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You had me up until you said Wind > Nuclear. lol It's not an advancement, it's much less effective and pretty useless if you compare the two.
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Apr 15, 2015 04:12
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Frykte posted:There's already a gigantic source of nuclear energy in space called The Sun. We can spend money creating more nuclear power plants or we can spend money grabbing all the free energy from the sun. ....you have to spend money to harness the power of the sun. Or did you think all the giant solar arrays in space and the giant microwave receiving dishes were going to be free, too? Oh, and the tons of research you need to do to even make this an effective system.
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Apr 15, 2015 04:14
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CommieGIR posted:....you have to spend money to harness the power of the sun. Or did you think all the giant solar arrays in space and the giant microwave receiving dishes were going to be free, too? Well, could we do anything to turn the moon into a weaponized microwave dish?
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Apr 15, 2015 04:15
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why has this thread not been goldmined as per my earlier request the ignorant are now soiling its beauty
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Apr 15, 2015 04:17
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My Imaginary GF posted:Well, could we do anything to turn the moon into a weaponized microwave dish? Considering the amount of energy you'd need to harvest to achieve his cited goal of 1,600 MW, chances are you wouldn't need to. Hell, just remember what a poorly thought out mirrored building in London did to some guys Jaguar: It started melting it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-23930675
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Apr 15, 2015 04:18
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CommieGIR posted:Considering the amount of energy you'd need to harvest to achieve his cited goal of 1,600 MW, chances are you wouldn't need to. if some lovely building mirrors can accidentally melt an entire expensive car, imagine what some high tech mirrors in orbit can do for our energy needs.
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Apr 15, 2015 04:20
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Luckyellow posted:You had me up until you said Wind > Nuclear. lol This thread has been all about the power plant progression in SimCity 2000 since about the first post. Sorry to ruin everyone else's fun but this was verging on being serious.
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Apr 15, 2015 04:21
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Frykte posted:if some lovely building mirrors can accidentally melt an entire expensive car, imagine what some high tech mirrors in orbit can do for our energy needs. We already do that, it called a solar concentration and the most powerful one is 344 MW and takes up more space than 4 nuclear plants. Ivanpah Solar Power Station: 344 MW @ 3,500 acres Sequoyah Nuclear Power Station: 2274 MW @ 525 acres. Hell, the world leader in Solar Concetrator power generation is Spain, and they still only top out at 2,204MW total for all the plants they have. That isn't even close to Sequoyah's total capacity. So what's the loving point?
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Apr 15, 2015 04:25
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CommieGIR posted:We already do that, it called a solar concentration and the most powerful one is 344 MW and takes up more space than 4 nuclear plants. Solar concentration is completely different from beaming down energy from a satellite.
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Apr 15, 2015 04:26
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Microwaves are too small for our power needs. We need to invest in macrowaves, like tidal generation.
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Apr 15, 2015 04:27
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Frykte posted:Solar concentration is completely different from beaming down energy from a satellite. Nice job moving the goal posts. Its not feasible compared to the perfectly viable systems we can already produce without any research. The solution you are arguing for still requires tons of research and even the current proofs of concept are nowhere near your stated goal of 1,600 MW. Tnega posted:Microwaves are too small for our power needs. We need to invest in macrowaves, like tidal generation. We need nanowaves. Small is bigger!
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Apr 15, 2015 04:28
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CommieGIR posted:Nice job moving the goal posts. Satellite + Tube/Big Metal Rod + receiver dish = free energy from the sun (durrr yeah the materials used to make this aren't free, durrr duhh I understand this) We have satellites, we can make big dishes are you telling me that a giant tube or a giant metal rod need tons of research??
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Apr 15, 2015 04:32
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Frykte posted:Satellite + Tube/Big Metal Rod + receiver dish = free energy from the sun (durrr yeah the materials used to make this aren't free, durrr duhh I understand this) I'm saying pouring MEGAWATTS of energy through the atmosphere is a terrible idea, regardless of giant metal rods or giant tubes. The current satellites in orbit generate maybe 400-500 watts on average for their payloads. Even the ISS generates only about 84 Kilowatts from its massive solar panels. You are wanting to generate Megawatts, and then pass those through an atmosphere. Ivanpah generates ~320 MW and covers THOUSANDS of acres. So to get to the scale you want to be at, we'd need an orbiting solar panel thousands of acres in size. Let's take Topaz Solar Farm in California, as they are a solar panel farm and not a solar thermal plant, which is what you are proposing with your microwave generating system. They are rated at 550 MW, commendable numbers to be sure. They utilize 9.5 MILES to do that. MILES. You know how much power you could generate if you had 9.5 miles of nuclear plants? C'mon man. A series of tubes or giant space needle is not going to be your biggest problem. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Apr 15, 2015 |
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Apr 15, 2015 04:38
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Lol.... I don't think that there are nuclear power plants orbiting the earth dude.
