Slashdot Mirror
Lunar Power
An Anonymous Coward cites this article on ABC News, excerpting: "...the world would have access to a limitless power supply. The moon receives 13,000 terrawatts of power from the sun. Harnessing 1 percent of that energy, he calculates, could replace all fossil fuel power plants on Earth."
By virtue of the size of earth, we ought to be getting more. Harnessing 1% of this is as good!
S
...That's Lunacy!
It currently costs $10,000 to get 1 lb of material into orbit. How much would it take to get it to the moon? One hell of a lot.
It's going to be a heck of a lot cheaper to burn money to make power than use the moon for a long, long time.
total nonsense. the receiving dishes would have to be large and would cost to much to manufacture and put in orbit. you'd be better off pursuing fussion as a source of energy. or why not build the solar cells on earth, or float them in lines of buoys on the ocean?
But c'mon. The moon's surface area is something like 38,000,000 km^2. So harnessing 1% of all that solar energy would entail 100% efficient solar panels over what? 380,000 km^2?
Get back to me when you've got the first hundred square kilometers or so done...
Christopher
Mozilla
oinkelshitz for everyone!
The "moon" receives "terra"-watts?
Apparently this dude has never put a marshmallow in his microwave oven.
--All your stolen base are belong to Rickey Henderson
Yeah, so uh what's so special about the moon exactly? Earth is practically the same distance from the Sun as the moon is distant from the Sun and isn't it a heck of a lot more efficient to just create a local satillite network instead of going all the way to the moon?
Or even better... just have it based, I don't know, on the ground? Once we come up with more efficient solar cells then you're all set...
how about a cable....
1%, ok, i'll grant him that...efficiency of solar cells being what they are..... of course that means completely covering the surface of the moon, and then figuring out a way to transport the energy back to the Earth....
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
I'm sure somewhere a team of oil executives is brainstorming this one.
Oil exec 1: This free moon power is getting to be a real problem, what can we do about it?
Lacky: Uh, buy the moon
Oil exec 1: Good thinking Jensen, you're in charge of the moon purchase deal.
Lacky: Ahh crap, I so fucking far behind on the whole Sun leasing plan as it is.
Oil exec 1: Next on the agenda, the copyrighting of all the wind on Earth. How's that going?
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
The height of delusional techno-fantasy-masturbation. Come on people, let's think here. What's easier... Getting photovoltaic or thermal concentration arrays up into orbit at the cost of thousands of dollars per ounce and then shipping them to the moon, installing them, and somehow shipping back gigawatts of electricity to earth by radiation..
OR,
putting up photovoltaic or thermal concentration arrays on earth. On your house, your car, in the backyard, on fields, on buildings, on deserts, on woodlands, on fences, on anything that's flat, vertical, or in between, using unskilled labor and unsophisticated tools.
The answer, of course, is to use less energy period. But you can't strap a nuclear warhead onto efficiency, so let's just go with the space rockets to the moon plan instead. Durr.
Just say no.
Or create a supermassive weapon that harnesses the power of the Sun and fire at nuissance countries.
C'mon editors. My cat could have figured out a better power scheme than this. Even the Hydrogren that is 20KM under the surface of the earth would be cheaper. New national level building codes where we force all new buildings to have solar panel roof tiles and solar colleting windows would be easier to pass by congress. Also, quite frankly, the guys that are still hacking away at cold fusion probably have a better chance of getting it all to work.
Damn I wish this was K5 so I could vote to dump this article.
Pithy, yet ultimately meaningless, phrase expressed with gusto!
This doesn't sound right ...we can't even make efficent solar power stations here on earth what makes this guy think it can be done on the moon. Granted the moon has no atmosphere to get in the way of the solar rays, but wouldn't the earths atmosphere hinder the transmition of the microwave beams transmitting the "power" back to earth.. just a thought
Just Limin' Mon
You don't take photovoltaic cells to the moon, you build a factory on the moon and make the cells there. Just about everything you need is there: water, minerals and even some things that you don't find that often on Earth.
This is probably as far beyond our immediate capability as getting to the moon was to people of the 1940's - just a matter of time, money and will. The latter seems to be the most lacking.
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
Although the actual technical details seem pretty nutty, I thought it was amusing that the project that would probably require a treaty and the cooperation of all the space-faring nations (ala ISS) to fund could probably be funded out of pocket by Microsoft.
Everything posted before this seems to knock this idea.
Granted it's not the best - people are letting other current problems stand in the way.
So, let's recap:
Lower the cost of getting things in orbit.
Make better working solar cells.
Costs too much [for whatever other reason].
Of course we could change these things. If my local power plant could take in some money for investing in such a crazy system we might actually see something like it.
Maybe it would be better for other situations like storing emergency power or making batteries for space craft....
Get your Unix fortune now!
If we take away all of the power of the moon, then there will be no light left. With no light, the term "dark side of the moon" will have no meaning. Pink Floyd songs will lose their relevance, no longer inspiring people to commit suicide. Earth's population will soar, until it becomes so crowded we will all suffocate each other to death.
Think before you act, people!
Have they asked The Man in the Moon?
Or, more seriously, did America claim the Moon when Armstrong landed there? Or did they donate it to humanity, or something similary lame?
Does the presence of Stars and Stripes on the Moon have any legal implications?
This reminds me of the classic marketing statement, "If just 1% of the population buy our product, then it will be successful!!"
Unfortunately, getting that 1% is close to impossible.
This reminds me of my geography teacher who once said that the world's entire need for electricity could be provided by a solar array in the Sahara Desert producing electricity at negligible cost (once it'd been built of course). However he also said that the fossil fuel companies would never allow it. I might also point out that even with microwaves you're going to suffer from some power loss on the way back to Earth. Maybe once there's a permanent base on the moon they'll need a source of power - but until then it's just in the realms of pie-in the sky & sci-fi.
Video Game cheats, hints a
Whay happens when there's a cloudy day on earth - which is more often than not...
Anyway - some of that energy will leak into the atmosphere and will result in heating of it.
Other problems - How about jets trying to avoid the wandering microwave beam paths - unless we we can somehow narrow down the beam to an incredibly tight small area. This seems unlikely to be able to get this sort of precise control.
I swear we've seen this idea multiple times before on slashdot...
..........FULL STOP.
But if it would actually require a treaty between most of the nations on earth, it obviously won't be happening any time soon.
And of course we'll have to actually get to the moon first...
(I can see the -1 Flamebait already)
I don't think that's much of a point, as it's not universally agreed that putting a cell phone microwave emitter to your head is a safe thing. The point I'd make is, well, McDonalds isn't killing you, is it? Bring on the microwaves!
So the moon has a percentage of the sun's energy, and if we harness a percentage then we'll be good... Why not just go to the big source first?
Also most ground based solar reciptors have been recieving this energy for years, just not really taking much notice of it. We use all of our resources we won't waste. Doesn't seem like news to me.
We have the guy with the same name as a noted Ed Wood hanger-on and crackpot psychic spouting "broadcast electricity will save the world" theories" straight out of the mind of Nikolai Tesla! It's quite the tech-loony smorgasbord. Where do the tinfoil hats fit in?
Didn't they have something like this in simcity 2k? I only ask becuase things didn't turn out well when it missed.
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
I would reply to this post, but the stupid IP ban is preventing me from posting at all :(
if only God had made the moon tethered by two nice fat copper wires...
Limitless power huh? Well call me old fashioned but when the guy holding up the Earth dies, we are all SCREWWWWWEEED!
The Klingons thought it was a good idea too and look what happened to them. :-)
< Insert Lame Extension Lead Joke Here >
sorry
Burma?
Sure, its a great idea...
:)
just don't expect us to pay for the extension chord.
great idea - so how will the power get to earth? how about a cable....
I first heard about this wacky idea of transmitting electricity via electromagnetic waves a couple years ago, and apparently some other people besides this guy think it's a viable solution as well. I don't remember enough from my physics classes to say authoritatively whether these ideas are feasible or not, but it's a damn cool idea nonetheless.
The orbiting satellites would obviously be much cheaper than moon stations, and could be positioned above a specific point on the globe. This eliminates the need for "global cooperation", since whoever puts the satellites up in orbit would put them above themselves, thus receiving the free energy. The Moon generator idea would require receiving stations all over the planet, and if any one of them failed for any reason, the whole planet would be without power for a few hours. Also the Moon station deal is basically an all or nothing project; you can't be relying on your power source to be unavailable for 12 hours of every day just because you can't run enough cables around the planet to your country. The satellites could be put up one at a time as funds allowed, at a cost of about a half billion $ each, as opposed to the $150billion estimated for the moon project. So obviously the satellite approach is much more likely to be feasible than the moon version. But I still like to see other suggestions in the media as to energy sources other than "we must open up ANWR for drilling"... no matter how wacky they may seem to be today.
"It would require the efforts of many nations and a treaty to do it," he said.
This was exactly what I said in the start-up initial meeting with our VCs.
To produce enough energy, we would need a hell-of-a-lot of satellites...
:P) which will normally burn up, so we dont notice them... However, these satellites would be exposed to these missiles, and we would be constantly repairing them...
ever gone outside at night??? notice those bright shooting things that fly across the sky???
the earth is constantly being bombarded by (often small) pieces of rock, matter and other c**p (MIR!?!?
[root@GRIFFIN root]# rpm -e coffee-1.22.3-1a.i386.rpm
error: removing these packages would break dependencies:
Quoth the caption:
A U.S. soldier scans the horizon as the moon rises behind him in Kandahar, Afghanistan. A physicist claims solar energy reflected from the moon could provide endless clean energy
Do they just have stock footage of Afghanistan lying around? Is this the best moon picture they could come up with?
Maybe they just searched through the pictures lying on their desk, till they found one with the moon in it. We're lucky we didn't get a snap-shot of the author's poodle with the moon in the background.
Microwave Power?...
Sim City 2000 Anyone?...
Where the hell are my Arcologies?
...would have to be a no-fly zone. Come to think of it, it'd have to be a no-pigeon, no-duck, no-eagle and no-butterfly zone too.
I don't think any of these uwave links will ever get built for one reason: NIMBY. (Not In My Back Yard).
Now, maybe you could convince some desparate 3rd world nation to receive, but that's not where the power is needed now is it? So you would just compound the transmission problem. I think they are better off using the power right there on the moon to drive energy-intensive manufacturing processes that produce small products that can be easily shipped back to Earth. That way, you free up energy resources on Earth without having to fuss about how the power is transmitted. Synthetic diamond production perhaps? Then of course there is the potential of mining the moon and running electric smelters up there, but it's probably only practical for certain rare commodity metals. How much platinum and gold is on the moon?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
(a) a Solar Power Project
or(b) Sex with a mare ?
Nikola Tesla.
And Tesla had the right idea.
Harnessing 1 percent of that energy, he calculates, could replace all fossil fuel power plants on Earth."
The actual quote said, "Harnessing 1 percent of that energy, he calculates, could power up to four Intel Pentium-4 processors AT ONCE!"
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Heres a link to the actual artical in the Industrial physicist: http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-8/iss-2/p12.pdf
It seems as though its weather that would prevent us from using the earth as the primary solar center. Also it seems we are already exposed to microwaves as part of industrial radio, cell phones and other high frequency output devices.
