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NASA Unveils Centennial Challenges
wonderfesten writes "NASA has finally got its Centennial Challenges program off the ground. Like the X Prize, the Challenges award cash prizes to private inventors who come up with solutions to problems. The first challenges are to design a light-weight, ultra-strength tether and a means of transmitting power wirelessly. But with a prize of just $50,000, will anyone give it a shot?" Details also available on MSNBC and Space.com.
Send the batteries via snail mail :)
or... more seriously... what about some thunder like system ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Transmitting power wirelessly is easy. Every signal, be it from a radio station, wifi, a cell phone or whatever, is a transmission of power.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Do not underestimate the power of a winnebago full of batteries.
liqbase
The first challenges are to design a light-weight, ultra-strength tether and a means of transmitting power wirelessly.
:)
This has "space elevator" all written over.
My site
I think whoever can solve any of those problems can licence the invention for a lot more money! Or is this the new form of OSS (Open Source Science)
Err... I got married a few months back. That 50 grand is mine soon as I tell NASA.
Note: This sig contains nine S's, nine I's and five O's which... means absolutely nothing.
it has something to do with magnets....
Good lord! They want to combine a light-weight, ultra-strength tether with a means of transmitting power wirelessly. Read that again. A light-weight, ultra-strength tether with a means of transmitting power wirelessly. My God! Do you know what this means? Do you?!?
Yeah, neither do I.
I submitted a one page white paper on using the Sun. I can't wait to get my $50,000?
They're looking for lucky people who inadvertently would make such discoveries.
Remember Newton and apples ? Edison and his kite ? Pain and vapour ?
It makes it worth trying to observe and analyze more.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Yes they will, but I have a feeling the Private sector may pay slightly more for such things. Then again a bit more inncentive never hurt
erm ... solar cells and a halogen light.
where do I collect my money?
Wireless power -- first conceptualized (correct me if I'm wrong) in a short story, science fiction piece by Theodore Sturgeon in his 1941 publication"Microcosmic God." I read it in high school and it has been one of the most endearing scifi works I've read....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
from 1996:
g ma rket=en-us
http://groups.msn.com/nasaufos/_homepage.msnw?p
Congress currently limits NASA to awarding prizes of $250,000 or less. The space agency is lobbying lawmakers for the authority to increase the limit to as much as $40 million. That would allow the Centennial Challenges program to set up competitions for more-advanced projects, like a human orbital flight.
The longer the government stays involved in NASA, the less the chances of NASA having successful missions and regaining achievement through innovation and daring. As long as Congress holds the reigns (and the pursestrings), NASA will be hampered by inefficient bureaucracy and meddling from unqualified naysayers. The XPrize is proof that it's time for government to exit this area of scientific examination and for philanthropists and concerned businesses to take control.
Just my $0.02, not counting inflation or exchange rates
when it rains, it gets real soggy. when it pours, i'm under the tap just _waiting_ for the joy
And you know a wireless wall-power-level bunny vibe would have serious sales potential.
--- What?
To convince congress to give them enough funding and realise there are risks associated with space to let them do something cool.
Tesla ruined himself trying to make it practical. htm
http://www.tfcbooks.com/articles/tws8c
50k. Thats miniscule. The least they could do is pony up the 100k that SBIR programs get.
I do security
50,000$ of spiders so i can weave its silk.
The early posts (and the submitter) seem to be missing the point... The $50k reward is just that - a reward. It's not like with the X Prize that the reward covered development costs. It's just an incentive - the *real* reward comes after you win. That's when you secure licensing deals, like Rutan did with Virgin.
-----
Michael Braukus
Headquarters, Washington
(Phone: 202/358-1979)
Metzada Shelef
Spaceward Foundation, Mountain View, Calif.
(Phone: 650/969-2010)
March 23, 2005
RELEASE: M05-083
NASA Announces First Centennial Challenges' Prizes
NASA and its partner, the Spaceward Foundation, today announced prizes totaling $400,000 for four prize competitions, the first under the agency's Centennial Challenges program.
