Airplanes are faraday cages, though I wonder about some of the newer carbon fiber designs. Not just for this, but also for getting hit by lightning. Worst case scenario is that you have to mark some areas as no-fly zones, but it probably doesn't matter much. If you believe cell phones can screw with airplane instruments, then I guess you'd believe microwaves power transmission would, too, but I think the danger is overblown.
Satellites already have to be hardened against all sorts of radiation.
Right. Because simply swapping out the antenna itself is such a herculean task, nobody would ever attempt to (gasp) replace an antenna!!
On a satellite in orbit? Yes, it is very difficult. Not impossible, but by doing so, you're cutting off your own air supply. Presumably, your country put those satellites up there to provide power, and changing them into weapons means you'll have power shortfalls.
If the military sees value in the basic technology at all as a weapon, then it'll be as purpose-designed satellites. Trying to convert the civilian ones over would be unlikely to be cost effective.
As I mentioned in another post, if there is any military value in this, it will be in 1) powering remote bases and equipment, and 2) reducing the number of wars being fought by removing oil as a source of conflict.
#1. If "beaming the power" as you so "scientifically" put it, is that easy, and the engineering is already in place... then why isn't it being done on a wide scale already? Surely more than just "cost" if so, provide figures.
Not "cost" exactly, but economics. You have to find an investor willing to put in billions of dollars on a concept never shown in practice.
FINDING: The SBSP Study Group found that even with the DoD as an anchor tenant customer at a price
of $1â2 per kilowatt hour for 5â50 megawatts continuous power for the warfighter, when considering the
risks of implementing a new unproven space technology and other major business risks, the business
case for SBSP still does not appear to close in 2007 with current capabilities (primarily launch costs).
#2. Since there are already safety issues with existing microwave technology, this is a valid concern.
What we have is a bunch of loons parroting off crap about high voltage transmission lines, microwave ovens, cell phones, and WiFi. They contradict longstanding physics regarding ionizing vs. non-ionizing radiation, and studies attempting to show a link to these things and some damage have invariably fallen flat. It's fine to contradict long held physics, but you better have some good evidence if you do.
Strategic use of a high power platform can include precision jamming of ground targets, damaging sensors on spaceborne equipment like spy satellites or missiles . ..
All of these require very specific frequencies which simply won't work for civilian purposes, but . . .
. . . or even powering other equipment making those platforms cheaper to launch.
Now we're finally getting to the one valid military use of this. But probably not equipment in space. Rather, it helps the military solve a logistical problem of powering equipment in remote places around the globe.
The other military use is more of a Sun Tzu thing: the best way to win a battle is not to fight it. Eliminating oil as a major source of energy also eliminates it as a major source of conflicts. This is exactly the position taken by the DoD's own report into SBSP.
You're assuming the design only has the capability to transmit microwaves.
Which is a pretty good assumption to make, because transmissions at any other frequency (be it IR or some radio frequency) will require a totally different transmission system. An extra system means extra weight, which would increase launch costs on a system that will already be struggling to be economically competitive with ground-based systems.
Using this stuff as a weapon makes a good movie, but poor science.
I'm sure there is no possible way the power transmission system could be changed to emit wavelenths to do something like destroy an ICBM or cause problems with a communication/power infrastructure on earth.
Your sarcasm is actually true. The antennas involved need to be tweaked to a specific frequency for maximum efficiency. If the military wants to do this, they'll need to build their own stuff, which they'd do anyway if they cared to.
No, it really isn't, not at the frequencies useful for SBSP. These frequencies must be specifically choosen to cut through all the water in the atmosphere (along with anything else). Since human bodies are mostly water, you're not going to absorb very much of the stuff, and what stuff you do absorb will be no different from being on the beach on a sunny day.
If the military wants to weaponize the basic technology, they're going to have to design with it specifically in mind (even if it's possible to use microwaves for this purpose, which it probably isn't). They won't get a useful weapon using the civilian power system. The civilian system might help increase launch capacity and thus make the weapon system cheaper to build, but again, that's no different from any other space activity of this magnitude.
