The Moon

william mook wrote:

We have a process that makes DC electricity from sunlight at
$0.00125 per kWh (1/8th cent per kWh) We have a low-cost way
to make hydrogen from water through what we call a wet cell
electrolyzer (stainless steel, water and potassium hydroxide)
at 50 kWh per kg of hydrogen. That's a 6.25 cents per kg.
That's $62.50 per metric ton of hydrogen from 9 metric tons of
water. (Water costs $0.30 per metric ton even in water poor
regions of the US)

When can we expect to see your smiling face on the cover of Forbes
with the caption "Move over Bill Gates - the NEW world's richest
man!!"? :-)

Jim Davis

In article ,
Jim Davis writes:
william mook wrote:

We have a process that makes DC electricity from sunlight at
$0.00125 per kWh (1/8th cent per kWh) We have a low-cost way
to make hydrogen from water through what we call a wet cell
electrolyzer (stainless steel, water and potassium hydroxide)
at 50 kWh per kg of hydrogen. That's a 6.25 cents per kg.
That's $62.50 per metric ton of hydrogen from 9 metric tons of
water. (Water costs $0.30 per metric ton even in water poor
regions of the US)

When can we expect to see your smiling face on the cover of Forbes
with the caption "Move over Bill Gates - the NEW world's richest
man!!"? :-)

When the Laws of Thermodynamics are repealed.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

(Peter Stickney) wrote in message ...
In article ,
Jim Davis writes:
william mook wrote:

We have a process that makes DC electricity from sunlight at
$0.00125 per kWh (1/8th cent per kWh) We have a low-cost way
to make hydrogen from water through what we call a wet cell
electrolyzer (stainless steel, water and potassium hydroxide)
at 50 kWh per kg of hydrogen. That's a 6.25 cents per kg.
That's $62.50 per metric ton of hydrogen from 9 metric tons of
water. (Water costs $0.30 per metric ton even in water poor
regions of the US)

When can we expect to see your smiling face on the cover of Forbes
with the caption "Move over Bill Gates - the NEW world's richest
man!!"? :-)

This is my vision!

When the Laws of Thermodynamics are repealed.

Nonsense.

First run silicon costs about $0.17 per sq cm. One sun illumination
possesses 0.085 watts per sq cm at ground level. Silicon solar cells
are no more than 20% efficient. So, each sq cm produces 0.017 watts
electrical per square cm. That's $10 per watt.

Now, solar cell manufacturers typically use surplus second run silicon
that's much cheaper to acquire - so they can produce a finished solar
panel for about half this figure, but are limited by the availability
of low-cost silicon. There is a diseconomy of scale. And that's
where the solar industry finds itself today.

http://www.jxj.com/magsandj/rew/2002...on_supply.html

To reduce the cost of silicon to say $0.02 per watt requires
concentrating the sun 500x normal solar intensity. This has been
achieved by a variety of researchers using multi-junction photocells
or low resistance photocells or some combination of both.

http://www.californiasolarcenter.org...0030708-1.html
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech...tovoltaics.ap/

These systems do not violate the laws of physics. 500x solar
intensity is 42.5 watts per square cm. Cooling systems are capable of
easily sinking 50 to 500 watts per sq cm.

http://www.coolingzone.com/Guest/New...r_TC_2001.html

So, plainly heating for the right kind of PV in the right environment
is not a problem while achieving silicon costs of less than $0.02 per
watt!

The rest of the puzzle is achieving very low costs in the
concentrating optics, the cooling sytem, installation and maintenance,
and the tracking system so that the entire system is $0.04 per peak
watt.

We have done this - and this is the basis of our success.

$0.04 per peak watt translates to 3/10th of a cent per year in annual
costs - depending on what discount rate and what lifespan you enter
for the PV system.

Each peak watt in a place that has say 2,400 hours of sunlight
produces 2.4 kWh of energy per year.

So, since there are no fuel costs the cost of this power is 1/8th cent
per kWh!

This is far lower than the cost of fuels in most power plants. This
means that we can make fuels synthetically at less cost than it takes
to extract them from the ground.

As for the size of the market.

