middle East will invalidate any foreign policy not based on total obliviousness to the external world.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
I don't see how there's even an argument about this being better...it's the SAME, isn't it?
Am I just missing something here, or isn't this process going to be essentially harvesting the water in the ocean for hydrogen?
And when we're all out of seawater AND oil, then what? Find a way to rip out Earth's molten core and use that to power our spaceships to get us off this planet?
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
Before you dismiss me as some idiot, let me just say I do know about physics, thermodynamics, molecular chemistry, and history. What I was doing here was thinking openly. All of the laws and rules of science are not flawless, they're all written by men. I don't doubt that our laws of thermodynamics are accurate, I'm only saying that it's ignorant to discount a seemingly impossible idea just because research to this day has built up evidence against it, for example, "the world is round." We all know how that argument turned out.
Think about this (and I'm talking basics here, extremely simplistic, I don't want to get into details): what exactly is gravity? Just because something is massive, why am I pulled towards it because I'm far less massive? Why can I force two positively charged magnets towards each other and they will force themselves apart for as long as I feel like doing it? Yeah, yeah, I know about magnetism and molecular attraction and all that stuff, but I'm trying to get at the fact that science doesn't fully understand all of the forces around us, and it may never, so don't go condemning new ideas just because they disagree with your high school physics teacher.
~ now you know
How are they going to keep a low earth orbit satellite over their little water tank? Or are they only going to zap their tank once in every 90-minute orbit? They'd have to be at geosynch for this to work. If they're not, I see them cutting (accidentally or on purpose) swaths of narrow burn-lines across the globe in nice big curves.
Give serendipity a chance.
Will the Godzilla Prediction Network have their own control room for the laser-birds?
"Sir, Godzilla is approaching Tokyo!"
*zortch*
I'm also curious about the wavelength of the orbital laser. I don't have a reference in front of me, but as I recall, the primary "window" through the atmosphere is in the visible and IR wavelengths... How much diffraction and reflection of the laser light will there be? I wouldn't want to be on the airliner that gets hit by part of the beam that gets reflected off an ice crystal: 1% of 10 megawatts is still 100 kilowatts - no small amount of power!
If these difficulties can be adequately addressed, it sounds like a great idea to me!
I'd rather be flying
Can they be far behind?
Where are the Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow when you need them?
Fnord.
My Heart Is A Flower
I saw something on TechTV about this.
My question is will it really mean diaster if something like a sim city kinda miss happens?
We seldom regret saying too little but often regret saying too much.
Although this seems like a great idea, most solar panels on earth can only extract 3 to 5 percent of the sun's energy per meter squared. Furthermore, it takes a huge amount of electrical power to actually get the silicon to form in those nice crystals in the first place. Thus, most solar panels in use right now are "catching up" on repaying all that energy dumped to make them.
... (i mean dr. evil's laser...)
Luckily for us, some people are working on making amorphous silicon crystals which don't have the big power requirement to make, instead they use really nasty chemicals (oh well, gotta try something) to produce the amorphous silicon.
Also, I was wondering what would happen if the laser "missed" and took out, say, Redmond, Washington? Is putting a huge laser in orbit something we really want to do? Just think of the Alan Parson's Project
Without a Giant orbiting lasers with this much power how will they stop the next Godzilla attack on Tokyo.
could be helpful if other genetic experiments go awry (akira anyone)
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
Here's a more promising method for Hydrogen cracking without adding more junk into orbit around this planet.
Go, Go, Gadget.
1.the issue with adoption of hydrogegn is the entrenched position that fossil-fuels have. it's not that hydrogen is harder to use, it's that there is billions invested in transport, wells, autos, etc, all which would have to change. not to mention the industry mogul's (and current usa administration's) vested interest. in additon, you don't need so many specialized resources to create hydrogen, eh - just some electricity and water - think of the threat that poses to the oil hegemony...
2.there are always energy costs to creating portable forms of energy, but that's the issue, not that it's more energy-expensive to create hydrogen than to use it. add up the costs in shipping oil around the planet. not cheap. the real benefit is that oil is portable once extracted.
Both of these problems are addressed if you burn CO2 in a hydrogen atmosphere to produce methanol. Methanol can be stored and transported like any other volatile liquid fuel, which means you can use the existing infrastructure, and can use it automobiles with minimal modification (though you'd want a ceramic engine block to avoid corrosion in the long term).
The article directly mentioned methanol production as an application of a hydrogen plant.
