Tapping Solar Wind's Renewable Energy 277
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.
Hmm. (Score:3, Interesting)
If the satellite is attached to a 5000km sail, which is spread so as to catch the solar wind, what's to stop it from blowing away?
Also, who gets to volunteer to have the bazillo-watt microwave laser pointed at them? I've played sim city. I know it's only a matter of time before the satellite moves and cuts a firey swatch through my town!
Re:Hmm. (Score:4, Interesting)
Just boil the Atlantic and harvest energy from the larger, more predictable hurricanes.
Could seriously change humanity (Score:3, Interesting)
So I always thought fusion would be the first thing to provide an infinite resource (electricity), but it looks like this is a more viable (read: closer) solution.
If humanity gets one resource that is in essence, infinite, it would seriously change our race. I hope, for the better.
Bizarre number choice (Score:4, Interesting)
OK, if we put up a rectangle 8,000 kilometers by 8,000 kilometers, it'll produce 100,000,000,000,000 times the energy we need.
WHY DON'T THEY SUGGEST A 1 KILOMETER BY 1 KILOMETER SAIL?
What's going on here? Did the guys being interviewed say something reasonable, and then also abstract it to a high number for the reporter, and the reporter only decided to write up the insane, absurd, bizarrely huge number? Or were the guys being interviewed just nuts?
ISS (Score:4, Interesting)
Why don't they test this by powering the ISS?
Re:Political obstacle not technological (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure you mean 'whoever can secure the receiver'. Here in the USA we don't just sit around and let people control their oil just because they built a nation and infrastructure on top of it. If we want a better price, we'll topple their regime.
Re:Sounds great... (Score:3, Interesting)
Civilizations thrive and prosper if there are plenty of cheap resources and energy available. The more of it the better. Right now we're heading for a shock in energy prices, so any creative idea, initiative is certainly welcome. "Depopulation" (whatever that means) has a dark side as well. Just watch Japan in the coming decades. They certainly aren't having lots of children [google.com]. If they don't build a population of robots/cyborgs, whatever to support them, in a few decades they will have a crippled economy full of old people. While I can be accused of not looking at the big picture here (like centuries), the best thing we can do is to maintain the population level. And while efficiency is certainly welcome in places (why the hell is the US using so much energy with almost identical living standards? [wolframalpha.com]), we will not need less, but more cheap energy in the future.
HA HA, only kidding (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually all these SPSS plans are all a big shuck. They tell the groundhogs that they're going to send back orders of magnitude more energy than civilization needs. When really, it makes more sense to use the power in situ and build space colonies to take advantage of it. It's all just a stalking horse to get the flatlanders to pay for their zero-G love hotels.
Re:Drag (Score:1, Interesting)
Mighty, the copper cable is not ATTACHED TO THE EARTH. It's called a "tether" because it's tethered to the sail, not the planet. It's a satellite in free orbit, with a cable dangling from it with one free end. So you can take the tinfoil off your head and chill.
The big issue is the beam of concentrated energy going pewpewpew down from orbit to some receiver station, to be turned into skillions and whillions of jigawatts to run into your iPod charger. If you're unclear on the concept, watch "Independence Day" and set the beam weapon obliterating the White House scene on continuous loop, only the beam is coming from a point way up in the sky, instead of a honking-big spaceship only a few thousand feet away. Stipulate that the as-yet-unknown receiver station will be able to withstand this power beam coming from the sky. Coolness. Now what if some sleepy technician, a runaway pet hamster in the control room, or an ebil terrorist plot causes the beam to leave the vicinity of the invulnerable receiver station and point at downtown Des Moines? Oops.
This has already been predicted in sci-fi deliciousness. The 1976 Ace Science Fiction Special "Challenge The Hellmaker", by Walt & Leigh Richmond, featured a space station affectionately called "Hot Rod", which used a huge, inflated parabolic dish to reflect sunlight onto a laser array, beaming energy down to earth, reflected from a phase-conjugate aiming mirror. It was a wonderful vision of cheap energy from the Sun, which was unfortunately co-opted by a group of terrorists, and used as a weapon to threaten cities on Earth shortly after its completion. The subplots were a little cheesy, but otherwise cute, and I thought it was an okay book for 1976. I think I still have a copy here somewhere, and there are plenty available used.
Too bad we don't have Heinlein's mythical "Shipstones", or we could just charge up unlimited power cells in orbit and safely transport them down, so no one need worry about being pew-pewed into charcoal.
Re:Sounds great... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sounds great... (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless every country had a space elevator, we would quickly see denial attacks against said space elevators (or attempts to control them). "Free, unlimited energy" is a game changer.
A saner approach would probably be narrow band microwave, I'd think.
Re:HA HA, only kidding (Score:3, Interesting)
Although, if you're interested in industrial use of antimatter, you might actually be concerned about the conversion efficiency of you solar wind harvester.