General Discussion

[Strangesam]

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fenian wrote:

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ProjectVRD wrote:

You also have no way of winning this debate and as such have resorted to repeating your own idea and even have the audacity to say that I agree with you

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I cant win because you keep saying I said stuff that I did not, youre implying I said stuff that I did not, so youre the one with the audacity, the one that isnt being serious.

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No-one can win because it's not a fully thought out idea yet, it's just a mere idea.

[Chuk_Chuk]

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fenian wrote:

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Chuk_Chuk wrote: 

The first 2 project answered too.

Does need to only be used by 1 country. Fair enough there is probably a time between america shifting to night and japan/australia shifting to day but that period of time is about 2, 3 hours at most 

 The moon is never over america for an equal period of time during the day or australia, but the fact is, that the moon wont be over us when we need the electricity for the most of the time, so we will NEED TO BUILD PLANTS TO SUPPLY POWER WHEN ITS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PLANET.

Is asutralia going to email us the power they get? so we have power plants for when its not around, they supply a surplus when it is around, great, trillion well spent.

Actually sort of yeah, considering we have under sea cables that transmit data/for the internet. There would be problems but laying under sea cable to channel electricty accross the globe but it isn't impossible. There would obviously be the problems of if they break and electrifying the entire ocean.

You would most likely mess up the earths weather system with an increase in water moisture being sent into the atmospehere due to being evaporated. You would also increase the temperature of the sea and possibly kill of creatures in the sea.

What are you talking about? aiming it at cities is fine, but aiming at the sea will kill sea creatures? its a microwave beam, it would be aimed at a collection facility in the sea, it would kill no animals.

If you read my earlier post you would notice that i said wide expansive space free of life forms would be needed (refering to deserts). This isn't going to work like a laser beam this is going to be spread over a large area of space. You would need at least 1km^2 of open land because that is roughly the area that the microwave would be spread over possibly more. Hence my post talking about water being evaporated.

The internation space station only produces 130.4 kW in total. If we say that a satellite made purely for producing energy generates 260kw you would still need 50,000,000 satellite in orbit to produce the same as the moon. Fair enough we may not need that many but we will need hefty amount of them which would come to the space issue mentioned in my previous post but also surely it would cast a shadow on the earths surface.

The UK does not need a trillion dollar power plant, The UK does not use all the oil in the world, smaller ones could be built over each country, Ireland does not need such vast power supplies as the whole moon, a smaller sat in orbit over ireland supplying power to ireland when it needs the power is all thats needed. If it needs nightime power a sat could be built over china and shoot microwave at our sat during the night and we pay china for it.

If you packed satellites with the same area as the international space station directly over the UK (243,610km^2) and they could produce 260kW of energy each you would only be able to produce 8MJ. The UK has enough nuclear power station to produce 10-11 GW and this isn't even it's main energy production.

That is if you packed them like you where playing tetris. My previous post above was wrong you would want at least 400m (being generous, I personally would say 1km) or so between each satellite, since they would be travelling at around 3.07km/s (speed of geostationary orbit geo sync would be around the same). this should be enough to correct any deviation in trajectory that could/would bring down your entire power plant crashing into the country it was above. 

So it would be smaller, and because it is not constrained by having to be built on ground, it could could be built in 3d to minimise any shadow cast.

By 3D do you mean multiple panels along a certain axis because that would cause shadows to be casted on it self or do you mean somthing else.

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Its quite simply an idiotic idea.

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[ProjectVRD]

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fenian wrote:

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ProjectVRD wrote:

You also have no way of winning this debate and as such have resorted to repeating your own idea and even have the audacity to say that I agree with you

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I cant win because you keep saying I said stuff that I did not, youre implying I said stuff that I did not, so youre the one with the audacity, the one that isnt being serious.

Re-read what I have writing.

I mentioned lots of points and without giving me one reason I was wrong, you said companies wouldnt allow it to be used as a weapon although technically it could? Chinese oil companies and china wouldnt want to start a war over it because their oil isnt making as much? they wouldnt hack it to use it as a weapon or destroy it becuase you say companies will be cool?