Transport and infrastructure aren't the problem.
The real reason why this won't be done any time soon is that gasoline is cheaper to produce per litre (by taking it out of the ground) than methanol (which must be made from scratch, by direct synthesis or farming and fermenting).
When/if oil and natural gas reserves are depleted, it will become cost-competitive. Before then, it won't be.
My understanding is it REQUIES VERY HIGH temperatures to Dissacociate water on the order of 3500 degreesf plus (PS Dont ever try to quelch a thermite reaction with water :)
This has nothing to do with the temperature needed to dissociate water.
It has to do with the fact that aluminum will happily strip oxygen out of water (3H2O + 2Al -> 3H2 + Al2O3 + 818 kJ).
This doesn't happen at room temperature (due to the activation energy and the oxide skin on aluminum), but at thermite temperatures it will most certainly happen. Aluminum is a very reactive metal.
And where did I mention Columbus? I simply inferred that at one point people said the world was flat, and later on it was proven to be "round."
If you're going to flame somebody, don't do it anonymously, and at least make sure you're doing a good job, damn.
~ now you know
but didn't mean to be trollish.. *sigh*
I just can't figure out why they don't use a laser detecting system and than shoot the particular laser freq out a safe distance from the site. It would at least give a marginal higher chance of survival and would probably be cheap as the laser would not have to on all the time just the detector.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Each nation will not have it's own energy source. The energy is global. It is global due to the way the world economy is. The economy is extremely global and inter-dependant. The idea of "nation" is going to be outdated before too long (20+ years).
There will be a few companies that will be in controll of whatever new energy source(s) there is(are). These companies will become the OPEC of tomarrow, except instead of nations being the constituents it will be massive corporations. Each one with sub-companies that speciallize in dealing with the laws of specific countries or regions.
me thinks Dr Evil is behind this "laser". Quick, we must get Austin Powers' mojo back!
From a space.com article:
"And it's not clear that NASDA's idea conforms to other standards laid out for solar power satellites ? that they should be environmentally benign and unusable as a weapon."
Hmmm... You're asking an organization that builds 1000 foot long metal boats that carry jets to be serious? You think that people who paid $500 for toilet seats are concerned about the cost of an orbital laser? Is the outfit that just toppled another sovereign government worried about international opinion?
For the US military an orbital laser system is not a question of how or why, but when.
This seems like the hydrogen version of the Microwave powerplant (Satelite in space sends microwaves to a recieving dish). Now, if my Sim City serves me correctly, this will ocasionally misfire, setting fires and causeing general disorder in the city.
.sdrawkcab si gis siht
Japan's purpose in the world could be argued to be
One, bring about Japanese artists,
who could then create Anime, with it's promise of orbital lasers.
And two, bring about Japanese scientists,
who could then figure out an actual reason why we should have them.
Thank you, Squaresoft, for the world of FF7.
And thank you, Masahiro Mori, for bringing us that much closer to that world.
-Slackergod
Well, I'm not a physicist, so I could be comparing apples and oranges here. NASA bounces lasers off of small mirrors on the moon for things like distance, movement, etc. The mirrors were left by the Apollo astronauts for this purpose. How much more difficult is it to range a space based laser onto earth coordinates. I gotta believe that's solvable. Your point about getting those coordinates in realt-time is quite valid though, which is probably why it's not done. It's far cheaper and simpler to arm the predators. No where as cool though.... :-)
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
any what you can change the orbital path of a laser sat. in a few min ??? and than put it right back where it was... suuuurrreeeee.....
This must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
"...couldn't we stick to nuclear power or something? At least those things have a track record and don't blow up (too often)."
if you look at the track record of an orbiting laser technically it has NEVER destroyed anything on earth... correct me if you feel the need to...
This must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
OK it goes like this:
in order to get H2, you have to use energy to split water right?
2 H2O ==> 2 H2 + O2
add energy
The left side is more stable so the right side has higher potential energy.
In a hydrogren fuel cell, the equation is reversed:
2 H2 + O2 ==> 2 H2O
energy is released
SO, if you are going to make hydrogen by splitting water and then use the H2 to get energy by combining it with O2, you can NOT get out more than what you put in.
