Well, unless you got your degree in light and energy applications, you are standing on an opinion. Technology is exponential, can you really say something is impossible these days? I never said we'd see this soon or anything.
Would it be more or less expensive and unreliable in the future?Seriously, solar power is expensive, unreliable
All the more reason to put forth new research into better methods.and electricity is not easily stored on a large scale so that it is usable at a later time - unless it comes out of the ground as a hydrocarbon, or you use the energy to pump water into a huge reservoir and take a huge hit in efficiency.
I dont wanna change the topic here, so thats all.
Have just one question, which I have asked before. If I want to buy a hummer and spend the money on the gas and ask no one to pay the tab; who the business is it but mine. Get a life all of you who are worried about how I spend my money. Okay?
Go back to worrying about Global Warming.
Well, they are trying. But the fact is that capacitance banks and superconducting magnetic storage are unreliable, expensive, and not of sufficient scale to store the amounts of energy required.All the more reason to put forth new research into better methods.
I actually scratched the surface on the superconducting storage idea while at A&M w/ my Mech. Eng. degree, BTW. It only has its current energy storage properties when cooled by liquid helium - pretty expensive. A lot of research is going into more inexpensive materials that can be cooled by liquid nitrogen, which is actually at a much higher relative temperature. But even at that, it doesn't compare to opening a valve on a natural gas pipeline or turning on a coal conveyor.
I am *sure* you have some proof to back that statement up...
Coal suffers from the same problems that oil does:
We are consuming it faster than it is being created.
AND
We have been consuming it for longer. The easy to find sources have been found and exploited, leading to the diminishing returns scenario that oil faces (more invested energy for each unit of energy, leading to less available per unit produced)
As I said, solar arrays in space have more than double the power production capacity than ground ones. The cost of getting them there adds a lot to the initial requirements, but I would point out they have almost no moving parts AND don't require any supporting infrastructure, such as new mines, and trasnportation systems (rail/roads/ships). Once sufficient orbital infrastructure is in place to use space mass (asteroids) instead of lifting it off the planet that (energy) cost almost vanishes.
Wind arrays are actually coming to be cost compe ive with coal, but that is with tax breaks. As time goes on, and the production of wind power benefits from the economies of scale that coal has benefitted from, it will surpass it.
RG is betting his meager IRA on that at least. :p
There was actually a very good article in National Geographic a few months ago... I don't agree with some of it, but you might check it out.I am *sure* you have some proof to back that statement up...
Exactly.
Cool. I am always interested in learning more about energy issues.
Nerd hobby.
(writes reminder to stop by student library after his icky pension fund accounting test)
Do you have any idea how much a shuttle launch costs (and when the next one is)? Best case, this would be put into orbit by rocket, which is still prohibitably expensive. It would be cheaper to make a light bulb that is powered by gold.As I said, solar arrays in space have more than double the power production capacity than ground ones. The cost of getting them there adds a lot to the initial requirements
Also, check out pictures of old spacecraft. Lots of crap (the asteroids you mentioned) hit the solar panels and do serious damage in a short amount of time.
Sorry about the snarky-ness. Usually people talk out their butts on stuff with little to back it up, but if you actually have read something on it, I can respect that.
Launch costs are no different from any other human endeavor in that they benefit from economies of scale.Do you have any idea how much a shuttle launch costs (and when the next one is)? Best case, this would be put into orbit by rocket, which is still prohibitably expensive. It would be cheaper to make a light bulb that is powered by gold.
Also, check out pictures of old spacecraft. Lots of crap (the asteroids you mentioned) hit the solar panels and do serious damage in a short amount of time.
I do indeed know that it costs something on the order of $9000 per pound to lift something into orbit. That will go down over time (in real terms) as we get better at putting things in orbit.
BUT
A good number of asteroids are almost pure metal in some cases. The amount of energy needed to nudge them into processing facilities already in orbit is negligible.
Think of it this way:
A ton of iron ore far removed from the source mine on earth before railroads was really expensive because it was difficult to mine and move. We just didn't have the technology.
Invest in the infrastructure for 20-100 years and it gets cheaper, and all benefit. Getting into space will involve similar processes with historical precedents.
It seems about as fantastic to us as descriptions of a new continent to the west seemed to dark age Europeans...
And on cloudy days you can draw off of the regular power grid. That might make things pointless in places like Seattle, but in San Antonio and damn near most of the country you get a good amount of days with sunlight.
People are starting to impliment this right now, but it isn't very cost prohibitive due to en ies like CPS requring insane amounts of insurance before they allow them on their grid.
A technical bit about what asteroids are thought to be made of.
http://www.permanent.com/ is a good resource for learning more about the science and potential business aspects of future space industry.
NASA is actually studying methods of space based power generation as well.
[QUOTE]Here's an good article that talks about the prohibitive cost of space exploration and how that cost inhibits exploration. This article talks about the possibility of putting material into orbit for $10.00 per pound. Quite interesting. It's led The Space Elevator.
http://www.unmuseum.org/spaceelevator.htm
[QUOTE=jochhejaam]It is a very interesting possibility, that has been making the rounds for a while.
Here's an good article that talks about the prohibitive cost of space exploration and how that cost inhibits exploration. This article talks about the possibility of putting material into orbit for $10.00 per pound. Quite interesting. It's led The Space Elevator.
http://www.unmuseum.org/spaceelevator.htm
My thoughts:
It requires some leaps in materials technology that require a LOT of R & D.
A much better idea is mass drivers, because this tech is already here and in use. Quite a few amusement park rides already use magnetic "drivers" to accelerate roller coasters very quickly.
