I believe this is the key matter in this debate. We already have many ways of producing a massive amount of energy. But storing it, there are just a few and all are quite insignificant in usable quantities.
Future sources of energy
- Thread starter TremblingBluStar
- Start date
I believe this is the key matter in this debate. We already have many ways of producing a massive amount of energy. But storing it, there are just a few and all are quite insignificant in usable quantities.
Solar thermal energy is looking promising. The question is, will we start building more of these now, or wait until we find ourselves in the middle of an energy crises?
Turning Glare Into Watts
Turning Glare Into Watts
All Seeing Eye
Admiral
Ok I have a question, would it be possible to build a ring around the Earths equator in orbit that orbits at a different speed to the Earths spin that can harness electricity by coils passing through the Earth Magnetic field? this power then can be beamed down via Microwaves?
LIKE THIS:
LIKE THIS:
'Clean' coal really is a myth - the only feasable way to make power generation from coal in any way environmentally friendly is using CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage). There are a few plants already around the world, and the USA was going to build one too, called FutureGen, but the DOE effectively pulled the plug on it a little over a month ago. An idiotic decision through and through, but from the present US Government it's hardly a surprising one.
Maybe we can find a way to harvest the energy produced by global whining.
If we could do that, we'd have an inexhaustible resource just in the Internet.
There are 14 Trillion barrels of recoverable oil around the world at this time. 470 year supply at present global consumption. The claim of "Peak Oil" has always been false. When price peaks soon after supply rises. America should be drilling for its own oil while working on alternative sources. Offshore, ANWAR,Shale... It is sound environmental policy as well. US standards are higher than just about any country we import from (including Canada). In terms of "carbon footprint" domestic supplied oil is between 20 and 40% better due to distance, energy required to obtain it, cracking plant efficiency and so forth.
Ethanol is a joke, the $40 billion sunk into this rat hole to date could have purchased enough Nuclear capacity to reduce foreign oil imports by 10%. (Heavy oil imports) Ethanol is best example of government/Congressional malfeasance to come along in a while. Who else but Washington would come up with a policy that provides "alternate energy" by burning more diesel and gas energy than it produces, and push up the price of corn and (due to land displacement) wheat 140% in the last couple of years.
The way out is nuclear/wind/micro hydro/passive solar for homes and buldings/high lipid algae/switch grass - cellulositc alchohol. That order. Solar electrical will never get around laws of physics - except perhaps geo-synch orbital. Hydrogen powered cars are a dead end when fossil fuel is used to produce this fuel. Hybrid tech will generally be a $9000.00 premium feel good gambit by auto companies until super batteries or the hyper capacitors used on Sulu's ship USS Excelsior appear.
That is why Excelsior is powered by He-3 using thermo-nuclear rings in its saucer section... Helium three is a proposal some years off. Our game is to survive as a civilization in order to get to Roddenberry's vision...
We use what we got. Let good old capitalism displace oil over time.
Pat Kean
Ethanol is a joke, the $40 billion sunk into this rat hole to date could have purchased enough Nuclear capacity to reduce foreign oil imports by 10%. (Heavy oil imports) Ethanol is best example of government/Congressional malfeasance to come along in a while. Who else but Washington would come up with a policy that provides "alternate energy" by burning more diesel and gas energy than it produces, and push up the price of corn and (due to land displacement) wheat 140% in the last couple of years.
The way out is nuclear/wind/micro hydro/passive solar for homes and buldings/high lipid algae/switch grass - cellulositc alchohol. That order. Solar electrical will never get around laws of physics - except perhaps geo-synch orbital. Hydrogen powered cars are a dead end when fossil fuel is used to produce this fuel. Hybrid tech will generally be a $9000.00 premium feel good gambit by auto companies until super batteries or the hyper capacitors used on Sulu's ship USS Excelsior appear.
That is why Excelsior is powered by He-3 using thermo-nuclear rings in its saucer section... Helium three is a proposal some years off. Our game is to survive as a civilization in order to get to Roddenberry's vision...
We use what we got. Let good old capitalism displace oil over time.
Pat Kean
Retrograde orbit? Like the idea. It also doesn't have to be a ring. Back in 1963, in a similar move as the DOE did with sequestered Co2 clean coal, the NOVA rocket program was cancelled. By 1976 we could have had heavy lift boosters in the 40 million pound thrust 425 Specific Impulse range able to put 600 metric tons into low Earth orbit. Today one could not get EPA clearance, and Friends of the Earth would picket you to death. The whimps are in control.
Major problems are magnetic interaction bringing the ring system into equalibrium by stopping it visa the Earth's spin and polarization.
Major problems are magnetic interaction bringing the ring system into equalibrium by stopping it visa the Earth's spin and polarization.
