Harvesting electricity from space?

[GaryN]

What makes us think that that power isn't already being used for something important?

Good point Mike.H, yes, maybe all is in balance. Best not to play with stuff we don't fully understand, while sunlight seems pretty safe. I was thinking about the shade the big reflectors would also create, they could build whole villages underneath them in the really hot countries.

Hi Riposte. I was thinking last night that I should really withdraw that statement. After all, most -isms fall apart eventually due to human greed and coruption, and not the system itself. Capitalism does seem to need to be reset occasionally though, and I like the biblical 7 year cycle. If every atom in our body is replaced over a seven year period, then it wasn't really me who took out that loan!

[StevenO]

As Nikola Tesla told us, "energy can be harvested at any location on earth, in unlimited quantities". I just think humanity is not ready for this kind of equality yet.

[D_Archer]

StevenO is right.
As the earth's atmosphere is a giant capacitor, radiant energy (as Tesla called) can be readily used.

The thing that always makes me uncomfortable in discussion about 'tapping into the power' is-

What makes us think that that power isn't already being used for something important?

The power is indeed already being used, by plants for example. The best example i know are chestnuts, the shell of the chestnuts have spikes, these spikes draw radiant energy from the environment to develop the seed (empower it so to speak).

I do think there is a limit to how much energy you can 'freely' use, energy does nog get lost, but there is real chance some sytems (dependent on this radiant energy) will be disturbed if you use too much.

Regards,
Daniel

[bboyer]

As Nikola Tesla told us, "energy can be harvested at any location on earth, in unlimited quantities". I just think humanity is not ready for this kind of equality yet.

Ya' think?

Sparling, Earl: N. Y. World-Telegram (July 11, 1935), "Nikola Tesla, at 79, Uses Earth to Transmit Signals; Expects to have $100,000,000 Within Two Years" ~ Here Tesla tells the story of the earthquake generated by the mechanical oscillator in his NYC laboratory in 1898, which brought the police there to stop him. They entered the lab just in time to see Tesla swing a slegehammer and smash the tiny device, which was mounted on a girder:

Nikola Tesla revealed that an earthquake which drew police and ambulances to the region of his laboratory at 48 E. Houston St., New York, in 1898, was the result of a little machine he was experimenting with at the time which "you could put in your overcoat pocket."

The bewildered newspapermen pounced upon this as at least one thing they could understand and "the father of modern electricity" told what had happened as follows:

"I was experimenting with vibrations. I had one of my machines going and I wanted to see if I could get it in tune with the vibration of the building. I put it up notch after notch. There was a peculiar cracking sound.

"I asked my assistants where did the sound come from. They did not know. I put the machine up a few more notches. There was a louder cracking sound. I knew I was approaching the vibration of the steel building. I pushed the machine a little higher. "Suddenly all the heavy machinery in the place was flying around. I grabbed a hammer and broke the machine. The building would have been about our ears in another few minutes. Outside in the street there was pandemonium.

"The police and ambulances arrived. I told my assistants to say nothing. We told the police it must have been an earthquake. That's all they ever knew about it."

Some shrewd reporter asked Dr. Tesla at this point what he would need to destroy the Empire State Building and the doctor replied: "Vibration will do anything. It would only be necessary to step up the vibrations of the machine to fit the natural vibration of the building and the building would come crashing down. That's why soldiers break step crossing a bridge."

In another interview, he boasted that, "With this principle one could split the earth in half like an apple".

Century Magazine, p. 921, Figure 2 (April 1895) ~ In 1893 Tesla constructed a preferred embodiment of the mechanical oscillator which he described as a "double compound mechanical and electrical oscillator for generating current of perfect, constant, dynamo frequency of 10 horsepower."

Allan L. Benson: World Today (Feb. 1912); "Nikola Tesla, Dreamer" ~ An illustration for the article shows an artist's conception of the planet splitting in two. The caption reads: "Tesla claims that in a few weeks he could set the earth's crust into such a state of vibration that it would rise and fall hundreds of feet and practically destroy civilization. A continuation of this process would, he says, eventually split the earth in two."

http://www.rexresearch.com/teslamos/tmosc.htm

Yowza, yowza, yowza! Just the kind of [ego-]Science needed.

