Outer system ready power source

karov · 2007-04-11 11:04:34

Methane ploymerization???

noosfractal · 2007-04-13 02:35:44

I don't think so. Methane is really stable. Best bet is to oxidize it.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-04-14 07:41:22

I don't think so. Methane is really stable. Best bet is to oxidize it.

Thermo-nuclear fusion is the most obvious power source for the outer Solar System.

karov · 2007-04-14 08:29:44

I don't think so. Methane is really stable. Best bet is to oxidize it.

oooopps! you are right! my mistake - I`ve mistaken the C-C or C=C bond being stronger than the C-H one!

karov · 2007-04-14 08:51:01

I don't think so. Methane is really stable. Best bet is to oxidize it.
Thermo-nuclear fusion is the most obvious power source for the outer Solar System.

Fusion is really hard to achieve! Many are brainwashed to see it as energy-density problem, as s.t. solvable through brute forse ( "just stuff it enough, until..." ), but we have to realise that the problem is more statistical , i.e. COMPUTATIONAL. I think the path to conquer the non-gravitational-inertial confinement methods, i.e. to not need stellar masses or temperatures/pressures at all, and to pass along without ANY "confinement" shall be based on approach s.t. similar to THIS: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ … 041207.php

A new discovery in emulating photosynthesis may allow for creating artificial versions of photosynthesis that would help convert solar to chemical energy at very high efficiency.
Through photosynthesis, green plants and cyanobacteria are able to transfer sunlight energy to molecular reaction centers for conversion into chemical energy with nearly 100-percent efficiency. Speed is the key -- the transfer of the solar energy takes place almost instantaneously so little energy is wasted as heat. How photosynthesis achieves this near instantaneous energy transfer is a long-standing mystery that may have finally been solved.
A study led by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) at Berkeley reports that the answer lies in quantum mechanical effects.
"We have obtained the first direct evidence that remarkably long-lived wavelike electronic quantum coherence plays an important part in energy transfer processes during photosynthesis," said Graham Fleming, Deputy Director of Berkeley Lab and the principal investigator for the study. "This wavelike characteristic can explain the extreme efficiency of the energy transfer because it enables the system to simultaneously sample all the potential energy pathways and choose the most efficient one."

In that sence as you see the photosynthesis IS computation of best possible path, massivelly paralleled via quantum maths.

In nuclear fusion the trick must be the same. The key to efficient and convenient fusion I suspect would come from the low temperatures faciliating the quantum processes, and the efficient fusion shall be rather to Quantum-compute / proposed neologism QOMPUTE ( say ) iron-56 out of ( say ) H-1 ...

We may be very close to breackthrough in this area, or very far away. BTW, Qomputing out things out of other things or from no things at all or making things to be .... seems like s.t. touching our most ultimate visions about technology, etc... so going back to more mundane techs:

The two obvious power sources there are
1. The Sun --
2. The gravity --

1. No problem that the solar radiation out there is not intensive. Even without to use OPTICS for concentration in SPACE , we could use much slower and agriculture-like methods to concentrate the free photonic energy in TIME. Imagine not so giant artificial photosynthetic "plants" which convert every captured solar photon into , say, oxidizer and store it ... some cold system based on superconducting and other "strange" cryo-effects -- product of synthetic metabiology.
The sun is 100 times weaker at Saturn or 1000-2000 times weaker in KB, you still could yield 1.3 KJ from m2, but for 100 , not 1 second.

2. "just" direct the fall of the smaller things onto the bigger things and decelerate them to produce usefull power. Combination of tethers and linear electric motor.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-04-15 09:39:59

For photosynthesis to take place, the plant must be above freezing, and sadly much of the outer solar system is below freezing, and there is much more to the Outer Solar System than four gas giants. The best energy sources for the outer Solar System are the onces that are independent from the Sun. You can have more efficient Solar collectors, but ultimately, the further out on is from the Sun, the larger the solar collector array will have to be to collect the same amount of energy. I've heard of proposals to make giant mirrors the size of the continental United States out in interstellar space, so that it can focus the Sun's light on a smallish O'Neill colony of a few thousand, it occurs to me that it might be easier to build a fusion reacto in outer space than on the ground. Inertial confinement fusion looks promising. Imagine an array of mass drivers all aimed at the same spot in space. Each Mass driver is 10 miles long and their are thousands of them, they are spread out, and each has collector arrays to collect energy all focused on the spot their aiming at and they all accelerate frozen fusion pellets toward the center of the array all at the same time, all the pellets converge on the same spot and Boom, a nuclear explosion occurs, much like a hydrogen bomb but without the fission trigger, the collecting arrays collect the radiation from the explosion and convert it to electricity, some of which powers the mass drivers so they can accelerate another bunch of fusion fuel pellets toward the same spot and Boom, the process repeats itself. This fusion reactor then transfers the surplus electricity to an O'Neill colony.

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#1 2007-04-11 11:04:34

Re: Outer system ready power source

#2 2007-04-13 02:35:44

Re: Outer system ready power source

#3 2007-04-14 07:41:22

Re: Outer system ready power source

#4 2007-04-14 08:29:44

Re: Outer system ready power source

#5 2007-04-14 08:51:01

Re: Outer system ready power source

#6 2007-04-15 09:39:59

Re: Outer system ready power source

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