The plan involves sending small manufacturing groups to the moon to both mine on the moon and use the supplies to build the solar bases. Kinda like MCV's(mobile construction units for all you non C&C players out there).
I on the otherhand think its just a secret plan created by doctor evil to put a "laser" on the moon.
Should we use the moon for our power needs, or...
should we BLOW UP the moon
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
"The moon receives 13,000 terrawatts of power from the sun... (bla bla)"
Why on Earth (pun intended) would we need to go the Moon for this?
Doesn't Earth get a healthy amount of energy from the sun as well? Would be surprising if it didn't. Clouds? They aren't that big of a problem. First, they don't cover 100% of the solar rays. Second, if the cells cover 1% of Earth's surface, that would be enough to get continuous energy IMHO. And, of course, you'd like to place most in sunny areas like deserts.
The big problem is to make effecient solar cells that cover 1% of Earth's surface. A pretty big area indeed. And make everyone agree with that it's ok. But I guess it would still be easier than going to the Moon for this.
Also, who's gonna pay?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
...."you could be swingin' on a star..."
-Matthias
The amount of experience gained is directly proportional to the amount of equipment destroyed.
How about if we tapped the magma core right inside the ol' planet earth? We could pile drive a 12,000 mile long, 100' diameter pipe right through to the center of the earth and pop out lava through some souped up oil derrick. The energy supply would be almost limitless!
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
wasn't there a news story in RoboCop about microwave energy from a space facility missing its mark on earth and taking out a small south american village? can't we learn *something* from hollywood?!?
i'd buy that for a dollar!
So, the moon receives 13000TW of power, and we only need 1% of that? Let's do a little math eh...
Solar cells are at best about 20% efficient. For the sake of my argument, that's the number I'm using. The argument stands even if you could imagine getting 50% efficiency from the falling sunlight.
They would need to cover 1% of the lunar surface on BOTH sides of the moon, because only half of the solar panels would be in sunlight at a time.
They would need to cover 5% of the surface, because the cells are only 20% efficient.
Combine those two problems, and you have 10% of the surface of the moon covered in solar panels. Add another 5% because not every portion of the surface is suitable for placing panels. Multiply the result (15% of the lunar surface covered) by about 1.5, to make up for the transmission loss from the moon to earth, and through the atmosphere. Result... over 20% of the moons surface, its TOTAL surface both visible and non, covered with solar panels to get that 130TW the author stated.
Imagine the moon with a bright shiny ring of solar sails all along the left and right edge. If you can't hear every environmentalist and presevationist crying out simultaneously in anger, you are deaf.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
From what I've read of the responses so far, a lot of you are missing the point.
;)
For starters, you missed the fact that he suggested mining the moon for the materials needed to build the photovoltaic collectors. That means that the only thing that needs to be put on the moon are some ships carrying parts for a mining operation. (We put ships there thirty years ago with much crappier technology!) It's not all that infeasible, though obviously expenses for space missions tend to rise higher than expected.
Secondly, unlike an orbital space station or orbital photovoltaic collectors, the moon itself requires no energy to be kept in orbit. So there is no need to expend fuel or energy keeping things up in space, since the moon does that already.
I know the immediate response to this will be that there are stationary earth orbits. That is true, but the items in them are still subject to the varying conditions of space (solar wind, micrometeors, etc.), whereas something firmly anchored on the moon is not likely to face those problems to the same degree. (Does anyone remember the solar storm that knocked out those communications satellites a while back?)
Thirdly, the use of the term "microwaves" refers to a section of the spectrum, not the same type of rays used in your oven in the kitchen. They are already used in power transmission here on earth, with no reported cases of harm to any form of life.
Just thought I'd clear those things up.
libertarianswag.com
I thought the Russians did that in the 70's???
:P
Or was that also a hoax???
*grins evily and starts to dodge the spot fires*
[root@GRIFFIN root]# rpm -e coffee-1.22.3-1a.i386.rpm
error: removing these packages would break dependencies:
Pipe into hell
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
Look at the picture caption. It reads:
A U.S. soldier scans the horizon as the moon rises behind
him in Kandahar, Afghanistan. A physicist claims solar
energy reflected from the moon could provide endless
clean energy for Earth. (John Moore/AP Photo)
Sheesh, where do they find these idiot journalists / editors?
Actually, it took out a California community, including at least one ex-president.
So it wasn't a total loss.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/12/13/142233
I remembered reading arguments about this a few months ago, apparentally I was right.
How about the debris on earth caused by all the satellites falling out of orbit?
Without him, we would still be back in the age of steam... In 10 years time, people will look at Linus and laugh at how primitive the 2.4 kernel was... "Oh.. He must have been a crackhead or a crap coder"... Which ofcourse we know is completely false... The same with Tesla... At the time, with their current scientific knowledge, it was a great idea... So before you go bashing Tesla (and other scientists for that matter) just think about where you would be if it wasnt for that tech-loony
[root@GRIFFIN root]# rpm -e coffee-1.22.3-1a.i386.rpm
error: removing these packages would break dependencies:
While this is a great-sounding idea, it has the kind of hidden problem that so often gets overlooked in the advertising hype.
First of all, because no part of the Moon is constantly exposed to sunlight, we would have to cover at least 2% (and more likely perhaps as much as 3%) of its surface to be able to continuouisly gather 1% of the incident solar radiance. So the construction costs are more than doubled, right there.
However, that is not actually the real problem -- which is the fact that in the process of suppling that energy to Earth, the TOTAL amount of energy released on Earth becomes increased. Sure, the idea is to replace existing power plants that release carbon dioxide and cause global warming, but even without that, so the threat I am describing can be delayed. Nevertheless, since total energy consumption will probably always rise (due to fundamental principle of capitalism, that people have unlimited wants), eventually enough energy MERELY RELEASED at the surface of the Earth, whether it be by fusion or imported from Space, can cause its own type of global warming. After all, ALL energy that does not escape the world as radiation eventually ends up as molecular kinetic energy (ordinary heat).
I submit that before any such thing has any chance to get out of hand, we need to put in place guidelines to ensure that the total "heat balance" of the Earth is not upset, due to energy transformed for human purposes.
And the best way I know to do that is to place huge mirrors in orbit, so we can deflect excess sunlight from such places as the Sahara Desert.
(With enough mirrors, we can also acquire planetary weather control.)
... but the moon is flat!
It must be: The power bases are going to be placed around the edge!
(I just hope they don't fall off...)
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
Sure.
Even a Dyson sphere seems more realistic :)
The Raven.
The Raven
Imagine how much energy must be shining on the Earth. Maybe we could harness that. Wait...
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Second - getting the energy to where it will be used. This isn't particularly silly, since the energy could be used to manufacture something on the lunar surface (eg. satellites) which doesn't need to go all of the way home. Manufacturing processes like vapour deposition would work well there on an enormous scale - but at current scales it is a lot easier to use vacuum pumps.
Now the problem comes in ... Earth is rotating. The moon isn't in an equatorially geosynchronous orbit and eventually either the receiving dishes would need to be moved or the transmitting dish on the moon would transmit enough microwaves to eliminate life as we know it for a few hundred meters around its target. If you fear the cellular phone radio waves.... think sticking your head into your microwave in the morning instead of coffee.
People have discussed the idea of transmitting power before. Heck, Russia built a solar reflector to light up their northern lands. It's feasible, but being able to protect Earth from a microwave disaster would be EXTREMELY hard.
Ever need an online dictionary?
International politics aside (never an easy thing), I long to wake up one morning and find that some politician somewhere has risen to the occasion and challenged the world... I've heard so much talk lately, online and in the press, about the need for a "Kennendy-Man-on-the-Moon-in-this-Decade.." speech from the powers that be... this is such a great time for an endeavour of such magnitude... so many unemployed and disillusioned people out there... if I knew there was a project underway to build a solar power station on the moon, I'd volunteer... and I'm sure you would too. peace
Years later, a doctor will tell me that I have an I.Q. of 48, and am what some people call "mentally retarded".
Oh gosh no. It makes perfect sense. We all know that the war against Afghanistan is to provide American Oil Companies with a pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan". The photo is just one reporter behind enemy lines at Disney trying to get the truth out.
For a start, that huge swirling core is what produces the earth's magnetic field, protecting us from stray cosmic radiation... If we were to upset/ damage that magnetic field by screwing up the way the core spins, we wouldnt need any energy anyway... We'd all be dead... A very crispy dead...
And also, that lava is hot enough to melt metal, so everything would have to be made of Carbon (or another very high melting point material)...
[root@GRIFFIN root]# rpm -e coffee-1.22.3-1a.i386.rpm
error: removing these packages would break dependencies:
Not like that wouldn't heat up the earth's atmosphere a few degrees or so, even at low power/wides beam spread. Instant wacky weather for miles around the downlink.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
It's going to be a heck of a lot cheaper to burn money to make power than use the moon for a long, long time.
Why even make money to burn it? We can conserve our energy by not even manufacturing the crap and we'd save the trees.
We could, however, burn cow manure and help to erradicate those ugly landscapes outside Area 51 where cattle was once raised that have been littered with pies. (Seriously, the area was big on cattle a while back)
x
Ever need an online dictionary?
Just harvesting the amount of "solar energy" that falls on my property each day would handle my energy needs, thanks.
I wanna go to the moon too though...
You're absolutely right WRT how you'd actually do this. However, I remain unconvinced that, when compared to terrestrial solar cells, the smaller quantities of cells required outweigh the stupendous cost of setting up lunar production facilities and supporting the lunar staff to maintain the system.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Expounding on the work of Alan Parsons, what if someone were to form an "Alan Parsons Project" to harness the power of the moon to create a huge "laser", transforming the moon into a "death star" like weapon against the earth?
Sending material to space is not cheap, so Criswell has studied lunar rocks collected during the Apollo mission years and determined that 90 percent of the aluminum, silicon and glass needed to build solar power plants can be found on the moon.
Let me get this straight. He wants to build a semiconductor manufacturing plant like the ones Intel owns.......but on the moon......that cost $2 billion.......
No wonder why this guy has been pitching this for 20 years without a bite.
Let's see, you can buy 21.5% efficient dual-junction GaInP/GaAs solar cells for $10 each or $17.44 per watt. $2 billion will buy ~115 megawatts worth of power. Save some money for infrastructure and overhead, so 100 megawatts worth of power. To obtain 100 megawatts of power, one would have to buy 174.4 million solar cells which will cover 465,067 square meters. I don't have the link to the NREL site handy, but let's assume that you can get 15 kilowatt-hours per square meter per day which yields 6,976 megawatt-hours of energy per day. At $0.07 per kilowatt-hour, that's $488,320 worth of energy per day.
Now, how many homes do you think you can power off of 6,976 megawatt-hours or $488,320 worth of energy in a single day? Now this guy claims an initial project of $15 billion and then another $135 billion to make it break even. My scenario is for $2 billion. Take that by a factor of 75 and you get 523,200 megawatt-hours worth of energy per day or $36 million worth of energy. Let's subtract the lack of pointing 7,500 megawatts worth of microwave radiation (the same as ~11 million 700 watt microwave ovens on simultaneously) at the Earth and do a risk analysis. Yup, this guy is a lunatic.
