Does anybody else see a problem here? But I know the republicon solution. Teach the 10 commandments in school! 😂🤣
https://www.livescience.com/space/space-exploration/china-plans-to-build-enormous-solar-array-in-space-and-it-could-collect-more-energy-in-a-year-than-all-the-oil-on-earth
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@lednaBM
If we had only listened to Jimmy Carter. That's all I'm saying.
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@Sfwmson The fossil fuel criminal empire knew about the problem well before Carter, but didn't care then and don't care now.... can't you just smell the next American Primeval.
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@lednaBM
I hope they pull it off.
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@jawarajabbi Ummmm.... yeah, no thanks. The damage to the environment is incalculable at this point. I did know an old navy guy who told me once about the guys who had to clean dead birds out of the radar dishes on the aircraft carriers...🤣😂🤣😂🤣🥳
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@lednaBM
Maybe I misunderstood. Isn't this a major move away from fossil fuels?
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@jawarajabbi @lednaBM Yes and no.
There were studies in the 70's about doing this. The answer ( as I remember ) was yes, it would work OK but the expense and complications make it too expensive for what it's worth.
Dead birds are not a problem with it unless they want dead birds.
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@Jestbill
China aiming high energy laser or microwave beam (I don't see any other way of moving that energy from orbit to earth) to some "small" spot somewhere in chinas desert.
"The beam moved few (thousands) kilometers, we are really sorry for all that fires it created."
@jawarajabbi @lednaBM
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@FandaSin @Jestbill @jawarajabbi As an electrical engineer, I can tell you such a thing is possible; however, it's like nuclear power for generating electricity. Can you do it? Yes. Do you want to do it? No.
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@lednaBM @FandaSin @Jestbill
Oh interesting! So blow up the satellite infrastructure if it fails type stuff. Yeah what could go wrong?
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@lednaBM @FandaSin @Jestbill @jawarajabbi it's like creating a pro lem to solve because the solution is 'cool'.
Why not solar arrays in the Gobi? Wires. Why even?
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@rightsprung @FandaSin @Jestbill @jawarajabbi
Anything we do has environmental consequences. That has to be recognized in any solutions.
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@lednaBM @FandaSin @Jestbill @jawarajabbi yes exactly
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@rightsprung @lednaBM @FandaSin @Jestbill @jawarajabbi@mastodon.online
Just to provide some important context, solar arrays in space are something that has been talked about since the 1970s. It is a good solution to a number of problems -- including one which was never mentioned (that I saw) until recently, which is the need for some way to keep dust off the panels (often using significant quantities of water).
The microwaves by which the power is beamed back to earth are, in theory, confined almost entirely to the area of the receiver. ("In theory" sounds like a weasel-phrase here -- but keep in mind that the more microwaves that go outside the receiver, the more energy is being wasted and therefore isn't sellable. Capitalists have been known to care about that, even if for the wrong reasons, and even the Chinese government is going to want to have the best return on resource investment.)
I remember discussions of the environmental impact which suggested that any birds who happened to fly through the beam would get a little warm, but not substantially harmed. If the heat was unpleasant, they would presumably learn to avoid the area.
If the Chinese plan has some numbers attached to it -- megawattage and receiver area -- then it would be easy enough to figure out if this is a reasonable prediction.
So, that's a thing to look into. Despite all the power, the density should not be high enough to be a serious danger even if safety-systems don't cut in should the beam drift off-target.
...and safety-feedback loops were part of any design I ever saw: the beam cuts off cold if ground sensors don't continually report that everything is ok, which can be checked several ways (including "are we still getting at least x% of expected power" as well as sensors right outside the receiver).
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@woozle @rightsprung @FandaSin @Jestbill 😉
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@woozle
What they can do with energy, in case it is not transfered to earth?
I mean it like - producing MW (or even GW) of energy and something moves the beam, it have to stop transfering that energy to earth (even for few seconds) and the energy have to go somewhere.
