🚀 go-pugleaf

snyder@henry.ece.cmu.edu (John Snyder) writes:

->On my local news, the commentator said that some experts say that a satellite
->tethered to the earth could provide a free, unending source of electrical
->power.  This sounds suspicious to me.  I think you will only get back
->something on the order of the energy to put the satellite up (i.e. changing
->the orbital energy to electrical energy).

We though about this at lunch yesterday.  One idea that we had was to
wrap a few coils of superconductor around the Earth and use the
Earth as a kind of giant rotor in an electric generator.  This would
provide energy and gradually slow down the Earth, but we should have
developed other sources before this gets too bad and could put some
rotational energy back by pumping current though the coils.

In fact, this might have other uses.  Ever though there were just
too few hours in the day?  No problem! Do you really want to put
Iraq (and unfortunalety the rest of the eastern hemisphere) back
into the dark ages. Easy!  Surf not high enough in California?
Just give the Earth a bit of a jolt!

Do you think I could get funding for this?  It would create lots of jobs.

->On National Public Radio, they said that the real idea was ultimately to
->use the idea backwards, i.e. as a motor, rather than as a generator.
->They said that the hope was that they could use solar panels to generate
->electric power to flow current through a tether, to help maintain
->orbits of large satellites or space staions, etc.

This is assuming that there are big enough magnetic fields where you
want to go.  Also you might lose out using up energy to orient the
tether all the time.

Somebody here also mentioned that there might be uses for a Mongo-sized
antenna orbiting the globe.  Obviously, somebody is holding things back
and there must be a really good reason behind the project in order
for it to get fuinding.  Maybe they are going to use it to find a
cure for cancer.

	Steve Austin