Technicality and reality are too different things although they cross borders. I said countries wouldn't use it as a weapon because the companies would run it and a nation wouldn't try to do otherwise because the other nations would all rise up against them for sabotaging what is a globally available resource of direct energy.

idiotic and not a serious response to my question, companies do nothing but start wars over energy.

Nations start war over cheaper energy, companies are there to reap profit. There is no profit to be made from such a war if that nation upon war is declared is already your customer.

I NEVER SAID ANYTHING ABOUT MICROWAVES OR THAT THEY WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO TRANSFER THE ENERGY, I SAID THE OPPOSITE THAT WE COULD BUILD SATS AS FAR OUT AS WE LIKED BECAUSE MICROWAVES COULD SEND THE ENERGY BACK TO US, WHERE DID I SAY ANYTHING OTHER THAN THAT?

This is the only part of this post that really matters, the entire idea of the Moon proposal is that the energy is beamed back with Microwaves. So anything you say about the energy  being delivered is no feasible is to say you are against the idea of Microwaves being used and how that would actually work. It is right there in post one of this entire thread. First you said the Moon is not out in the day, and then said it would be low on horizon and thus lose energy. I said Moon even if on the other side of the planet would not matter because the maser beam would use other satalites anyway before reaching the ground and maser beams would be thin enough to hit the receptor no matter the angle on the horizon, suffering extremely minor loss.

You on the other hand did say they would need to be in low orbit and would fall out of the sky, thats an idiotic statement that cant be taken serious.

I said if in low orbit, or medium orbit, geostationary orbit they are at the mercy of clutter and would need fuel anyway to maintain that orbit. Orbital physics 101, they teach it year one in comprehensive school.

You have no way to win the argument, because your whole plan needs sats for it to give us power when we need it, so all your arguments agains my sat system become void, your system needs them too.

It only needs relay satalites, it doesn't need a whole plethora of satalites, or army of satalites more like it, that would be required to make enough energy to make the orbital proposal worthwhile. How many would be needed for one city like New York using an orbital version?!

So we are looking at a very few number for the Moon proposal... and how many exactly for the orbital proposal?

Its the dumbest idea in the history of man, and thats why it will never happen. Only someone who believes everything they see on tv would believe it was a good idea.

I would probably say that the Arian Race thing was a dumber idea, but then again we don't think alike.

Youre full of rubbish, nothing you have said makes any sort of economic sense, and you have resorted to twisting my words into stuff I didnt even say.

I would propose you twisted your own words as well mine.

1. the moon is only ever half in light at maximum, only 49% of the solar panels will ever be on at once, and sometimes they will all be off.
2. we will need to build a sat system to beam the energy back, otherwise we wont have it at peak times, either way we need a sat system, my way would simply make the sat system generate the power.
3. Companies and countries will go to war over control of it
4. we will still need power plants
5. we will need some sort of way to store massive ammounts of energy on earth or a lot of the capcity will be wasted anyway.

1, 2, 3 are just one sentence versions of what has already been discussed. Point 4 is something I have already said would happen. Point 5... welcome to the world of energy production since Edison created the world first DC power station in New York, that is not breaking news. America users an energy storage facility that it used for it's laser fusion project that stores more than the total output of the United States of America, 500 terrawatts in fact.

So now go on, keep twisting my words.

I don't need to. Somebody is doing a fine job already.

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[dannyjt]

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fenian wrote:

If I was going to give a tirllion dollars to someone, it would be the guy who put forward plans to make the enterprise, complete with ability to go to mars in 90 days, and gravity, and lasers. Not for a powerpant that does not meet our needs and could be used as a weapon against us.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47396187/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.T7OUuuvUOSo

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Send that trillion dollars to me. I'll speak to a few of my contacts and we'll have one up and running within the year.

[Moghal2007]

Interesting idea but doubt it will go into development

[fenian]

[Warren_Jeeves]

I like The Dark Side Of The Moon, one of the best albums ever made but I do prefer Wish You Were Here.

[ProjectVRD]

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fenian wrote:

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Poorly thoughtout, out of curiosity... will this orbital army of powerstations required for useful power output be manned?