Sorry, I am curious.🤦😆
https://www.anker.com/eu-en/blogs/balcony-power-plant-with-storage/what-happens-if-pv-modules-are-not-connected
@rightsprung @lednaBM @Jestbill
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@FandaSin @rightsprung @lednaBM @Jestbill
My understanding is that it doesn't have to go anywhere; it can just stop generating. If you put a solar panel in the sunlight but don't hook it up to anything, it's kind of like having a battery that isn't connected to anything. Nothing happens.
(That said, one thing I've often wondered: do solar panels get cooler when their power is being used? If that's true, then there might be heating problems if the power isn't being beamed out somewhere -- but heat-management is more or less part of the design of anything humans put into space, if I understand right.)
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@FandaSin @rightsprung @lednaBM @Jestbill
P.S. I only just noticed the link -- and the article says this:
Either way, rotating the panels so they no longer catch the sunlight seems like it would solve the problem.
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@woozle
Rotation - yes, that is good solution, thanks.👍
Dissipating heat in space is REAL problem - you don't have anything to dissipate it into. (radiators are the only way to dissipate heat)
@rightsprung @lednaBM @Jestbill
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@FandaSin @rightsprung @lednaBM @Jestbill
Reading further, I see this which answers my earlier question in more satisfying detail:
...but yeah, rotation if all else fails. There are also ways of just radiating it into space, and maybe other uses I haven't even thought of. Gosh, we've got too much energy, what do do... :blobcatthinkingportal:
I could imagine them also keeping batteries on board (whether LiFePO4 or molten salt or...) for storing energy during short interruptions -- but I don't know if that works out economically. Certainly there would be smaller batteries to keep the nav and com electronics going even when the panels aren't generating, especially if the array is sometimes in Earth's shadow.
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@FandaSin @rightsprung @lednaBM @Jestbill
...but then there's this, which is what it tells you do to after disconnecting the panels electrically:
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@woozle @FandaSin @rightsprung @lednaBM @Jestbill If a powered device is still powered it will stay hot because current is being forced through a resistance, which is what creates the heat in electrical components. Removing the electrical power allows the device to cool, because no more heat is being generated, but the heat leaves through convection (airflow around the device), a bit through conduction (through physical connection to other stuff), and a tinier bit through radiation (emission.)
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@whknott @FandaSin @rightsprung @lednaBM @Jestbill
Right, but also this is a highly nonreflective surface that's presumably in direct sunlight (worst-case for cooling, anyway)...
I keep coming back to the fact that if a lot of the incoming EM is being converted to electricity and shunted elsewhere, then it's not being converted to heat at the point of reception -- meaning that the conversion to mobile electricity effectively becomes a cooling factor as long as everything is operating and in sunlight.
I mean, just basic physics -- conservation of energy -- says that has to be the case, right?
...and then disconnecting it breaks the mobility, so the energy has to stay in the panel in some form until it's radiated away...
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@woozle Heat is produced in EVERY circuit in proportion to the resistance of the circuit. Always. It is always the case that some large proportion of the electrical energy in a circuit is wasted as heat. Whether it is operating as intended or not.
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@woozle Draw a box around your device. Draw an arrow into your device, label it W, for Work. Draw three arrows coming out of your box, label them W, S, and Q. Q is heat. (There should be a Q in, too, but we'll ignore that for a moment.) S is entropy. If you put in W, you will get W + S + Q out that add up to your W input. Force any of your outputs to go down (i.e. put in W and do not output W) and you will get more Q or S to balance. That is conservation of energy.
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@woozle Also, you keep saying radiated. It is not the case that the majority of cooling is provided by radiation. The majority of cooling is provided by convection. After that, it is provided by conduction. Radiation is the least efficient means of moving heat, and will move the least amount of heat in any situation unless the device is in a vacuum.
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@woozle
Also, up there in 'vacuum', one assumes there is plenty of scope for radiating excess heat away?