:wq
Um hello to all the fuckheads at ABC: If the moon receives that much energy, and the Earth is 10x (or whatever) bigger than the moon, I'd bet it receives more energy from the sun (even accounting for all that is scattered by the atmosphere) and would be just a wee bit easier to capture. Let NASA spends it's billions (oh wait, Bush is in office...) on important stuff, like say that little project that is billions overbudget right now.
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
On the cow manure idea:
A new 750-kW power plant at Tinesdale Farms in Wrightstown, WI, is the first in the state to be powered by cow manure. The facility uses a "digester" to convert the manure to methane, which is then burned to generate electricity. Ag Environmental Solutions, LLC (Wrightstown, WI) owns and operates the facility, and Wisconsin Gas/Wisconsin Electric is buying the power and selling it to its customers. The manure comes from 1,800 cows at Tinesdale Farms, and it generates enough electricity to power 250 homes -- http://www.achrnews.com/.snippy./
Ever need an online dictionary?
God damn hippies banned me for posting this comment 22 times. May you burn in hell moderator!
By the way, your work's great.
And imagine what a mega weapon a moon covered with solar cells is. Just send the amazing energy as non-"harmless" to your country of favorite hate.
Man I'm happy this project is technically impossible, and don't tell me US army wouldn't have thought of that use of such an installation.
--
Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
"It would require the efforts of many nations and a treaty to do it," he said
As a history buff and an environmentalist, and, a shameless dilettante, I have long held that the exploitation of space will require we as a people become one worldwide. We simply will not have independently or factiously, the hard and soft resources necessary. I've also long suspected that any sentient life capable of extended space travel will have necessarily put aside violence. Recently on my first trip to the mother planet all these assumptions were proven true. ;)
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
The big advantage to doing solar energy on the moon, as opposed to doing it in space, would be that local resources are available for most of the construction needs. The disadvantage, of course, is the rotation - half the time you're in the shade. That and the transmission costs.
The advantage of the moon over the earth is mostly lack of atmosphere. All that pesky air takes like 2/3 of the energy!
Websurfing: The Next Generation - StumbleUpon
augment your senses: http://sensebridge.net/
how come i can't even get a (Score: 1) even if I posted intelligently... fuck!
Can the Earth withstand all that extra energy pouring in? Assuming this lunatic project gets built.
First of all, that darn atmosphere absorbs a lot of it. Second, that's the energy that keeps you warm and feeds you (plants don't live off of love, you know).
The only way the moon as power source will be practicable will be if we move up there or figure out how to get that energy down here. Neither one is any easy task. You can pretty much forget about the first, and the second involves crazy plans with microwaves. What happens when the aiming device gets hit by a meteor, and the microwaves fry some poor shmuck? oops. Not to mention the amount of power that such a system would lose sending the signal through the atmosphere.
The only way I see space based power being practicable is with some sort of geo-synchronous elevator (the ones that are connected to the planet by a metal cable in sci-fi). Then you could put solar panels, fission/fusion or pretty much any other type of power plant up there, and just let the wires carry it down with a whole lot less risk than a microwave beam.
Don't hold your breath for any practicable space based power in our time, though.
BlackGriffen
..From the usual "windmill" claptrap you get from people who don't like nuclear power.
Seriously, thought. It's a cool idea, but you'd really need a way to build the panels from local materials. When our lunar power corp was up and churning out solar panels, the situation would just *beg* for a bald guy with a cat blackmailing major cities. Bad fry-day?
To me, the real merit of the idea is to estabilish lunar industrial base which would make getting stuff into orbit a relative bargain. Anyone know if there are actually useful metal deposits et cetera in the moon?
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
... I can't see the forest for the trees! This is clearly an idea that might be possible in the far flung future, but again. It's the Feasability, Stupid!
How would that be better tthan solar cell's on earth?
If they were on earth, at least, you don't have to launch them, you don't have to defend them furiously against space-debree, no fancy microwave power-transfer device,... (make up more yourselves).
SLOGEN [ http://ungdomshus.nu : Sebastian cover music]
"...the world would have access to a limitless power supply. The moon receives 13,000 terrawatts of power from the sun. Harnessing 1 percent of that energy, he calculates, could replace all fossil fuel power plants on Earth."
If we've got the same guy doing the calculating as we have doing the spell-checking, we're fucked. Besides, duh, it costs money to get something to the moon. Whats the rocket going to be powered by? Cash or rubberbands?
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
If we had the technology to do this on the moon, we could do it more easily on some desert.
Terra is not the right prefix, you should use tera. Se International Units prefixes for more info.
Get energy from the wheel mouse of everyone scrolling while reading /. posts.
PETA-WATT of energy per day!
Just for kicks and giggles, I thought I'd try to figure out how much area you'd need to cover to pick up that 1% of energy hitting the moon.
Radius of the moon: 6378.1 km
So the area of a disc of that radius is 1.278e8 km^2.
One percent of that is of course 1.278e6 km^2.
Lets construct our solar panels in a band around the equator, so that at any given time, 1% of the sunlight is being collected.
Treating the band as approximately a rectanle, so I don't have to think too hard, 1.278e6/6378.1 = 100.18 km
Now this stripe on a flat disc needs to be translated back to a band on the surface of a shpere. Approximating that band as a cylender, with hight 100.18km, and radius as that of the moon, we get approximately 4.0e6 km^2. For reference, thats tad less than half the size of the United States (9.629e6 km^2).
86?
Did I miss something?
From the article, the moon receives eight times greater an intensity of sunshine. So do sattelites. So the deciding factor for choosing between satellite cell farms, earth cell farms, and moon cell farms, should only be econommics. Personally, I think the article is too skimpy and the featured dude is nutty as a fruit-cake, advocating lunar expeditions for the sheer sake of the cool factor. The guy wants to save costs by mining materials from the moon. The problem is, people can't even build an igloo from rocks, how are we gonna make a parts manufacturing plant on the moon?
The second option, building a solar cell satellite farm around earth seems much more economical, and they generate just as much energy as on the moon.
The only one question that remains is, which one gives more energy per cost? Satellite farms or earth farms? This is even before asking the question of microwave safety.
for the lunar power plant.
This requires a robot for permanent residence.
Relying on one huge installation to suply a very large amount of earth's enery would be a very nice target for potential attacks ( terrorist, ET, ...). Earth would be like a unborn foetus being cut from it's navel String.
The only thing that's truly keeping our wireless PDA's grounded is the need for juice...
Where do I sign up to buy a springboard-microwave-energy-receiver-module ?
CySurflex
Build several (or several hundred) big (square-mile-plus) mirror-array collectors throughout the world (the dispersal reduces output fluctuation due to nightfall and weather).
Use the concentrated sunlight to generate steam which generates electricity which can be transmitted to grid subscribers, or to wet areas to generate hydrogen from easily available water (they hydrogen storage further reduces output fluctuations by acting as a chemical battery).
Use the hydrogen to run vehicles, electric generators for off-grid communities, and grid generators when sunlight is scarce.
The startup costs for this can't be any higher than for exploration, drilling, and refining of oil in the millions of wells we've sunk, and the resource costs aren't any lower than free gunk from the ground, and the maintenance can't be nearly as expensive as tankers and oil slicks, so this should work out fine until the sun quits on us.
--Blair
But why:
use photovoltaic
ship power back from the moon?
This was examined back in the 70s and there's a set of even better solutions. Two samples:
1) Put the actual collectors/generators in sync orbit:
Much shorter distance to ship the power.
Much greater surface area than the moon.
Negligible gravity (just tidal and station-keeping forces).
Alternatively: Use the L4 or L5 points - same distance from the Earth but still has the low-gravity and improved surface area factors.
Mine the moon for the bulk of the material, but use a catapult to launch it to orbit. (For L5 there's an orbit using one of the other L points as a lens that requires very little delta-v to perform the final injection, so the catapult does essentially all the work.) Smelt and construct it in orbit.
2) Build a STEAM plant on the ground and launch the pieces into sync orbit, where they're assembled. (Most of 'em go in reusable unmanned heavy-lifters. Much cheaper than the shuttle.)
Steam has the advantage that you don't need to do a lot of fancy processing. Just a turbine, mirrors, pipes, generators, condensers (a flat plate painted black at right angles to the sun or behind the collector mirror, with some more plumbing attached), and a trick microwave transmitter (plus an antenna farm in the desert.) You don't need much water, and it goes around and around without leaking out for decades or more, like the freon (or whatever) in a household refrigerator.
Tesla could have done it (except he'd have used VLF radio for the power feed, at considerable loss).
These proposals and several others were examined in detail by the L5 society (founded by the same Keith Henson who is now in Canadian exile over the Scientology thing).
NASA did a study on number 2, and came to the conclusion that it was too expensive. The L5 society then studied NASA's study and found an error: They'd done it in two steps:
- Design a plant.
- Design a set of vehicles to lift the parts.
The heavy-lift vehicle was sized to lift the largest single part, which was the turbine wheel, which was enormous, making the vehicle very expensive. But it turns out it was enormous only because the plant designer had gone for efficiency with no thought to the launch issue. By sacrificing 10% efficiency the turbine could be reduced to the size of the next largest part, which would enable a much smaller and cheaper rocket to do the job.
With the (unofficial) revised estimates, amortized over enough plants to feed the rate of growth of US power demand at the time, the total capital investment was a bit over a trillion bux. Sounds like a lot. But in fact it was cheaper than building any of the earthbound alternatives for the same capacity. (Fossil fuel and nuclear were both expensive - though nuclear wasn't yet politicized out of affordability - and the remaining options such as water, tidal, wind, biomass, etc. couldn't hack the demand.)
Of course that's without even considering that the fuel is free.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
same with me, stupid ip ban >:[
The generators would then convert the energy into harmless microwave beams, which would be aimed at collecting stations on Earth
Apparently this dude has never put a marshmallow in his microwave oven.
You misunderstand the technology.
The household microwave oven uses K-band microwaves. These were chosen because they're strongly absorbed by water, resulting in very efficient heating of most foods. (There are several ranges of frequencies that do that. But K band is absorbed about the right amount to cook food through rather than frying the surface or mostly passing right through.) Microwave ovens also have a very high energy density because the microwaves bounce back-and-forth and build up until they're absorbed by the food (or the transmitter magnetron, which is why they burn out if you run them too long when empty).
The "microwaves" proposed for space solar power downlinks are MILIMETER waves - chosen because they're easy to handle and go RIGHT THROUGH water without being strongly absorbed. That's mostly so they'll go through humidity and clouds without major loss - though it helps that birds don't get cooked either.
At the downlink rectenna farm the milimeter wave energy density is similar to the energy density of sunlight to maybe three times that. But the rectenna is MUCH more efficient than a solar panel at turning it into electricity. And the rectenna intercepts very little light. You can graze cattle under it.
Even if there were an issue with the waves if they hit something ELSE (and for some stuff there is - it would heat up as if a heat lamp was shining on it), aim is not a problem. That's because the downliink is a synthetic-aperture system driven by a pilot beam from the rectenna site. The pilot signal is the only thing keeping the thousands of individual transmitters in phase. So if it's lost the beam defocusses. Most of it misses the planet entierly and the rest becomes nothing more than an annoying milimeter-band radio noise.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
An Anonymous Coward wrote:
"You also make this guy sound saner than he really is. He wants to mine materials on the moon for building a plant. [Well of course! cast a magic wand, change moon rocks into power plants!]"
