Skip to main content ↑ ↓
Topic: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread (Read 809801 times) previous topic - next topic
Mav and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread

Reply #870 –
Who really cares about the moon and energy for it - but if energy solutions can be developed for it and used on earth, then that can be beneficial (trickle down technology works!).  Nuclear can explode, don't need to worry about waste disposal, because no one is there and it doesn't matter.

Can't find anything that suggests night on the moon isn't ~340 hours.







Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread

Reply #871 –
Quote from: dodge – on
Who really cares about the moon and energy for it - but if energy solutions can be developed for it and used on earth, then that can be beneficial (trickle down technology works!).  Nuclear can explode, don't need to worry about waste disposal, because no one is there and it doesn't matter.

Can't find anything that suggests night on the moon isn't ~340 hours.
@dodge
As we push towards nuclear fusion we need helium-3, it will be critical, and compared to earth it's abundant on the moon. That is why China, Europe and the USA want bases there, the rest of the mumbo jumbo, having a pitstop on the way to Mars, a moon based space telescope, communications, etc., etc. are all a smokescreen. They want to mine and most of the mining will be conducted underground. Sth Korea and Japan will join in this venture shortly as well.

If you want to understand night and day or continuous sunlight on the moon read up about lunar liberation, with the moons small tilt axis of only 1.5° it's possible to build small towers on the crater rims at the lunar poles that would keep the sun permanently in the line of sight above the tower's horizon, and because the moon has no atmosphere the sun on the horizon is as powerful as the sun at the zenith, it makes no difference. Low gravity means it's very easy to build towers, and 300m tower needs less strength on the moon than a 2 storey house here on earth.

But if you build that infrastructure on the moon you need it to last, because the cost is about 50,000x more expensive per kilogram to build the same thing there as you would here on earth.
"Extremists on either side will always meet in the Middle!"

Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread

Reply #872 –
I would have thought the risk about solar was more about dust, debris, and random meteor crashes.  The surface of the moon is heavily cratered because there's no atmosphere to protect it.   Not to mention the amount of moon dust, and who knows what the radiation out there will do to the electronics with no atmosphere.
"everything you know is wrong"

Paul Hewson

Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread

Reply #873 –
LP - sorry, it isn't something that interests me. From what you said, sounds like a few countries competing to get there first.  Imagine if they worked together to achieve the result...

Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread

Reply #874 –
Quote from: Thryleon – on
I would have thought the risk about solar was more about dust, debris, and random meteor crashes.  The surface of the moon is heavily cratered because there's no atmosphere to protect it.  Not to mention the amount of moon dust, and who knows what the radiation out there will do to the electronics with no atmosphere.
Dust and meteorites are equally a risk to all infrastructure, the low gravity means the vast majority of ejecta from significant impacts depart lunar orbit. Existing lunar soil/dust is electrostatically charged.

For reference. NASA and ESA only recently developed self cleaning coatings specifically designed for use on hardware deployed to the lunar landscape. The coatings are expected to be applied to Panels, Windows, Camera Optics, Visors, etc., etc., for future missions. You press a button and the coating electrostatically ejects loose debris from the surface, an analogy is grains of sand bouncing off a vibrating plate.
"Extremists on either side will always meet in the Middle!"
 

Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread

Reply #876 –
It's amazing how the political position of many is so plastic, take the case of the data-centers.

Most of these developments come with 24x7 noise and emissions pollution, but they are sold as green, claiming solar and other renewable energy sources. The current round is even being supported by the Green parties.

But every data center makes use of gas turbine generators with Uninterpretable UPS for full online standby. These centers are not like the backup / hosting facilities people are familiar with, the proposed centers are in fact Server / GPU farms built for AI. In effect they use small jet engines that can ramp up and shut off at short notice. The developers will tell you the turbines only really ever run during an outage, that is a partial truth, they only all run to supply full power as part of an outage whether it is planned or unplanned. The reality is in combination with the full online UPS, the gas turbines will be cycled on and off around the clock 24x7. A big data center might have more than a dozen turbines, sometimes with duplicate or triplicate redundancy. That can mean at least one gas turbine will cycle on and off every 20 or 30 minutes somewhere at the facility, such that each generator is run for a small period of time once a day, sometimes more than once a day, and in any given hour there is a generator running for some significant portion of the available time slot.

Hardy green, certainly not environmentally friendly, and nearly always situated in remote locations because of the reasons above!

Now I'm all for super computers and R&D resources, give the scientists and engineers what they need to solve the next pandemic or environmental crisis. But this is not what the modern data-centers are really for, the bulk of the resource is being targeted at 'gaming' the financial sector, shares, crypto and targeted investments.

I'm not at all happy about having our tax dollars fund tools designed to the grow the personal wealth of billionaires. And it's truly ironic that some are all for this type of investment but openly protest a new train line, desalination plant, airport, freeway or power station!
"Extremists on either side will always meet in the Middle!"