Humanity uses 5.5 trillion watts of power in the form of 28 billion
barrels of oil per year. To replace this with terrestrial solar power
requires the production of 22 trillion watts of solar panels. At 20%
efficiency this requires 129,500 sq kilometers of land be paneled. At
4 cents per watt this amounts to an investment of $880 billion.
Allowing for double this figure to account for energy transmission,
and attached solar powered hardware to produce synthetic liquid and
gaseous hydrocarbon fuels from carbon-dioxide extracted from the air,
results in $1,760 billion. For this we obtain enough fuel to provide
essentially all the hydrocarbon fuels of the world today.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec11_21.pdf

Petroleum 28 billion barrels @$30/bbl = $840 billion

Which is a 47% rate of return, and easily funded to any level given
the the basic process is well proven.

An interesting sidebar is the impact of the cost of oil on demand for
oil.

http://www.mb.com.ph/MAIN2004093019533.html

Lower oil prices and increased supplies translate to rapid economic
growth in less developed regions. This means huge increases in
economic output as well as increases in demand for oil. Particularly
as automobile use spreads worldwide.

http://www.eurochinabusiness.com/industial/const.htm

What this means in an environment of unlimited energy availability
(the Earth intercepts solar energy at a rate of 171,500 trillion
watts!) is very rapid growth to about 11x the present economic output
of the world (from $40 trillion to $440 trillion in 36 years assuming
7% real growth) and along with it growth in energy markets from $840
billion to $9,240 billion by 2040.

With 40% margins maintained throughout this period this means a
company with $9 trillion today growing to nearly $100 trillion by
2040. This is 10 to 100x larger than the wealth created by Bill
Gates' innovations! And given the great impetus these innovations
give to the global economy and general raising of the human condition,
this money is well earned!

"Peter Stickney" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Jim Davis writes:
william mook wrote:

We have a process that makes DC electricity from sunlight at
$0.00125 per kWh (1/8th cent per kWh) We have a low-cost way
to make hydrogen from water through what we call a wet cell
electrolyzer (stainless steel, water and potassium hydroxide)
at 50 kWh per kg of hydrogen. That's a 6.25 cents per kg.
That's $62.50 per metric ton of hydrogen from 9 metric tons of
water. (Water costs $0.30 per metric ton even in water poor
regions of the US)

When can we expect to see your smiling face on the cover of
Forbes with the caption "Move over Bill Gates - the NEW world's
richest man!!"? :-)

When the Laws of Thermodynamics are repealed.

Not surprisingly it is a concentrator approach. My BOTE calculations
inferred that his approach was probably good for 1-2 cents per kWhr and
probably more. Though beyond this would require more specific analysis
on my part.

Even at 1-2 cents per kWhr it is still a winner, though numerous
concentrator approaches should potentially be capable of this, his is
probably the best of them. Direct hydrogen production via the
thermodynamic water splitting Sulphur Iodine process is one of the
latest interesting ones.

This is something that I think SPS advocates tend to underestimate. The
ongoing advancement and cost reduction of terrestrial renewable energy
sources. Traditionally such R&D was driven by the environmentally
conscious, it is becoming driven by the economically conscious, expect
big advances when this happens. Money is a far more honest and more
effective driver of technological development.

Pete.

"Pete Lynn" wrote in message ...
"Peter Stickney" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Jim Davis writes:
william mook wrote:

We have a process that makes DC electricity from sunlight at
$0.00125 per kWh (1/8th cent per kWh) We have a low-cost way
to make hydrogen from water through what we call a wet cell
electrolyzer (stainless steel, water and potassium hydroxide)
at 50 kWh per kg of hydrogen. That's a 6.25 cents per kg.
That's $62.50 per metric ton of hydrogen from 9 metric tons of
water. (Water costs $0.30 per metric ton even in water poor
regions of the US)

When can we expect to see your smiling face on the cover of
Forbes with the caption "Move over Bill Gates - the NEW world's
richest man!!"? :-)

When the Laws of Thermodynamics are repealed.

Not surprisingly it is a concentrator approach.

Yep.

My BOTE calculations
inferred that his approach was probably good for 1-2 cents per kWhr and
probably more.