Sending up machinery that can mine lunar soil (for the ores) and water (for fuel and oxygen) is far less expensive than shipping the constructed materials, even for extremely small projects. This would not be an extremely small project.
Give the moon a solar array and you can get a few watts. Give the moon a fab plant and it can make arrays for one heck of a long time. Better still, the gravity of the moon is 1/5th of that on Earth, so launching fabricated items to, say, Mars, becomes significantly less expensive.
It's certainly not trivial, but it is forward-looking. You can save a few bucks by launching parts to the moon, but economically, it scales worse than Napster. =P
My
Limekiller
Nice dictionary.
Ex-Porn Star Lovelace Dies at 53
By COLLEEN LONG
Associated Press Writer
DENVER (AP) -- Linda Boreman, who starred as Linda Lovelace in the 1972 pornographic film ``Deep Throat'' and later became an anti-porn advocate, died Monday from injuries she suffered in a car crash. She was 53.
Boreman was taken to Denver Health Medical Center with massive trauma and internal injuries after the April 3 accident, hospital spokeswoman Sara Spaulding said. She was taken off life support Monday, Spaulding said.
Boreman's ex-husband, Larry Marchiano, said he and their two adult children were at the hospital when she died.
``Everyone might know her as something else, but we knew her as mom and as Linda,'' Marchiano said. ``We divorced five years ago, but she was still my best friend.''
The family moved to Colorado in 1990 and the two divorced in 1996 after 22 years of marriage.
Boreman claimed her first husband forced her into pornography at gunpoint. They divorced in 1973.
Their relationship disintegrated into a life of violence, rape, prostitution and pornography, according to her 1980 autobiography, ``Ordeal'' and her testimony before congressional committees investigating pornography.
Boreman said she was never paid a penny for ``Deep Throat'' and her husband only was paid $1,250, though the film grossed a reported $600 million.
After leaving the industry, she traveled the lecture circuit on a crusade against pornography, speaking at colleges and with prominent feminists.
``I look in the mirror and I look the happiest I've ever looked in my entire life,'' she said in a 1997 interview. ``I'm not ashamed of my past or sad about it. And what people might think of me, well, that's not real. I look in the mirror and I know that I've survived.''
Boreman was born Jan. 10, 1949, in the Bronx borough of New York.
Who run Barter Town?
The ONLY reason to use the moon is becuase it has cheap materials. Build your solar collectors (preferably solar lasers and whatnot) on the moon and lauch them towards mercury. The sun puts out more energy in a single week than has ever existed in ALL the reserves of wood, coal, gas, oil and nuclear fuel on the earth... combined. That is a frigging lot of free god damned power out there!
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
This is a perfect example of a guy who thinks too much and got totally out of touch with reality. Let's take a look at this, shall we?
He wants to build solar panels which will somehow instantly generate "harmless" microwaves (according to the article) and beam them to Earth. Unless he developed some kind of revolutionary new kind of solar panel, the ones he's planning on using are the run-of-the-mill photovoltaic variety. Presumably he wants to use all the voltage from these panels to drive a powerful microwave transmitter. The receiver will pick up the alternating magnetic field (i.e. radio frequency) and convert it back into electricity. Is this possible? Yes. Is it practical? Hell no. There are a couple of major things one must consider. First of all, the microwaves would lose an insane amount of energy traveling the 250,000 miles back to Earth. Unless I miss my guess, falloff for electromagnetic waves in space is (1/r*r, where r is distance). Physics geeks, please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about that. Even if you were able to generate the massive amount of energy in question, turn it into microwaves, send it to Earth, and convert it back into enough electricity to power something more than, say, a lightbulb, the moon isn't geostationary. You would constantly be having to aim the beam. So now you get to power a sophisticated (and quite expensive) tracking system as well, and let's not forget atmospheric diffraction.
If the moon supposedly can get 13,000 terawatts from the sun (god knows what kind of convoluted mathematics he used to come up with that), then what does the Earth get, having 13 times more surface area?? It sounds like this fool would be better off taking his $15 billion and planting solar farms all along the equator of the Earth than living out his fantasy of beaming electricity though space.
-R
Ronald Reagans first executive order as president of the USA was to have all 113 solar panels removed from the White House roof.
....for at least the next 20 years.
Government is filled with nitwits fighting over their own personal kingdoms like feudal lords. I think we can chuck the solar rooftop collection mandates
That doesn't mean it isn't a decent idea..It just isn't going to happen.
Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.
Hmm... Why not cover one percent of the earth's surface with solar panels and save the inefficiency of transmission? I'm sure that the roof tops of people's houses/offices/any other construction makes up for at least one percent of the earth's surface.
Why do people always try to make things harder than they really are?
...why that sounds like more than 1.21 jiggawatts to me
Karma: Bad (mostly affected by moderation done to your comments)...Now i know why.
We'll damage the lunar ecology!
Harnessing 1% of the 13000 Terawatts (not terrawatts, funny pun though) would mean covering
at least 1% of the surface of the Moon with solar panels. That is about 380000 square kilometers, larger area than Germany.
This does not take into account that half of the arrays would be on the dark side of the Moon at any given moment.
Monitor the level of microwave radiation received at different parts of the grid. It should peak in the center of the grid and drop off as it moves out. If the peak moves off-center, the satellite corrects itself. If the peak hits the edge, the transmission shuts down.
As for putting receivers in cities (as per Sim City 3000) that's dumb. There's several hundred square miles of desert which the pacifist tree-hugging hippies (TM) claim are unfit for human habitation because of the A- and H-bomb tests in the 50s. Build the receivers there.
...about a Lunar Power Station. I think it is riduculous to suppose anyone would transport solar cells to the moon.
The raw materials are there to build the solar cells. There's a lot of vacuum that simplifies vapor deposition of surface coatings. My SF story has humans on site to install solar cells churned out by a small solar cell factory. A lot of automation and use of on site materials would reduce launch costs.
As for microwave power transmission, a few thousand watts is lot when its in a teeny metal box holding my coffee. But when its distributed over several square miles, the power is greatly diffused. A rectenna covering that space will concentrate the energy quite nicely. if you're still worried, may I suggest a tin-foil hat?
Nevertheless, i think the news story is exaggerated. We're more likely to only see Lunar Power Stations in science fiction stories. But hey, i write science fiction stories.
Hey lets just build a nice big Dyson Sphere and have fun floating around on the inside!
--- This meme is memory intensive
1400 W/m2. And guess what, the Earth does too. If you want to set up solar panels, do it in Earth orbit; the Moon is totally irrelevant.
Great - now all we need is a 385,000km cable to attach to it... oh and to shift the moon into a geo-stationary orbit so that the cable doesn't end up getting tangled - dang...
They chose the slashdot blackout to post several new april fools stories. Kinda amusing, but it does get old, doesn't it?
Cheers
-b
I've thought about this before. Unfortunately, there's too much weather around. We want to make these things as cheap as possible, and so that they last. I think the basic plan was to put two hydro dams between England and Ireland - really quite short distances in the end. Alternatively, France and England. This leaves you with several hundred square miles of relatively calm, flat sea water.
Sea salt is corrosive too. (In the sense that it catalyses rusting and most other oxidation reactions).
If we blow it up, there will be a lot more surface area to put solar cells on. Brillant!
That, and what happens when the Moon gets into the Earth's shadow cone ?
:D
World-wide power outages for a good hour-long planned every year... Talk about efficient, reliable power source
Funny you should mention this. Did you know you can get an approximate figure of the speed of light using only a common microwave oven, marshmallows and a ruler? Try this experiment:n 34/marshmal.htm
http://www.physics.umd.edu/ripe/icpe/newsletters/
Where do your buy your tires? Honestly, from my experience tires last about 30000 km, that is 18750 miles. When having a bit more sporty car, it's much much less... (I learned that the hard way) Motorcylce tires? Even worse: 6000km, max.... Besides, did you know that road security experts say that a two year old tire should be replaced, whatever the profile-depth is.
Perhaps SUV tires last longer, I don't know. It's perhaps about that kind of cars you talk, but surely not about the regular Honda Civic, VW Golf or Ford Focus.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
that it, it is all a brillant plan by Disco Stu.
This guy says it can be done for 135 billion. Thats alot of money, but lets just put this in perspective. Lets say the project goes over budget by say 20 percent (as alot of space programs tend to do) and ends up costing in the neighborhood of around 160bill. Damn thats alot of cash!
Then wrap your mind around this. Our government spent 60 billion to design and buy the latest and best fighter jet the F-22. Our military budget is $68 billion a year and expected to jump to $100 billion in the next four years. And you guys all think that this guy's idea is to expensive? If he has done the groundwork on the project enough to come up with a estimate, and ABC put up a story about it I would hope that we can at least believe his estimate.
$135 billion is chump change when you think about what would be accomplished. It could be a marvel of human genius. And perhaps it might make the world think a little better of us if we started producing all the power we actually used, while selling it cheap to them to.
Two thirds of the earth is covered by sea. We do not need all that space for ships and not all ocean is so ecologically important and vulnerable that it would be hurt by being covered with solar panels. Does anybody know if ever the feasability of floating solar panels has been investigated? Put a lot of them together in a network, enough distance from each other and connected by strong carbon fiber ropes, or with wave energy harvesting rods, as discussed in this /. story. Should be robust against large waves during storms. Put some loud high frequency whistles at the edges of the net to chase away whales (or some other similar protection trick). Transport of energy to land by cable on the bottom of the sea, just like phone & internet cables.
He's worried about debris orbiting around the Earth, when his proposal involves potentially tearing up the moon's surface.
Still...the idea has some merit, just seems a bit crazy.
How shall I put this...?
Tornado? Cyclone? Hurricane? Hypercane? Willy-willy? Lightning? Sure, they don't hit a high enough balloon but they do hit the cables quite hard.
Also... doesn't that make things a little difficult for air traffic? How about shading if you've got that many balloons (or kites) up?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
"Harmless" microwaves? Jeez, wasn't it ABC news that was driving the bandwagon-style campaign against leaky microwave ovens?
"Only" one percent of the moon's surface? Everyone knows it takes a huge amount of resources to get just one team of people to the moon and back, yet this guy thinks it's feasible to haul thousands of tons of material and supplies for an interplanetary construction project bigger than the state of Texas?
This idea has been around for decades, and it keeps getting shot down for the same, obvious, practical reasons.
Not to mention... it would take far more energy to manufacture and transport each solar cell than they would produce over their entire service life! Even if it were actually carried out, it would be a net loss.
Bill could probably pay cash for it next week if he wanted to. And get a serious tax deduction. But he won't.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Now, getting energie from the moon. I guess we would receive 13,000 luna-watts.
Seems to me it doesn't matter what they're doing up there, as long as they _are_ out there.
Where are the lunar-hotels we've been promissed? When will I be able to take a vacation on the moon?
I'm pretty sure that once we start building something up there, whatever is might be, we'll have to come up with new technologies, new ideas, etc.
When was the last time a man stepped on the moon? Space exploration nearly came to full stop in the past decade. All we do today is luanch more settalites -- can you say space junk -- and work on that ISS, which only hell knows when will become operational.