All Seeing Eye
Admiral
Even if the metal coils passing through the Earths magnetic field did slow them down the slow down would be only minuscule surely since theres not as much gravity, or no gravity? but if the slow down was indeed such a serious problem theres plenty of ways of keeping the ring orbiting, any form of propulsion for the ring would require less energy input then if it were on the surface of the Earth since there's not as much gravity, so even if we still utilised fuel such as liquid hydrogen propulsion to keep it spinning we'd get more power from the ring then what we put into it because the spin of the Earth requires no energy input from us, also we could utilise the Moons supply of Helium 3, the Earth would technically be pollution free and the ring would be clean energy since the exhaust fumes are in space.
But what if we have already used up all of the easy to extract, high quality oil? What happens when it takes more that a barrel of oil's worth of energy to get a barrel of oil out of the ground?
Peak oil is not about running out of oil. It's about oil getting harder to get out of the ground.
While I agree with your corn ethanol remarks, there may be several more ways forward with solar than commonly assumed...
Nanoantenna Solar panels/cells
http://www.inl.gov/featurestories/2007-12-17.shtml
this method is basically harvesting the energy from solar radiation directly, no funky solar panel silicon cell/doping issues to contend with, nor the thermodynamics efficency/heat engine losses associated with solar heating based technologies.
Which reveals the real problem: All the electrical energy you can get from this was originally chemical or nuclear energy in the rockets that launched the thing.
Ok I have a question, would it be possible to build a ring around the Earths equator in orbit that orbits at a different speed to the Earths spin that can harness electricity by coils passing through the Earth Magnetic field? this power then can be beamed down via Microwaves?
LIKE THIS:
If we put cogs on the ring too, and also put a similar but smaller cogged ring around the moon interconnecting with earths, I think that as well as utilising the earths magnetic energy we could also create a perpetual motion machine too.
In the Diagram below, think of the larger cog representing Earth, and the smaller cog representing the moon.
As we are working with magnetic fields, we would not need to give the initial strong push to set the perpetualness off...though if we did require an initial energy input we could always utilise the moons southern pole Hydrogen reserves to fuel this.
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SamuraiBlue is on to the game. Cash flow is why we're all still fossil fuel junkies and the "dealers" are in no hurry to change things, even as temperatures rise and oxygen level sensitive species (frogs) are dying off around the globe. There's not much noise in the media yet about us all suffocating from O2 depletion before we've burned anywhere near known fossil fuel reserves, especially in concert with things like continuing de-forestation in the Amazon, etc.
Fission - short term. Fusion - long term. That's how we'll crack water into free hydrogen and oxygen (and power de-salination plants as droughts increase) in a nice closed-loop fuel cycle so I can keep my 6.2 litre supercharged 'vette on the road - the boys and girls at BMW can already do the conversion in their sleep. (
never said I was full on greenie).
We better get cracking on the infrastructure swap over people - the clock's ticking nice and loud.
P.S. As per hydrogen storage concerns, things like metal hydride slurries will become a lot more workable once political will (ie. development cash) get behind them. As SamuraiBlue said - it's all about money. Technical mountains get spent into molehills as required (can anyone say "Manhattan Project"?). The right people just have to get scared into seeing who or what the "enemy" is.
Fission - short term. Fusion - long term. That's how we'll crack water into free hydrogen and oxygen (and power de-salination plants as droughts increase) in a nice closed-loop fuel cycle so I can keep my 6.2 litre supercharged 'vette on the road - the boys and girls at BMW can already do the conversion in their sleep. (
never said I was full on greenie).We better get cracking on the infrastructure swap over people - the clock's ticking nice and loud.
P.S. As per hydrogen storage concerns, things like metal hydride slurries will become a lot more workable once political will (ie. development cash) get behind them. As SamuraiBlue said - it's all about money. Technical mountains get spent into molehills as required (can anyone say "Manhattan Project"?). The right people just have to get scared into seeing who or what the "enemy" is.
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Well, we better get on it soon. The quicker we can get off of our dependence on foreign oil, political reliance on foreign dictators, and get rid of crooks in the White House the better.
Of course, if we keep putting things off eventually other countries will step up.
Of course, if we keep putting things off eventually other countries will step up.
All Seeing Eye
Admiral
I truly cannot believe that a species such as ours STILL rely on fossil fuels after all this time, I'm truly embarrassed for the human race. 
I truly cannot believe that a species such as ours STILL rely on fossil fuels after all this time, I'm truly embarrassed for the human race.
I find it sad to think that at this moment in time there is enough money and resources to feed everyone and explore the Solar System. Americans could have gone to Mars several times with the money they spent in Iraq.
