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Tapping Solar Wind's Renewable Energy
A few folks noted a story making the rounds about the huge energy potential just blowing past the planet in the form of solar wind. This research involves putting a satellite into orbit with a thousand-meter cable and a 5,000-mile sail to generate more power than the earth currently uses.
The first thing any government will ask is: "So who will be in control of all the world's power?"
You understand that the Earth is already out in the solar wind, right? With a surface area vastly larger than the proposed sail? If we were going to blow away, it'd have already happened.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The first two men on the moon are world famous, but very few people can name who the third or fourth are, or indeed any of the others. Clearly, being first is hugely important. If you're first, you get bragging rights and endless book deals even if you're not a very good writer (I'm looking at you, Buzz). If you're not first, all you get to do is go around telling everyone you hit golf balls on the moon in hopes of getting invited to speak at an elementary school assembly.
With this in mind, deciding who will be the first on Mars is hugely important. When the time comes, everyone is going to be fighting to be the first person to set foot on Mars, and since the mission will likely be international in nature, global politics also will come into play in making the decision. Therefore, the perfect solution was devised: Let everyone be first! So, we're going to tie a huge solar sail to the Earth and bring the entire planet to Mars at once. This way there's no arguing, and everyone will be happy.
According to the team's calculations, 300 meters (984 feet) of copper wire, attached to a two-meter-wide (6.6-foot-wide) receiver and a 10-meter (32.8-foot) sail, would generate enough power for 1,000 homes.
So why would we build one sail, which would be a target and fought over by countries and an untold number of businessess when you could run up a bunch of smaller sails? Easier to build and maintain, which lowers the barrier to entry and stops the wars and lawsuits which would inevitably break out over THE sail. I guess you have to dream big, but like anything, start small.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
They're proposing we build a sail that when viewed two-dimensionally next to Earth is over half the size of the entire planet? Even if you ignore the issue of space debris punching holes in this thing left and right the logistics of creating and "stitching" this together in space are unbelievable.
In the way that 'non-depleting' is too hard to say.
I vote they point that honking big power laser at the moon for a couple of years so they can work out any bugs in the targeting control system.
They can always use the power to work on in-situ zone refinement of lunar material.
Or carve honking big glowing letters into the moon and sell the advertising space to fund the work.
We already have a working plasma reactor, placed approximately 93,000,000 miles away for safety reasons. You can see it if you look East in the morning. I know! Why not just... use THAT one!
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
This is a great idea for powering space stations and such, but how the heck do you get the power back to the ground? You'll lose a lot of power during transmission from satellite to ground. More importantly how do you avoid killing people with the heat wave?
Would be nice if you could just string a cable from orbit to the ground, wouldn't it? Another reason to start working on that space elevator.
What would should be doing is looking for realistic solutions:
- Depopulate: Less babies == less humans == less need for energy
How is this realistic? Want to start a war to wipe out most of the population? Your other suggestions are a lot better, fortunately.
how do you successfully attack someone who controls a 30 million billion jiggiewatt deathray?
Get some farm kid to fire a torpedo down a vent shaft from his X-wing?
-- Alastair