Was Tesla's idea feasible?

[bascule]

I've been looking more into Tesla's idea for wireless power and it turns out I grossly misunderstood it. I've discovered he intended to transmit electricity into the earth and air at the Schumann resonance, which is determined by the distance between the ionosphere and earth. His goal was ultimately to fill the Schumann cavity with non-Hertzian (???) waves, using resonance to gradually build the wave intensity until the cavity was effectively "filled" and devices could begin tapping into it. More power stations could be added as demand on the system increased.

 

Possible? Impossible? Completely insane?

[Severian]

I wouldn't like to say that it was impossible, but I think it is a bit far fetched. The distance to the ionosphere is not very well defined (the ionosphere 'switches on' slowly) and changes depending on where you are, so you would get huge dissipation from the parts of the wave which were not resonant. I imagine that the energy requirements to do this would be staggeringly huge.

 

But even more worrying would be the health (and environmental) effects of pumping so much energy and electromag radition out into the atmosphere.

 

Just look at the width of the 8Hz peak and you will see that a it would not be an efficient resonance:

 

[Rocket Man]

well, you can reflect radio waves off the ionosphere, radios have a deadband between the line of sight and the reflection angle off the ionosphere so for a radio there is such a thing as too close.

 

radiowaves are electromagnetic, so you can tap energy off radio transmitters, it's how a crystal radio works.

 

but to run even a small device requires substantial power. tesla managed to power lightbulbs 100 miles away from a tesla coil via voltage between ground and air, reflecting it off the ionosphere and resonating it there to boost efficiency isn't entirely mad, but it's pretty ambitious.

 

there are theories that Mr Tesla blew up tunguska with a big tesla coil and the ionosphere (probably crackpot conspiracy theories though)