Revolutionizing our civilization's energy consumption is not just feasible; it's relatively cheap

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it would also drive the religious right nuts

earth powered by a fucking sun powered (luciferan) pentagram
kek

This is a dumb fuck idea and you are all dumb fucks who know nothing about energy production and distribution, not to mention physics.

Almost as bad as "solar panel roads" holy fucking shit.

Why stop with human life? The vast majority of animal life sustains it's existence by the destruction of other life. Everything other then the plants and fungus is a lost cause, imo.

this.

the whole thing is fucking retarded.

fission power will easily power us until mechanically confined fusion (GeneralFusion) is developed

The moon is too expensive, Geosynchronous orbit is easier as the ground stations wouldn't have to move and there would not be any relays required (which inherently cause inefficiency). And it could happen, depending entirely if the US decides to pursue an oil tariff (a thing Democrats want to fund Amtrak, and Republicans want to protect American oil companies). But the technology just isn't there yet, nobody has made a working 1:1 demo device.

Also another issue is launch capacity, as an 2 gigawatt (per hour) plant would require at least 666 acres of solar panels (assuming 3 megawatts/acre). Given that solar panels weigh about 4 pounds per foot, that gives us 174,240 pounds or 88 US tons per acre. At 666 acres, that's 58,608 US tons of equipment that has to be launched. This is a problem as the Falcon Heavy (launching next year) has a maximum capacity of 24 US tons to GEO. That's about 2,442 launches. NASA's SLS Block II (which they hope will have running a few years after the SLS I, so sometime in the late 2020s) will have a maximum capacity of 140 tons or about 420 launches.

So it's not an impossible project, but it's not feasible until NASA gets their shit together. I bet the TVA (or similar) would love clean power from space. But again, they need a way of actually getting there.

Can someone explain to me why not use a space gun to launch much smaller, lighter rockets into orbit

Microwave power transmission, at sea level, is proven to work at about ~1 mile with 85% efficiency. While a lot of work and research needs to be done, it's clearly feasible given that power transmission in space (ie altitudes above 50 miles) is much easier than power transmission at atm. Already, normal electric (ie non microwave) rectenna power is used in phone chargers as well as a handful of electric bus chargers and light rail systems.

The main problem is actually getting them into space. And this is why people want a space elevator.

Guns work by exploding.
Rockets also work by exploding.

The problem is that these "lighter" rockets would still be too heavy for a single explosion in a big gun.

At this point the big rocket gun explodes too along with the rocket

You need rockets for continuous controlled explosions.

Because the guy who was behind that idea worked for Saddam Hussein and was assassinated during the gulf war. I'm not joking:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull

Have robots do it

Okay genius, how do you get the power from space to surface without going through atm

Remember they almost fucked up the Earth's environment in the back store ofo Gundam. 0079

That doesn't make any sense at all. You can control the rate of explosion in a gun just as much as you can in a rocket. And a gun is far, far more efficient than a rocket in terms of explosion per velocity transfer.

Yes but you only get one explosion.

Here just read up on it on wikipedia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_gun

As noted it's only really feasible for relatively small things at low orbits currently, even theoretically.

Because atm stops being atm once you get a mile above ground. Then conditions steadily improve as the air becomes thinner and thinner. Assuming a 15% reduction over 1 mile under atm conditions, and the density of air (ie atm conditions) halving every mile, then 10 miles up there is only a about 28% loss with each successive loss/mile occurring beneath .01%. This brings our final surface-to-LEO loss to about 28.4%. Or so my very rough math says.

Of course there's other issues, say cloud cover or smog, but the basic math works out and that's why anyone is even bothering with the idea as of late.

The one explosion is only needed to get it accelerated to a fraction of its final velocity though which would allow for a drastic reduction in the amount of fuel needed to be carried, both because some of it has been moved off the ship (which has huge consequences for weight) and the usual recursive weight losses in rocketry.

That's a plan for much later in time, dyson swarms are a thing though look them up.

