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For Calliban re old mill video: https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 55#p230555
Thanks for that link! I had time to watch it, and appreciated both the presenter and the gent showing the property.
At the conclusion of the video, a figure of 100 years was given for the time since the mill was last used and today
Details about the kinds of wood used for various parts of the machinery were interesting.
I appreciated the detail about mills being lost due to explosion of the flour powder. I'd hear/read about such risks, but this puts the stories in context.
Assuming the demise of the mill occurred in 1924, that would have been after the end of the First World War, and industrialization would have been in progress on a large scale, so perhaps small operations like this mill could not generate enough income to survive, even though the property and equipment were paid for. Perhaps the demise is due to the lack of a young person willing to assume the responsibility. The supply of young people would have been severely reduced due to the war.
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For Calliban re material to transfer force to the space vessel main beam:
GW sent this suggestion by email:
Try some of Ed Pope's ZrO2/C "matech" heat shield material as "grab holds" spaced apart on the outside of the graphite or carbon-carbon engine shell (assuming it is also the pressure shell). It's strong, and it is low conductivity, and you don't shine photons where these "grab holds" are located. That reasonably-well isolates the white-hot carbon engine tube from the structures it attaches to. There is also the forward dome of this thing, which could be ever-cooler layers, against which the ship could bear. And you might even try holding it by its regeneratively-cooled nozzle.
If you have time, please evaluate this material to see if would be up to the job.
Regarding holding the nozzle seems to me likely to allow the heating chamber to separate from the nozzel.
Placing the force transfer devices on the side or on the dome would seem to me better able to keep the heating chamber attached to the nozzle.
The nozzle would be applying force to the bottom of the heating vessel, and the walls of that vessel would carry the force up to the frame of the ship via the devices to be specified.
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For Calliban re http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php … 44#p230844 in Plastics
Thanks for bringing this good idea back into view!
In this time in human history, there is a great deal of turbulence, and that means opportunity for the prepared...
A ** very ** inexpensive transport device able to keep rain off passengers and travel 50 to 100 kilometers in a day might be greatly appreciated.
We do not currently have air pump stations anywhere in the US (that I know of).
Introducing an air driven vehicle would be similar to introducing gasoline cars back in the early 20th Century.
However, electric charging stations are becoming common to the point they are almost able to satisfy demand for electric vehicles.
Could an air vehicle plug into one of those electric charging stations to refill itself?
How long would a refill take?
You mentioned the catastrophic failure mode of plastics.... Can that be addressed by adding fine metal filaments to the wrapping to provide some backup strength?
Nantechnology is coming alone nicely. Can the filaments of carbon structures be given intelligence to report failure anywhere in a strand.
PS ... The Optical Plane project has run into heating issues, or more specifically, thermal energy transfer issues.
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For Calliban re Terraformer's idea plus kbd512's idea about compressed air vehicles...
You've referred to trompe many times... here is a part of a post from 2023 that includes the term:
Could we store energy in compressed air under the sea? At 10bar(g), 1m3 of air will store some 0.73kWh of energy. Let us assume we can recover that energy with 80% efficiency. So 0.58kWh/m3 recoverable energy. Let us assume storage tanks are 10m high. Given four decades of deindustrialisation, UK baseload electricity consumption is about 30GWe. To store 24 hours of power, we must store some 720 million kWh, requiring some 1.24 billion m3 of air. Stored in ballasted 10m tall concrete tanks, this would occupy a seabed area of 124 million m2 or 124km2. If we assume that the air tanks have some space between them, lets say their packing density on the seabed is about 50%. Air tanks capable of storing 1 day of UK baseload piwer, would cover an area 248km2. That is asquare about 10 miles aside, about the size of a city centre. The thing that makes this idea practical is the fact that air tanks could be thin walled concrete, hemispherical end cap cylinders. These would be partially flooded and manouevered into position on the sea bed. They would then be ballasted with dredged sand and gravel. This would ensure that as the tanks fill with air, all wall stresses remains compressive. This would allow even a thin walled concrete structure to function as an air store for decades or centuries, without age related degredation. Even if installation is expensive, long system life would allow undersea compressed air storage to be added incrementally.
In that post you were talking about huge reservoirs of air under the ocean.
kbd512 is talking about small tanks of air that can be sold for use in automobiles.
Waves are powered by solar energy, and tides are powered by the Moon.
I would be ** very ** interested in how a ** real ** engineer might design a system to use the Trompe method to compress air for small tanks, using tides as the energy source.
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For Calliban re hydraulic energy storage...
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 07#p230907
Your second drawing reminds me of a system in use in the US
The need for fresh water to be distributed to large populations has led to deployment of towers that look very similar to your drawing.
The difference is only in how the power is drawn off.
In the US version, the height of the tower provides gravitationally stored energy to deliver fresh water over a wide geographic area. The number of towers at a given site reflects the population to be served.
A small town can be served by just one of these towers, while a large city may have multiple clusters of multiple towers.
Power can indeed be drawn off as hydraulic service. Firefighters routinely draw upon the stored water to deliver streams of fresh water to extinguish flames. In that case, it is common to supplement the available pressure with vehicle provided auxiliary power.
In any case, this is definitely a practical design concept with multiple uses.
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For Calliban re Yuri's rotating sail concept...
kbd512's small team is working on a vessel design to accelerate using solar energy. kbd512's design is an update of a 1950's concept to use thermal energy instead of electricity or sails.
A benefit of the design is that it provides 40 MW of solar energy that can be focused with precision.