@FandaSin @rightsprung @lednaBM @Jestbill
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@bytebro @FandaSin @rightsprung @lednaBM @Jestbill
Getting rid of waste heat in space is harder in some ways, because you can't take advantage of convection...
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@woozle
OK, I get that. So we're talking just radiators, and relying on the difference between the stupid-cold of space and the hot radiators?
Wouldn't that be pretty darned efficient?
(I'm a computer geek, not an engineer, so forgive any unintentional stupidity here!)
@FandaSin @rightsprung @lednaBM @Jestbill
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@bytebro @FandaSin @rightsprung @lednaBM @Jestbill
Sort of? This is where the idea of "black-body temperature" comes into play. You want the maximum difference between your radiator's BB temp and the surrounding sky.
Fortunately, as you note, the BB temp of most of the universe is pretty dang low.
The bottleneck, if I understand right, is the total wattage you can convert to heat, less leakage back into the system you're trying to cool (due to imperfect thermal insulation), at any given time -- preferably without melting anything that isn't designed to be melted.
If you've suddenly got a hundred megawatts of unused power, I'd think this might require some pretty hefty engineering.
Definitely doable, but also nontrivial.
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@woozle
I'm learning 'New Things' (new to me), which makes this a good day. Thank you.
Maybe someone like 'PBS Space Time'[1] will do a YouTube thing on it at some point.
@FandaSin @rightsprung @lednaBM @Jestbill
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@bytebro
Mmm... Using an infrared laser to "spit" the heat? (I don't know, just asking)
@woozle @FandaSin @rightsprung @lednaBM @Jestbill
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@woozle @rightsprung @lednaBM @FandaSin @Jestbill in some of the old info I've read about this, it's also a pretty wide beam, by the time its come down from orbit. Enough to be picked up by the receiver, but not concentrated enough to start incinerating houses & nearby wildlife, like an orbital weapon
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@patterfloof @woozle @rightsprung @FandaSin @Jestbill Not a weapon until they attach the secret focalizer..... 😂🤣😂🤣🤣
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@lednaBM @rightsprung @FandaSin @Jestbill @jawarajabbi TANSTAAFL even Hydro dam projects release a lot of green house gases. Methane is produced for one.
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@lednaBM @FandaSin @Jestbill @jawarajabbi Research was done on this in the west years ago. rectennas AFAICR the actual irradiation level would be very low if the beam drifted off. Sorry, no forest fires. However, it's a rather expensive way of doing it and ground based is better.
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@Jestbill We've come a long way since the 1970s!
@jawarajabbi @lednaBM
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@lednaBM
Fuck the 10 commandments. They have no place in public school.
Or civilized society, for that matter.
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@BinroHeretic How about if they add thou shall not microwave your neighbors population... 🤣😂🤣😂
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@lednaBM
I'd say that should go without saying. Sadly, people aren't smart enough to grasp it.
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@lednaBM
Good for them.. the more they make us look like the shithole we are.
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@GatekeepKen I know we have far much more than our fair share of problems we inflict upon the world, but do you think it's a great idea to be microwaving Earth from space, given all the environmental problems humans have already caused? Yikes!
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@lednaBM
We have enough fire power to destroy it in a split second if they get to be a threat. If they use it for energy, that's why it's there!
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@GatekeepKen @lednaBM Blowing up an orbital platform would make low Earth orbits unusable.
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@jhavok @GatekeepKen 🤣😂🤣😂 true
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@jhavok @lednaBM
It might take out Muskilites...woops
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@lednaBM @GatekeepKen My understanding is that broadcast power in this form is a heckuva lot lower density than it is near your microwave - and also in a frequency range that doesn't affect biological systems.
I think of it this way: sunlight is power from radiation being sent to us already, and we mostly know how to avoid being hurt by it.
The big fear of course is it being used as a weapon. Maybe other countries should do it too?
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@lednaBM I've played enough Sim City 2000 to know how this turns out
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@mrbadaxe
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