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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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lchic - 08:40am Jun 30, 2003 EST (# 12755 of 12764)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Gisterm's queries on power Energy issues are interesting...here are some questions that pop to mind about the giant floating solar array, Robert:

How would you transport energy back from your 460 km square floating solar array to someplace it would be useful? Did you say "as hydrogen"?

Would electricty produced by the array be used to to operate a giant electolysis plant or plants, also floating with the array to separate the hydrogen from seawater?

How would you desalinate the seawater as would be necessary prior to that process?

What would be the end-to-end efficiency of that desalinazation/hydorgen production process? Is the massive energy required to do those process steps taken into account in your calculation of array size with 5% efficent solar collectors? If not the array would have to be larger.

Naturally the hydrogen would have to be liquified to be transported efficiently...would that be by hydrogen supertankers? Sounds expensive.

How much energy is required to cool a ton of hydrogen to liquid temperature and maintain it there? Is that taken into account in your array size calculation? If not, the array will need to be larger.

For every two atoms of hydrogen separated from the distilled seawater, there will be one atom of oxygen released also. If I recall correctly the atomic weight of oxygen is about 16 times that of hydrogen. So for each ton of hydrogen produced there would also be eight tons of oxygen. What would the oxygen be used for? Maybe an increase in percentage of atmospheric oxygen that would occur over time be a good thing? I doubt that environmentalists would go for such tampering with good ol' gaia. :)

What impact would a 460 km square array blocking most sunlight to the 211,000 square km of seawater beneath it have on the temperature of the sea? Would a cold spot that size cause changes to the nautral circulation of ocean currents?

How would marine life in the region be effected? Would it force changes to their natural migration patterns? Would sea mammals that swam too far under it just drown?

What would happen to the array when a typhoon hit it?

Would removal of 5% of the solar energy that would usually heat the region cause changes to the local weather above the array? Could a cooler spot that size cause clouds that might defeat the purpose of the array?

I wonder how large an explosion a hundred thousand tons of liquid hudrogen would make if a suicide bomber set itself off aboard a liquid hydrogen super tanker or at a large land storage facility? Who would want one of those in their harbor? Gotta wonder. Way safer nuclear powerplants have been pretty much rejected here in the state for fear of what might happen if things go wrong.

You're right about there being some serious problems to solve to deveop a technology like that, Robert; but I think you're wrong in saying they're easier than building a MD system. It would cost trillions of dollars to do someting like that and build the infrastructure to to support it. If money were spent at the same rate as is now being spent on MD I'd geuess that energy project would take hundreds of years to complete.

I think the better place for the array would be in a large desert like in northwest Africa, the Austrailian outback or the southwestern US. You could lose an array that size in the western desert of the US and still be close enough to consumers to feed the electricty almost directly into the existing power distribution

gisterme - 03:53am May 10, 2002 EST (# 2137 of 12754)

gisterme 5/10/02 3:44am (continued)

I think the better place for the array would be in a large desert like in northwest Africa, the Austrailian outback or the southwestern US. You could lose an array that size in the western desert of the US and still be close enough to consumers to feed the electricty almost directly into the existing power distribution grid without all the weather dyn

lchic - 08:53am Jun 30, 2003 EST (# 12756 of 12764)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

weather dynamics, corrosion, conversion and transportation problems posed by a seaborne array. There would also be far less need of a massive new energy distribution infrastructure that conversion to a liquid hydrogen energy economy would require.

Even so, such a gigantic object would still cause a huge impact on the local weather, flora and fauna, don't you think?

Gisterm's Questions from

<a href="/webin/WebX?14@13.gubGb3E5lTT.1256979@.f28e622/2652">gisterme 5/10/02 3:44am</a>

lchic - 08:54am Jun 30, 2003 EST (# 12757 of 12764)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Gisterm's Questions from

http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.gubGb3E5lTT.1256979@.f28e622/2652

fredmoore - 09:03am Jun 30, 2003 EST (# 12758 of 12764)

People ...

There are many problems with the solar collection array but why go past the one about the salt and dust continually reducing the efficiency. The cleaning schedule would require most of your output.

This is exactly why 1/4 of the effort in KAEP will go into researching THERMO ELECTRIC FABRICS. Ultimately you will have a material similar to standard 3 metre wide shadecloth but which generates electric power to 'universal' terminals which repeat every 6 metres of length. The thing is that dirt doesn't interfere with thermal absorbtion and thus power generation. If you want photovoltaic arrays (which is another 1/4 of KAEP )- put them in GEO where they will stay resonably clean.

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