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Apr 15, 2015 04:48
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Frykte posted:Lol.... I don't think that there are nuclear power plants orbiting the earth dude. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAP-10A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_for_Nuclear_Auxiliary_Power#Even-numbered_SNAPs:_compact_nuclear_reactors The Curiosity Rover ring a bell? Voyager 1 and 2? Pioneer series?
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Apr 15, 2015 04:49
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CommieGIR posted:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAP-10A These are not lasering the generated energy back to the planet. They aren't so much power plants as they are resource removers. You say that 10 miles of nuclear plants orbiting the earth is a good thing for us to work on, but if they're orbiting then they're going to have to laser the nuclear power back to earth anyways.
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Apr 15, 2015 04:53
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Frykte posted:These are not lasering the generated energy back to the planet. They aren't so much power plants as they are resource removers. You say that 10 miles of nuclear plants orbiting the earth is a good thing for us to work on, but if they're orbiting then they're going to have to laser the nuclear power back to earth anyways.  Wow, if that is all you took away from what I said, its safe to say your microwave energy project is never getting of the ground anyways. Congrats.
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Apr 15, 2015 04:54
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Frykte posted:durrr
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Apr 15, 2015 04:55
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Frykte posted:durrr duhh
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Apr 15, 2015 04:55
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Frykte posted:Satellite + Tube/Big Metal Rod + receiver durrr duhh E:gently caress
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Apr 15, 2015 04:56
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Palace of Hate posted:E:gently caress Its a series of tubes! 
CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Apr 15, 2015 |
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Apr 15, 2015 04:58
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You guys are so stupid. Clearly, you send a giant rechargeable battery to space, charge it, and bring it back down to earth. Then you swap it out like a Tesla.
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Apr 15, 2015 05:47
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I think a pretty legit strategy is building coal plants in the shape of a dick so the pollution looks pretty bbc'y
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Apr 15, 2015 07:25
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Frykte posted:If there are any fusion goons here, I'd love to hear your take on fusion power plants. What, if anything, can we do about this?? I'm currently working in this field, what exactly do you want to know? Working power plants are a long way off, although a functioning prototype (the DEMO reactor) is the next phase of development after ITER. Current timescales put DEMO at around 15-20 years after ITER begins operation (which should happen within a few years). Notional plants maybe 10-15 years after that. Not the most hopeful timescale, it's true, but speaking with a decent knowledge of the current state of the field, it is likely to actually happen.
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Apr 15, 2015 13:46
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I feel OP would have received a lot more support if they left the microwave garbage behind and flat out admitted they want an orbital ion cannon. Who doesn't love ion cannons, they rock.
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Apr 15, 2015 13:52
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Frykte posted:if some lovely building mirrors can accidentally melt an entire expensive car, imagine what some high tech mirrors in orbit can do for our energy needs. Melt them? Seriously, though, you drastically underestimate how expensive and difficult it is to put large things in space, drastically overestimate how much power a satellite with some big solar panels on it produces, and appear to think that lasering the energy through the atmosphere is safe, easy, efficient, and worth the massive costs involved. To put things in perspective, the entire world used 22,126,000,000 MWh of electricity in 2011, and that's not even counting energy consumption from other non-electrical sources such as the gasoline in your car's tank. 1600MW (which is a loving absurd bullshit number you'd probably need a solar panel the size of Wyoming for) is a drop in the bucket.
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Apr 15, 2015 15:53
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I don't see the big issue here. Just go into the map editor, build a big hill and place a bunch of waterfalls. Bam, you've got a base for clean, modular, indestructible hydro dams
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Apr 15, 2015 16:20
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Just wait until we unlock mega waves - our TV dinners will be ready in a fraction of it's current time!
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Apr 15, 2015 16:44
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Gavrilo Princip posted:I'm currently working in this field, what exactly do you want to know? Working power plants are a long way off, although a functioning prototype (the DEMO reactor) is the next phase of development after ITER. Current timescales put DEMO at around 15-20 years after ITER begins operation (which should happen within a few years). Notional plants maybe 10-15 years after that. Not the most hopeful timescale, it's true, but speaking with a decent knowledge of the current state of the field, it is likely to actually happen. I'm working in the nuclear fuels world, I do molten thorium salts! Woo!
