/sci/ - Science & Math

>>3735112
>They don't want clean energy to succeed.
I don't think you understand how shit solar power is in its current form for supplying electricity for all of modern civilization. While I have no doubt there are Big Oil interests meddling constantly in clean energy research the fact is both the overall effectiveness of solar as well as corporate interests are holding it back. I'm not against solar, just the terrestrial version as it has to combat against reduced solar radiation from the atmosphere, clouds, and the whole day/night thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power

And have you checked out LFTRs yet?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vzotsvvkw

>>3568861
>without having to worry about the weather.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power

>>3559948
I'd say that the sudden availability of such treatments would be the very thing that causes massive social change.
'Well since we have these many people all young and living for hundreds of years we need to change food production, energy...' etc.

>>3559952
>It's greedy to want to live forever
Not to mention impossible, due to heat death and random accidents.

>If one generation lives forever, that means either a) no newer generation and no new innovation or b) massive overpopulation.

This is my argument;
a) As you age with a healthy mind of a ~25 y/o, I would argue that you get MORE intuitive and creative, with more ideas to add.
b) Space colonization. Today, a dream. Soon, a reality.

Space-based solar

Earth-based solar has a few major pitfalls:
Baseload power: For about 12 hours, no sunlight. Batteries to store excess energy are impractical.
Weather: Clouds fuck your shit up, yo
Location: It would be nice if everywhere got the same energy as the Sahara. Unfortunately most of civilization seems to be located around the 40 degree latitude mark.

With space-based solar, the benefits are grand. Since there is no atmosphere, the panels receive 4 to 10 times more power than Earth-based ones do. No weather either. Since the panels are in geosynchronous orbit they stay direct sunlight 99% of the time.
And the transmission of electricity to the surface can be done with microwaves that interact with the atmosphere very little, making the efficiency losses about 2%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power

The reason why you live, the reason why we have oil and coal, the reason why Earth doesn't have a frozen landscape covered by frozen nitrogen and carbon dioxide over rock-hard ice fields encompassing the planet, is because of our sun. Our sun that is also 150,000,000 kilometers away. The yellow dwarf that is literally dwarfed by the supergiants we have discovered.

>>3123198
Our sun formed out of a huge gas cloud of molecular hydrogen, and some other trace elements around ~5 billion years ago. The planets also coalesced out of this gas cloud, but some didn't have enough gas/gravity when the sun ignited so then the hydrogen and helium gas clouds largely flew away.
The sun has a LOT of hydrogen.

OP, you were born at exactly the right time. Longevity extension and all that fuzz.

>>3049242
>why? more cost-effective to shield just the sunward hemisphere
First, cost does not matter. Robots reproduce and are only limited to the amount of available asteroid materials for construction of more of them and more of sunshield.
Second, the sunward sunshield would have to be held up or propelled sunward because the solar wind would be pushing on it as well as Venus' gravity pulling on it. To counteract this it would have to orbit, meaning exposure to searing 103 million kilometer distance sunshine. And the nightside would have a constant die-off of plants as there would be no grow-light sunshield shit.

>I guess you mean DECREASES its opacity
Do I? I know if I have a black brush on Photoshop and decrease the opacity, I can see more though it.

>>2999617
Not using a book for this course, merely using stuff from different websites. Only thing we've worked on are the principles behind galactic, equatorial, ecliptic and horizontal coordinates.

That said; bump.

The sizes are correct, and I have checked, it does account for approximate commercial efficiency.

HOWEVER.

You'll have a very big base load power problem, as daylight areas can't transfer electricity to night time places very efficiently at all. We don't have superconductors yet. HVDC alleviates some of the problem but it's still pretty lossy.

As an anon pointed out above, solar panels have nasty side effects in manufacturing and in degradation. For a solution I would recommend assembling and keeping them in space, wirelessly transmitting their power. However this requires automated factories and mining places on asteroids so that's a few years off.

And even though that amount of space looks small in comparison, that's still a massive portion of the map.

>>2785498

Texas A&M University.

>>2746924
Anotherfag here again. Stop focusing on the negative and post some fukken awesome pics instead, for example!

>japan creates space elevator
>I finish my degrees in astrophysics and aerospace engineering
>tackle with possible investors, eventually win
>make space-based solar panels and launch them into GEO
>?????????
>PROFIT (oh so much profit)

A man can dream...

Is engineering normally a prerequisite to get a degree in physics?
I'm talking to a Navy recruiter, and he's saying that in order to go into Nuclear Physics, I have to first go through Nuclear Engineering. The thing is, I don't want to go into Nuclear Engineering, and I don't really want to be fed false or exaggerated info.

???

The International Space Station has Humanity, Fuck Yeah! written all over it. We should rename it.

>>1913942
I want to be in that pic. Not looking at that pic.

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Is it possible for there to be another "Big Bang"?
If so, what would happen to our universe?

nothing much