Could you share your approach? You're starting with junction
temperature right?

Though beyond this would require more specific analysis
on my part.

And proprietary information.

Even at 1-2 cents per kWhr it is still a winner, though numerous
concentrator approaches should potentially be capable of this, his is
probably the best of them. Direct hydrogen production via the
thermodynamic water splitting Sulphur Iodine process is one of the
latest interesting ones.

Yep.

This is something that I think SPS advocates tend to underestimate. The
ongoing advancement and cost reduction of terrestrial renewable energy
sources.

Don't underestimate the development of private space programs ability
to dramatically lower costs of space access!

In the Cold War the State Department had to worry about the negative
impact on missile proliferation a low-cost developer of commercial
space travel might have. In the new age of direct US pre-emptive
intervention in the affairs of any nation that might threaten US
interest, and improved recon abilities due in part to space based
systems, this is no longer an issue.

So, Burt Rutan and all after him will build an X15 analogs and better
and exceed the performance of those systems for something like 1% of
the program cost and 0.1% of the losses in human life!

Traditionally such R&D was driven by the environmentally
conscious, it is becoming driven by the economically conscious, expect
big advances when this happens. Money is a far more honest and more
effective driver of technological development.

Yep. Which is why for-profit operations like Scaled Composites and
not cost-plus like all government programs is a great benefit to the
space faring community.

The government programs could be a pathfinder for private enterprise,
if the government would declassify stuff presently classified and put
NASA in the role of supporting private space development, like NACA
supported private air travel. Back in the day NACA even evaluated the
military potential of aviation advances produced by industry. This
could be a role within the Air Force, or even NASA as well in the
modern age of commercial space development.

In the end, low-cost solar will not stop when it reaches the price of
fossil fuels. Although during the era when fossil fuels are still
dominant, costs will hesitate there. This will create a brief period
of a decade or less of great profits in low-cost solar. (a period
when my patents are in place!)

But, eventually, low-cost solar will create low-cost energy generally.
When that happens, we will have a return of the 'too cheap to meter'
scenarios of the nuclear industry of the 1950s.

Low cost energy along with an effective international police force
(what the US is tending toward, they just haven't figured out how to
pay for it) will create a period of dramatic economic growth that
could transform the world in a few decades. This isn't just a
political rant. The spread of nuclear technology and the outbreak of
even limited nuclear conflict is a very very bad thing that will throw
any rosy scenario into a cocked hat. So, its in everyone's interest
to make sure that doesn't happen. Even if they don't believe it or
support it. I think future generations will look on George Bush as we
now look on George Washington (I didn't vote for him, so I can say
this without bias) and today's war on terror will be viewed by future
generations the way Americans view the Whiskey Rebellion.

And it could go faster than even that!

Add in the economic impact of the appearance of real honest-to-god
robots in a large variety of roles as computer technology continues to
advance, and you have a recipe for economic growth on a scale
unprecedented in history! (just as computers eliminate the need for
much of middle management and improve the skills of even tiny
companies - robots eliminate the need for skilled workers and allow
any population anywhere to benefit from the skills and knowledge
available anywhere in the human corpus of knowledge - essentially
eliminating the need for training altogether, just pay for the robot -
banks leverage a portion of the robot's earning potential - and users
put it to work - the banks keep everyone honest)

If robots arise over the next five to eight years, we will see general
global growth skyrocket from 4% to 7% range to the MID double digit
range (30% to 70%) - which will transform the world in less than a
decade, and expand PER CAPITA energy use to levels that are
unprecedented in history.

This is the real rosy scenario. Every scenario that doesn't postulate
strong economic growth is a recipe for the eventual abandonment of
industry by humanity.

Why will per capita energy uses be so high? Well, they grow rapidly
as a population begins to change the way they travel. From walking
and biking to autos for example. They grow rapidly again as personal
jets or their modern analogs become generally available. I flew with
a millionaire a few days ago from NYC. His fuel bill for that one
trip was something like $20,000. Future personal jet users might not
be so wasteful (I was thinking of personal trains that personal trains
used by the wealthy of the 19th century were very similar to this jet
interior - but today's autos are smaller and more efficient though
achieving the same ends as the personal train)

Again when personal spacecraft become generally available energy use
rises. Then, continuously as speeds increase toward light speed.