Great assumption, shitter

why bother with solar panels at that point? An efficient Peltier element would be able to do the same job but with far less maintenance as it would both self-cool it's electronics and be a completely solid-state device (as opposed to layers of silicon).

your chart is in metric, try again

peltiers aren't efficient though

Literally kys yourself

wew, 10/10

Let's round 6000 meters up to 4 miles, and say that the density halves every two miles. In which case we're left with about a 56% loss which is still really great. But in this case I'd also argue that the loss can be reduced as people figure out how to properly graft electric alternating current principles onto microwave power.

My point is that it works, and you've provided evidence that it does.

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this. just wait for fusion power.

Why haven't you killed yourself yet?

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I really feel like that picture needs to be upside down to be funny, but I don't see how that could work.

This is why we need to restart the NERVA program or some variation thereof. Or a skyhook, which could also be accomplished with today's technology.

A space gun would actually be a really good idea, but it does pose a lot of technological problems. For one, a chemical explosion wouldn't impart that much power into the projectile, meaning you would have to use a coilgun or something. Also, the acceleration forces of a gun are far greater than those of a rocket(as in like 300g compared to 6g), so you couldn't use a gun for fragile parts or astronauts, so really you would need to design spacecraft to withstand the enormous forces from the gun, which tends to translate to heavier and less efficient designs. The projectile would leave the barrel at such high speeds that it would immediately start to experience the same heat that spacecraft do on reentry. You would need a lot of ablative material on your ship.

I like how human progress has reached the point where this is a casual statement

Why dont you do it fucking pussy, ill cut you with my edge nigger!

It's not solar panels, it's a solar collector (a bunch of mirrors pointing toward a tube of water to make it into steam).

…Couldn't they set up one or more geosynchronous satellites above the atmosphere so that the moon has highly reliable points to transmit the power to? Then they could have those satellites wait until the best time (e.g. clearest weather) to beam that energy onto the grid.

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Well it's true. The last mission to the moon was in 1972, 44 years ago. I'm kind of surprised that no massive corporation has tried to turn it into a billboard in that time.

Yes, we already do this to charge people's cell phones.

I do not understand how you can beam power. Please explain this.

Light itself is "power" (energy actually) transmitting through space. Most is just very inefficient because it's not focused.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_transmission

Oh hay someone made a thread for this.

The sticking point of orbiting solar panels is the heavy cost of sending large amounts of mass into orbit and maintaining those orbits. With moon energy you obtain most of the materials on the moon itself while a far diminished amount of propellent is needed to set up and maintain the orbits of much less massive microwave-relay satellites.

See his whole talk on this to hear the drawbacks of orbiting solar collectors:

youtube.com/watch?v=i_RZzHaBdbk

Microwaves can pass through cloud cover rather easily actually.

What has stopped NASA or some other organization from setting up a proof-of-concept solar power collector satellite already?

Can't speak for other organizations, but as an American I'm ashamed to admit that NASA gets shit all for funding. It's not like that kind of thing would be terribly expensive, but they have a tight budget and it's already stretched over current projects they have going. I think they actually are doing engineering design work in that area, but the threshold from that stage to physically launching something is massive and would require Congress to allocate more funding.

solar power plants with those reflectors beaming the energy on one tank heating the liquid inside are basically beaming power too, don't they? seems like basically the same idea, except that you don't just bundle and reflect heat but rather microwaves?

why isn't china doing it? they need the energy and have the capacity for space travel. it seems like they would already be on it if this was indeed a feasible way

unlike the US they're not under the boot of oil industry, doesn't even matter if you call them capitalist or socialist or whatever in that regard

I hope that when China starts doing more shit in space it will make whatever flag-waving retard sits in the Oval Office start agitating for a modicum of science funding for fucking once.

plebs cant into energy density, never mind how retarded it is to babble about building shit on the moon right now, you burgerniggers cant even get to your spess station without russkie help, its a fackin joke, the pennies obamer gave Nasa arent shit either

Solar in spess is more viable but for a present day solution its fucking retarded project venus tier shit

what we need is massive r&D into nukey, nukey is insanely clean, safe and puts out mongoloid strength levels of jiggatygiggatywatts, without heavy research into fusion and fisison we arent going to leave this fucking rock and we will all slaughter each other, or god will one day get sick of our shit and fire a gigantic rock at our rock

this is one of the keys to a more socialist world, imagine if energy problems ceased to exist, standard of living would rise exponentially, for many people power is still a complete luxury

tldr greenies are almost as bad as nazis, they definitely cover each other on the venn diagram

People are too afraid of nukes for nukes to be viable. When talking politics, human stupidity is like, the first thing you need to account for.

