Now here's the kind of solution to energy crisis I'd like to see. Space-based systems capable of producing 100 billion times more power than we now consume! With a collection sail 8400 km wide.
The only problem is that you have to locate it far from earth. See: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19497-outofthisworld-proposal-for-solar-wind-power.html QUOTES: Forget wind power or conventional solar power, the world's energy needs could be met 100 billion times over using a satellite to harness the solar wind and beam the energy to Earth – though focussing the beam could be tricky. . . . ["Tricky" hardly begins to describe it!] . . . The concept for the so-called Dyson-Harrop satellite begins with a long metal wire loop pointed at the sun. This wire is charged to generate a cylindrical magnetic field that snags the electrons that make uphalf the solar wind. These electrons get funnelled into a metal spherical receiver to produce a current, which generates the wire's magnetic field – making the system self-sustaining. Any current not needed for the magnetic field powers an infrared laser trained on satellite dishes back on Earth, designed to collect the energy. . . . . . . A relatively small Dyson-Harrop satellite using a 1-centimetre-wide copper wire 300 metres long, a receiver 2 metres wide and a sail 10 metres in diameter, sitting at roughly the same distance from the sun as the Earth, could generate 1.7 megawatts of power . . . A satellite with the same-sized receiver at the same distance from the sun but with a 1-kilometre-long wire and a sail 8400 kilometres wide could generate roughly 1 billion billion gigawatts (10E27 watts) of power, "which is actually 100 billion times the power humanity currently requires", says researcher Brooks Harrop, a physicist at Washington State University in Pullman who designed the satellite. . . . . . . but there is one major drawback. To draw significant amounts of power Dyson-Harrop satellites rely on the constant solar wind found high above the ecliptic – the plane defined by the Earth's orbit around the sun. Consequently, the satellite would lie tens of millions of kilometres from the Earth. . . . - Jed
