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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

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rshow55 - 11:01am Jul 17, 2003 EST (# 13040 of 17697)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

A Proposed solution:

Very large area, thin, light floating photocell mats -

Thin glass photocells, small enough to accomodate wave motion (perhaps 10-20 cm square or rectangular plates - or perhaps hexanal plates, 1 mm thick) - bonded to "bubble wrap" floatation, with gaps between the plates, and leakage paths, large enough to shed rainfall.

Each photocell plate would be a "solar battery" - which can be connected to other batteries, and electrical loads, in parallel or series, as other batteries are.

Photocell plates would float on "bubble wrap" or modified bubble wrap - polyethylene with air floatation. (Glass bead floatation, or other floatation, could substitute.)

Very low water displacement for these mat assemblies ( mean water displacement around 1/8" - .3 cm ). Assembly would be well connected inertially to water - would conform to waves, with some damping - ( with a bubble wrap with a top and bottom sheet layer, - quite a lot of damping. )

High area for these collection assemblies - (perhaps 1 km X 10 km standard) .

Assemblies towed to "follow the sun" on the oceans between the tropics so that the photocell collector assemblies are always at or near the center of illumination and convection

At the latitude of maximum illumination, water is very calm (with some chop from thunderstorms ).

Towing means no chunk of water is under the photocell mats for long.

Towing rate of about .5 km/hr would take a few horsepower for 1 km X 10 km assembly.

Peak electrical energy per assembly = peak illumination of 10^10 watts times efficiency - - 20 gigawatts/collecter for 20% efficiency ) At earth's center of illumination, on oceans - about 8 hours worth of peak energy absorbtion per day.

Electrical energy electrolyzed to hydrogen in 50-100 electrolysis assemblies per collector - with hydrogen collected periodically

Collectors would be "industrial scale" assemblies - but it would take a lot of area and a lot of assemblies. At 30% efficiency - would take 5,300 collector assemblies to supply the equivalent of current oil production ( 75 mbd ) . ( This is about half the area of Pennsylvania - a tiny fraction of the ocean area available. ) At 3% efficiency, 10 times that area, about 75% of the area of Texas (still a tiny fraction of available area), and ten times the number of collectors.

rshow55 - 11:01am Jul 17, 2003 EST (# 13041 of 17697)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

At a shadow price of 10$/barrel energy equivalent, at the collector, a 30% efficiency collector would generate $5.15/square meter/year - or 51.5 million dollars per "collector"/ year. For 3% collector efficiency, values are 10 times smaller ( $.052/square meter/year ). My guess, which is only an estimate, but a careful estimate, is that collectors with efficiencies well over 10% (perhaps over 20%) and working lives longer than 10 years could be built for between 2 and 3$/square meter.

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The question "Is this worth doing" would depend on who owned the assets. For a company or nation controlled by people with a big stake in current oil reserves and current energy industry arrangements - the gain might be partly or completely offset by losses in their old petroleum businesses. For a company or nation with a smaller stake in the old arrangements - the same investment might be far more attractive.

For the industrialized nations as a whole, looking hard at this job would be very much worth doing.

Is ocean based solar power a unique alternative? No.

But it is an alternative - one that offers engineering challenges - but no difficult scientific challenges at all.

There are always different ways to do things. Each may be optimized in terms of specific assumptions - and with work - both the assumptions and the optimization can be very good. Then you pick the best alternatives - or try to.

I think that the equatorial proposal would work - and my guess is that it is likely to be the best alternative, considering everything. But the cost of simulation is now much, much lower than it has been - and it should make sense to evaluate a lot of basic approaches.

Optimization is "doing the best you can." It takes some work to find out what "the best you can" is. 12759 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.RErUbPHeYTe.1147663@.f28e622/14430

I've been concerned about the technical aspects of doing this job - and have spent a lot of hours in the last few weeks working through details. The technical part of the work looks doable, and with good organization, fundable on a basis that can proceed rapidly - effecting world energy supplies within a few years.

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