Sure, it's a stupid method of generating power, but if it involes going back to space, I'm all for it.
The intensity of the light hitting a given object is proportional to the sin of the angle at which the waves hit, so you would need even more than 10% of the moon's surface covered. Think of the case where the two arrays of reflectors are perpendicular to the sun's rays. Those reflectors would absorb a whopping 0% of the 13000TW of power.
The money would be there if there was a will. The Apollo programme wasn't cheap either and look where it took "us" (I am not American, therefore the quotes).
Even more: Money spent on a project like this does not just evaporate. It is spent on material, services, supplies and would do more for the economy than any other government scheme currently being planned will ever do.
Oh comon you bastard, you stole that from me!
+5 Informative
The short way of saying `me too'.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
These guys have obviously never played Sim City 2000 (it's a joke. laugh. =))
But, seriously, how strong are these panels and transmission arrays and whatnot? having no atmosphere an all, the moon gets hit a bit harder by solar wind. If solar flares can disrupt radio comms on earth, imagine what sort of havoc they would play with electronics on the moon?
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
A better idea that's technically not much less umptuous. Why leave it at the moon? We can build a huge spaceship travel to Alpha Centaury (our nearest star) and then build a sphere right around the star catching *all* it's light. Then send it as a "harmless "microwave to earth, and hope that earth doesn't just evaporate from all the energy.
--
Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
You monkeys. All this talk is pointless. Have none of you ever heard of Zero Point Energy? It's all we'll ever need. Here, read this:
http://www.seaspower.com/StrategicOverview.htm
and this:
http://www.seaspower.com/Papers.htm
Just wait and see....
A new study shows that the sun produces millions of kilowats daily. If only 1/10 of 1% of this amazing energy source were harnessed it would replace our need for fossil fuel!
Dr. Evil may try to take it over, and ask for $1,000,000 - wait, $100,000,000, to prevent the barbecuing of NY State......
Do you expect me to talk?
Nooooo Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.....
Hmmm...
13000 Terawatts / 1.21 Gigawatts = 10743801 uses of a Flux Capacitor
Let's say you have 13,000 terrawatts coming from the moon, in the form of an energy beam to some location on Earth, like a power antenna farm or something similar. Wouldn't having an humungous beam of microwaves or laser light be sorta counter productive, seeing how it would have to punch through the atmosphere somewhere and most likely near the ecliptic where we have all of those nice geostats?
I can see the headlines now:
...and now on CNN, an update today on...fzzzt
Fast machines, powerfull AI, impulsive invention,... All I lack is a good espresso machine!
A couple of points are missing from people's arguments.
First, we have this "Not In My Backyard" attitude going on. We might be able to generate enough power theoretically on Earth by photo-voltaics, but we could never acquire the real-estate to do it.
We are going to make the cells on the moon, not haul them up from here.
We don't have to cover the moon with solar cells. It's a convenient place to start, but at some point we can start putting arrays in space.
It currently costs $10,000 to get 1 lb of material into orbit. How much would it take to get it to the moon? One hell of a lot.
You're right, but as others point out, the big project would rely on an in situ photovoltaic panel factory on the lunar surface instead of transporting the panels.
Nevertheless, I think it would be a good start to have a demonstration project, transporting and setting up earth-made panels on the moon just to see if we can beam some power back here.
At the very least, it would get people thinking about the project and its problems and get it in the public eye, which is essential to get funding in a representative democracy.
Just focussing people's minds on the problems is a good way to start solving them.
If we dismiss this idea out-of-hand as too expensive and impractical, it is pretty well doomed to remain too expensive and impractical.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I don't see this idea realized. Not as long as there is oil in the ground.
Too many nations depend on selling the oil. The world will have energy but: the only nations that can invest into this project are the ones with the cash. Other nations will depend on the big nations to sell them the engery. This will be abused a lot more. It's all going to be politics and you know how that is like. Anyway, in a world of peace... this would be a perfect project. (I am not at all a depressed person, maybe a bit too much realistic)
42 + 1 = 42
It's just a matter of changing the mindset of business and government. And getting off the silly idea of power generation on the moon.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
How many terrawatts are in 1.21 jigawatts?
What Would Jesus Do
(for a Klondike bar)?
I don't get too worked up about global warming from fossil fuel burning because it seems to me that the worst case scenario is that we return the earth to a state similar to what it once was...much more tropical than now. However, if we begin piping additional energy into this closed system, I would think we would get some serious global warming. We would be increasing the earth's absorptive surface area while leaving it's radiative surface area the same. That doesn't strike anybody else as a generally bad idea?
From the article:
It would be like having an electric cord stretched across the solar system," he said.
Then, I'm not so sure if we really want to do this... Maybe after the (soon and assured) completion of the moon elevator?
nor any drop to drink.
The same dilemma that faced the Ancient Mariner faces people who are looking for energy sources. It doesn't take much looking to find prodigious sources of energy that, for practical reasons, we cannot exploit, at least any time soon on the scale necessary to Solve All Humanity's Problems(TM).
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Should be pretty easy to fix. You would need to put something like a laser at the ground location firing at a receiver on the moon. If either drifted at all and this beam no longer hit the target on the moon, it would cease sending power. You could even play with modulation of the beam for security purposes.
.
load "linux",8,1
"The entire spectrum can thus be collected, coverted to a narrow band frequency that has relatively low levels of absorption by the atmosphere, and beam it to Earth"
if you have to kill people somewhere, you just point the beam at them. I`m sure there are treaties to stop this sort of thing though, right? Right?
I think you should go and look at some newer tires. Maybe here.
There are numerous brands of tires for standard passanger vehicles with rated lifetimes of 70,000 miles. No, they're not sporty tires. They don't have the grip that S and up brands have because they're made of harder rubber. If you start looking at the really sporty tires (V-Z ratings) you'll notice that few, if any, have mileage ratings. The few that do will be 18000 miles or less. Most Z rated tires will only last a few thousand miles. Why? Because the rubber on them is very soft in order to grip the road better. It also means it wears down faster.
There are tradeoffs in tires, just as with anything else, but if you're not going to drive like a race car driver then a 70,000 mile rated tire may very well be cost effective. The one big advantage to buying a more sporty tire (S or T rating) is that you'll have the additional grip in instances you NEED it. I know, for sure, that new tires have saved me from more than one accident.
Imagine those solar panels forming the biggest mirror ever constructed or dreamt of. Then imagine, as happens so often on the moon, a good-sized space rock smashing that $150 billion dollar investment into splintered fragments. Would make a cool video.
one two three four five ?!! That's the combination on my luggage!
And WHY isn't every portion of the surface suitable for placing panels? Because it's pummeled by meteorites!
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
... Now all we need is a REALLY, REALLY long extension cord, and we're good to go.
Brian
Unlimited Bandwidth? No.
Cheapest Prices on the Net? No.
Fantastic Customer Service? YES! Read what our clients are saying:
Quality Linux Based Web Hosting Solutions
First off, let's pretend we have the gobs and gobs of money needed to cover 1% of the moon's surface with solar panels. Then let's pretend that our increasingly fictional scheme will be in sunlight all during the month (as opposed to the two weeks when our solar panels will be facing the sun).
How exactly do you intend to get the power back here to earth?
There's only one reasonable solution: Microwave transfer. This means that this "environmentally friendly" energy you're getting will result in a very powerful microwave beam scorching a path along the earth's surface with the orbit of the moon. You'd be "saving the environment" by creating something that can (and will) cause death and destruction on the earth's surface comparable to a nuclear war.
Sorry, I think that building better fission reactors is a far easier, safer and cheaper way of doing things.
Its always amazed me why anyone thinks that solar cells are a "green" power. Even throwing away the super toxic manufacturing processes involved and the massive amount of mining (much more disruptive than drilling) that would be necessary for some of the elements used, there are still big problems.
Another response calculated you'd have to cover an area the size of the US on the moon to get enough power. If the solar cells were on Earth and thus losing power due to our atmosphere, the land mass needing to be covered would be much greater. Other factors like needing to be within reasonable transmission line distance from the area of usage and thus not at the equator increase the area needing to be covered even more.
Changing the reflectivity of the ground across such a large area will have a much bigger effect on climate than greenhouse gasses. A lot more power gets absorbed in the lower atmosphere and less in the upper. Actually, the more efficient we make the cells, the worse the problem gets because it becomes more concentrated. If you were to absorb say 50% of the power in an area like Arizona and move it too the North to generate heat and power cars (thus generating heat) in the Winter, you WILL get climate changes across most of the US. Arizona and areas east of it would be much cooler and the North would be warmer.
Moving the power generation to the moon at least keeps us from changing the reflectivity of a much larger area on Earth. It would also likely be cheaper because the reduction in solar cells needed would more than cancel out the extra cost of getting people and some supplies to the moon (as pointed out elsewhere, you don't take the solar cells to the moon, you just make them there).
There is a partial solution for the Earth based issue too. You could add a mirror beside each solar cell. If you figured out the original reflectivity of the land first and added enough mirrors to keep it there, you'd avoid some of the problem, but not all. Normally the power received is converted to heat right there, but this power will be shipped off. Anyway you look at it, you really lose
On the other hand, we'd be sending the amount of power (almost always heat in the end) to Earth that is normally absorbed from the sun by the continent of North America. Doesn't that have to calculate into the equation somewhere? Seems like the extra heat being sent to Earth would have to have an effect.
I'd also like to point out that if we ever "solve" our power generation problem, our usage is only going to go up. Period. For example, even environmentalists would probably like to have the power to build our homes and cities underground (I mean truly underground, not just in a trench and covered with dirt) and return the surface to being essentially a big park.
I know some satellites use ion engines to stabilize themselves. Is there not a risk that a constant transmission of photons to earth would result in the moon accelerating away from the earth?
Anyone know if I am worrying unneccessarily?
As we all know "dubya" pulled out of the kyoto agreement stating it was bad for the US and the world. This pissed everyone off a bit but dubya didn't care. He said that the way to beat global warming was through technology and investment.
Well, here's your chance mr president. Dig deep in your pocket and spend that 135 billion dollars for this project. Either that or we see for certain that the only reason you wanted out of Kyoto was because the oil companies wanted to maintain the status quo and keep pumping more and more toxic fumes into our delicate home.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Or is this thing absolutly hilarious?!? I had read many things on "free energy", from total hoax to some which are beleivable. But this?!? C'mon! Collect energy on the moon and send it back to earth... microwave... Why not just run a wire while being there? I don't want to flame, but this is totally ridiculous. There is SO much more others areas where we should be looking for "clean energy" sources. Hydrogen for one, Fuel Cell and BioHydrogen are an exemple. maybe not for centuries and centuries to go, but begin there, implement this now, and then start looking at other ways to acquire energy. Continue physic research in some novel area, try to understand the universe a little bit more then we do for now. I'm sure we don't have to go to the moon(mouhahaha) to gatter energy...
I'd rather be sailing...
Ahhh, to look up into the night sky and see the unblemished moon, uncorrupted by man...oh well, so much for that.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
The site is quite interesting, but even after surfing quite some while I didn't see any mileage ratings. Yes, I did look at the P and Q rated tires. Would you mind to give me a pointer?