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Apr 15, 2015 16:52
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Trochanter posted:I don't see the big issue here. Just go into the map editor, build a big hill and place a bunch of waterfalls. Bam, you've got a base for clean, modular, indestructible hydro dams dammit I was just about to post this I do like the space cable made of crystals though 
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Apr 15, 2015 17:16
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Each solar array on the International Space Station can generate a maximum of about 32KW. Each solar array has a mass of 15,824 kg. (source) For the purposes of simple math, we'll say that we can get about 2KW per metric ton of solar array. A good-sized power plant's electrical output is often at least several hundred megawatts, if not several gigawatts. 1GW is a good round number. So about 500 metric tons, or 500,000kg of solar arrays (not counting microwave rectenna, or thrusters to keep the satellite in position, or any of the other structure that would be necessary). Assuming we use the not-yet-built Falcon Heavy rocket, and assuming a projected payload cost of $1,000/lb, or roughly $2,200/kg (and that's generously assuming SpaceX gets everything right with their plans for reusability), it would cost about $1.1 billion dollars just to lift the solar arrays to orbit. But wait, it gets a lot worse. Because that's the cost to low Earth orbit, or LEO, where our bigger-than-the-entire-ISS satellite would be whizzing around the planet once every 90 minutes or so. That's not really suitable for power generation; we need to get it to a much higher orbit, which is much costlier. The projected maximum payload for Falcon Heavy is 53 metric tons to LEO, but only 19 metric tons to a geostationary transfer orbit! We'll be generous again and assume that this ratio applies to the final payload to geostationary orbit itself. This effectively raises our launch cost by a factor of at least 2.8, meaning it would cost about 3.1 billion dollars - again, this is only to lift the mass of the solar arrays into orbit. This doesn't cover actually building a modular solar array satellite bigger than the International Space Station, nor does it cover building the receiving antenna or power infrastructure on the ground. Better hope you can design it to be remotely assembled without a human presence, because manned missions will rapidly inflate your costs too. Additionally, you're not going to get 100% efficiency from transmission either, meaning that your 1GW maximum solar array will not translate to 1GW of electricity on the ground. Palace of Hate posted:we could just build like 100 nuclear power plants instead of this stupid rear end bullshit exactly CommieGIR posted:We already do that, it called a solar concentration and the most powerful one is 344 MW and takes up more space than 4 nuclear plants. Ivanpah also winds up burning a shitload of natural gas
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Apr 15, 2015 17:20
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Gavrilo Princip posted:I'm currently working in this field, what exactly do you want to know? Working power plants are a long way off, although a functioning prototype (the DEMO reactor) is the next phase of development after ITER. Current timescales put DEMO at around 15-20 years after ITER begins operation (which should happen within a few years). Notional plants maybe 10-15 years after that. Not the most hopeful timescale, it's true, but speaking with a decent knowledge of the current state of the field, it is likely to actually happen. bah, Lockheed martin say they going to have one in two and half years! As far as I can tell no one other than Lockheed martin thinks this.
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Apr 15, 2015 17:56
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Instead of microwaves, let's build a series giant mattresses in the desert that can transfer kinetic energy to electrical energy and just chuck asteroids at them. This seems much more feasible. Free energy and precious metals.
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Apr 15, 2015 18:01
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Lightnings like pure energy. Can't we just get everyone to walk around any near by open fields with a lightning rod connected to a bunch of batteries. It would be like natures lottery. Get struck by lightning, free electricity for a year!
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Apr 15, 2015 18:13
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dr_rat posted:bah, Lockheed martin say they going to have one in two and half years! Lockheed Martin hasn't released any actual data yet either, which makes it all the more dubious. Don't get me wrong: If it works, it could be amazing. But we need data to support it and a public review.
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Apr 15, 2015 19:21
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Each solar array on the International Space Station can generate a maximum of about 32KW. Each solar array has a mass of 15,824 kg. (source) Could we, say, construct a graphene space windmill to harvest the energy of the solar winds? Theoretically, of course.
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Apr 15, 2015 19:47
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Can the military underwrite this? One man's accidental catastrophic alignment failure is another man's carefully aimed orbital death ray. And since it's for civilian power generation, it doesn't count as weaponizing space.
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Apr 15, 2015 19:57
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Easier to go down - dig tunnels through the earths crust (I mean, it's only like 20 or so miles. We've built tunnels longer than that!) Pump water down, get steam, turbine it to electricity, make $$$s, A man made volcano would be awesome!
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Apr 15, 2015 20:15
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Why don't we take the poor and put them into self contained pods which harvest their electrical energy and place their minds into a simulation of earth. We reduce demand while increasing supply. It can't fail.
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Apr 15, 2015 20:44
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OzyMandrill posted:Easier to go down - dig tunnels through the earths crust (I mean, it's only like 20 or so miles. We've built tunnels longer than that!) What would happen if you blew up a nuke inside the caldera of a collapsed, live volcano?
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Apr 15, 2015 20:49
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