The third point is nothing. The energy in question is not easily absorbed by the human body or anything else that isn't specifically designed to capture microwaves. This no more contributes to space weaponization than any other activity in space.
No. The main concern for climate change is that humans are causing a feedback cycle with CO2 that increases the total heat capacity of the system. Once you reach that heat capacity, extra heat just gets thrown into space.
Additionally, any other power source you can imagine will have some efficiency lost as heat, and most of them will be quite a bit worse than beam losses and rectenna efficiency (which is around 90%).
If you are about to post anything about any of the issues below, please at least read the Wiki page on SBSP first. Doing so will save a lot of electrons.
How do you beam the power
Give people cancer (or other safety issues)
Weaponization
Beam energy will be lost in transit, absorbed into the atmosphere, and contribute to global warming
A basic understanding of the technology and physics will debunk all of these, and WikiPedia gives a good overview of these non-criticisms. Anyone continuing to parrot them below will be flogged.
It's not hard to clap with one hand with a little practice. I picked it up in middle school. The trick is to let your fingers be loose while your wrist is fairly stiff and flap back and forth. There's various YouTube clips of this; here's one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8Q1nLwYK6E.
In regards to EA and their like, I wonder if its related to accounting similar to Hollywood accounting.
I doubt it. Hollywood Accounting happens because some people fall for signing a contract for a cut of the profit, so they make sure the movie doesn't technically make a profit. Game development is usually salaried.
. . . concluded that there was ample evidence of an increasingly competitive communications marketplace and that cable did not have undue control on the programming pipeline.
I just crapped my pants, but I'm not sure if it was from laughter or fear.
Not necessarily, just need to get below the frost line. Even in climates where the temperature can swing between 0 and 90F throughout the year, the temperature under the frost layer doesn't change much more than 10F. That's how vertical geothermal loops work.
The submitter's idea is similar to a horizontal loop, which for houses, is a cheaper option than vertical loops (since you don't have to dig as far down), but you need a very large backyard to do it (a few acres, IIRC).
IMHO, the submitter's best bet would be to use these pipes for underfloor heating. Since the house is still being built and he doesn't appear to mind having his computer stuck in a certain location, he can put some pipes going outside to a small AC unit. It'd work much like central AC, except connected only to the computer. Sub-freezing temperatures are possible, which he's not going to get with this setup, since the fluid can't get any cooler than the concrete slab foundation. The AC setup can be made by salvaging a window sill AC unit, or built yourself with an AC compressor and heat exchanger from a car.
No, I'm not. As the GP points out, you can very much get a full functioning phone without signing a contract. You just pay more to do it. That's a simple matter of negotiation, as far as I'm concerned. Nobody is forcing the choice on you.
That's your opinion. It's perfectly reasonable to agree to a more restrictive contract in exchange for a cheaper phone, provided everything is clear up front.
For one thing, Microsoft has always had a larger strategy in mind with the XBox, namely taking over the living room as much as they have the desktop. They don't want you playing these games on a standard PC, and in fact go out of their way to make all sorts of problems for those who try.
For another thing, even without them making you jump through artificial hoops, you'd still have to emulate a PowerPC on an Intel, which isn't going to be fast enough without a quite a few iterations of Moore's Law behind you.
It was actually a case of bad acting. The original script material basically lays out that Han thought he was talking to a pair of provincial yahoos who didn't know what parsec was. Obi-wan, of course, was nothing of the sort, and was supposed to react to this obvious misinformation. But since Alec Guinness was just there for the money and didn't care to try, the audience was never let in on the joke.
This led to the expanded universe trying to explain it away, but the fact is that it was a flaw in the production.
An XBox360 has a PowerPC processor, so you can't run it on a PC. The programming API is somewhat similar, but Microsoft would never let you play XBox games on a PC without jumping through more hoops than its worth. Same goes for any other console. Nintendo still sends rabid lawyers after people who make hardware dumpers for SNES games.
Slashdot Mirror
The rectenna is basically a thin wire mesh. You can put it over farm fields and still grow crops underneath.