NASA's Centennial Challenges promotes technical innovation through a novel program of prize competitions. It is designed to tap the nation's ingenuity to make revolutionary advances to support the Vision for Space Exploration and NASA goals. The first two competitions will focus on the development of lightweight yet strong tether materials (Tether Challenge) and wireless power transmission technologies (Beam Power Challenge).
"For more than 200 years, prizes have played a key role in spurring new achievements in science, technology, engineering and exploration," said NASA's Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, Craig Steidle. "Centennial Challenges will use prizes to help make the Vision for Space Exploration a reality," he added.
"This is an exciting start for the Centennial Challenges program," said Brant Sponberg, program manager for Centennial Challenges. "The innovations from these competitions will help support advances in aerospace materials and structures, new approaches to robotic and human planetary surface operations, and even futuristic concepts like space elevators and solar power satellites," he said.
The Tether Challenge centers on the creation of a material that combines light weight and incredible strength. Under this challenge, teams will develop high strength materials that will be stretched in a head-to-head competition to see which tether is strongest.
The Beam Power challenge focuses on the development of wireless power technologies for a wide range of exploration purposes, such as human lunar exploration and long-duration Mars reconnaissance. In this challenge, teams will develop wireless power transmission systems, including transmitters and receivers, to power robotic climbers to lift the greatest weight possible to the top of a 50-meter cable in under three minutes.
The winners of each initial 2005 challenge will receive $50,000. A second set of Tether and Beam Power challenges in 2006 are more technically challenging. Each challenge will award purses of $100,000, $40,000, and $10,000 for first, second, and third place.
"We are thrilled with our partnership with NASA and we're excited to take the Tether and Beam Power challenges to the next level," said Meekk Shelef, president of the Spaceward Foundation.
The Centennial Challenges program is managed by NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. The Spaceward Foundation is a public-funds non-profit organization dedicated to furthering the cause of space access in educational curriculums and the public.
For more information about the Challenges on the Internet, visit:
- http://centennialchallenges.nasa.gov
For information about NASA and agency programs on the Internet, visit:http://www.spaceward.org
- end -
Evertyhing is going to ball bearings these days.
Too bad they weren't doing this in Tesla's day.
The development of the SpaceShip One cost much more than the $1M received from the Ansari X-prize.
The prize is just a little extra carrot to speed up the research and making people compete on who can find working solutions first.
There has to be dozens of research projects already underway to find solutions to these problems. A bit of competition would help to speed up the process.
What ever happened to Tesla coils? Didn't they transmit power wirelessly? I know there was a problem..but what was it?
Is that a Tannenbaum reference? "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway" and all...
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
With NASA trying to do too mnay things with too little money, I'd like to get in on the action as well.
- $10 for first person to discover tenth planet
- $15.75 for invention of anti-gravity device. Must include batteries
- $17.50 for first person to deliver truckload of gold bullion to my house
- $37.50 for proof of alien life
I've got the money right here (pats wallet). Let's all not rush. Stand in line, please.
What's 'spaceaward'? "The Spaceward Foundation is a public-funds non-profit organization dedicated to furthering the cause of space access in educational curriculums and the public." [found in NASA's press release: M05-083]
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
I also remember reading in a Russian science and technology journal (Yiuniy Tehnik) in the early 90s, about a patent to have a huge solar array in space that would send the power to the ground as a microwave beam.
I can transmit power wirelessly. Here's a light bulb and a solar panel. Light bulbs transmit energy. Solar panels convert light energy to power. Voila.
Cepstral: Quality TTS for OS X, Linux, Windows
NASA has offered $10000000 for the first free energy machine.
see over unity, perpetual motion etc
Previous posters... sheesh. from TFA, we see that you need to beam power to a robot climbing a cable, being judged by the amount the robot is able to carry while going. Batteries and LCRs are probably out. They suggest directed microwave or similar, if any of you are interested.
