And?.... methane has an impact too... Like I said, there are many things that impact the climate.. Co2 is certainly among them.
No instead its just going to expand into a red giant and scorch the entire surface of the planet. People won't be worrying about a 1 or 2 degree C change in temperature 5 billion years from now.
The "water is being heated from underneath"? What does that mean? Did Satan turn up the thermostat in hell?
actully, yes...sort of. there's an increase in hot spots and volcanic activity. i've also hear radio reports that the Pacific is expanding to make room for the mantle expanding. this stuff may have happend before, but watching what happens on the ocean floor is a new thing for humans.
It doesn't have to have enough of an impact to change the direction of the climate in order to still have an effect nonetheless. Think of it like the vectors. The force of air resistance or friction still has an impact on your car's velocity, even if it's not enough of an impact to get your car going in reverse instead of forward. Basically, I'm only arguing that Co2 has an impact. I'm not arguing that it has enough of an impact to effect any particular trend. There's so many factors and it's so freakin' complicated.
Yep... Geothermal energy. Which is the same energy that's been inside the Earth for billions of years.. Fortunately, its release from the Earth slowed down enough that we could be here. : ) But it did flare up here and there, in fact they reckon supervolcanoes caused caused a mass extinction event a couple hundred million years ago... Hopefully that doesn't happen again.
How do the physics calculate when a solar airplane needs to hold 250 passengers and cargo? If it cannot hold passengers and cargo, then what would be the application for such a craft?
Wright Bros started with less. It is an accomplishment, that involves innovation, that grants advancements, that brings achievement... isn't this why we're here... not to stagnate ourselves.
I'm all for innovation! But there are physics at work, and although we don't know what the future holds, it's difficult to imagine 250 passengers and cargo being able to lift off from ground with the power generated by a few solar panels? Some day there will be other propulsion systems for this type of heavy payload but hard for me to imagine solar electric...
Could you imagine that solar could get us into space? Probably not, but it's part of the research as an independent power source for the vehicle that travels up the length of a space elevator. It is practical application and proper implementations that will give us the greater of our endeavors within solar panels. Solar technology is doubling it's output capacity every two years, with current solar efficiency still under 20%, the future of solar still has a lot more room to grow. Will it be able to lift a jumbo plane with 250 passengers independently, probably not, but that wouldn't be a practical application for it, giving 250 passengers each their own solar power plane would be a practical application.
Exactly. Why would you even want to fly with 250 other people? There's delays, TSA molestation and irradiation, and then the 250 creepy and annoying people themselves. I'd much rather take my own free-to-fly ultralight.
Solar doesn't 'get' us into space...solar provides electricity once the craft is in space. I'm an advocate for solar and wind. I believe for many years to come these sources at best will be supplemental to other power generation like nuclear and hydroelectric. IMO expanding alternative energy is only part of the solution because in parallel we need to redesign our homes/offices and appliances to minimize electric demands. It's kind of silly to install a solar system on a house which has an electric range, electric oven, electric water heater, electric general heating system, etc. and is poorly insulated. We should ban electric appliances! And what's wrong with mandating maximum insulated homes on new construction? Lighting needs to be LED type or that use direct current instead of AC. I'm guessing in 90% of home building, spending an additional $10-$15K-$25K up front for the items mentioned above would be no big deal to home buyers. There's so much we can do to reduce our electric demands but the collective we simply are not yet interested...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator "Powering climbers - Various methods have been proposed to get that energy to the climber: Solar power power compared to the weight of panels limits the speed of climb."
Hopefully you're not mortgaging the house for this venture? In my novice opinion this venture is impossible to construct...
Not impossible, "impossible" is always a laughable statement... the real problem is that we don't have the technical expertise to accomplish it at this time... a space elevator would be the cheapest and cleanest way to get man into space. Before that, we do need to catch a few asteroids and learn how to haul them around our solar system, even use one as a gravity tractor to keep the Moon forever in Earth's orbit. By this time, we all might be flying around in solar powered and self guided vehicles and wouldn't think twice about a climber on a space elevator using solar for its power.
Solar Impulse was a nice project but it showed the limits of solar. It took a plane that only weighed 3,500 pounds 2 months to fly across the US. You typical jet flight across the US is around 6 hours. There is a limit on how much power you can get from solar panels and they will simply never fly any serious aircraft.......EVER. You not only have to deal with the theoretical limit of 86% efficiency for solar panels but you also only receive so much power in irradiance to begin with. Sunlight is a diffuse power source its as simple as that. This means that you can make individual single or dual pilot planes similar to Cessnas (which are actually lighter than Solar Impulse) but you will never be able to carry more than a couple passengers and very little cargo. This article does a nice job of pretty much putting a kabash on the whole solar powered plane thing. http://www.empiricalzeal.com/2013/04/06/solar-planes-are-cool-but-theyre-not-the-future-of-flight/ A couple things I found surprising was that the average speed for the plane was around 26 mph............that is a complete and utter joke for air travel. The other thing that suprised me was the size and weight compared to a 747. It has the same wingspan but it has a teeny tiny cabin compared to the jumbo jet and weighs one one percent of the weight of a 747.