All NASA had to do to hit a mirror on the moon with a laser was shoot it into a general area. Since they could stick a decent telescope on the ground the mirror wouldn't have to reflect ALL of the light produced by the laser on the ground. Therefore divergence wasn't a big problem seeing laser light reflected off the moon. It is mathematically solvable to stick a laser in orbit and shoot somebody on the ground but from an engineering standpoint it is unlikely to happen (at least from a geosynchronous orbit like he mentioned).
First you need a gigantic lasing chamber to produce alot of photons. You need enough so the energy at the focal point of the laser is high enough to actually do some samage and not just make somebody feel unseasonally warm. Then you need the best optics ever created in the history of mankind to keep the beam from diverging so much that it becomes an ineffective weapon. As for a power source you'd need a really really big solar panel or at the very least a fission reactor to produce enough energy to feed the lasing device. From a much lower orbit the mechanics become alot more feasible (making up for divergence from a 100 mile altitude or 22,000 mile altitude, take your pick) but pretty impractical for a tactical assault weapon. Shooting a small target whilst moving at hundreds of miles per hour from 100 miles (possibly more if you're firing at an angle) is pretty damn hard. I would bet by the time you had to worry about being shot from space by a laser wielding satillite you could beam up to it in your person space suit and kick the optics out of alignment.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Make it too good and cheap, you screw up every economy on the planet. But that's another post.
Too big to fail? Does that make me to small to succeed?
Yes I comment on my own post. 8)
Just a question to the moderator.
How can I be overated when my score was 1 ?
Was it SO BAD ?
this post will cost me a -1 Offtopic, but then I would love to get an answer 8))
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
This sounds ok with me as long as it doesn't interfere with my orbital mind control lasers.
For some city blocks the infection rate is upto 90%
Aids in africa is not gonna have any effect on world population as Africa is simply too sparsly populated. The problem there is going to solve itself and the only way we can help it is with education.
A Major aids epedemic in india or china could have an effect on the world population.
A similar DOD funding of civilian plant, in exchange for the right to comandeer it during war, is already in place. Many jetliners are partially paid for by the DOD on the condition that they will be available for troop transport.
This is no big deal. In fact, this idea is unfeasible as it would interfere with flight paths. Why not just set up arrays of solar panels and use that electricity to make h2 from water?
Fiddling with this is just stupid.
It never fails to amaze me how a person bright enough to figure out such subtle environmental effects could come to such a stupid conclusion.
All technology is cause and effect. For each positive effect, there are negative effects. The question is whether the negative effects outweight the potential good.
What is the impact of fried birds dropping onto this pool?
Ocean scavengers have a free lunch. KFC has a potential entree it can sell to consumers. Birds are dying at airports, electrical lines, skyscraper windows, etc. every day due to modern day technology. I'm not going to give up my lifestyle to save one flying rat. (What New Yorkers affectionately call their pidgeon population)
What are they going to do with all the Oxygenium? Since the air we breathe consists to more than 70 percent of Nitrogen, not Oxygene, simply freeing large volumes could be problematic. (And can be quite a risk for the installation itself. Think of "no smoking".)
They'll compare it to the pollutants generated by the combustion engine. Also, I don't give a rat's ass about smokers, they can get a job flipping burgers... (no make that collecting garbage). The explosion caused by the plant a hundred miles away from a population center concerns me less than a nuclear plant's meltdown in a residential neighborhood by a major population center (Shoreham, Long Island).
On a more serious note, its always a potential concern, but I doubt that much oxygen would be released by the laser energy transiting to the collection center. If it were a significant amount, it would indicate that the laser would lose too much of its energy to be economical. Finally, its possible to convert the solar energy to microwaves before being sent down.
What if a mislead plane happens to fly into the beam? A weather balloon?
The same thing if they fly into a skyscraper, a microshear, or a airforce combat zone exercise. Sorry Osama bin Antity, I'm not going to give up my lifestyle to save an incompetant pilot and his passengers.
Impact on clouds? Hitting them (and the H2O within them) will also split the H2O, and then Ozone will react from the Oxygenium radicals. And: Ozone is only good in exactly the right height over ground. Every Ozone lower than that is poisonous and, in the volumes we're talking about, could lead to quite interesting weather effects within these clouds.
Are you suggesting its preferable for us to have hundreds of million (soon to be billion) internal combustion engines releasing that ozone at sea level?
Don't talk about what happens if this cloud of ozone happens to drift over some city. In cities, we usually call this "smog" and try to avoid it.
Its still hundreds of feet higher than where the cars make the ozone.
