Axil Axil <[email protected]> wrote: This technology is just a starting point. The end game in flying wind mill > development is a plane like robot that can fly a holding pattern in the 200 > mph winds of the stratosphere connected to the ground by a carbon > nanotube and/or boron nitride nanotube . . . >
Like a kite, instead of a balloon. So there is no need for lighter-than-air gas. We have discussed such systems here. Some of the proposed ones begin by powering the turbines from the ground to lift the machines, then when they reach the operating height, the wind powers the turbines instead. > based material as the tensile element in the tether design, since the > measured strength of carbon nanotubes appears great enough to make this > possible > What we need are nanotubes strong enough to build a space elevator. Then we can cheaply deploy space-based solar systems that beam the energy back to earth. Plan B would be to build nanotube-material towers above the atmosphere to deploy solar cells at LEO heights, and send the power back down the towers. In other words, the towers would not be 42,000 km long space elevators, but only 20 km tall. I believe that is high enough to be above clouds and atmosphere, so that the solar cells intercept more light, without interruption (except at night). Great stuff! But it would cost vast sums of money. I hope that cold fusion makes it all unnecessary. - Jed