But, lets keep it in the 21st century shall we?

We'll see everyone get autos, and before that's completed, everyone
will get VTOL flyers. Bad news for the road builders. Good news for
the environment.

Automated piloting will mean that these flyers will come in all sizes,
down to package carriers. People in the future will think no more of
putting an object in a package sized automated ballistic transport and
tossing it out the window with an absolute certainty that it will
arrive reliably to where its going in minutes - just as we think
nothing of dialing a few digits and reaching anyone anywhere by
telephone in the world.

What this means is that energy use could be not only 10x today's use
in 30 years- which means everyone lives at US levels or better. But
that energy use could be 100x to 300x today's use in less than 20
years.

In this high growth scenario (mook's rosy scenario) everyone lives far
far better than even millionaires do today and the wealthy live even
better still - and they all will regard our present age as we might
regard the one room school houses and buckboards of the 19th century.

In this high-growth scenario space travel costs have dropped
dramatically, and energy needs have risen dramatically.

The point of all this goes back to what you're saying. This
fundamental shift in energy use drives collectors off-world in search
of higher efficiencies and lower costs.

Our models indicate that there is one invariant and that is, when you
install about 500,000 sq km of solar collectors on Earth, there are
very powerful reasons to begin installing far larger areas in space
and beam energy to where its needed.

But we're setting the stage today. With lower cost technology brought
about by private investment, a commitment to peace and liberty
throughout the world to insure peace in the nuclear age, and the
ability of people to work hard to improve themselves and the prospects
of their children by innovating new ways of doing things.

Bill


Pete.

"william mook" wrote in message
om...

Not surprisingly it is a concentrator approach.

Yep.

My BOTE calculations inferred that his approach was probably
good for 1-2 cents per kWhr and probably more.

Could you share your approach? You're starting with junction
temperature right?

Not exactly, my background is more in heat engines, so I sort of took a
thermodynamic approach. From this perspective the crux of the problem
is the heat source or concentrator, if you can make this for less than
the cost of fossil fuels then you know the economics can be made to add
up, (pretty much). They added up. From there I sort of looked at a
cost comparison between a heat engine plus generator system, (as per a
thermal power station), and the concentrated water cooled solar cell
approach, the latter looked much cheaper.

On a side note another prospect I have been playing with of late is
basically the idea of a trench a few meters across covered with a
transparent reinforced plastic sheet. Conceivably this could be made
for a few dollars per square meter. Originally I was thinking about
this as a low cost closed cycle greenhouse which requires negligible
irrigation water, ideal for desserts, perhaps also with elevated CO2
levels. This would be a useful commercial precursor to farming in
space. Anyway, it could also serve as a protective cover for solar
power collectors, protecting them from wind, rain, dust, etc., enabling
a far lighter and cheaper design. I doubt it would add up, but it is
just a thought.

I agree with most of the rest of what you said. I see a high rate of
continued economic growth, lead by technological development, as fairly
essential for the well being of all. Though I do not expect people to
educate or work themselves any less. Economic growth will make space
much easier.

An interesting prospect with the tethered wing thing is to attach it to
a hybrid vehicle. This basically turns it into an electric and
relatively quiet VTOL aircraft, at little extra cost, (though it would
be nice to soup it up a bit). Fuel consumption would be little
different, perhaps even less. As you can imagine this might have quite
significant economic and social benefits. You could probably commute
five times as far for the same cost and time, disseminating cities. It
could also generate tens of kilowatts of power as a wind generator when
not otherwise in use.

Pete.

"Pete Lynn" wrote in message ...
"william mook" wrote in message
om...

Not surprisingly it is a concentrator approach.

Yep.

My BOTE calculations inferred that his approach was probably
good for 1-2 cents per kWhr and probably more.

Could you share your approach? You're starting with junction
temperature right?

Not exactly, my background is more in heat engines, so I sort of took a
thermodynamic approach.

That's a good place to start.