Airplanes are faraday cages, though I wonder about some of the newer carbon fiber designs. Not just for this, but also for getting hit by lightning. Worst case scenario is that you have to mark some areas as no-fly zones, but it probably doesn't matter much. If you believe cell phones can screw with airplane instruments, then I guess you'd believe microwaves power transmission would, too, but I think the danger is overblown.
Satellites already have to be hardened against all sorts of radiation.
Right. Because simply swapping out the antenna itself is such a herculean task, nobody would ever attempt to (gasp) replace an antenna!!
On a satellite in orbit? Yes, it is very difficult. Not impossible, but by doing so, you're cutting off your own air supply. Presumably, your country put those satellites up there to provide power, and changing them into weapons means you'll have power shortfalls.
If the military sees value in the basic technology at all as a weapon, then it'll be as purpose-designed satellites. Trying to convert the civilian ones over would be unlikely to be cost effective.
As I mentioned in another post, if there is any military value in this, it will be in 1) powering remote bases and equipment, and 2) reducing the number of wars being fought by removing oil as a source of conflict.
#1. If "beaming the power" as you so "scientifically" put it, is that easy, and the engineering is already in place... then why isn't it being done on a wide scale already? Surely more than just "cost" if so, provide figures.
Not "cost" exactly, but economics. You have to find an investor willing to put in billions of dollars on a concept never shown in practice.
The NSS study has a full business case:
FINDING: The SBSP Study Group found that even with the DoD as an anchor tenant customer at a price of $1â2 per kilowatt hour for 5â50 megawatts continuous power for the warfighter, when considering the risks of implementing a new unproven space technology and other major business risks, the business case for SBSP still does not appear to close in 2007 with current capabilities (primarily launch costs).
#2. Since there are already safety issues with existing microwave technology, this is a valid concern.
What we have is a bunch of loons parroting off crap about high voltage transmission lines, microwave ovens, cell phones, and WiFi. They contradict longstanding physics regarding ionizing vs. non-ionizing radiation, and studies attempting to show a link to these things and some damage have invariably fallen flat. It's fine to contradict long held physics, but you better have some good evidence if you do.
Strategic use of a high power platform can include precision jamming of ground targets, damaging sensors on spaceborne equipment like spy satellites or missiles . . .
All of these require very specific frequencies which simply won't work for civilian purposes, but . . .
. . . or even powering other equipment making those platforms cheaper to launch.
Now we're finally getting to the one valid military use of this. But probably not equipment in space. Rather, it helps the military solve a logistical problem of powering equipment in remote places around the globe.
The other military use is more of a Sun Tzu thing: the best way to win a battle is not to fight it. Eliminating oil as a major source of energy also eliminates it as a major source of conflicts. This is exactly the position taken by the DoD's own report into SBSP.
You're assuming the design only has the capability to transmit microwaves.
Which is a pretty good assumption to make, because transmissions at any other frequency (be it IR or some radio frequency) will require a totally different transmission system. An extra system means extra weight, which would increase launch costs on a system that will already be struggling to be economically competitive with ground-based systems.
Using this stuff as a weapon makes a good movie, but poor science.
They'll provide an abundant source of pre-cooked meat for the poor.
I'm sure there is no possible way the power transmission system could be changed to emit wavelenths to do something like destroy an ICBM or cause problems with a communication/power infrastructure on earth.
Your sarcasm is actually true. The antennas involved need to be tweaked to a specific frequency for maximum efficiency. If the military wants to do this, they'll need to build their own stuff, which they'd do anyway if they cared to.
No, it really isn't, not at the frequencies useful for SBSP. These frequencies must be specifically choosen to cut through all the water in the atmosphere (along with anything else). Since human bodies are mostly water, you're not going to absorb very much of the stuff, and what stuff you do absorb will be no different from being on the beach on a sunny day.
If the military wants to weaponize the basic technology, they're going to have to design with it specifically in mind (even if it's possible to use microwaves for this purpose, which it probably isn't). They won't get a useful weapon using the civilian power system. The civilian system might help increase launch capacity and thus make the weapon system cheaper to build, but again, that's no different from any other space activity of this magnitude.
The third point is nothing. The energy in question is not easily absorbed by the human body or anything else that isn't specifically designed to capture microwaves. This no more contributes to space weaponization than any other activity in space.