Browsing with +2 to insightful posts and a higher threshold makes the average post seen seem a lot more ingenious
Today, good ir lasers can get 60% wallplug efficiency (>99% quantum efficency and little outcoupling losses, plus little additional resistances adding to the bandgap).
...
The main reason why solar cells are unefficient is that you have to gamble with the bandgap: set it too high, and you will lose to many low energy photons. set it too low, and all those high energy photons will lose all energy >E_gap as phonons/heat. So even an absolutely ideal Solar cell could only get a little over 25% or so efficiency with a backbody spectrum.
But now take a laser and create a optimally tuned solar cell with a bandgap just a bit lower than the laser wavelenght. You should be able to get 20-30% total transmission efficiency at least, imho, after a little optimisation.
That doesnt sound too good, but its not so bad compared to other ways to store and carry energy (batteries, ect).
But of course, having solar power stations in orbit that beam down their power with lasers would make a lot of people very nervous, for very good reasons
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
$50K buys a lot of rubber bands...
We don't use it nowadays because it is not "merchantable" - there still is no efficient way to prevent leeching, unpaid use of it. Besides, I am not sure about this, but perhaps his machines needed to work with longwave radio frequencies to accomplish standing waves in concentric double sphere ground-ionosphere resonator. His work on wireless power transmission seems only remotely related to our radio of today
is this 50k to come up with an implenation that i can keep the rights to, ie: sell it to other people, or is this 50k to hand over the whole thing forever ?
means of transmitting power wirelessly
Behold! I give you... the SUN!
This could actually work against research in those areas. No one will come up with better prize money, since NASA already tagged it. Instead, there will be X-Prizes in other fields of research.
It's an incredibly smart way of paying for research though. This way NASA won't spend more than $50k on major discoveries.
How do these prices weigh against NASA research costs? I wouldn't mind knowing if these are done "to enhance space travel and encourage developement" or if they are just to save a few pennies... anyone know?
I like muppets.
Does NASA realise you can make that kind of money by simply working?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
In 1996 NASA tested a satalite on the end of a 12 mile tether. STS 75. They charged the tether with a small amount of electricity and expected to see a small rise in the amount of electrical activity.
. ht m
t he r.html
A few second later the line snapped and the satallite drifted off into space.
After gaining communication with the satallitle again, many of the switches and guages were in different positions, in particular the stabliser controls. Many of the electrical components were damaged due to a "large unexpected spike" in electrical power, which also caused the tether to snap.
http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/chron/sts-75
http://quest.nasa.gov/space/teachers/liftoff/te
My god, NASA are really runnign out of money. First, they can't afford to keep their two most succsessful probes going, now they can't afford to give out decent prizes.
The sceptic in me wonders whether NASA may just be hoping no-one will bother, then when they go off in a few years time and spend a dcent few 100 million on the projects, they will be like "look we did what no-one else could again".
After all, these days they are having problems stressing their usefulness to a US government itching to spend NASA's grant money on another war or two.
Isn't that what Tesla kinda went nuts over?!
point the solar death ray at the little robot. Sure his back will get a little warm buy hey heat is power. And if it doesn't work he'd be really well lit.
(Beware ! While some of his books are great, his cooking skills are minimal and "How to prepare your input", his book on cooking, does not live up to his other works.)
Of course, otherwise NASA would do the research itself.
Iraq: war to save the U
OK, imagine this scenario:
;-)
A satellite (or other relatively still object) is up in space. It has a large collection grid that is basically a peltier in reverse (heat makes electricity). Fire a laser from the ground at the grid. Boom, wireless power.
Another model: A heat-pipe in reverse (a tank of water or highly boilable liquid with steam pipes turning a generator). Fire said laser at heating point. Liquid boils and turns generator. Liquid cools and returns to heating chamber. Boom, wireless power.