Using jets to power a small load across the country is not only slow, but it is costly and very inefficient compared to the ideas behind maglev trains. With trains that can reach theoretical speeds of 4,000mph within a vacuum tube and a capacity of carrying thousands of passengers at a time, jumbo jet air travel begins to look like a joke. If you wanted to jump over to the local store you could take a "26mph" air traveling vehicle, if you wanted to go to the other side of the country you could take a maglev train that could get you there in less than an hour... Our outdated ideas must first be remolded into considering the applications in which they will be used, and not the current applications that are already in existence. Practical application and proper implementation. http://electrical-engineering-portal.com/innovative-approach-to-maglev-trains-solar-energy http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=69&doc_id=1286366
I happen to have a soft spot for trains as I used to travel with my family on AmTrak to Seattle every summer to visit relatives out there so you won't get any argument out of me about trains. It is just sad to see that people aren't willing to take an extra day or two and ride the train. You get to see the sights and it is a hell of alot less stressful than flying the few times I have flown. Maglevs are good although we would have to gut the entire track system as the majority of it isn't even capable of high speed rail on standard track as we learned in my state when they tried to sell us a lemon of a train system. I would just be happy with an overhaul of the current rail tracks that allowed for high speed rail for transporting cargo. The vast majority of cargo is already transported by ground on trucks and trains. Planes are mostly used for next day delivery stuff from Fed Ex, UPS and US Post Office which is a very tiny percentage of all stuff being shipped. A maglev train won't get you across the country in an hour. The amount of power needed to accelerate the train at start and at stop would be enourmous not to mention you would flatten all the passengers like a pancake.
Naw... astronauts break 20,000 mph getting into orbit, which is only about 250 miles. Sure, we have human pancakes if it was instant acceleration, but not in gradual acceleration. Power is relative to the use within a vacuum tube as the power needed to produce these higher speeds would be drastically reduced. I love train rides too. "But can people handle the forces of going that fast? The engineers behind the project say yes. According to the ET3 website, "just going fast does not affect the human body. The human body can tolerate 8g of acceleration or more for short periods of time. Top fuel dragsters are capable of about 4g acceleration. Many roller coasters produce 3g of acceleration. Most cars produce almost 1g under maximum braking. If acceleration is limited to 1g, most people will not experience any discomfort. The time to travel estimates assume a maximum of 1g of force, and a top speed of 4,000 MPH." - http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=69&doc_id=1286366
Yeah I suppose since its such a long distance they can take their time accelerating. Its an intriguing idea, I just have to wonder at the cost to build a giant vacuum tube over 25k miles long would be though as opposed to just a normal maglev like the ones in Disneyworld and in Germany and Japan. Here is an article showing some of the possible routes..... http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/infrastructure/4232548
We don't have the technical expertise, or the materials, or the money, or the interest, at this time but you believe we will sometime in the future? Maybe 500 years from now. Why stop there? Why not dream up more outlandish ideas? Maybe a craft can attach itself to a laser beam and use it's energy to ride off into the sunset?
Ok, I'll bite... ...some of us would like to see our endeavors actually go towards advancing civilization for the rest who are stuck in archaic and repetitious ideals that have produced nothing more than stagnation for the last near half century. That have done nothing more then, in lemming form, continually regurgitated the same motions and actions that have led us into a zombie like state of perpetual inaction. We need to find a way into space that is cheap and efficient and we need to do it rather quickly. We need to learn how to live in space, colonize space and advance our race in space. Not seeing the potential, the reasons, and the want of such endeavors is a lack of critical thinking and foresight, while living in complacence and stagnation is the worth of such an existence. What could we do if money is no object? "The proposed mission cost of $2.6 billion over 10 years is just over 1 percent of NASA's spending over the next decade. The asteroid retrieval is comparable in overall cost to the Mars Curiosity rover mission. NASA thinks it can get astronauts there on a month-long mission by the early 2020s. Once the asteroid is parked in lunar orbit, using it for research and resources will require repeated astronaut missions and visits by robot probes. NASA's current budget will not pay for that full suite of follow-up missions, but the initial results should convince policy makers to seize the opportunity to do great science, gain experience in human exploration, protect the planet, and kick-start deep-space industries. If we can afford to have explorers in deep space, then we should look at every opportunity to maximize the scientific and economic return from their work beyond the moon." http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/moon-mars/4-questions-about-capturing-an-asteroid-
