What an idiotic policy. Just because they can't think of anything to do about it doesn't mean nobody can. What arrogance. Maybe they can't either, but worth a try.
I say if these idiots aren't planning to report Killer Asteroids, then their funding to look for them should be cut off. Give the money to someone who isn't so bloody arrogant, or to someone trying to do something about it (eg cheap access to space).
wonder about the probabilty of using a flywheel for a UPS?
Congratulations, you've invented the motor-generator. Well, sort of.
I haven't seen one lately, but a mainframe computer center I once worked at had such -- electric motor -> heavy flywheel -> generator. In large part it was just to smooth out ripples in the AC line (might also have converted the frequency). Forget running the computers for fifteen minutes -- a flywheel with that much energy is downright dangerous (consider, if it stops suddenly, it has to dump all that energy in a matter of milliseconds).
For UPS needs, batteries are better since the store/withdraw rates are reasonable. A flywheel is good where you want to store or dump a lot of energy fast. (Basically, the flywheel is the motor/generator rotor.)
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What an idiotic policy. Just because they can't think of anything to do about it doesn't mean nobody can. What arrogance. Maybe they can't either, but worth a try.
I say if these idiots aren't planning to report Killer Asteroids, then their funding to look for them should be cut off. Give the money to someone who isn't so bloody arrogant, or to someone trying to do something about it (eg cheap access to space).
Congratulations, you've invented the motor-generator. Well, sort of.
I haven't seen one lately, but a mainframe computer center I once worked at had such -- electric motor -> heavy flywheel -> generator. In large part it was just to smooth out ripples in the AC line (might also have converted the frequency). Forget running the computers for fifteen minutes -- a flywheel with that much energy is downright dangerous (consider, if it stops suddenly, it has to dump all that energy in a matter of milliseconds).
For UPS needs, batteries are better since the store/withdraw rates are reasonable. A flywheel is good where you want to store or dump a lot of energy fast. (Basically, the flywheel is the motor/generator rotor.)