How do these high-mileage tires perform anyway if you don't live in a hot, not-much rainy country? I mean, grip is very important in a country like mine that regularly has snow and rain. Actually I have two sets of tires: one Z rated for the summer (yes my car *needs* that) and H rated for the winter (I just have to keep calm).
My estimation of 30000km wasn't even based on my current car, but normal car I had before (Audi 80, 1987...), which is neither sporty nor needs exotic tires. I'm still not convinced that choosing a 70000mile tire is a good choice, it sounds dangerous to me. Considering my current mileage, I would only need to buy tires once in 7 years. Rubber doesn't last well 7 years long, and a lot can happen in 7 years.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
We're going to build this "power station" on the moon and "beam" back the energy.
Is it just me or does this sound like a plot line for the Simpsons?
Given the track record of our scientists and their math skills, somehow I see much of the western seaboard being pan fried like a blackened catfish. The only other question I have for this plan is:
"Will I get hushpuppies with that?"
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
If it's a goof - frag'em.
(I know - we all mis-spell, but this is a Big Deal Scientist and this article made it past a science writer and an editor, eh?)
If it's a pun- frag'em then frag the fragments.
We'll give the author and the researcher the houses right next to the microwave receivers so they can then deal with the inherent problems in controlling a 240,000 mile long MASER beam when there's a 2+ second lag in your feedback loop for aiming those TERAwatts back to a constantly moving hand-off receiver network. (the moon may always show the same face to the earth, but it don't work the other way around - no spot on earth can see the moon all day - and for much of THAT time the geometry sucks)
OK - so go to a TDRS type satellite network - geostationary final leg - then tell me that it's more efficient to develop a microwave receiver farm from scratch (rectennas still only exist as science-fair-sized demos - this is like launching an estes Big Bertha then asking NASA to let you build the next gen shuttle...) than to just ramp up production on terrestrial PV cells?
The original PV geosynchronous satellite plan (Glaser et. al.,) is still too expensive to be implemented - and that would just be the final leg - imagine getting a manufacturing plant to the moon! We only put 16 tons of stuff on the moon six (ok we tried a 7th) times. And that was just to scott around for a weekend.
We're already getting upwards of a kilowatt-hour per square meter in most places on earth that need it - why not use what's here?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Not all energy consumed on earth are in the form of electricity, which as though the only source of energy the proposed system can provide. We will have to replace all the autos on earth with electricity powered railed cars, I guess.
nuf said.
We don't have an energy shortage on Earth. We have a shortage of CHEAP energy. And, cheap is relative. No matter how cheap energy is, it will never be cheap enough unless it is free. So... We will ALWAYS have a shortage of CHEAP energy.
Today, right now, we ~could~ build solar energy collection systems that ~could~ provide pollution free energy, just not cheap. We could also dam rivers, and build windmills. Again, pollution free, but not cheap.
I don't think that solar panels on the moon can possibly be significantly more effecient than solar panels on the earth. And solar panels on Earth are not cheap! ( If they were, we would have more of them.. ) Search the web, you can buy them. They cost a lot for only a few watts when the sun shines.
How can a plan to spend $150 BILLION ( before it starts to break even.. ) Be a good idea?
$150 BILLION before it starts to break even means, that you have to invest $150 Billion up front, and then after a while you won't need to invest more because the system will be paying for it's self. How does the system pay for it's self you might ask, people have BUY the power from it...
Who PAYS BACK the $150 BILLION investment??? The people buying the power?? Citizens of Gov'ts. People of planet earth? Around 6 Billion people live on planet earth. So this plan would require each human, on average, to pay ~$30 American for funding. Easy for you and me.. Perhaps not so easy for Afgani's or Cubans who live on $100 / year, and don't even have electricity..
And even after way pay the world wide energy tax to fund the building of some quack's pipe dream, we still have to pay market rates for the power.... IT will NEVER, NEVER, EVER, ( don't even think it.. ) EVER be free. ( [ never ] )
The biggest part of my electricity rate goes to pay for distribution. Commodity electricity sells for 1 - 3 cents/kilowatt hour. Average price in USA to consumers is 7 - 8 cents/kilowatt hour. Even if a magical FREE ELECTRICY engine was invented, your rate would probably only go down 2 cents..
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Kevin
Acually, the idea of using the lunar surface as some sort of power base is a wonderful idea. Just like harvesting the asteroid belts for resources and Jupiter for hydrogen is too. But what do all of these have in common? NONE OF THEM HAVE BEEN DONE YET! And why do you think that is? The ideas have been around for a while now. Criswell isn't the first and he won't be the last to think of wonderful uses for all that empty space on the moon.
But let's deal with reality for just one minute. We won't get into the people paranoid (with possibily good reason) about beaming energy to the Earth. We won't talk about the people who want to conserve the lunar landscape. We won't even talk about complicated numbers indicating how much energy you could or couldn't beam to the earth in the first place.
Instead, lets talk about how difficult it has been for society as a whole to switch from oil to anything else. To support a mission of the magnitude discussed in this thread, we at least an alternate energy plan that works AND a society (it's not just the government here) that is willing to support it. World wide, we have neither. Hell, we're having a hard enough time convincing people to use hybrid cars, let alone flip the bill to send multiple missions into space to build stuff on the moon. Oil, on the other hand, is cheap. It has an established infrastructure. It's plentiful for the time being. It's my unfortunately pessimistic opinion that we won't even see the makings of a mission like this for 50 years, if not even in my lifetime. Unless there is a major shortage and fast (such as the Middle East going up in a radioactive pyer), I just don't see it happening.
Besides, what ever happened to nuclear power? You can quote me all the possible disasterous consequences you want, but Japan has it down to a fine art. even if you don't want to go that route, I think you'll find more than enough adequate alternate power sources here on Earth if we'd just be willing to flip the bill for em. Lunar power bases isn't science fantasy, it's just social fantasy right now.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Reminds me of early Internet business plans (~1995)-- they always included the line "There are X many people using the Internet. If we could get just 10% of them to visit our site..."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Just to put things in perspective:
;-) )
Man consumes about 15TW per year.
If we could get the moon (or whatever else we might employ) to generate 130TW, we would have at least 6.5 tiwes the current energy consumption of the entire world available to us.
If you assume that man's energy use continues to double every 20 years, then we'd have enough energy to meet all our needs for fifty years. And if its all solar energy, than this energy is all FREE after the system is built (assuming, of couse, that nothing ever breaks
That is a LOT of power--well worth a hefty price tag.
---
Feel free to correct me, flame me, and/or mod me into oblivion if any of my estimates are slightly off.
Snarkiness is inversely proportional to wisdom because it emphasizes feeling right rather than being right.
...we forgot to account for the thrust generated by beaming all that power back to earth. We pushed the moon out of orbit, and sent the earth into an eccentric orbit eventually destined to rendevous with the sun. ;)
IANAAOEAAA (I am not an astronomer or even an ameteur astronomer)
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
I usually don't comment on sigs, but that one made me spew coffee.... Has anyone actually got a linux kernel that'll load (from a 1541 drive no less) into a Commodore 64?
I had always thought that a major problem with covering the moon with stationary objects like panels and buildings was protection. Doesn't the moon take a pummeling from asteroids or meteorites sort of like the old game Missile Command?
Me thinks you been playing too much Sim City.
stainless steel
If I could get just 1% of Slashdot readers to send me $.01, I'd be rich.
I don't know how 1% became the gold standard for things that ought to be easy, but it's become a very tiresome cliche.
Maybe you live in interesting times
kwoat da tingy:
wasn't there a news story in RoboCop about microwave energy from a space facility missing its mark on earth and taking out a small south american village? can't we learn *something* from hollywood?!?
Or on a related note, didn't we learn anyhting from SimCity. or was I the only one who never saw any disasters aside the drift from my microwave plants and the occasional alien invasion?
--- As to make my comment seem, by comparison, more intelegent... doodie doodie doodie poop poop poop!
We would either have to put it at a place that can see the moon at all times... (probably at one of the poles??) Or just launch a few sattelites to orbit the earth and provide a link to certian stations around the globe. Since they have already successfully uplinked sattelites by laser, setting this array up couldn't be that much different... just make the transmitter on the moon able to change where its transmitting.
Wouldn't this nice ozone layer also protect us from the microwave waves the power generators will send to Earth?
Somehow nobody has yet linked to Criswell's original article, which was published in the current issue of the Industrial Physicist, put out by the American Institute of Physics, a highly respected research physics organization in the US.
:-)
In other words, Criswell is no crackpot; this is a realistic plan. Read the article. I don't entirely agree with him - I think lunar materials could more effectively be used to construct orbiting solar power satellites - launch from the lunar surface can be very cheap using electromagnetic railgun technology, and in orbit you can get sunlight 100% of the time, not 50% (with solar incidence angle effects to worry about too). But Criswell's scheme is one of the most promising options, and should be considered seriously.
How soon could this be done? Essentially all the technology is in place - the scheme could benefit from some further developments of robotics, but a first launch date of 2010 is not unrealistic, and we could have power from the Moon before we would see anything from ANWR
Energy: time to change the picture.
Look, if we just chrome the moon, then we can use the reflected sunlight (well, for most of the month) to light the earth at night, and so our solar panels would never be without a source of energy. Problem solved. Get with it people.
Move along. No sig to see here.
"The moon receives 13,000 terrawatts of power from the sun."
Hehe, terrawatts? Never heard of those before!
"Source... The Final Frontier" -- keepersoflists.org
If it's gonna be a big fat power station it oughta have a nice shiny Chrome job!
I'm thinking of the moon like a giant magnifying glass beaming energy back to earth... Was that an ant that just smoked?
If you want a good power source figure out how to extract energy from Government lobbyists!
Look at the moon rising over Kandahar. It's only visible for a few hours at a time. That is not my definition of reliable power! Storing the energy or shipping it long distances introduces unacceptable losses.
wouldn't we need to cover one percent of the moon's surface with photovoltaic collectors? oh wait photo-voltaics are only thirty percent effective. The collectors (if placed on the near side) would stretch from one side of the moon to the other and be of a significant thickness. How the hell we going to get them up there? While we're wishing for the moon I'd like the sun and the stars.
The US gov't already has a good bit of data and a very slick site describing earthbound alternatives to the very sexy(though seemingly terribly inefficient) idea of lunar solar power. It's here: http://www.eren.doe.gov
Everyone seems to think that this is a screwball idea but I disagree.
/. must have some connections in the media. We will need some good stories about how we are one of the best run companies in the world. A real up and comer ready to change the world.
$100+ billion to cover the cost of the project, no problem. First we'll setup separate companies and load them up with our debt keeping our balance sheet clean.
Then we will sign contracts with power companies to sell them our terrawatts of power while simultaneously buying terrawatts from them. No money will actually change hands but we will count the income from them as a sale and write off our payments to them as an expense and depreciate it over 10 years.
We'll get Enron to market whatever power is left over. They can "make the market" for us. I hear that Californians will pay a fortune for power. Since this is clean and green we can charge them extra. Maybe Gray Davis will sign a big dollar contract with us, preferably we can lock him in at historically high prices.
Next, we will need a really good auditor who knows how to keep their mouths shut. Anybody have a suggestion?