From this perspective the crux of the problem
is the heat source or concentrator, if you can make this for less than
the cost of fossil fuels then you know the economics can be made to add
up, (pretty much). They added up.

Yes. The cost of optics is crucial.

From there I sort of looked at a
cost comparison between a heat engine plus generator system, (as per a
thermal power station), and the concentrated water cooled solar cell
approach, the latter looked much cheaper.

Water cooled heat exchanger system (we used a transmission radiator
available from an auto supply store for our first one - 12VDC
operation!) is much cheaper than a heat engine/generator. Quite
right.

On a side note another prospect I have been playing with of late is
basically the idea of a trench a few meters across covered with a
transparent reinforced plastic sheet.

Some folks are working on something like this;

http://www.geocities.com/ralfsun/
http://www.mdatechnology.net/techsea...?articleid=226

The killer here is maintaining accurate fresnel fabrication and low
cost framing installation and so forth.

Conceivably this could be made
for a few dollars per square meter.

Depends on how you maintain accuracy of the fresnel cross-section.
But, I agree with the right kind of innovation and effort - and
sufficiently large production volumes, material costs would dominate
and the lenses could be made for a few dollars a square meter.


Originally I was thinking about
this as a low cost closed cycle greenhouse which requires negligible
irrigation water, ideal for desserts, perhaps also with elevated CO2
levels. This would be a useful commercial precursor to farming in
space.

Israel has experimented with closed systems (not as closed as you are
proposing) for years and gotten astounding increases in output as have
others.

http://www.attra.org/attra-pub/gh-herbhold.html
http://www.citrusandvegetable.com/ho..._Peppers1.html
http://www.israel-embassy.org.uk/web/pages/copegrow.htm
Anyway, it could also serve as a protective cover for solar

A solar powered water cycling system combined with a vapor tight
greenhouse - built at sufficient low cost, can dramatically increase
output while decreasing the cost of each unit of output. This has
huge implications for world hunger - essentially providing a means to
eliminate it.

The techniques can serve as a model for close ecologies for space
stations. Absolutely. Also, once humanity begins capturing asteroids
to feed space industry in Earth orbit, we can build farm and forestry
satellites in space and provide unlimited amounts of food and fiber
anywhere in minutes from space delivered directly to consumers like
JDAMs.

This will eliminate entirely agriculture and forestry on Earth (along
with industry) and allow a very high living standard to be maintained
while Earth's ecology returns as much as possible to its native state.

power collectors, protecting them from wind, rain, dust, etc., enabling
a far lighter and cheaper design. I doubt it would add up, but it is
just a thought.

Trench collectors feeding lines of PV arrays that are convectively
cooled are a very cheap way to go. One of the problems with a linear
concentrator though is that you're limited to about 208x solar
intensity. So, your PV costs are automatically more than doubled.
And, the current designs of the optics are rather higher priced to
install and maintain. That's because at the hairy limit of
concentration the system becomes very sensitive to minor perturbations
- dropping a factor of 2 with a breeze. So, practical systems are
usually 70x with reasonably priced frames, footers, and so forth.


I agree with most of the rest of what you said. I see a high rate of
continued economic growth, lead by technological development, as fairly
essential for the well being of all. Though I do not expect people to
educate or work themselves any less.

Without robots but with low-cost energy we can expect 4% to 7%
economic growth rates - because the training and skills of worker are
the limiting factor, and its hard to move beyond this level.

With robots and low-cost energy we might expect growth rates 8 to 10 x
this rate! Why? Because we will easily incorporate any portion of
the human corpus of knowledge into any robot electronically. Thus,
skills play a far lesser role.

Heck, just having a reliable humaniform tele-robotic system

http://telerobot.mech.uwa.edu.au/
http://www.creare.com/telerobo.html
http://world.honda.com/ASIMO/

will increase the efficiency of knowledge anywhere!

The distinction here can be made clear with a simple illustration.

(1) Human - a doctor must be present to deliver involved medical
care.
(2) Telerobot - a doctor must drive a medical telerobot to deliver
involved
medical care.
(3) Robotic - a doctor must instruct a controlling program for a
robot so
that the robot may deliver involved medical care.