Not.

[jjohnson]

The idea of obtaining electricity from nearby space needs to investigate and quantify the available power density, and its variability. The drift current here is nothing like it is as it approaches the sun, and probably not near as dense as the DC current between the 6V battery and the bulb in your flashlight. Even the interplanetary medium - solar "wind" - is highly variable in its current density, and using it, if it were possible, would require storage to even out the time-variable input, just like terrestrial solar power systems. -And shileding for CME storms is another hurdle to contemplate. That we have high densities in certain areas (current sheets in the ionosphere exhibiting as auroras) is due to electromagnetic effects which are much larger (and less well controlled) than humans are likely to be able to install successfully. Imitating nature through technology is not always as simple as the idea purports.

The Japanese have adopted the idea of converting solar radiation into microwave radiation which would be transmitted down from the orbiting kilometers-square collectors to an offshore floating receiver field, where it would be converted into usable grade electricity for transmission to their electrical grid. Lest we think, "How innovative of them!", this idea has appeared regularly in publications like Popular Science and Aviation Week and Scientific American for years. It would be more appropriate to say, "How enterprising of them, and not us!" Remember who invented TV's and calculators and computers - and where they are largely manufactured today. Film at eleven.

For a pretty well thought-out article on terrestrial solar, read Scientific American's January 2008 issue's cover story, "A Solar Grand Plan", pp 64-73. The authors are credible and have good real-life experience and expertise. Their thesis is that it is possible to go almost completely solar inside 50 years at an affordable cost, if we would just do it. - But we won't; bet the planet on it.

For other related interesting stuff, read Nanosolar's web site on their printed solar panel technology, with video of how they do it and a Homes section on how they want to get into adding solar electricity to the residential market. (I live in WA and in the Energy Department's blue colored solar zone, averaging only 0-2 kWh/sq m/day through the winter months, so am an unlikely candidate.) Also, about ultracapacitors, read the EEStor blog (the Texas company developing bariam-titanate-based high energy density caps) at http://www.bariumtitanate.blogspot.com/, and the Canadian electric car company ZENN who has partnered with EEStor (as have Lockheed Martin in another potential application) at http://www.zenncars.com Well, getting far afield here. We live in a sea of energy; it will be up to the technologists and the marketplace to determine the most efficient course, and it may or may not be "tapping into the big electrical currents in space".

[StevenO]

As Nikola Tesla told us, "energy can be harvested at any location on earth, in unlimited quantities". I just think humanity is not ready for this kind of equality yet.

Ya' think?

<...>

Yowza, yowza, yowza! Just the kind of [ego-]Science needed.
Not.

Tesla was marginalized by the powers that be and still is.

To learn a little more, just check right before your nose: The Unified Field Theory

[D_Archer]

Project Ixion > http://www.blazelabs.com/n-ixion.asp

Energy from vacuum energy field gradients....

Regards,
Daniel

[david barclay]

We can get all the electrical power we want without beaming it from space.

A simple configuration is capable of allowing for the controlled modulation of the underlying force affecting gravity and electromagnetism. This is a process of focus involving a differential in energy., which in turn will supply a continuous flow of electricity.

To see what I'm talking about check out Project Unity at http://www.gravitycontrol.org

[StevenO]

We can get all the electrical power we want without beaming it from space.

A simple configuration is capable of allowing for the controlled modulation of the underlying force affecting gravity and electromagnetism. This is a process of focus involving a differential in energy., which in turn will supply a continuous flow of electricity.

To see what I'm talking about check out Project Unity at http://www.gravitycontrol.org

Very slick website, I especially like the galaxy animation. Unfortunately I failed to find anything substantial, like a piece of theory with formula's and numbers about the magnitude of the effect for instance or some experiment that a sceptic inquirer could try on his desk or backyard. Would you have anything more?