Finally, we will need a couple of Senators and Congressmen on our side, better start making some contributions. We can probably get some DOE grants out of this also. We can turn some of the money back around and put it into their campaigns. Beautiful.
I think that we are ready for an IPO. Any takers? We can use the money to blanket the airwaves with some really cool advertisements. We can have a household name. Nobody will have any idea what we do but that will just add to the mystique. We will also need a really cool logo.
Somebody on
I used to make fun of the business majors when I was in school. It turns out that they are a lot more clever and creative than I ever imagined. Inventors can't seem to make a perpetual motion machine in their labs, Alchemists can't turn lead into gold, and Physicists can't make cold fusion work but the businessmen do this type of thing all the time. It just takes the right attitude people
Of course Murphy's Law says the day it's supposed to go online, a giant asteroid smashes into the moon. (Where's Bruce Willis when you need him?) I picture it something like the impact of the rock that put this goofy idea into the scientist's head.
Never pet a burning dog.
You forgot about the earth's seismic movement. it took 1.2 seconds even for laser to travel from earth to moon, so any slight movement of the ground where the trasnmitter is could result in the microwave energy being misfired.
> Begin quote
They would need to cover 1% of the lunar surface on BOTH sides of the moon, because only half of the solar panels would be in sunlight at a time.
They would need to cover 5% of the surface, because the cells are only 20% efficient.
Combine those two problems, and you have 10% of the surface of the moon covered in solar panels.
> End quote
No, you don't. You cover 5% of the total surface (or 3%, if a previous poster was correct, but we'll stick to 5 for now). That way, you'll always be covering 5% of the surface in the light. The 'both sides' of the moon argument is flawed, because you're always talking about the total energy received anyway. So, that's 10% of the total (or 6) rather than 20. It's still a monumental amount, but a lot less so.
I also don't see why an environmentalist should complain about being able to 'see' solar panels on the moon. Environmentalism isn't about preserving purely aesthetic matters, but about preserving natural resources. A lot of valuable, endagered habitats aren't all that attractive, but are still valuable. And I'm not sure it would be all that ugly anyway.
I'm not saying the suggestion is good, merely that your refutation is flawed, albeit based (apparently) on a very reasonable premise (excessive cost involved).
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." Salman Rushdie
Let's go to capture the sun!!
I don't understand why you would need to put them on the moon. Wouldn't it be cheaper to float them in an orbit? After all, landing the equipment on the moon is a big hassle, plus you can't use the collectors all the time. Floating something in space is alot easier (relatively speaking) and should allow more control over how much of the time the collector panels are in use... or are we assuming that the fixed locations on the moon mean less tracking and monitoring costs than using satelites?
50% of the moon is in shadow from the sun at any given time. That 50% is not the same 50% all the time.
During a new moon, the dark side is, as even you point out, the side facing us! It doesn't get sunlight, which is why we see black when we look at the new moon.
I guess the great slashdot blackout has only further reduced the signal-to-noise ratio in these posts.
I have been looking into PV systems for my home. At current RETAIL market prices, you can get a KW of 120 VAC generation capability for about $10K. This means that for $ 1M you can create 100 such systems. For $1B you get 100,000 such systems. For the 135 Billion this would be 13.5 Million systems. The benefits of doing it this way are 1. No distribution system required ( and no distribution loss ) 2. Distributed control of the resource ( big country can not hold little country hostage for power ) 3. Can be built incrementally as funds are available and if the project gets scrapped halfway through, what you have built so far is 100% functional and on-line. This model is very crude, it does not show the benefits of mass standardization of the systems and mass quantity purchasing. In fact, for a project of this size, the project could build or purchase a PV manufacturing plant and significantly reduce the cost of the panels.
Z
enough is too much
You are still thinking about this in a system where there is no atmosphere on earth. You forgot about refraction due to the atmosphere. The refraction might be small enough to ignore for the time being, but a large flux in the atmospheric pressure, storms, and you can have your beam focusing completely off target.
That's the point of the "pilot" signal from the ground. It experiences the same refraction, and its phase at the transmitter array controls the phase of the return signal. Even in the most violently mixed atmosphere the refractive index won't change enough to matter in the fraction of a second it takes for the return signal to arrive.
It's just like the holography hack where they record the phase distortion of the frosted glass and predistort an image so it is transmitted through the frosted glass and reconstructed correctly on the far side.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
There have been many proposals to put solar power stations in space and beam the energy to earth using microwaves. Just what we need, to live under a microwave oven. Actually the beam would be dispersed over a large distance and the power level at any point within low, but you can imagine the claims of new cancers and the time all the lawyers will be having. Putting the station on the moon would cause problems with beam dispersion since the moon is ten times distant than any proposed earth orbit station. Still there is more room on the moon for a higher gain antenna to condense the beam width. However an earth orbiting station could be put in an orbit that would enable sending the beam so it lands over low population areas. The moon is not in geosychronous orbit so that also imposes a tracking problem.
One other thing they didn't bring up in the article was the amount of maintenance involved in this massive project. The moon's thin atmosphere will be a two-edged sword for this project. The thin atmosphere allows more energy to pass through unfiltered, but on the other hand, that same property does not protect the surface from asteroid/comet strikes. On earth, our thicker atmosphere creates the friction necessary to "burn up" a lot of those particles. Some might argue that it's pretty rare for those asteroid strikes to occur or that it's just sensationalism (a la Armageddon/Deep Impact) but the number of smaller objects that hit the earth and the moon is actually quite high. The last time I looked in a telescope at the moon, it was covered with craters. Earth doesn't even come close. Imagine having to put a permanent team on the moon just to run around and replace broken panels.
Your actions on earth echo in eternity.
The amount of greenhouse gasses we are currently releasing is trivial compared to the gasses released during enormous volcanic eruptions
This is the commonest defense of human greenhouse-gas causing actions.
Question: What about the effect of removing over half the world's tree mass? (As seen from the window of a plane over US, Costa Rica, etc) Trees "eat" CO2 and expel O2. Just one tree does quite a job. You never hear about lack of trees causing global warming though....??
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Just go to Home Depo and get a really, really, really, really long extension cord and then hook up alot of power strips! I'm sure Home Depo will be running a sale soon.
jeesh.......waiting for my 20 seconds to pass......comeon....ok maybe now...wish the freaking form kept the content when I hit back after the annoying slashdot anti-spam filter kicked in
See Asimov's story "Reason" for why you might want to think twice about aiming terawatt microwave beams at an inhabited planet.
Also, you only *think* we don't have to worry about ecological concerns. (A) You're dumping terawatts of heat into Earth's biosphere. Anybody wanna debate Global Warming? (B) Someone's sure to object to spoiling the view with planetoid-sized industrial works. (C) There are people who worry about the effects of tiny electric fields from nearby power lines. What will they think of being at the business end of a power beam?
"If either drifted at all and this beam no longer hit the target on the moon, it would cease sending power."
So where does the power go then? "Massive explosion wrecks moon power system. Film at 11 if our batteries hold out."
If we replace our use of fossil fuel to generate energy with an equal amount of energy obtained from moon microwaves, there's no difference to the "current equilibrium". The point is that in the "closed system" that's really in question, both fossil fuels and external microwaves are external inputs. There's good evidence that our burning of fossil fuels *is* disturbing the equilibrium of the system. Replacing this with an equivalent amount of external microwaves would disturb it just as much.
A separate argument would be whether the abundance of clean energy from the moon would encourage greater energy use, but that's not the argument you were making.
135 billion really isn't that huge an amount of money when you consider, for example, what the US spends on cosmetics a year (something like 10-20 billion a year). So if woman just went without makeup for 10 years, we could have free unlimited power. Suffice to say over the long haul 135 billion is a drop in the bucket. The problem is getting someone to take responsiblity for the short term cost, but seeing as terms in office are 2-4 years it is probably too much to ask ;)
The moon does have weather. Ok, sure, it's not the smae kind we have here, and for obvoius reason: the atmosphere. It protects us from a helluva lot of stuff, including meteors (and smaller space borne dust particles), solar wind, and the nice EM fields the sun likes to shoot at us every so often.
Solar panels require maintaince here, and they will on the moon also. To be anywhere sort of close to their maximium efficency, they need to be clean. The moon is a dusty place, no? If the moon is covered so that 1% of that energy is stored, that means alot of surface area of solar panels; that means that there is much greater probability that meteors are going to destroy solar panels. The only reason satellites have it as easy as they do is that they are relatively small.
And, let's not even mention the next time a solar flare blacks out most of Canada, and our orbital power at the same time. Then there's the issue of glare off the solar panels. Potentially, if large enough area of the moon were covered, it could be damn bight at night during a full moon. It could throw nocternal creatures off their cycles, and suddenly we have a huge ecological problem here on earth--people and animals stressed out over too much light. Ok, well maybe not, but you never know!
The idea is nice, but it's full of holes (not that in itself is a bad thing, there are things to be learned from this, no doubt). I only hope that fusion makes it big before this does.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Since we are also worried about getting hit by asteroids and how we'd defend against them, we could use this idea to build, what I'll call a "laser" on the moon, in a base called the "Death Star". This "laser" could be used to target any asteroids heading to Earth and blow them up. This "Death Star" would be manned by a multiple nationality crew and have a system much like ICMB's where everyone needs to turn the switch in order to activate the "laser".
All joking aside, I still think it's a good idea.
branch of research these guys are doing at the University of Wisconsin at the Fusion Technology Institute.
http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/pubs?which=posters
Basically, boils down to this: we need highly renewable clean nuclear fusion power. The solution? He3-He3 fusion reactors (probably another 30-50 years off, but the potential is HUGE). The lunar surface is FULL of He3 (confirmed by Apollo missions). He3-He3 reactions produce NO Class A or Class C nulcear waste. And 1 ton of He3 would be able to produce 10,000 MWe-years of electricity. All you need to make this work is to perfect the reactor technology and find a cheap way of mining He3 off the lunar surface.
Best part is: mining for He3 through the surface can be done with robots and put in canisters sent back to earth. This can be done for MUCH MUCH less $$ than a lunar solar panel. Plus the power output is magnitudes more per unit of lunar surface area.
The presentation I got this material from is listed here:
http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/FTI/POSTERS/glk_amster
HAHA.
Man, You SUCK!
Or adding many more trees.
Europe and North America now have more trees than they had in 1900. Europe more than it had in several hundred years.
I should've gone and looked for specific models... like the Michelin X-1 which is rated for 80,000 miles, the Firestone Affinity Touring also rated for 80K, and the Goodyear Regatta2. Yokohama, Bridgestone, and pretty much all the other big tire companies also have 70-80k rated tires.
Whether or not they're available for your car is another question (doubtful if you have a car that likes Z rated tiers), and they're all "touring" tires, which basically means general usage in moderate climates. They're all designed to work well in the rain as well as dry roads, but probably aren't top-notch in snow/ice (but work fine with snow chains if legal wherever you live).
I'd also question the long-term usability. I suspect that they were originally designed for use by high-mileage vehicles, but they're certainly being marketed toward the general public. On the upside, they've come down in price since I last looked at tires. About 2 years ago they were in the $100-150 range each, now they're in the $50-75 range.
boy oh boy when will USAians learn to spell. Tera-watts, thank you very much. Get OmniWeb to spell it for you next time. Blah.
