Re: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps

From: quibbler (quibbler247_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 06/11/04 

Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 14:33:25 -0600

In article <40c9d592_1@news.iprimus.com.au>, copsR@yourdoor.com says...
> "Mike Combs" <mikecombs@nospam.com_chg_nospam_2_ti> asks:
>
> > Could you provide more details? I'd heard something along the lines that
> > Savage was no longer at the center of the LUF, but nothing to the effect
> > that he has disassociated himself from the stated plan, nor that the LUF
> was
> > defunct.
>
> Maybe he's improved it all.
>
> Maybe Savage updated his OTEC idea when he realised that
> objects lifted through the earths gravity well gain potential energy.

He certainly realizes that they store potential energy. That potential
energy comes from the fact that work was already done to lift them and
you're not going to get any more back out than you put it.

> So he has replaced them with Mountain Gravitic Energy
> Convertors where you pull a stone up hill and get energy from
> letting roll back down again.

It's been proposed that one could collect water on the top of high
mountains and run it down giant penstocks to hydroelectric turbines in
a basin and range area. It has little or nothing to do with OTEC, even
though both systems rely upon solar energy as their prime energy source.
I'm not sure that you could collect enough water to make it worthwhile
for power generation. It might be okay to temporarily store power if
one had large, sealed basins on the top of a mountain range. In some
mine areas they also use slurry pipes to transport mud and tailings.
One can generate some amounts of energy there.

>
> Maybe he realised that at close to 0.00 PSI, water boils at room
> temperature

Lots of gases would boil at temperatures below that. But there would
still be fundamental thermodynamic limits if one is only exploiting the
temperature difference between room temperature and some cold source,
like deep sea water. You also still have to do work to get the cold
water up.

>, so you can use the low pressure steam in vacuum
> sealed turbines as a perpetual energy machine.

Yeah, try again. The steam needs to be recondensed and there is nothing
perpetual about it. The temperature drops when the sun goes down and
your generator can cut out. There are both Closed cycle and open cycle
OTEC. Closed cycle were some of the earliest designs, in fact. OTEC is
an old idea proposed by the likes of D'Arsonval in the 1880's.

>
> Maybe instead of just magically extracting 'seament' by
> passing electricity through magnesium he has decided
> to have it extract gold

Sorry, but there are not sufficient concentrations of gold in sea water
for economically viable extraction, at least with present extraction
methods. If one had better methods then one would probably extract many
of the more plentiful minerals first.

> and uranium

There is substantially more uranium in sea water than there is gold.
But it's still not clear that it would be more economical to extract it
from sea water as opposed to land sources. In any event uranium oxides
are actually not worth that much.

> instead to fund and
> power his project.
>
> Maybe he discovered that there is more nitrogen in the
> atmosphere than dissolved in seawater

You have to expend large amounts of energy to extract N2 from the
atmosphere. It doesn't just come out of its own accord. Nitrates and
other fertile materials sucked up from the deep oceans as a byproduct of
OTEC would be quite a bit easier to utilize than nitrogen from the air.
In fact, in some spots of the world natural currents drive these
nutrients to the surface and create fertile fishing grounds.

>, so he is out
> there replenishing the soil by blowing through dirt.

Yeah, sure, I guess farmers just wait for a nice wind storm to fertilize
their fields.
 
> Maybe he finally completed high school physics and
> chemistry, got a clue,

You might want to be careful about aspersions like this, since an
objective reader might find some of his proposals more reasonable than
your own.

> and is now to embarassed to
> show his face in public.

Savage said a lot of whacky things, but you've nicely demonstrated
that you've got even whackier and less well founded views of your own. 

-- 
      Quibbler (quibbler247atyahoo.com)
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the 
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be 
made that faith is one of the world's great evils, 
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to 
eradicate."  -- Richard Dawkins

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