Boiling Water In Space

[Silvercrest]

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Popular Science has featured articles where all houses would be running on a hydrogen power source before 2010, and said power source would be no larger than a refrigerator.

Guess what --?

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Well then, you've just made your solar turbine obsolete, haven't you? Just haul one of these babies up to the colony on a space elevator and you're good to go.

 

[John Picard]

No, but it does mean that if space elevators are the only way to make your project work,

They aren't, I simply pointed out that elevators would make it even cheaper when someone was moaning on about cost of payloads and rockets.

Stating it will be cheaper in a news article does not negate what happens in the real world. As it so happens, the shuttle has not been cheaper to operate than conventional rockets, as was promised and put on paper.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Popular Science has featured articles where all houses would be running on a hydrogen power source before 2010, and said power source would be no larger than a refrigerator.

Guess what --?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Well then, you've just made your solar turbine obsolete, haven't you? Just haul one of these babies up to the colony on a space elevator and you're good to go.

Not really since the fuel to power these devices are none renewable. My idea is a renewable energy source and can be continually made bigger and expanded to eventually generate large quantities of power.

You could theoretically build a large sphere in space near the sun and have the outer shell of this sphere covered in these powerplants.

 

[John Picard]

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Well then, you've just made your solar turbine obsolete, haven't you? Just haul one of these babies up to the colony on a space elevator and you're good to go.

Not really since the fuel to power these devices are none renewable. My idea is a renewable energy source and can be continually made bigger and expanded to eventually generate large quantities of power.

Oh geez. One of those would provide enough power for decades for your space colony. Keep digging, it's fun to watch.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Oh geez. One of those would provide enough power for decades for your space colony. Keep digging, it's fun to watch.

You have the calculations to prove this? you know the size of the colony? you know this mini reactor produces more power than my proposed powerplants?

I await the math.

 

[John Picard]

Oh geez. One of those would provide enough power for decades for your space colony. Keep digging, it's fun to watch.

You have the calculations to prove this? you know the size of the colony? you know this mini reactor produces more power than my proposed powerplants?

I await the math.

Sure - 12.

 

[Alpha_Geek]

Oh geez. One of those would provide enough power for decades for your space colony. Keep digging, it's fun to watch.

You have the calculations to prove this? you know the size of the colony? you know this mini reactor produces more power than my proposed powerplants?

I await the math.

For a comparison, we'd have to know what power output you anticipate from your "design". Your "design", so you do the math.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Oh geez. One of those would provide enough power for decades for your space colony. Keep digging, it's fun to watch.

You have the calculations to prove this? you know the size of the colony? you know this mini reactor produces more power than my proposed powerplants?

I await the math.

For a comparison, we'd have to know what power output you anticipate from your "design". Your "design", so you do the math.

So you don't know the output so can't say that a mini nuke reactor would produce more and can't say cost would outweigh the benefits.

On a side note, just what the heck is your avatar all about?

 

[John Picard]

Dilithium reactors are more efficient anyway. I'm just sayin'.

 

[hyzmarca]

What produces more power on Earth and is more efficient at energy production, steam powered turbines in coal/nuclear power stations or solar panels??

Per unit mass, per unit area, per unit fuel, or per unit entropy? This is a rather mportant distinction. While steam turbines are produce more power per unit area. They are, however, far more massive than photovoltaic panels of comparable output, which is why photovoltaics are used on space-stations and satellites these days.

In space there's no Earth gravity affecting the turbines meaning they will move even quicker and more effectively than in a gravity environment, obviously therefore producing far more power output.

Not relevant. Friction is the limiter, no gravity.

In the case of the batteries you only need fuel to transfer the batteries to and from Earth and with it being in space you don't need a lot of fuel to do it. You therefore produce more energy and use less fuel than you would with an Earth based system.
You save fuel, have a free energy device creating as much power as you want depending how big you build it and simply transfer that stored energy.

Batteries large enough to make such a project worthwhile would also have so much mass as to make moving them in any reasonable time insanely wasteful.

It's logical to assume that in 1 year the space based powerplant would produce more power for Earth or colony than inefficient solar panels.

Possibly. It depends on size.

I rest my case.

Back to the original question, you can boil water using sunlight on Earth. Understand that the temperature of body is determined by its thermal energy*its specific heat capacity / its mass. The thermal energy absorbed from light is determined by the output of the light source / the distance from the light source^2 * the absorbance of the body * the surface area of the body.