A third model: High-efficiency solar panels on the object? Didn't we recently see a story about a solar panel breakthrough in which the new panel captures infrared and converts that to electricity as well? I think it had a 25-30% transfer efficiency, WAY beyond current methods. Go talk to those guys. Boom, wireless power.
I mean, c'mon, there's all kinds of ways to do this with existing technology. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!
Stiny! Get me a danish!
I think they are trying to go the "you get free publicity" route, sort of like X-Prize. X-Prize entries definitely cost more than the 10 million dollars that they won. But they got a lot of free publicity and now they have a contract with Virgin for commercial service. Make a viable space tether or microwave power transfer system and we'll make you famous!
ForeclosuresYes - Find home foreclosures near you!
And they'll be able to get a lot more money than that as well.
There are a lot of uses for a tether with a better strength to weight ratio. Climbers want to reduce the weight they have to carry and will pay a premium to save sufficient weight, so just that market will be worth a lot more than $50 000.
Grandpa and Herman from the Munsters did this YEARS ago. It wasn't very stable, however, and ended up ruining Lily and Marilyn's hair salon business by shocking all of their customers hair. All you need are a couple of big steel balls, a handcrank thing, and late cousin Wolverine's inheritance money. And for god's sake, don't stand in the middle of it!
Someone who finds NASA a pair of balls should get $50,000.
Ok, maybe I'm being too harsh, it's 20/20 hindsight on my part to think that strapping people to big tanks of fuel and lighting it on fire is dangerous. We were only able to figure that out after they started blowing up, so I maybe they're justified in freezing like a deer in headlights in light of the shuttle tragedies.
I remember several successful experiments have been done in the last decade that powered different devices using a highly focused microwave gunplexer. In one instance, they powered an RC plane up to about 50 ft in the air. The only problem, of course, was that the transmitter had to be pointed directly at the plane with a very narrow beam. This wasn't exactly practical for mobile devices, but could work fine for a fixed source and destination depending on range.
Wireless Power
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
why isnt this modded funny? Just because a peltier consumes electricity and shifts temps doesnt mean it works the same in reverse, not even close. sorry.
OK, NASA is giving prizes.
Does this mean that they will then own the rights? If so, why would I give something worth much more than $50K to them. So they can have one of their industry buddies "develop" it?
Whether or not NASA will take ownership, I'll be better off ignoring NASA and patenting my stuff on my own.
The prize only serves to provide free publicity.
There is not nearly enough love in the world, but there is far too much trust.
"But with a prize of just $50,000, will anyone give it a shot?"
C'mon... Where's that good old open source attitude that there's so much of around here?
It's not about the money... Much like information and software, lightweight tethers and wireless power transmitters want to be free.
Er not ot be a smart ass but by it's nature a peltier works that way anyway if you make one side hot and the other side cold it will produce electricity. In fact I saw one on tomorrows world once that you just chuck on a cmap fire and voila instant power from heat.
PLASTICS
for only $50k, you're looking at optimization problems
unless Uri Geller would be willing...
hmm peltier as a power source ?
was $10M, not $1M . .
Brilliance doesn't need a sig.
Done
<dr.evil>1 Billion Dollars!!!! </dr.evil>
I mean, come on, how much are sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads? 25,000?
Be sure to remember the Programmers Prayer
Thunder does not suffer from many of the disadvantages of lightning, e.g. all this EMF related stuff. However, you have to deal with the lack of directionality, this would be harder to control with sound.
As with all of these, transmission seems easy. Probably they will want reception too, and conversion into something useful at the receiving end. Darn.
What keeps me going is my inertia.
Wake me up when they come up with a light weight ultra strength means of transmitting power *and* a wireless tether.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
"Tesla did it first!
Wishing I was a millionaire since 1969.
If NASA offered a major prize, say one, five or ten million dollars, it'd be both a sizeable chunk of their budget and something which might just produce far more results for the money than NASA itself does.
It is therefore not a huge surprise to find the prize is paltry.