Requirement to achieve the 500 million solar panels. Earth blue, orbital power stations grey.

Fairly up to date map of current space congestion around planet earth

Supposing the laws of physics have indeed changed, there is over 100,000 pieces up there after China missle test by the time we get the power stations in orbit.

[LordRoss]

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ProjectVRD wrote:

Fairly up to date map of current space congestion around planet earth

Supposing the laws of physics have indeed changed, there is over 100,000 pieces up there after China missle test by the time we get the power stations in orbit.

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I'm fairly sure some company (I think in Sweden) are raising money to launch a mission to clean the space garbage around Earth.  Should take care of some of that clutter at least.

As for the debate in question.  To be honest I can actually see both sides of the argument.  Or at least I think I can.

From what I can make out it's pretty much this.

Project's theory:  MOON POWER > Sat > Earth

Fenian: Sat Power > Earth

What seems to be getting lost in the debate is how many sat's are needed to make power and beam to Earth and how many sats are required to relay power from moon to Earth.  Obviously being more specfic (although kinda hard due to it all being hypothetical) will enable you both to see the logistics and costs easier.

Don't forget lads, having a debate is great for the mind however don't get caught up in your own point of view, try and be as open minded as you can and at least try and see where the other person is coming from. 

Doing this should allow you to focus on explaining certain parts of your debate that you feel the other person doesn't quite understand.  Otherwise you are just bouncing the same arguments off without actually listening to one another.

Although this is text based and not vocal, I will use a quote from the Sharpe program that I rather like (and thus rememebered).  We have two ears, but only one mouth; so a good leader will listen twice as much as he shouts.

I'm sure there is some sorta relevance you can take from that quote anyway lol

Sorry for waffling, back on topic.  Do we even need to go into space for power in first place? Is there nothing else that can be sorted down here on Earth?  Perhaps something involving the oceans, like erm...maybe dumping something (I dunno what) down deep under the sea and the pressure creates some sorta energy.  I'm making this all up but it sounds good in my head.

[ProjectVRD]

Ocean power would be a powerful tool for creating energy, moving bodies of water contain immense amounts of energy and as such other forms of water based technology are most powerful power plants on the planet.

The Three Gorges Dam is produces the most energy of any power plant created by man today, 18,000MW. By comparison the biggest energy producing Nuclear Power Plant was the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Plant which produced a total of 8,212MW.

There are five Gyres in the world's oceans that we know about, these are immensely huge circular rotating streams of water. Two are in the Atlantic, two in the Pacific and one in the Southern Ocean... there might another in the Indian Ocean but can't remember. The water is constantly moving in these gyres they can be used to rotate the blades of many massive rotars moored from the ocean floor, producing huge amounts of energy.

The are plenty of other good sources of energy as well such as self-feeding Nuclear plants which use better materials that Plutonium and Uranium, in that they emit less dangerous particle's when spent but also more of the energy inside the material can be used for energy production. The drop off of efficiency in the two main forms of radioactive material is quite drastic. Thorium is a great alternative.

The holy grail as far as touching distance technology is concerned is without a doubt Fusion technology, reportedly more efficient than moving bodies of water if proven to work. The Plasma Torus design is always 50 years away no matter when you ask how long until we get it working properly. However the Laser Hydrogen Pellet variant is showing massive promise and could result in a working prototype which returns more energy than what is put in before the next 50 years. Subsequent tests keep producing better and better results, the first instance of positive gain might be as little as 5 years away according to the VIPER team members (part of ITER).

We could also put all those scroungers who refuse to work back in to work by making them walk in a giant wheel much like the ones we put in the cages for our Gerbils, as they walk the wheel turns and thus runs into a dyno and generates electric. If they refuse to contribute 7.5 hours of electrical generation per day for 5 days during the 9-5 peak time, we cut all their benefits. Imagine how much electric can be generated by the 1,000,000 shirkers out there, at least they would stay reasonably fit and could even work from home!! It's like national service for the lazy, but without training them to fight.

I personally believe using the lazy to produce energy is the best idea regarding the energy production, it would annoy the hell out of those who can't work because they feel stepped on a nail or some other rubbish like that.