Most of the cost of putting something into orbit is fuel. Payloads in rockets are dwarfed by the fuel tanks required for the rockets. You have to lift the payload, plus all the fuel required to get you to orbit.
A mass driver is basically a big gun that shoots stuff into space.
Since you don't have to spend the energy accelerating fuel to suborbital speeds the actual energy involved is much less.
you know texas could power the entire nation with solar energy?
the price for solar will go down greatly once the demand increases; the systems are becoming more and more reliable as the technologies improve greatly by the day. There are already a few buildings in this city that are powered by solar, the biggest example probably being the county jail.
And the thing with solar is that a huge commerical farm wouldnt be needed in order to produce the energy for the masses. You can also store the solar energy, whereas if you have a couple of cloudy days, you will have the reserves to power your dwelling. The main power grid is simply used as a backup...I'm not sure if you can 'sell' the power back to the city or not in San Antonio, although I know in some areas it can be done.
You can do it. CPS will buy back and your meter will actually roll backwards, but you need to have an incredible amount of insurance in order to do it. It isn't cost effective because of the CPS demands at this time.
I'm not trying to say that we should not use alternative energy. Yes, they are currently researching all of the previous items, some showing much more promise than others. But it is in NASA's best interest to provide the most optimistic, Buck Rogers-like description of their projects in order to provoke as much public interest to secure their funding.
Sure, Texas can power the entire US on a sunny day... as long as you don't get massive hailstorms that destroy millions of $$ worth of solar cells every other week in the spring and fall.
It has been figured that if solar effieciency is brought up to current production goals, 25% of the rooftops in the US could meet the current electrical needs on a sunny day nationwide. Sure, that is a good thing, and steps will be taken to move that way to supplement our energy supply and decrease demand. But a realistic energy policy will be to use a domestically available, easily transportable and storable engergy source locked up in the form of coal. It is still orders of magnitude cheaper than most of the alternatives to implement on a scale large enough to make a dent in the nation's power demand.
Barking up the wrong tree.
70+% of petroleum goes to transport, predominantly gasoline. So the biggest target is reducing gasoline consumption.
There should be an immediate $2/gal fed tax on gasoline, which is used to subsidize purchases of fuel cell cars. The subsidy helps offset the higher prices of first generation fuel-cell cars and the supporting infrastructure until economies of scale bring the production an operating costs down.
Infinintely better to put those $2 into fuel cell cars than into the pockets of the rapacious anti-American oilcos. The Repubs subsidize the oilcos, the Repubs are anti-American.
Am I supposed to get a bunch of fuel-cell tractors? Are you going to eat a fuel cell?
What do you do with the millions of worthless autos and bankrupt auto manufacturers?
FYI, coal can be turned into a fuel.
"Am I supposed to get a bunch of fuel-cell tractors?"
why not?
"Are you going to eat a fuel cell?"
does drinking petroleum or gasoline figure significantly in US petroleum consumption?
"What do you do with the millions of worthless autos"
recycling steel from autos is already big business. no change
"and bankrupt auto manufacturers?"
GM is already bankrupt, Chrysler was bailed out by the feds.
If they can't build what the market wants, em.
Don't take this the wrong way, but this is the way I see it and I've posted about it before.
The US military in the Persian Gulf region is directly related to gasoline consumption in this country. You can explain it any other way you want to, but the fact is if there were no oil under that sand, we wouldn't care 2 bits about the place.
Therefore, why isn't there a higher gasoline tax to pay for the military expenditures that are directly related to gasoline consumption? I don't think they need the tax to subdize anything but they should have the tax to pay for the service gasoline users get. And a gasoline would tax in proportion.
CPS' own studies - that they love to ignore - show that conservation can save just as much energy if not more than new measures can produce. But there is no backbone to seriously promote conservation as a means to free up energy.
conservation. If I want to use however much energy and pay the price then that's my choice.
Boutons, if you're willing to buy $20/lb ground beef, we'll talk. If not, you may actually want to see how farmers and ranchers are already being seriously crunched by increased fuel cost because it is responsible for producing their main income.
I'm not saying that I don't support alternative energy sources. But most people don't have any idea about how expensive it will be to replace hydrocarbon fuels, which are extremely convienient and have over a century's worth of infastructure dedicated to their dispersal.
Don't forget that the hydrogen to power your fuel cells comes from natural gas, not electolysis of water. The net energy consumption to get hydrogen from water is by the definition of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics a wasteful proposition. Basically, you will never get the amount of energy out that you put in. What kind of "energy source" is that?
"$20/lb ground beef"
beef agriculture is a huge sink of resources. 90% of the corn (which itself is a huge sink for chemical/petroleum fertlizer) goes to animals. cheap sugar from corn goes into sweeten every bite the food industry can stuff it into, contributing to obesity and related diseases, which are some the most expensive sinks of medical resources. but the beef/pork/chicken, agriculture, and food industries have purchased enough politicians to get what is best for them, not what is best for the people. aka government corrupted by special interests.
Most people have been getting a damn good idea from the gas/heating bills about how expensive it will be to continue burning hydrocarbon fuels. And it will only get worse, with ONLY the energy companies profiting. and with continued geo-political dependence of the USA on Muslim countries. 9/11 WTC and Iraq is directly connected to US dependence on ME oil. Tell me that dependence is "cheap". Afghanistan, Iraq, and the war of terror will cost USA 1000's of lives and T's of $. Tell me that's cheap, cheaper than serious conservation and de-coupling the USA from the ME.
Separating hydrogen from other elements takes energy, ie, the hydrogen is "charged up" with that energy, the energy that is released in fuel cells. Natural gas is not the only source of hydrogen.
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