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Coal -> Hydro -> Oil -> Natural Gas -> Nuclear -> Wind -> Solar -> MICROWAVE -> Fusion. It seems to me like we're skipping a very important part of technology. Because of the rich wealthy classes wanting to get the most out of their oil dollars they're sabotaging things like the electric car, and skipping straight to fusion energy even though we already have the technology to easily put satellites into orbit around the planet. This is most likely a stalling strategy by the power classes that are in control. I don't know much about fusion power but from what I've read, even though we're making progress it's still a long way off. At the current time in our species tech tree it makes more sense to put satellites into orbit that will then beam the suns energy back to earth to a microwave power plant. It is both economically viable and the dividends will be huge on this technology's stocks. The big problem though is that the central bankers already know about this. They're choosing to skip this part of the technology tree because the sooner we have alternatives to oil, the sooner their oil dollars will plummet. 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??
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Apr 15, 2015 00:00
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de_dust posted:Uh what about when the beam misses the massive dish smart guy? Especially after you defunded the FD to afford the thing?! The odds of this happening are astronomical and not worth worrying about in my opinion. Nice big intelligent looking graph Palace of Hate, mind telling us plebeians what exactly it means??
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Apr 15, 2015 01:11
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Palace of Hate posted:it means it won't work for the same reason your satellite tv goes out when it's raining. also the same reason that your food gets hot when you microwave it. basically you would just be microwaving the atmosphere with somewhere between 100-10000x of the power you recover at the ground "power station" Before you fire the energy laser break the atmospheric pressure with a large metal rod like breaking the water with a cannonball before diving in.
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Apr 15, 2015 01:35
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Keep in mind that once the satellite is in orbit, it will be able to power itself and send out drones to create these large metal rods. Another solution to the problem is similar to a space elevator: A large tube that runs from the satellite back to earth. If the inside of the tube is made out of mirror or even possibly crystals the satellite will be able to beam energy past the atmosphere. The energy tube doesn't even need to extend all the way back to earth, only past the atmosphere. If we can build an elevator to space then this will be extremely easy.
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Apr 15, 2015 02:19
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Hitlers Gay Secret posted:Or instead of doing any of that gay poo poo, we just skip microwave power and go onto fusion energy. This would be a good idea if we knew how close fusion energy is. It could be a month, it could be a century! We're going to eventually be constructing a giant space platform that covers large parts of the earth eventually anyways so it's not like we're going to be wasting our microwave power plant investment. If we discover fusion power during the microwave investments, we can just recycle the microwave satellites to do something else.
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Apr 15, 2015 02:24
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My Imaginary GF posted:Sounds like a great way to experiment with terraforming. What I'm picturing are platforms dotting the Indian ocean, to turn the Nejd wet and restore the cedars of lebanon. From what I've read microwave power plants can output as much as 1,600 megawatts. I'm not sure how much fresh water that translates into. edit: My source is a little out-dated I imagine that if scientists actually started working out the kinks it could produce much more than 1,600.
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Apr 15, 2015 03:52
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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.
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Apr 15, 2015 03:59
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CommieGIR posted:Or, and this is a big one, we could build an nuclear power plant with equivalent output and not even bother with record shattering massive metal rods and giant tubes. 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.
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Apr 15, 2015 04:04
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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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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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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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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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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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Main Paineframe posted:Melt them? 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. 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. 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.
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Apr 15, 2015 21:12
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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? Yeah you better call my 3rd grade teacher and tell her to change my A+ grade for my report about ants based entirely on Sim Ant because video games can't possibly be scientifically accurate, right? 
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Apr 21, 2015 22:25
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Pope Guilty posted:Did people not actually get that this was a SimCity 2000 thing from the first post? The authors of the SimCity 2000 instruction manual used solid peer reviewed scientific research for the sections on water systems and power plants. Nobody in this thread has actually refuted using a tube to get microwave energy past the atmosphere.
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Apr 22, 2015 07:44
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