🚀 go-pugleaf

srobiner@pollux.usc.edu (Steven Robiner) writes:

>Excuse me, but isn't something missing from this "Tethered Satellite"
>experiment?  The shuttle is at one end, and the satellite is at the 
>other, right?  But that's an open circuit, so where's the load
>joining the ends of this 'generator.'?

The shuttle apparently has some means of emitting electrons at its
end.  The electrons presumably don't go straight back to the
tethered satellite along the path of the tether, so there's something
like a current loop which can intercept flux.  It's a very large
vacuum-tube diode.  

But you're right:  without that, the trick wouldn't work.  Whether
it will work in the actual case remains to be seen.

-- 
Matt McIrvin  mcirvin@husc.harvard.edu  My .plan is much more obnoxious.