Slashdot Mirror
Space Ring Could Combat Global Warming
telstar writes "Though the debate continues around global warming, a new proposal suggests building an artificial space ring around the Earth to block the light of the sun and bring a balance to solar radiation, cloud cover, and heat-trapping greenhouse gases. The ring could be comprised of particles which would scatter the sunlight, or be built by an interconnected ring of spaceships aligned to block the light. The former proposal is estimated to cost anywhere from $6 trillion to $200 trillion dollars, while the spaceship solution would run approximately $500 billion. Halo fans rejoice."
Since the beginning of time man has yearned to destroy the sun...
How could this go wrong?
This would not work. Other planets would become jeleous and greedy, all of them wanting to get The Ring from us. There would be wars, many would die, and entire civilizations would die. What we need to do is get a neutral planet, one without such greed, who can take the ring, and hurl it into Jupiter. Then, the universe will be free.
Wouldn't it be cheaper, easier, and more effective to, I don't know, build energy systems that don't release carbon? Just a thought.
And in related news, Al Gore has ridden the mighty moon worm.
Honestly, how much would it cost to require an SUV to get 30+ MPG instead of 15?
It would actually costs less than an SUV, you'd just have to dump half the steel to cut weight, which would reduce its size significantly. I propose we call the result the "carr." Or something like that. I don't know. I'll leave that to marketing, but I'm gonna get my company on top of this. We'll make a fortune.
That might even take the pressure off the environment, as you could probably shut down most of the world's coal-fired power stations.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
They want their article back.
I think you meant to write "finding a way to eliminate dependence on foreign oil."
In other words, let's start using the energy we get from the sun to meet our current needs.
It's unbelievable that someone would suggest that we should restrict future energy delivery from the sun just so that we can keep on consuming energy stores from the past (oil) and pollute our sky with the smoke. Pure laziness. It's like a teenager cleaning his room by hauling his dirty laundry out of the house and burying it, wasting all the effort he ought to be using to just clean the clothes. Not that I've ever done this.
Stationkeeping under these circumstances is very difficult. There are plenty of other concerns... heat rejection, debris, etc.
It was a good idea, but not feasible... at least not as feasible as the ring idea.
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
For some reason, I'm getting an image of a charred barren hillside a few miles from the collector. A bunch of people are running around on fire. Oh, wait, that's a SimCity 2k screenshot. Nevermind.
Because it's easier to convince people to let you put a bajillion microsatellites into orbit than it is to convince them to let you build another nuclear power plant.
The entire world becomes depressed, due to the absence on natural light, kills themselves or simply stop having sex.
;-)
;-)
YOU stop having sex BECAUSE it is too DARK??? Hmmm... You are such a minority!
Paul B.
P.S. Lucky you to get that stunning nimpho supermodel as your GF!
Did anyone else read that as GIF?
Now, let's orbit these solar cells at 500 km altitude, i.e. a diameter of 13,756.3 km or circumference of 43,217 km. The article doesn't say how wide the ring should be, but to block 1.6% of the sunlight to a circle 12,756.3 km in diameter would require a strip about 160 km wide. That's 6.9 million square kilometers of solar cells in the full ring.
Now the silicon wafer in a solar cell is really quite thin, typically around 300 microns thick, so that's only 2.074 cubic kilometers of silicon all up. Density is 2330 kg/m3, so that's 4,833 megatonnes of silicon required, or about 0.0000005% of the earth's resources. I think we have enough.
Of course, the energy required to manufacture that sort of area of solar cells would be pretty high, but think of the returns. The earth receives about 1370 W/m2 in orbit, so multiply that by the area of cells facing the sun (2.04 million square km), and you get about 2.8 billion MW of incident radiation :-) Let's say these cells aren't particularly efficient, maybe 10%, plus transmission losses of another 70%, and you still have 84 million MW of usable energy, all day, every day.
Now, in 1997 we used 380 quadrillion BTUs, globally, or about 111 quadrillion watt-hours. That's an average consumption of 12 million MW, comfortably within our budget for some time. An energy-producing system with a capacity of 7 times the entire global requirements is worth quite a bit.
There's only one downside to this - if we divert all this energy down to earth & use it, it all ends up as heat in the end, which completely nullifies the original purpose of the ring (if you remember) of preventing global warming! D'oh!
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Though the debate continues around global warming...
What an excellent opening sentence. The problem is, which debate is he referring to? Is he talking some real scientific debate? Or maybe a politically motivated debate based on non-science in which the powers that be try to confuse the public into believing there is no scientific consensus, with the goal being to maintain the status quo and avoid angering the energy lobby.
Because, scientifically, there is no real debate anymore over whether or not man is impacting the climate and causing global warming.
Download my free songs!
Then where will all the good posts come from?
http://www.andashdesigns.com/
Uh-oh, I'll bet it's not...
have everyone on the planet plant at least one tree.
This could be going in the right direction...
trees would help cool the earth.
Yes, okay, and now for the science...
because they hold more water.
... Okay, not what I was expecting, but let's go with it...
trees also help water evaporate so there will be more rain.
But, I thought we were storing water, not helping it evaporate? There must be some logical reasoning behind this...
more rain = cooler weather.
Oh. Dear. God.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"