Add wattage gained and subtract wattage lost due to radiation, conduction, and convection (you can look up those equations yourself). So long as the result is a positive number then body will continue to increase in temperature.

Large commercial solar plants on Earth tend to be solar-thermal rather than photovoltaic, because bulk solar thermal is both cheaper and a more efficient use of space. But this only applies when economies of scale set in. Photovoltaic is both cheaper and easier for powering small objects and individual homes. In the consumer market solar thermal is almost exclusivly used water-heaters.

Essentially, a space-based solar thermal plant loses on mass and always will. Its extremely heavy and will require a great deal more propellant than the equivalent solar panels will.

Also, space is not cold. Seriously, it isn't. Vacuum is the best insulator there is. This is why spacecraft of all sorts need giant radiators.

 

[Silvercrest]

You have the calculations to prove this? you know the size of the colony? you know this mini reactor produces more power than my proposed powerplants?

I await the math.

For a comparison, we'd have to know what power output you anticipate from your "design". Your "design", so you do the math.

So you don't know the output so can't say that a mini nuke reactor would produce more and can't say cost would outweigh the benefits.

You don't know the output either. You don't know the numbers for your own design, and yet you insist it will produce more, as you did here:

You don't need calculations to know that a steam powered turbine will produce more power than solar panels. It kind of goes without saying.

I'm afraid it's a bit hypocritical to refuse to provide calculations, then turn around and insist that someone else provide them.

 

[Trekker4747]

I say we just all wait for the Infinite Improbability Drive. It will solve all of our problems re: power generation and space travel/colonization.

 

[Silvercrest]

It won't be long. This thread is getting more improbable as we go.

 

[Alpha_Geek]

So you don't know the output so can't say that a mini nuke reactor would produce more and can't say cost would outweigh the benefits.

On a side note, just what the heck is your avatar all about?

OOps, how about some salt for that foot?

Submarine and surface shiip reactors go up to 500 MW. A reactor that was transportable by aircraft ran at 1.5 MW output and kept one of the Antarctic stations powered for a decade.

So, where are your numbers, Taccy?

 

[John Picard]

So you don't know the output so can't say that a mini nuke reactor would produce more and can't say cost would outweigh the benefits.

On a side note, just what the heck is your avatar all about?

OOps, how about some salt for that foot?

Submarine and surface shiip reactors go up to 500 MW. A reactor that was transportable by aircraft ran at 1.5 MW output and kept one of the Antarctic stations powered for a decade.

So, where are your numbers, Taccy?

He still has to Google some bogus news article to try to counter anyone's argument.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

So you don't know the output so can't say that a mini nuke reactor would produce more and can't say cost would outweigh the benefits.

On a side note, just what the heck is your avatar all about?

OOps, how about some salt for that foot?

Submarine and surface shiip reactors go up to 500 MW. A reactor that was transportable by aircraft ran at 1.5 MW output and kept one of the Antarctic stations powered for a decade.

So, where are your numbers, Taccy?

My space turbine will go up to 5 million MW.

 

[Alpha_Geek]

My space turbine will go up to 5 million MW.

And from what is this figure derived?

 

[Trekker4747]

My space turbine will go up to 5 million MW.

And from what is this figure derived?

It's from an applied systematic summation.

 

[Alpha_Geek]

It's from an applied systematic summation.

Ah, yes, I see where the figure was pulled from now. Thank you!

 

[Birdog]

So you don't know the output so can't say that a mini nuke reactor would produce more and can't say cost would outweigh the benefits.

On a side note, just what the heck is your avatar all about?

OOps, how about some salt for that foot?

Submarine and surface shiip reactors go up to 500 MW. A reactor that was transportable by aircraft ran at 1.5 MW output and kept one of the Antarctic stations powered for a decade.

So, where are your numbers, Taccy?

My space turbine will go up to 5 million MW.

That's 5 gigawatts. It only takes 1.21 gigawatts to make a Delorean time travel. Seriously, that's an order of magnitude more juice than a commercial nuke plant puts out. Have you ever seen how much waste heat a 500 Mw plant puts out? You'd have to have thousands of acres of radiator to lose that heat. The ISS has 1680 square feet of radiator for it's heat load.