Re: Threading a moon

Mike Williams wrote:
Wasn't it Nyrath the nearly wise who wrote:
Logan Kearsley wrote:
Would it be feasible to generate electricity on a Jovian moon by
running
conductive cables along lines between the near and far poles to take
advantage of the moon's motion between Jupiter's magnetic field?
And, if so, how much power could you generate on any particular moon?

Dunno. In George Zebrowski's MACROLIFE, the colony
on Calliso generates energy with copper bars.

Each bar has a laser for power transmission.
It is boosted at Jupiter. As the bar cuts the
magnetic lines of force, electricity is
generated. This is converted into laser energy
and beamed back to a receptor at Callisto base.

Eventually it enters Jupiter's atmosphere and
is destroyed, but they are cheap to manufacture.
More are boosted to replace those destroyed.

Not having read Macrolife, I don't get the concept behind boosting more
bars to replace the old ones.

Generating electricity from a conductor moving through a magnetic field
doesn't generate energy for free. Generating a current causes a force on
the conductor which acts to reduce its speed, and you end up converting
its kinetic energy into electricity. Boosting up a new conductor to
replace one that's fallen into the atmosphere requires at least as much
energy as the kinetic energy that the old one converted into
electricity. So you end up with no more energy than you started with.

Launch from the moon, not from Jupiter, so they start out high up with
lots of gravitational potential.

Attaching conductors to a moon means that the kinetic energy that gets
used is that of the moon itself, and a moon has a vast amount of KE, so
it won't run out for ages.

-l.

.

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