Sulfur dioxide, raising up in clouds from big cities or other things that burn fuel (oil plants?) is known to react to Sulfur Acid in the athmospere, with the help of the power of sunlight. A while after, we call this "sour rain" or "acid rain". What amount of acid could react if a cloud like this is hit by this _very_ strong artificial sun?
Hydrogen technology means hydrogen-powered cars. No SO2 to make unpleasant acid compounds.
The only argument that really warrants concern is the ozone layer. But howabout not being such a Luddite, and let the scientists and engineers at least demonstrate that it can work before trying to shut it down without convincing evidence? That way, you stick it to The Man; the capitalist swine has to outlay all those cash before discovering he can't recoup his investment. This way (research before cruxifiction), progress is allowed to happen, and technology can improve peoples' and other living things' lives.
Why are you using a computer when you should be hugging a tree, hippie-lover? Don't you realize the toxic chemicals and metallic pollution caused by these metal boxes???
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
(Damn, why stick the Preview button next to the Submit button...)
Fiddling with this is just stupid.
It never fails to amaze me how a person bright enough to figure out such subtle environmental effects could come to such a stupid conclusion.
All technology is cause and effect. For each positive effect, there are negative effects. The question is whether the negative effects outweight the potential good.
What is the impact of fried birds dropping onto this pool?
Ocean scavengers have a free lunch. KFC has a potential entree it can sell to consumers. Birds are dying at airports, electrical lines, skyscraper windows, etc. every day due to modern day technology. I'm not going to give up my lifestyle to save one flying rat. (What New Yorkers affectionately call their pidgeon population.)
What are they going to do with all the Oxygenium? Since the air we breathe consists to more than 70 percent of Nitrogen, not Oxygene, simply freeing large volumes could be problematic. (And can be quite a risk for the installation itself. Think of "no smoking".)
They'll compare it to the pollutants generated by the combustion engine. Also, I don't give a rat's ass about smokers, they can get a job flipping burgers... (no, make that collecting garbage). The explosion caused by the plant a hundred miles away from a population center concerns me less than a nuclear plant's meltdown in a residential neighborhood by a major population center (Shoreham, Long Island).
On a more serious note, its always a potential concern, but I doubt that much oxygen would be released by the laser energy transiting to the collection center. If it were a significant amount, it would indicate that the laser would lose too much of its energy to be economical. Finally, its possible to convert the solar energy to microwaves before being sent down.
What if a mislead plane happens to fly into the beam? A weather balloon?
The same thing if they fly into a skyscraper, a microshear, or a airforce combat zone exercise. Sorry Osama bin Antity, I'm not going to give up my lifestyle to save an incompetant pilot and his passengers.
Impact on clouds? Hitting them (and the H2O within them) will also split the H2O, and then Ozone will react from the Oxygenium radicals. And: Ozone is only good in exactly the right height over ground. Every Ozone lower than that is poisonous and, in the volumes we're talking about, could lead to quite interesting weather effects within these clouds.
Are you suggesting its preferable for us to have hundreds of million (soon to be billion) internal combustion engines releasing that ozone at sea level?
Don't talk about what happens if this cloud of ozone happens to drift over some city. In cities, we usually call this "smog" and try to avoid it.
Its still hundreds of feet higher than where the cars make the ozone.
Sulfur dioxide, raising up in clouds from big cities or other things that burn fuel (oil plants?) is known to react to Sulfur Acid in the athmospere, with the help of the power of sunlight. A while after, we call this "sour rain" or "acid rain". What amount of acid could react if a cloud like this is hit by this _very_ strong artificial sun?
Hydrogen technology means hydrogen-powered cars. No SO2 to make unpleasant acid compounds.
The only argument that really warrants concern is the ozone layer. But howabout not being such a Luddite, and let the scientists and engineers at least demonstrate that it can work before trying to shut it down without convincing evidence? That way, you stick it to The Man; the capitalist swine has to outlay all that cash before discovering he can't recoup his investment. This way (research before cruxifiction), progress is allowed to happen, and technology can improve peoples' and other living things' lives.
And why are you using a computer when you should be hugging a tree, hippie-lover? Don't you realize the toxic chemicals and metallic pollution caused by these metal boxes???
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
have developed a photocatalyst that uses optical radiation - which makes up 43% of solar energy
Your expertise in "known" solid state laser gain substances doesn't mean jack if you can't realize that this is a heretofore UNKNOWN substance.
Read the article. It precludes EVERY ONE of your points.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"