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!
Xybernaut already does this. They had several large industrial clients, like telecom workers, who used the wearables for "hands free" computing / reference.
True, but they still arn't actually limited by Carnot:
max efficiency = 1 - Tlow / Thigh
where T is temp. in Kelvins.
so for 250 deg C, we've got
max eff. = 1 - (25+273)/(250+273) = 43% compared to their cited 20%. Leaves lots of room for improvement.
Anyway, the real way to gain efficency is never to convert the fuel to heat in the first place, i.e. use a fuel cell, and get ~100% efficiency.
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Websurfing done right! - StumbleUpon
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
Xybernaut already does this. They had several large industrial clients, like telecom workers, who used the wearables for "hands free" computing / reference.
Websurfing done right! StumbleUpon
There is a system which does exactly this already - StumbleUpon
It allows you to submit cool sites to it's queues, and recommends sites back to you from those queues.
True, but they still arn't actually limited by Carnot: max efficiency = 1 - Tlow / Thigh where T is temp. in Kelvins. so for 250 deg C, we've got max eff. = 1 - (25+273)/(250+273) = 43% compared to their cited 20%. Leaves lots of room for improvement. Anyway, the real way to gain efficency is never to convert the fuel to heat in the first place, i.e. use a fuel cell, and get ~100% efficiency.