If we are constrained to humans, the ability to provide medical care
to the global population must await the training and testing of human
doctors. The vast amount of these doctors are trained to deliver
medical care humanity already uses - very little brain power is used
to expand treatments.

If we are constrained to telerobots, the ability to provide medical
care is multiplied. A human doctor can be summoned anywhere in the
world thus improving the efficiency of medical care delivery
worldwide.

If we have robots that can deliver medical care as safely and reliably
as the best human doctors, then all we must do is copy a software
program from some master instruction tape and send robots hither and
yon to await the delivery of medical care. Logistics are reduced to a
simple problem of medical consumables supply.

Clearly the best we can do in any year is maybe add 7% to the pool of
qualified doctors in the first scenario. In the second we may be able
to raise that to 15% to 20% increase in medical care delivered per
year. In the third case we may be able to raise that to 40% to 70%.

In cases where saturation of care has taken place (imagine a medical
suite in every home, office and factory, along with air mobile medical
suites at the ready throughout the world) - then the vast majority of
people in medicine will begin to think about improving the nature and
quality of medical care. That is, far more research will get done and
the best human brains will radically improve the quality of medical
care beyond even the best that we see today. And this will continue
to improve yeilding ultimately indefinite life spans.

Economic growth will make space
much easier.

Absolutely! Focusing on reducing core costs will also make it easier.
These two trends taken together will make spacetravel something very
different than what we've become used to during the Cold War. The
dreams and visions of the pioneers of the 1930s will largely have been
fulfilled and surpassed.


An interesting prospect with the tethered wing thing is to attach it to
a hybrid vehicle. This basically turns it into an electric and
relatively quiet VTOL aircraft, at little extra cost, (though it would
be nice to soup it up a bit). Fuel consumption would be little
different, perhaps even less. As you can imagine this might have quite
significant economic and social benefits. You could probably commute
five times as far for the same cost and time, disseminating cities. It
could also generate tens of kilowatts of power as a wind generator when
not otherwise in use.

Pete.

Interesting idea. I'm having a little trouble envisioning this wing
you speak of. But the idea of using a sort of windmill as a flight
vehicle is novel! If I'm reading it right.

"william mook" wrote in message
om...

Interesting idea. I'm having a little trouble envisioning this wing
you speak of. But the idea of using a sort of windmill as a flight
vehicle is novel! If I'm reading it right.

Not really, it is more a big winged UAV with a load carrying tether such
that it is flying at full forward speed, (in a very tight circle), when
lifting payloads vertically off the ground. Structurally it is far more
efficient, and hence lighter and lower cost.

One possible application that might interest you is as the basis of a
very direct and fast hydrogen distribution system. In a VTOL fashion
transporting LH2 direct from production plant to end user at high
subsonic velocities powered by the LH2 boil off. Vehicles anywhere up
to a 1000 ton might be used though around 10 ton vehicles might serve
smaller users better and be safer. If memory serves the hydrogen costs
were only something like two percent per 1000 km.

I was originally thinking about this as a power transmission system for
very off shore wind power, though it might work in the general sense.
While piping of GH2 is probably cheaper long term, as a LH2 distribution
system it is probably better as tank and insulation cost are greatly
reduced. It is far more flexible, direct and requires a far lower
initial infrastructural cost, it should be economically practical. It
is a mass producible system.

Pete.

Pete Lynn wrote:

Not really, it is more a big winged UAV with a load carrying tether such
that it is flying at full forward speed, (in a very tight circle), when
lifting payloads vertically off the ground. Structurally it is far more
efficient, and hence lighter and lower cost.


Oh....Dear....God! Mook has undergone binary fission, and now there are
_TWO_ of them!
This has to be the dire effect of electromagnetic fields from those damn
EERs that everyone told us were the wave of the future- but which have
only led to thousands of incinerated Electro-Flivver drivers and
countless unwholesome mutations....remember: Birds Fly....Men Drink;
Mook Thinks....and Turds Fly!
Stop the insanity! Stop the insanity NOW!


