Comment on If God had wanted us to have nearly unlimited clean energy, He would have placed a fusion reactor into the sky.

GraniteM@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  All that yet microwaves still leave my burrito frozen in the center.

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  • GraniteM@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Gotta lower the power setting and increase the cook time. One minute at 100%? No! One and a half minutes at 80%!

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    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      also, offset from the center of the microwave on the spinny plate. centered will only get you a portion of the waveform, moving the food around through a larger cross-section of the waveform = more thoroughly cooked stuff.

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• chunes@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Still don’t understand how this could possibly generate energy.

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  • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    the power plant is in space and beams energy to the dish.

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    • chunes@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Right, but like… whatever you’re doing in space is going to be more cost effective to do on earth. Not to mention the insane amount of energy lost to the atmosphere

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      • saturn57@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Energy loss for wireless energy transition is actually surprisingly low. Here is an example of 80% efficiency over 1 kilometer: ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1123672

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      • vithigar@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Unless you really need to optimise for land use. An arbitrarily large solar array in space could transmit to a fairly small collector in the surface.

        As for losing power to atmospheric attenuation, high frequency microwaves will pass right through most everything that would scatter visible light. Clouds, dust, etc wouldn’t really impede it.

        I won’t say it’s not a silly idea, because it is. It’s fun to think about though.

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      • Zron@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Big solar panel

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      • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        musk wants datacenters in space. which makes sense, 24/7 sunlight and no transmission of power is grand; but I do wonder about the shielding and moving the data back and forth.

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      • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        yeah but imagine you can put the plant and all the pollution on an asteroid or something.

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  • exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It basically doesn’t work out.

    Theoretically you could have 2500 square meters of solar arrays above the weather beaming the power down to a dish with only a 500 square meter footprint.

    But you’d still have to deal with weather with some kind of a storage solution. And 2500 square meters of area in space seems more expensive to claim than just 500 square meters of area on land, in pretty much any scenario.

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