Maybe you should stop calling nuclear power "nukes" then

GUD FUGGEN JOB Holla Forums :DDD

true

also true

ive had some success with the exfounder of greenpeace, he seems to be a man of conscience, is very credible, and he openly supports nuclear power + calls out greenpeace for what a shitty, downright antihuman organization they have become

this vid right here is solid far as I can tell:

youtube.com/watch?v=BpBnJq19R60

i'm not bought by the idea yet but c'mon, if you have counter points pls don't just squeeze them so lazily out of your ass

Are there rocks flying around at 38,000 km/h on Earth all the time? This idea is retarded.

not solar panels, a solar collector - a bunch of mirrors shining sunlight into one spot to heat a fluid and generate electricity

the moon is fuckhuge, you could build shit tons for redundancy and iirc the plan was to build them with materials on the moon already

if you can get robots up and running to build the shit you don't even need to worry about maintenance because you can just build more instead

not like you'll run out of room on the fucking moon

fugg DDD:

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haha good idea, rawr x3!

There are. The composition of the moon is pretty much the same as Earth, because it used to be part of earth.

No, the whole point is to build as much there as possible. Mining operations on earth are largely automated already. Microchips could be manufactured on earth and sent in bulk to be stored. Robots could retrieve them when it's time to make new robots. And you can even build a bunker for storage to minimize potential damage from asteroids.

Which means you have to sift through loads of bullshit to find any. They're "rare" in the sense that they're, although common, hard to get at because they're never concentrated.

My point is that, while yet it would be wise to only try to send up what it really makes sense to (stuff that requires large factories to produce and that is lightweight), because it's the fucking moon you're going to have to send up a ton and even then it won't be remotely self-sustaining. And even if you get it self-sustaining one small, fast-moving rock would quickly "remedy" that situation.

give info on how many rocks per square meter and hour/day/week/… are hitting the moon surface compared to hail, sandstorms etc. on earth and you can call it retarded all you want. but until then you're opinion is shit and you can shove it back up your ass like a space docker

you're keep posting your "tiny rock keeps hitting shit on moon" like a fucking meme as if everything ever to set foot on the moon is going to be constantly shelled with an endless storm of fucking rocks.
what the fuck is wrong with you kid? lol

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put effort into it or be discarded as a faggot

To be fair, with all the shit we launched in space, the surroundings of earth are filled with scraps of all size moving at very high velocity, it's even a quite big problem for the NASA.

you have to establish your claim as fact first before you can go shit around that there are constantly rocks flying around wrecking shit on the moon

and you have, that was the point
put it into relation to the damage done on earth by sandstorms (where the fuck else make solar energy panels more sense than in the fucking desert you stupid fuck?), hail and other factors i wont bother to bring in myself as it is your claim so you better give the facts or be discarded as a faggot and shitposter

There's a certain frequency at which objects collide with the moon, but the more important detail he's missing is the likelihood that they would hit any part of the infrastructure. It's not as if the entire moon would be covered.

I'm all for thorium-based nuclear power but I really doubt it has the ability to supplant other power alternatives both in terms of cost and available fissile material. Beaming back energy from the moon would still be cheaper per kilowatt-hour.

Give me one reason why I should waste even 10 seconds on their propaganda.

soooo~
does anyone knows how that ITER progect going?

Litterally why.

What? Use solar pannels to turn light into energy at a loss, then turn it back into light, send it back to earth, and turn it back to energy at a loss?

Because the Moon has abundant materials to make panels and it doesn't need to maintain its own orbit.

Because there really is that much more energy available from solar panels in space that it makes it worth it. And convert into microwaves for transmission, not visible light.

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not solar panels, solar collectors