Space elevator tethers, Dielectric Elastomer Generators used in a new wave power concept, and so on

“Space Elevator”
I remember treating it as a “role-model” due to the excitement they were able to generate, but one day it dawned on me that hype was all they had, and they were never going to build one. Too many engineering challenges at this point in time.
Looks like it might be workable on the moon (less gravity, no atmosphere).
My version I though of way back in the 1970’s was a stack of “hyperloop”-type maglev trains inside vacuum tubes arranged like the rings of Saturn, traveling fast enough to be in orbit and also hold up the tubular rings, that could be climbed like a ladder into space. Kids - what do they know? Even Google, Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates combined could not afford it. Anyway in that sense it is similar to a lot of AWE ideas: unworkable given current technology, if at all.

Check out @MichielKruijff’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/MichielKruijff/status/1084583253489696768?s=09
32km long space tether to de orbit some outa date hardware… It’s a start. Sorta.
Works for Ampyx

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Here’s another bad idea that will never emerge - one more instance of global-warming insanity, as the next glacial cycle approaches…


God, people are SO gullible,
Still waiting for a single wave-power device to prove useful after all these years.
Not sure why - seems like plenty of power is there…

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2018.0566

Modelling and testing of a wave energy converter based on dielectric elastomer generators - rspa.2018.0566.pdf (1.3 MB)

That’s a fun concept to think about.

@dougselsam, I split the topic. The related concepts by themselves are fine. I don’t want the original topic to be about discussing merits of individual concepts (Wikis are not for discussion), which your posts are an invitation to, and did, so I split the topic to prevent that there, and to give that discussion a better place to happen, here. Also…

You’re acting the part of a concern troll. Even if you’re not, you’re acting like a broken record. Point made, move on.

I vote for deletion of future posts with climate change denial. This forum is not the place for that.

Mentioning the scientific consensus that we’re overdue for the next glacial cycle of the current ice-age is not “climate change denial”. It is, rather, a willingness to have a more complete discussion than what can fit on a bumper-sticker, considering true long term trends that have been repeating over a half-million years by this point. Here’s a great video that makes a convincing case that a small amount of CO2 and methane emissions from rice-paddies and slash&burn agriculture saved us from descending into the next glacial cycle 8000 - 5000 years ago, as four previous cycles suggested. He explains how mankind has saved ourselves from the next glacial cycle about halfway through, but it is a great video to watch from beginning to end.

One of the most comprehensive, educational, and entertaining treatments of the subject I’ve seen. Just ran across it last month.
I did not say methane and CO2 are not greenhouse gases. But if you look at the last few hundred years, “the panic” alternates between warming and cooling every 30 years or so. Back in the 1980’s we watched documentaries about the world freezing over. I had been working out theoretical wind energy stuff on paper for years by that time. Didn’t realize back then that it was sometimes easier to just build stuff and run it than prove a theory on paper. Anyway I’ve always liked wind energy because it is exciting, not as a climate religion. It is truly worthy of study in itself how quickly people who start supposed discussion groups end up trying to control what people are allowed to say. Close your mind, and close your life. My point was the current “climate” of “climate” is often used to rationalize any energy-related idea, no matter how goofy. Now of course, we know that a bad idea can serve to catalyze a good idea, so it’s good to see what ideas are floating around. But it’s also good to keep a sense of reality, lest someone waste like a billion dollars on a bad ideas. Not that that could ever happen of course…

Yes. He gives a nice overview of glacial cycles and how and why they happen. This isn’t climate change denial.

It misses the point here, because the only consequence he mentions of the current warming, maybe because he is a geologist, is sea level rise.

The global warming dread is not primarily because of sea level rise however, but because it is one more driver of the

I’d gladly trade sea water levels much higher than they are now for the abundance of life on the planet before the appearance of man. Instead we get both sea level rise and an extinction event.