Consider yourself flogged.
No. The main concern for climate change is that humans are causing a feedback cycle with CO2 that increases the total heat capacity of the system. Once you reach that heat capacity, extra heat just gets thrown into space.
Additionally, any other power source you can imagine will have some efficiency lost as heat, and most of them will be quite a bit worse than beam losses and rectenna efficiency (which is around 90%).
If you are about to post anything about any of the issues below, please at least read the Wiki page on SBSP first. Doing so will save a lot of electrons.
A basic understanding of the technology and physics will debunk all of these, and WikiPedia gives a good overview of these non-criticisms. Anyone continuing to parrot them below will be flogged.
It's not hard to clap with one hand with a little practice. I picked it up in middle school. The trick is to let your fingers be loose while your wrist is fairly stiff and flap back and forth. There's various YouTube clips of this; here's one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8Q1nLwYK6E.
In regards to EA and their like, I wonder if its related to accounting similar to Hollywood accounting.
I doubt it. Hollywood Accounting happens because some people fall for signing a contract for a cut of the profit, so they make sure the movie doesn't technically make a profit. Game development is usually salaried.
I've normally seen that quote attributed to Werner von Braun.
. . . concluded that there was ample evidence of an increasingly competitive communications marketplace and that cable did not have undue control on the programming pipeline.
I just crapped my pants, but I'm not sure if it was from laughter or fear.
What costs more to get to the moon? A kg of water, or a kg of feathers?
Simple questions are not trolls.
Not necessarily, just need to get below the frost line. Even in climates where the temperature can swing between 0 and 90F throughout the year, the temperature under the frost layer doesn't change much more than 10F. That's how vertical geothermal loops work.
The submitter's idea is similar to a horizontal loop, which for houses, is a cheaper option than vertical loops (since you don't have to dig as far down), but you need a very large backyard to do it (a few acres, IIRC).
IMHO, the submitter's best bet would be to use these pipes for underfloor heating. Since the house is still being built and he doesn't appear to mind having his computer stuck in a certain location, he can put some pipes going outside to a small AC unit. It'd work much like central AC, except connected only to the computer. Sub-freezing temperatures are possible, which he's not going to get with this setup, since the fluid can't get any cooler than the concrete slab foundation. The AC setup can be made by salvaging a window sill AC unit, or built yourself with an AC compressor and heat exchanger from a car.
Who modded this Troll? It's a ligit question. Concrete moves and cracks with temperature changes, and it's going to move the pipe with it.
However, it's basically the same thing as underfloor heating. I would think the rebar would take care of most of the load from temperature changes.
No, I'm not. As the GP points out, you can very much get a full functioning phone without signing a contract. You just pay more to do it. That's a simple matter of negotiation, as far as I'm concerned. Nobody is forcing the choice on you.
That's your opinion. It's perfectly reasonable to agree to a more restrictive contract in exchange for a cheaper phone, provided everything is clear up front.
Why post as Anonymous? Around here, bizarre jumps of logic that seemingly support Linux get modded up.
For one thing, Microsoft has always had a larger strategy in mind with the XBox, namely taking over the living room as much as they have the desktop. They don't want you playing these games on a standard PC, and in fact go out of their way to make all sorts of problems for those who try.
For another thing, even without them making you jump through artificial hoops, you'd still have to emulate a PowerPC on an Intel, which isn't going to be fast enough without a quite a few iterations of Moore's Law behind you.
It was actually a case of bad acting. The original script material basically lays out that Han thought he was talking to a pair of provincial yahoos who didn't know what parsec was. Obi-wan, of course, was nothing of the sort, and was supposed to react to this obvious misinformation. But since Alec Guinness was just there for the money and didn't care to try, the audience was never let in on the joke.
This led to the expanded universe trying to explain it away, but the fact is that it was a flaw in the production.
An XBox360 has a PowerPC processor, so you can't run it on a PC. The programming API is somewhat similar, but Microsoft would never let you play XBox games on a PC without jumping through more hoops than its worth. Same goes for any other console. Nintendo still sends rabid lawyers after people who make hardware dumpers for SNES games.