I know there are plenty of people at NASA who'd encourage this sort of prize based competition and would want a large prize, because they really want space travel to get going, but the behaviour of an *organisation* as a whole is *not* the same as the will of the majority of people who comprise the organisation - NASA is not a democracy.
On a slightly seperate note, the outcome we've seen here, this paltry, pointless prize, this situation could only arise from a State run organisation.
NASA is, as I've described, encouraged to offer these prizes, since it soaks up a lot of money from the State and is pressured by the State to behave in certain ways (and these prizes are very popular right now, because of the success of the X-Prize) but *at the same time* any actions NASA take which encourage non-State space activity of course threaten NASA itself!
So we get a paltry prize, because NASA is caught between Sylla and Charybdis.
--
Toby
I think that the difference lies in the fact that the X-prize was exciting. Most people aren't going to care about "lightweight tethers". Beamed power, maybe. But it doesn't seem like it'd have the same kind of visceral thrill as watching an X-proze competitor launch.
I think the idea behind offering a prize is to motivate people.. this isn't really much of an incentive. The actual motivation was there before NASA decided they've toss a few bucks to someone for doing all of the legwork.
I suppose though, with budget cuts and all, NASA doesn't have a whole lot of capital behind them to do it themselves.
Thank you for posting the real link for this story.
To everyone who is positing various ways of transmitting power wirelessly, they already have a method in mind:
Showcasing the first representative prototypes of Space Elevator climbers, this event will re-define public perception of the Space Elevator project by taking the first step away from mathematical models and drawing boards and into the world of real working hardware. By participating, you get the opportunity to partner in writing this unique chapter of history.
The competition provides the race track, in the form of a crane-suspended vertical ribbon, and a strong light source to power the climbers. Competing teams provide climbers, which have to use the power beamed to them and scale the ribbon while carrying some amount of payload. Climbers will be rated according to their speed and the amount of payload they carried.
The climbers (unmanned, of course) will weigh 25-50 kg [50-100 lbs], and will ascend the ribbon at about 1 m/s. [3 feet per second or 2.5 MPH]
The beam source is a 10 kWatt Xenon search-light (80 cm beam diameter, about 25% efficient), which should yield a climber power budget of about 500 watts.
The ribbon is roughly 30cm (1 foot) wide by 1 mm thick, is about 60m (200 feet) long, and is tensioned to about 1 ton.
Building a climber is not an easy task. The designers have to juggle light weight structure, efficient photo-voltaic arrays, efficient motors and power electronics, low-loss traction mechanism, thermal management, and control systems.
Not a walk in the park, but we'll make it worth your while. We will be offering $50,000, $20,000 and $10,000 to the 3 best teams.
link:click here
The competition rules are at the bottom (pdf). Frankly, this sounds more like a college/high school technology building competition than an X-prize.
Im sorry who the hell moderated this overated , He is pointing out that the Space pen VS pencil story has become a fable , IE a story to guide your life by . I think he has a good point and it does not deserve moderated down
It seems to me that questing for wireless power transmission is a waste of time. The problem with high-power microwave beams is that anything getting in the way would get cooked, same with lasers. The focus should instead be on miniaturization of power sources such as fuel cells, and maybe even miniature elementary particle power generators that harness the energy that permeates the universe on a quantum level.
But it did go a good way towards defraying them. From what I remember, SS1 cost ~$20M, so the $10M prize helped, but it definitely didn't cover development costs. This doesn't dispute your main point, however. The real reward for SS1 is yet to come...
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Hmm, it seems that it IS even close. Sorry. ;-)
Stiny! Get me a danish!
How about the NASA challenge of just getting off the ground?
--
make install -not war
Isn't there a Microwave powerplant in Simcity 2000? Why don't they just use that. God. Idiots!
this looks more like transmitting electricity through the surface of the earth,
Wat Nasa wants is power through nothing, as in an external power source for let's say an aircraft
Tethers can be used in space to do everything from adjusting orbits to generating electricity from orbiting planets that have magnetic fields.
p e. shtml
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2003/20030414/ro
http://www.vectorsite.net/tarokt5.html
Tethers of (only) 20km long or less are much less likely to have problems then some ground to space tether that has to deal with wind conditions and other weather on the ground.