I'm wondering if you might be able (willing?) to consider how 40 MW of solar energy might be used to melt asteroid material into a form that can then be solidified and returned to Earth by one of Yuri's solar sails?
Any gases present in the material would be driven off by heating, but perhaps those could be captured?
The gases might have more economic value than the solids.
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For Calliban re hydraulic energy storage...
I asked Google for the pressure at 7 miles in the ocean, and it came up with a figure of over 1000 bar.
At a depth of 7 miles (approximately 11,265 meters or 36,900 feet) in the ocean, the pressure is around 1,086 bars (or 15,750 psi), which is over 1,071 times the standard atmospheric pressure at sea level.
This is a follow up to kbd512's idea of using the Trompe air compression system to fill tanks for use in automobiles.
Your original idea (as I remember it) was to store air in large underwater reservoirs, and to tap that air for power.
kbd512 has invested some time in thinking about how an air powered automobile system might work.
It seems to me that an industry might be built around the filling of air tanks to 500 bar or 800 bar at sea.
To achieve a pressure of 500 bars in the ocean, you would need to descend to a depth of approximately 5,000 meters (or 16,400 feet), as pressure increases by about 1 atmosphere (or 1 bar) for every 10 meters of depth.
That would be a depth of just over 3 miles.
I asked Google about the depth of the water near Hawaii:
The ocean surrounding the Hawaiian Islands is very deep, with the Hawaiian Trough reaching depths of about 18,045 feet (5,500 meters) and the average depth of the ocean floor on either side of the island chain being roughly 15,000 feet.
Asking Google again:
Solution The pressure at a depth of \(\text{15000\ ft}\) in the ocean is approximately \(459.33\) bars.
So an industry offshore of the Hawaii Islands could fill tanks to 459 bar, and those could be shipped world wide to serve the automotive and other air consuming markets. The advantage (of course) is that the heat generated by the pressurization is absorbed by the ocean. That heat is then collected from the atmosphere later on when the air is released.
Energy to power the compression operation could be provided by wind towers and perhaps by solar panel barges if they are made large enough for ocean service.
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For Calliban re report on visit in the Netherlands!
Thank you for the pictures of the landscape and architecture, and for your reflections on the Mars equivalent.
I'll bet that Void will like your suggestion of canals for Mars cities.
The practical reasons for that use of water seem likely to motivate Mars settlers to dig up and refine the quantities needed.
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For Calliban re images of wind mills and landscape of the Netherlands
We are indeed fortunate to have your visit available to our members and non-member readers!
Regarding wooden teeth ... I am reminded of: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"
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For Calliban re latest additions to your collection on the Netherlands...
Awesome!
Thanks very much!
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For Calliban re visit to Netherlands and thoughts about habitats on Mars:
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 33#p231133
The topic did not have an index, and the first post of mine was #9, to I added an index entry there.
Your image of the hexadecimal design for community expansion on Mars seems highly likely to win favorable review if it were afforded a large audience. This forum is a great place for you to develop your ideas. I'm hoping you might be inspired to aim for a publication that has a wider audience. The field of architecture will surely have publications that persist despite the digital age. Perhaps one of them might be willing to consider a paper showing your ideas.
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For Calliban re interesting fusion concept!
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 77#p231177
It crossed my mind that the pressures needed could be created by assembling asteroid material around a core built as you have shown. At some point the pressure would reach what (I gather) is needed to facilitate operation of the device.
Can you calculate how much mass would be needed?
A gravity based confinement system would seem worth considering for a community well away from the Sun.
The complexity of magnetic confinement seems (to me at least) to mean a community that uses such technology will have to maintain the intellectual capability to maintain it, but human brain power is NOT guaranteed with existing reproduction techniques.
Update per Google: The pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench is 1,086 bars.
Is that enough for your design to work?
Operating a reactor at that depth would seem relatively safe except perhaps to nearby hardy sea life.
If you can get your design to work at that depth you would potentially achieve the first positive return on energy invested.
That would be an attractive outcome. If you want to start patent coverage in the States, GW Johnson is potentially available as a guide. He holds a patent and informed me recently of current costs. You can expect to invest $1500 for the first cover letter.
Update later: If the Marianas Trench is not deep enough for your concept to work, how about Jupiter, Saturn or perhaps even Neptune?
What I have in mind is a harvesting device. If the fusion happens when the vessel has descended to an appropriate depth, then the power generated could lift the vessel back to orbit, with a full load of valuable material.
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Follow up to post #237, and to a post in the Gravity Fusion topic...
Calliban, your inspiration may not pan out, but I think it is worth pursuing a bit further.
What software might exist to help you with the analysis?
If you design a test article that you deliver to the bottom of the Marianas Trench, you can equip it with sensors and communications services.
Will the sphere be buoyant? If so, it would need to be carried down by a vessel with massive weights to overcome the buoyancy. Those weights could then be overcome by pumping air into lifting tanks.
It seems to me an ocean test article would be less expensive than a device you might imagine for the surface of the Earth. The distinct advantage is you are not limited in size of your sphere, although I admit a kilometer diameter would seem a bit much to most potential funders.
In any case, the Gravity Confinement topic is available if you are inspired in future.
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For Calliban...
The article at the link below is about unwanted growth in the rodent population at Hinkley.
https://interestingengineering.com/cult … oup=test_a
This won't be a problem on Mars.
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For Calliban ...
Thanks for this post in Water ...
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 67#p231367
I'm glad to see the water experiment went well. I'd be astonished if the massless propulsion concept succeeds, but I'm glad to see there were folks with deep pockets willing to take a chance on it!
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