One possible application that might interest you is as the basis of a
very direct and fast hydrogen distribution system. In a VTOL fashion
transporting LH2 direct from production plant to end user at high
subsonic velocities powered by the LH2 boil off. Vehicles anywhere up
to a 1000 ton might be used though around 10 ton vehicles might serve
smaller users better and be safer. If memory serves the hydrogen costs
were only something like two percent per 1000 km.

I was originally thinking about this as a power transmission system for
very off shore wind power, though it might work in the general sense.
While piping of GH2 is probably cheaper long term, as a LH2 distribution
system it is probably better as tank and insulation cost are greatly
reduced. It is far more flexible, direct and requires a far lower
initial infrastructural cost, it should be economically practical. It
is a mass producible system.



You might want to consider some things he
1.) What exactly is the tether made out of? Let me guess....Fullerine,
right?
2.) What exactly is the tether hooked to at the base end? There's going
to be a tad of a pull on it as the aircraft accelerates, isn't there?
Let me guess, there are going to be two aircraft on it; one per side to
balance the forces, right?
3.) I assume that the aircraft detaches from the tether once it's
airborne (I sure hope so, or you've come up with an idea that makes
Mook's laser-driven flying cars look safe- at least all they do is fry
birds and decapitate buildings as the beams whizz and fizz on their way
to the cars; this thing could mow down whole forests like a giant
Weed-Eater); so, think about this a second- when the plane detaches
itself, which way is it going to travel? It's going to come off the wire
at around a 45 degree angle to it's normal direction of flight, and this
isn't going to help its controllability any as it leaves.
I once saw an idea like this on the cover of a 1930's Science Wonder
Widgets magazine; in that case it was a airliner taking off the back of
a locomotive running on a circular track... I notice this never caught
on. ;-)

Pat

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...

Oh....Dear....God! Mook has undergone binary fission, and now
there are_TWO_ of them! This has to be the dire effect of
electromagnetic fields from those damn EERs that everyone told us
were the wave of the future- but which have only led to thousands of
incinerated Electro-Flivver drivers and countless unwholesome
mutations....remember: Birds Fly....Men Drink; Mook Thinks....and
Turds Fly! Stop the insanity! Stop the insanity NOW!

:-)

You might want to consider some things he
1.) What exactly is the tether made out of? Let me guess....Fullerine,
right?

S-Glass, though spectra, kevlar, carbon fiber, piano wire, etc., would
all work, they are just unnecessarily expensive. The atmosphere is not
really thick enough to justify Fullerine. :-)

2.) What exactly is the tether hooked to at the base end? There's
going to be a tad of a pull on it as the aircraft accelerates, isn't
there?

The same thing a wind turbine is attached to, though without the healing
moment, the loads otherwise being proportionally about the same. The
anchor has to offset the lift force of the wing. Even at twice the size
of a 747, with similar power levels, that is still probably less than a
1000 ton.

Let me guess, there are going to be two aircraft on it; one per side
to
balance the forces, right?

That is one of many options.

3.) I assume that the aircraft detaches from the tether once it's
airborne (I sure hope so, or you've come up with an idea that makes
Mook's laser-driven flying cars look safe- at least all they do is fry
birds and decapitate buildings as the beams whizz and fizz on their
way to the cars; this thing could mow down whole forests like a giant
Weed-Eater); so, think about this a second- when the plane
detaches itself, which way is it going to travel?

It remains attached to the tether, obviously there are numerous safety
possibilities, apt analogy. :-)

It's going to come off the wire at around a 45 degree angle to it's
normal direction of flight, and this isn't going to help its
controllability
any as it leaves.

Could be worse, could be a space elevator. :-)
Seriously though, I would suggest far off shore for big ones.

During WWII the Germans experimented with large Cody trains many
kilometers high flown on piano wire. They had a few interesting
experiences. I remember something about one instance where they lost
the train and retrieved the piano wire by just winching it in across the
country side, gaining all sorts of things in the process, like a sheep
in less than perfect condition.

I once saw an idea like this on the cover of a 1930's Science
Wonder Widgets magazine; in that case it was a airliner taking off the
back of a locomotive running on a circular track... I notice this
never
caught on. ;-)

That is not the worst of them.

Pete.