Main Paineframe posted:

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.

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.

JohnGalt posted:

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.

Frykte posted:

I dunno where you're getting your figures from but all my research papers (can't link them they're behind an extremely expensive pay wall that you can't afford) estimate that a single microwave power plant will cost approx. 28,000$ dollars and output 1,600MW. Again, this is out of date so I expect that the real cost will be lower by now.

Frykte posted:

How safe are they? In spider-man 2 the miniature sun they create gets out of control and I think Dr. Octopus has to sacrifice himself to stop it from growing and destroying the planet. Are fusion reactors more or less dangerous than nuclear? Would you say an out of control fusion reaction is more or less likely than the microwave energy tube breaking/bending?? Thanks.

CommieGIR posted:

BULLSHIT. Bullshit. Bullshit.

GameFAQs for SimCity2000 posted:

-MICROWAVE POWER-

Date Available: 2020
Output in Megawatts: 1,600
Cost: $28,000

An orbiting satellite around the Sun collects solar energy. It then
beams it back down to the plant, harnessing it and making it usable to
the public. That is how microwave power works. But there are occasions
where the beam misses and hits the neighborhood instead, torching it
and destroying the plant, not to mention cutting off power to everyone.
This is what could happen to you and your city if you play with
disasters enabled. But is also very inexpensive, while not looking like
that at first glance. It only costs $17.50 per megawatt of power; you
can compare that to the $40 that gas power costs. It is also very, very
clean, producing no pollution whatsoever. Microwave power is a good
idea for huge cities with gigantic power needs, and very little space,
but have a large cash reserve.

Frykte posted:

I dunno where you're getting your figures from but all my research papers (can't link them they're behind an extremely expensive pay wall that you can't afford) estimate that a single microwave power plant will cost approx. 28,000$ dollars and output 1,600MW. Again, this is out of date so I expect that the real cost will be lower by now.


How safe are they? In spider-man 2 the miniature sun they create gets out of control and I think Dr. Octopus has to sacrifice himself to stop it from growing and destroying the planet. Are fusion reactors more or less dangerous than nuclear? Would you say an out of control fusion reaction is more or less likely than the microwave energy tube breaking/bending?? Thanks.

Frykte posted:

I dunno where you're getting your figures from but all my research papers (can't link them they're behind an extremely expensive pay wall that you can't afford) estimate that a single microwave power plant will cost approx. 28,000$ dollars and output 1,600MW. Again, this is out of date so I expect that the real cost will be lower by now.


How safe are they? In spider-man 2 the miniature sun they create gets out of control and I think Dr. Octopus has to sacrifice himself to stop it from growing and destroying the planet. Are fusion reactors more or less dangerous than nuclear? Would you say an out of control fusion reaction is more or less likely than the microwave energy tube breaking/bending?? Thanks.

Cantorsdust posted:

Cantorsdust posted:

Frykte posted:

Read the entire thread before replying please. It won't hurt the atmosphere because it's either going through a tube for the length of the atmosphere, or a metal rod will make a path for the microwaves.

Frykte posted:

I dunno where you're getting your figures from but all my research papers (can't link them they're behind an extremely expensive pay wall that you can't afford) estimate that a single microwave power plant will cost approx. 28,000$ dollars and output 1,600MW. Again, this is out of date so I expect that the real cost will be lower by now.

Zodium posted:

If you can't identify trolling by a statement like this, you are basically braindead.

Zeitgueist posted:

I thought people figure it out by the first post

Woolie Wool posted:

Wait, you're going to build a loving space elevator and all you're going to do with it is use your bullshit energy generation technology from SImCity 2000?

BTW, the materials required to make a space elevator don't exist and may never exist. It ain't gonna be metal either.

Also if your 35,785-kilometer bullwhip to the heavens breaks, what's going to happen to the earth?

E: Oh wow he really did take this straight from SimCity 2000.

CommieGIR posted:

Debate and Discussion.

blowfish posted:

...but if we take this obvious troll seriously, and then debunk his position, we will have accomplished...

Pope Guilty posted:

Did people not actually get that this was a SimCity 2000 thing from the first post?

CommieGIR posted:

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.

Phobophilia posted:

I support this endeavour OP because it can be easily repurposed into a death ray to vapourise poor brown people.

Pope Guilty posted:

That's the neutron bomb, jeez

Phobophilia posted:

Ah, but can you neutron bomb people from orbit? I think not sir.

My Imaginary GF posted:

Could we, say, construct a graphene space windmill to harvest the energy of the solar winds? Theoretically, of course.

Phobophilia posted:

You just need to drop a space anchor on earth from orbit.

blowfish posted:

great now we're spinning the earth

JohnGalt posted:

Put sails and a rudder on earth, turning it into a giant spaceship?

Now this is something I can get behind.

Sheng-ji Yang posted:

Click this thread for one weird trick to generate energy the central bankers don't want you to know about

Scrub-Niggurath posted:

So im envisioning the space weapon system from cod ghosts except instead of tungsten rods it shoots energy down instead

Farmer Crack-rear end posted:

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.