[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
If we use mini-airships, blimps and balloons which have windmills and solar panels on them as well as communications equipment, then we can have windmills floating above every city to generate power . . .
As I pointed out before, there are four problems with this plan:
1. You would have to tether them to the earth. Otherwise the wind would simply blow them away. The wind turbine would not turn; it would be blown along with the balloon, in still air. There is presently no material capable of tethering a high-altitude airship or blimp to the ground. Any rope or cable long enough to hold an airship will be too heavy for the airship to lift. (WWII barrage balloons were moored anywhere from 4,500 to 15,000 feet, and they had no extra payload capacity; 15,000 feet was the highest the balloon could lift a long cable.) We might develop carbon filament material light enough to tether a balloon, but if we do we should probably use it to build tall towers or a space elevator instead.
2. Airships, blimps and balloons have small payloads. You could put telecommunications equipment on board, but solar cells or windmills would be far too heavy to lift.
3. There is no practical way to transmit the energy to earth.
4. Airships, blimps and balloons are extremely fragile. Zeppelins such as the Hindenburg were blown to pieces by moderate storms. See, for example, the history of the US Naval airships Shenandoah and Los Angeles. Perhaps modern ones would be somewhat stronger, but they would never survive a winter storm, and winter is when there is the most wind and the greatest need for energy. (For that matter, conventional wind turbines must be feathered during heavy storms, and nuclear power reactors cooled by ocean water sometimes have to shut down during storms at sea.)
- Jed