Since it's still way too expensive to even assemble and use geosync. PV satellites as described by Glaser et. al., then how could it ever be productive to launch something just as large to sit there and RELAY power coming from another more expsnsive installation 240,000 miles away? It's not.
Once upon a time we made ourrsleves believe that we could build lots of safe, effective, cheap nuclear power plants. In theory - yes. Practically - no. Why? Becasue when you look at things as a physicist, anything within the bounds of the laws of physics can be classified as a good idea. Hand it to an engineer, and you run up against a whole new set of limits that fall into the category of 'practical'. Then try to sell it to the public, and you have to address the realistic needs and wants of real people who you were supposed to be helping in the first place.
Please remember that our largest excursion series to the moon - Apollo - simply moved about 100 tons of equipment (16 tons six times) - and that was just to tool around for a few days each time. This power plan entails mining, smelting, metals purification, HIGH PRECISION manufacturing (you esssentially have to build a semiconductor factory to make PVs), etc... it's one thing to ask people to assemble fully debugged building blocks on Station, and if we can do that. why bother launching it to the moon?
And how you gonna get that much-ballyhooed railgun in place and working on the moon? They are another high precision, high maintenance piece of work. The Lunar Module Ascent Stage engines had exactly two working parts and a backup for each, and talk to the moon walkers about how much sweating they did over that simple little detail. I've seen a simple testbed railgun (firing mere bricks) go south, and would not want to be nearby in an EVA suit when it happens. There are far more practical details to doing this than the theory suggests.
I envision many large boxes marked "ACME" whenever people start spouting things like "get a railgun" , "go to the moon", "shoot stuff back". I spoke with Gerry O'Neill about these schemes several times when he was still with us - and while I admired him as a visionary, you still have to place all these use-the-moon schemes as Velikofsky in the 40s. Yes, it eventually worked. Yes, it was exciting. Is anyone going to the moon since for any practical reasons? No. Were there valuable spin-offs? Many. But no-one at NASA ever deluded themselves into thinking that the Apollo missions were worth billions of dollars as a geology field trip. And no one will go to the moon to build power stations simply because we need energy. We have energy. We need a better financial model and a better distribution network.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Planting trees sounds like a good employment measure. (I'm always joking about stirring the sea in order to allow salts (natural manure) from deep parts of the sea can reach the upper layers which receive more sunlight. This would rapidly increase the amount of plankton and thus help reduce CO_2.)
Anyway, i think someone who persistently says the earth was a closed system should be modded a troll rather than interesting.
This sig is a true statement, but I cannot prove it.
Ever have a cockroach get into your microwave and try to kill it by turning it on? They like it.
Why the plant? Cut out the middle man and hose the cows up directly. Cows fart *huge* volumes of methane...
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
I postulated in the late 70s that the moon's luminous energy (plain ol' light) reaching the earth's surface could be permanently increased using titaniumdioxide dust. A micron thick layer of this dust on the moon's surface could turn large areas from brown to bright white.
After a little thought the idea seemed more useful as a way to encode information for a very long time. A well planned pixel pattern on the moon might serve the next species that looks up from terra firma.
No area of the moon is "pummeled by meteorites" with a frequency worth mentioning. The moon is covered in craters for two reasons:
-When it was new, there are a heck of a lot more meteorites around. By now, most of the debris in the solar system has been "swept up" be planets. (Actually, the moon's new enough that this might not have a large effect.)
-No atmosphere = no erosion. Craters from ten million years ago are still in perfect shape.
NOW, I consider myself more of an armchair ecologist/generalist than an "environmentalist", but I have to kick up a fuss here.
On what grounds do you accuse "environmentalists", who are dedicated to preserving some sort of ecosystem in the face of our population and business growth, of wanting to protect the "environment" of the moon?
The moon doesn't have an ecosystem of which I am informed.
Preservationists, maybe, but not environmentalists. And Lunar Perservationism is not exactly up and running as a PAC. Hell, as an old O'Neill disciple, I'd rather the moon look like industrial New Jersey if it means getting cheap, eternal power for man. Besides, you'd have a really, really hard time picking out those collectors and transmitters with the naked eye. The moon has a pretty good albedo as it is. Shiny panels aren't going to raise it enough to detect without intruments, in my too-lazy-to-check opinion.
One "environmentalist" in the YES column, please. (Tho I'd much, much rather deploy powersats. Does no one read "The High Frontier" anymore?)
Isn't 13 000 Terawatts 13 Petawatts?
You dare to hit ME! JOHNNY PASCAULLY!!
And they seem to be teaching Slashdotters to misspell it, too.
I suppose however that you're right: they are for people who do 30k miles a year (they exist, I do know some people like that), and then the recommended 2 years I cited still apply. I think however that most people are better off with lower-mileage tires that have a better grip. Most people are bad drivers (including me). ;-)
Well, at least you proved me wrong. Besides, what's about cost: Z rated tires are usually above 100$, so I don't even dare to complain anymore. It's the price to pay for having a fast car
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
How could there be terrawatts on the moon? Perhaps you mean terawatts.
t.
The general consensus on photovoltaic cells is they are very inefficient compared to other alternatives, using modern technology.
However, photovoltaic cells aren't the only way to harness solar energy.
Not all solar plants on earth use photovoltaic cells. IIRC, most major solar plants don't use them at all. Instead, they use parabolic mirrors to reflect the light onto a small reigon with something to carry the heat away, such as a pipe filled with oil. The oil is being continuously pumped through the pipe, and in turn, the heat drives turbines, which drive generators.
Back in the 70s, there was a large amount of research being done on large inhabited colonies to be used in space. Back then, photovoltaic cells were even more inefficient, so they looked for alternatives. The most efficient way to collect solar energy they found was using mirrors reflected on a boiler like area that drove a generator. I'm pretty sure this holds true for today.
A couple years ago, I found a book in a used book store titled "Colonies in Space", which was written in the mid-70s by T.A Heppenheimer. It outlined several designs created by various high profile organazations (including NASA), many of them very detailed. All of the colonies were expensive, but they planned to offset the costs by building a satellite in geosynchronous orbit that collected solar energy then beamed it back to earth via microwave energy. Many of these colonies and orbital power stations were proposed to the senate, president, etc, but it was shot down because of initial costs.
One of the more amusing parts of the book explained what would happed were something to cross the beam (like a bird), while it was being sent back to earth. The collection area had to be a few miles in diameter. They could easily keep people out by putting up a fence, and the beams would harmlessly bounce off aiplanes, but any unsuspecting unshielded passerbys would experience a strange warming sensation.
This isn't incredibly new technology. It's been extensively researched for decades now, and the only thing holding it back from happening are the inital costs. We need to start thinking in the long term, instead of worrying about initial offsets.
More like Score 2: blatantly wrong.
And to make matters worse, not only do you look silly for mistakenly saying that the same side of the moon always faces the sun, you had to look like even more of a poser by calling it Sol and Luna...
The same side of the Moon (Luna) faces our planet, Earth (or Terra in your poser-speak). The sun sees every side of the moon.
Dark side of the moon doesn't mean it literally. What are they teaching kids these days in school?
i suppose a extension cord would be out of the question?
not only are solar cells reasonably inefficient, but the space environment also causes them to degrade over time. solar array lifetimes in space are on the order of 10 years, which means they would need to be replaced periodically- not a small task for thousands of square kilometers of solar arrays.
I was just surfing around yesterday and found this: J-Lo's Moon on the Moon Check out the last section in the page....about projecting j-lo's behind on the moon!! I have got no idea how much truth there is to this story....but one can hope :)
Mostly because the rectanna is just an overgrown TV antenna, with the individual elements sized smaller to use a higher frequency. It is called "rectanna" because they also build into it the rectifiers that turn AC microwaves into pulsating DC power. Make several of those into a square panel and -- bingo! -- you've got an element of the receiver grid. NASA's early tests had about 85% efficiency in turning microwaves to electricity. They could probably do better today.
Compare that to a silicon solar cell, which needs to have light penetrate into its blue-gray depths just far enough to generate an electron and hole pair in the active junction between the N and P layers. And, those electrons and holes have to be swept apart by the static field in the junction before they can recombine and be wasted. Designing a good solar cell is hard. It takes both quantum mechanics and serious material science, plus critical cost controls to be able to manufacture them cheap enough for widespread use.
"You've crossed my Line of Death!" "What? No! Where is it?" "Here in the fine print...."
Actually, that's a common misconception. Water's resonant frequency is several GHz higher than a microwave oven's 2.4 GHz. That was chosen as a good tradeoff between what was manufacturable back then and water's absorption spectrum.
Future power sats may use a different band, but maybe not. I once saw a frequency chart that had the 2.4 GHz slot marked "Power Broadcast". Wouldn't it be a kick if they used the same freq as ovens? It would make sense -- cheap magnetrons are readily available and the band is already cluttered with noise from leaky ovens.
It's also used for Bluetooth. I wonder if there would be any problems when the power sat switched on....
"You've crossed my Line of Death!" "What? No! Where is it?" "Here in the fine print...."
I believe the moon is full of craters for a reason. What happens when you start populating the moon with photovoltaic cells. How long will it be before we are repairing these things in space onece a week?
I'm Usually (Score:+.005, Sarcastic)
14 days out of 28 any part of the moon is in shadow. The energy From the Sun on Earth is immense compared to the moon. All you need to do is store enough of it long enough to eliminate weather as a factor. Positioning your collection array in the right place to begin with helps. Unfortunately even on Earth it's not economically viable now, going to the Moon and adding the complexity of beaming it back as microwaves is obviously not going to help that problem. Tidal forces and other schemes are also a huge potential energy source. There are vast resources on Earth at our disposal before we need to go off to the moon to beam back microwaves. Jeeze, can't NASA fire these nuts and spend our tax dollars researching useful stuff, instead of trying to contrive useless excuses to go to the Moon?
Covering the moon with photovoltaic cells would make it a lot darker from the perspective of viewers situated on Earth. Not only would we lose an object of timeless beauty and inspiration, but many, many species of animals are thought to depend on the moon for navigation. If they can no longer migrate properly, this could mean interruptions in the food chain, in local ecologies, and worse. I hope someone stops to think about this before we go and blot out something so important and poorly understood as our nearest astronomical neighbor.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
You said that the Earth has siesmic movement.... then stated that a movement like that could cause a microwave misfire.... yet the transmitter is on the moon. Don't you think that they would also create one hell of a dish to collect it??
The solution to that is to have the oscillator necessary to produce the microwave beam here on Earth, powered by a tap off the microwaves coming down. If the power transmitter doesn't get that signal, it can't make microwaves. And if the power beam wanders off the receiver, the power goes off on the transmitter that's sending that signal.
You have give the transmitter local power for startup, like that button you hold down on your water heater to bypass the safety valve on the pilot light until it heats up.
sorry. But is that 250 homes' power net, after you pay for running the digester and the manpower?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Everyone has it all wrong. There's no reason
to put photovoltaic cells on the moon and beam
the energy back to earth - this is far more
complicated than simply cutting off large chunks
of the moon and lowering them to earth using
gravity, then using the material as fuel
in existing power plants. Cheese is mostly fat,
so it should burn quite well.
If you want starships, you have to live with the bomb