Wouldn't a space elevator be the world's LONGEST wire?
NASA is lobbying to be able to put up more prize money and I think putting out small amounts like this is simply to help them get support for the bigger amounts.
Over on Astobio.net they have an article where Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about the positive return prize money has yielded in real advancements. Seems pretty obvious how good they are for progress so this should help NASA's arguement that they should be able to put up more money. Another poster said they are limited right now to 250,000.
Testla was successful in transmitting power without wires. However, they found that guards were just randomly falling over dead. Further investigation showed that the guards were dieing from the radiation.
:)
Will NASA award the money, even if the radiation kills everyone around it
FYI: the wired article on space elevators (referenced in the first wired article) has a link to the NASA IAC, which contains a pretty cool technical report (PDF) on the specifics of the space elevator proposal. They cover a lot of their basis in terms of the technical details and possible problems from cable construction and deployment vehicles to oscillations in the cable and environmental concerns.
The cable is pulled tight by the satelite wanting to fly off into space. It's a bit beyond geostationary orbit, so it isn't actually orbiting in the conventional way.
"The only way it COULD work is if you had a double cable attached at the peak...so each cable is long enough to reach the ground by itself."
Running 2 cables up there would require each to carry half the load, and connecting them into a loop doesn't change that. I'm asking for a continuous loop of half the width (and twice the length) and a simple pully on the satelite and ground station. Just attach stuff to the belt and drive it from the ground pully. The only reason this might not work is problems with the 2 cables flopping around while moving past each other. Oh, and accelerating that long cable would take time but only once.
Instead of a mass on a string swinging around, it's a mass with a pully on a belt swinging around. The strength requirements don't really change, but the power source is no longer a science project.
Why am I even taking this seriously?
Honestly, I'm a little confised. I know people always assume beamed power when talking about the space elevator. But I also usually hear about the tether being made of carbon nanotubes. And I know I heard about research in superconducting carbon nanotubes.
Anyone wanna tell me why this isn't a promising direction of research?
Anm
Wireless power in many instances is easy but low powered. What the focus needs to be on is superconducting materials that enable us to make devices that require minimal power to function.
Imagine a watch that took your body heat and with the right chips in the watch would convert that heat and power/charge the watch.
The same could be said for any number of ways to get power somewhere. If things were ultra low powered then fiber optics could be used to power devices.
That is also a reason I think seti faces a problem. Modern civilizations may be using superconductor tech that gives them virtually no ELM footprint past their local region of space. If we do find something more likely that signal will fade and eventually dissapear over time.
Why, just yesterday, I submitted my patents on devices for climbing light-weight, ultra-strength tethers, operating on broadcast power, such as laser beams.
I already had a patent pending on "tethers or tethering-style devices or mechanisms which are light in weight, and yet simultaneously and concurrently ultra in strength".
3) Profit!
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
Finally, better materials for tetherball!
The first challenges are to design a light-weight, ultra-strength tether I see... into bondage, are they?
Um, so why not just transfer the power using a wire? The tether can be the wire. It only needs to be conductive. Also, it can be an electrodynamic tether, though I'm not sure it can generate much power by virtual of being geostationary.
On my planet, NASA was created in 1958 and is only 47 years old.
