Hopelessly skipping microwave power plants because of rich Oil-Men

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Hopelessly skipping microwave power plants because of rich Oil-Men

My Imaginary GF: Jul 17, 2005; by R. Guyovich

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"

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.

How much fresh water could a microwave conceivably create per day of operation?

# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 03:47

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 06:54

My Imaginary GF: Jul 17, 2005; by R. Guyovich

Frykte posted:

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.

Well lets say you're microwaving the ocean off the west coast of California. Will it help solve this drought?

Also, how many 50 megaton nuclear warheads would it take to produce the same atmospheric humidity as one years' worth of microwave beam operation?

# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 03:55

My Imaginary GF: Jul 17, 2005; by R. Guyovich

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.

Could we attach a double pully to the tube, and synergize the core pillars?

# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 04:04

My Imaginary GF: Jul 17, 2005; by R. Guyovich

Palace of Hate posted:

theres too many magnetic field lines, air molecules, and delta velocities between us and that idiot

Could we maybe deploy some flaps and sail on the solar winds? It'd win the war on terrorism.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 04:12

My Imaginary GF: Jul 17, 2005; by R. Guyovich

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?

# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 04:15

My Imaginary GF: Jul 17, 2005; by R. Guyovich

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)

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.

exactly

Ivanpah also winds up burning a shitload of natural gas

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

# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 19:47

My Imaginary GF: Jul 17, 2005; by R. Guyovich

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!)
Pump water down, get steam, turbine it to electricity, make $$$s, ~~bribe~~fund politicians to tax the 'space microwave' businesses out of action, etc.
A man made volcano would be awesome!

What would happen if you blew up a nuke inside the caldera of a collapsed, live volcano?

# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 20:49

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 06:54

My Imaginary GF: Jul 17, 2005; by R. Guyovich

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.

Plus irradiation is permanent.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 23:08

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Hopelessly skipping microwave power plants because of rich Oil-Men