Big Stick Physics

Category: Technology (Page 2 of 3)

Science Alert: China considers Moon bases in lava tubes.

September 29, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Science Alert: China interested in Moon caves

On the Moon, astronauts will need protection from a different set of hazards. They’ll have to contend with cosmic and solar radiation, meteorites, wild temperature swings, and even impact ejecta.  The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has found hundreds of lunar ‘skylights,’ locations where a lava tube’s ceiling has collapsed, making a natural opening into the tube.

The International Space Station is only about 300 miles high.  That gives the ISS some protection from cosmic rays.  Cosmic rays are positively charged particles moving at relativistic velocities.  Alpha radiation consists of some of the same positively charged particles, and is the type of radiation that Putin has used to assassinate opponents.  He used polonium which emits alpha radiation.  Those particles are big and slow, and can be stopped with a piece of paper.  When a person ingests polonium, the radiation attacks the person from the inside, with nothing stopping the particles.

Cosmic rays are moving at nearly the speed of light.  Shielding with lead, as one might use to block Superman’s vision, doesn’t work because the particles hit lead atoms and knock them free.  Those heavier atoms would act like shrapnel.

Hydrogen atoms are good for shielding from cosmic rays, so water, ice or plastic works, but you need a lot of it, on the order of several meters.   A lunar lava tube would provide meters of rock and would be excellent shielding.

On the Moon, astronauts will have to contend with the temperature swings. Earth’s natural satellite is a world of temperature extremes. One side of the Moon is in direct sunlight for half of the time, and surface temperatures reach as high as 127 degrees Celsius (260 °F.) The side that’s shrouded in darkness sinks as low as -173 °C (-280 °F.)

The Moon is a world of temperature extremes only on the surface.  Apollo astronauts did experiments with thermal conduction on the surface of the Moon.  Go down half a meter, and the temperature is a constant temperature of about -4 °F.  It gets colder than that in Ohio.

Because the Moon has no atmosphere, heat is not conducted through convection, but only from radiation from the lunar surface to the -450 °F of space and through conduction through Moon rock.  A lava tube on the Moon be -4 °F.  An enclosure that is insulated from the floor of the cave would lose very little heat. 

China’s future plan, after successful exploration, is a crewed base. It would be a long-term underground research base in one of the lunar lava tubes, with a support center for energy and communication at the tube’s entrance. The terrain would be landscaped, and the base would include both residential and research facilities inside the tube.

This is likely to be every nation’s plan.  China has 30 million people living in caves, so maybe the idea doesn’t seem as novel to them.

WSJ: Electric vehicles aren’t working out like they’d hoped.

August 22, 2023 / / 0 Comments

The Electric-Vehicle Bubble Starts to Deflate

The Electric-Vehicle Bubble Starts to Deflate

It’s ironic, to say the least, that the U.S. is seeking to imitate China’s economic model at the moment that its industrial policy fractures. Look no further than its collapsing electric-vehicle bubble, which is a lesson in how industries built by government often also fail because of government.

It’s always a bad idea when the government tries to nudge us into something.  If EV’s are a great idea, the market will recognize that without the need for carrots and sticks.  After all of the lying and bullying with regard to Covid, we don’t believe what the government tells us.  Their motives are suspect and their thinking is muddled.

Ford recently reduced its EV production targets as its losses and unsold inventory grow. At the end of June, it had 116 days of unsold Mustang Mach-Es, and GM’s electric Hummer had more than 100 days of supply. And this is in a growing economy.

Electric vehicles have a limited range, recharging takes hours and they catch on fire.  Some consumers may overlook these features, and they are welcome to buy one.

From a policy perspective, we don’t have a bunch of nuclear power plants generating cheap and abundant energy.  Pushing to electric makes no sense until we’ve got the nukes.

Our grid is not robust.  My power went out for three hours yesterday while the weather was sunny and mild.  Fix the grid.

Toyota, my choice in vehicle manufacturers, doesn’t go in for fads so my next vehicle will be another conventional Tacoma.

With all of the technological innovations we have, more of us should be richer and more comfortable.  Governmental interference is pissing away the future we should be enjoying.

Beaming energy from space. Death ray or utopian solution?

August 8, 2023 / / 0 Comments

SciTechDaily: CalTech satellite beams energy from space.

A space solar power prototype, SSPD-1, has achieved wireless power transfer in space and transmitted power to Earth. The prototype, including MAPLE, a flexible lightweight microwave transmitter, validates the feasibility of space solar power, which can provide abundant and reliable power globally without ground-based transmission infrastructure.

This is one of those dangerous ideas that sound wonderful until you understand it.

Sunlight in space has much higher energy than the sunlight that reaches us.  The atmosphere screens out gamma rays, x-rays, and most of the ultraviolet.  That’s good because these high frequency waves of the electromagnetic spectrum would give us cancer and break down all organic molecules.  Solar panels in space could capture much more energy than they do on the ground.