I submitted this story a couple of times yesterday, but it sadly wasn't accepted. Maybe it was too long or had too many links? In any case, here's a copy, which has a little additional info:
MSNBC, Space.com, and Wired report that NASA, in collaboration with the non-profit Spaceward Foundation, has announced its first two Centennial Challenges. The Centennial Challenges, inspired by the Ansari X Prize and DARPA Grand Challenge, are prize contests seeking to stimulate private industry development of technologies relevant to space exploration. One contest is the Tether Challenge, for building the sort of super-strong tether needed to make a space elevator feasible. The other is the Beam Power Challenge, for creating a wirelessly-powered ribbon-climbing robot capable of lifting as large a payload as possible within a limited timeframe. The initial set of challenges in 2005 will award $50K to the winners of each contest. A second set of challenges in 2006 will award first, second, and third place prizes worth $100K, $40K, and $10K. It's hoped that these contests will further space elevator technology and help eliminate the 'giggle factor' surrounding them. Additional contests will be announced in the coming weeks, although Congress currently restricts NASA from awarding prizes of more than $250K; the agency is lobbying to try to get this limit raised to $40 million for future prizes.
"Shut up, he's on a roll."
Are we sure we want to transmit energy wirelessly? Have we forgotten the lessons taught us by the GI Joe movie? They developed the "Infinite Energy Generator", which broadcast an unlimited amount of energy anywhere in the world, but then Cobra tried to steal it for their own evil purposes. Is this proof that NASA is supporting terrorism? I don't see what else it could be.
The first is very inefficient, because a laser from the ground will lose a lot of energy before it reaches your peltier. On a related note, perhaps a peltier in orbit would generate electricity by itself, since one side would face the sun (hot) and the other away (cold), and the delta would produce electricity. No?
The second isn't wireless power. That's like saying, "You want wireless power in your lodge? Here, take this generator!" You're in essence generating power in that place, which isn't the same to me. I don't know how NASA would see that.
The third still isn't wireless power. Besides, it's still very, very inefficient.
A guy flew a model place with wireless microwave power, but that also was inefficient, or would be at really long distances.
A blog like any other.
There can be no disputing that the Solar Death Ray is an early leader in the wireless transmission of awesome amounts of power.
Funny you should mention that - the "Buckeye Bullet" electric race car from Ohio State (300+ mph, holds Bonneville class record, controller just won the PC/104 design contest) uses about 2000 lbs of sub-D cell NiCds all wired up in series and parrallel
Is that you? You know the election is over don't you?
-Gabrielle
Where the hell do you get -1 Troll from what was supposed to be +5 Funny?
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
Thats for the climbers obviously, u dont want them to weigh alot otherwise you put added stress on the tether. With wireless power theres no need to embed electrical cables with the tether, and the climber wont need to carry heavy batteries or fuel.
my $0.02
I propose we use battery-laden African Swallows or carrier pigeons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catapult
Point to point indeed: Assuming maser beams with similar efficiencies to their optical counterparts, one could pour mega-wattages into a 12 foot dish from as far away as need be: Just do NOT cross the streams - with *anything*. :-)
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
Heat does not generate electricity or any sort of useful work.
A heat differential does. You need a hot place AND a cold place and piggybacking on the heats tendancy to want to move from hot to cold is where you get energy from. The bigger the difference in temperatures, the better your ability to extract useful work from it.
This is why the simple heat engine model won't work. space is a great insulator, you would heat up, but have no where to dispose of the heat to create your cold sink. Without air as a medium, you have to rely on radiant energy to dissipate heat, which isn't going to be easy.
Solar panels however are a good idea, it is likely all the entries into this contest will use them because they work now and are well understood. I am not sure why you think you are taking crazy pills, it is well known wireless power works now. A space elevator is mainly a matter of scale, building something bigger and stronger than we ever have before.
http://notanumber.net/
Well, when I mentioned a peltier in the first example, I was referring to the extreme temperature differences the are inherent in space (near Earth orbit at least). NASA has documented that the difference between being in the sunlight and in the shade can be 200-259 degrees (maybe more).
You merely put the "cold side" of any device that needs heat dissapation in the shade of the sun. I would think a peltier of any quality would generate a great deal of electricity using this model, but I am not sure if it would be comparable to high-power solar or other methods.
Thanks for replying.
JP
Stiny! Get me a danish!