If that energy is captured and beamed down to the Earth, we are adding energy to our environment.  The idea is analogous to putting mirrors in space to direct additional sunlight to ground-based solar panels.  More solar energy would be added to our system, so the climate would warm up.

With only a couple of satellites, the warming would be negligible as a few power stations generate electricity and profit.  When internal combustion engines were invented, nobody worried about adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.  Beaming energy from space is not a utopian solution, but a bad idea.

The energy beam coming from the satellite would be focused and powerful.   When the beam hits the target, electricity is generated.  When the beam hits something else, it’s a death ray.  Tesla wrote about this, and his papers remain classified.  Interlocks would be installed to terminate the ray if it wonders.  Those interlocks could be removed when a target needs to be destroyed.  That makes beaming energy from space a dangerous idea.

AP News: First new nuke plant is going online.

August 3, 2023 / / 0 Comments

AP: First New Nuke Plant

ATLANTA (AP) — The first American nuclear reactor to be built from scratch in decades is sending electricity reliably to the grid, but the cost of the Georgia power plant could discourage utilities from pursuing nuclear power as a path to a carbon-free future.

The federal government is nudging us toward an all-electric future.  Gas stoves and wood stoves are being regulated to extinction and gas hot water heaters will be next.  Wealthy people are given a $7500 incentive to buy electric cars with conventional cars to eventually banned.  This is happening while the electric grid is getting less reliable.  Wind and solar power are being subsidized while they are known to be intermittent, fair weather electrical generators.  

If the federal government wasn’t actively trying to make our lives less secure and comfortable, we’d be building a new nuclear power plant every two years, like China is.

The third and fourth reactors were originally supposed to cost $14 billion, but are now on track to cost their owners $31 billion. That doesn’t include $3.7 billion that original contractor Westinghouse paid to the owners to walk away from the project. That brings total spending to almost $35 billion.

That sounds expensive, but two years ago, the federal government spent $2 trillion on a Covid stimulus package, and we’ve got nothing to show for it.  Biden’s college loan forgiveness plan was going to cost $30 billion per year, and again, we’d have nothing to show for it.  Instead, build a new nuclear power plant every year so Americans could have cheap and abundant electricity.  Nuclear power plants are one of the safest ways to generate electricity and produce no carbon dioxide (if you care about that sort of thing).

BBC: If you use air conditioning, we will turn off your electricity.

July 28, 2023 / / 0 Comments

BBC: Summer temperature strain the grid.

Nearly 200 million Americans are under “dangerously hot conditions” alerts with temperatures expected to soar past 100F (38C) in several major cities. 

Those major cities are places where it often gets above 100 F in the summer, so no real surprise.

PJM Interconnection, the company in charge of power supply in 13 states and Washington DC, warned that “extreme heat and/or humidity may cause capacity problems on the grid”.

“Temperatures are expected to go above 90F (32°C) across the footprint, which drives up the demand for electricity,” the company said in a statement.

Rather than give a $7500 rebate to rich people buying Teslas, banning gas stoves and portable generators and offering incentives to install wind and solar power, perhaps the federal government could try working for the benefit of the American people.   The federal government loves burning money.  How about spend enough to harden the electrical grid and build 30 new nuclear power plants.

If global warming and climate change are inevitable, wouldn’t it be great to have abundant and reliable electricity to provide air conditioning?

Electric cars aren’t a done deal.

May 31, 2023 /

WSJ: Automakers get into mining.

WSJ: Automakers get into mining.

When General Motors began outlining plans in 2020 to fully switch to electric vehicles, it didn’t account for one critical factor: Many of the battery minerals needed to fulfill its plans were still in the ground.

“I remember seeing a report from our raw-materials team at the time saying, ‘There is plenty of lithium out there. There is plenty of nickel’,” said Sham Kunjur, an industrial engineer now in charge of securing the raw materials for GM’s batteries. “We will buy them from the open market.”

GM executives soon came to discover how off the mark those projections were, and now Mr. Kunjur’s 40-person team is scouring the globe for these minerals. 

“Why Magical Thinking isn’t Whimsical” or “No Shit, Sherlock” would also have been serviceable titles for this article. 

If 3 million cars are sold in the US each year, and each car needed a 100 pounds of lithium for the battery, that’s 300 million pounds of lithium needed each year.  That’s a shitload.  Before we switch to electric cars, someone should be thinking this through.

Those cars also need a shitload of electricity.  The US doesn’t have a lot of surplus generating capacity and we build a new nuclear power plant about every 10 years.

Not paying attention to the basic requirements prior to a big policy shift isn’t a clever way to induce technical advance.  It’s a way to insure that the general population will live a life that is needlessly frustrating and expensive. 

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2024 Big Stick Physics

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