Carbon Nanotube Tether

[bratman]

My picture is this, there are such things as CO2 collection stations already that are manmade and the carbon nanotube tether in fact would not be solid it would be like a chinese finger puzzle, hallow and pressurized with superheated CO2. (the static electricity might heat it) And for another thing the static electricity generated by tube would probably power the whole thing, what would use the most power is getting it into outerspace once. After that it should be able to power itself and probably alot more.

 

After getting into space I was hoping of a collection station with an assembly line type apparatus. Form the CO2 into objects that can be sent off into space. Yes I remember the solar sail and other items that seem to be able to be made into propellant even yes CO2 pressurized, not sure how that would work out in space, worked on WallE ;p or at least his fire extinguisher did.

 

Hmmm a block or a more flyable form of frozen C02 with a pressurized superheated C02 tank made from more carbon nanotubes or plastic and mylar sails. Metal would not be a good choice. Anyway thanks guys for input on this. Hope one day someone can use this discussion to an end.

 

Once the CO2 is space, yes what is stopping it from coming back down? Hopefully it never does, if it does it forms again in the atmosphere but im sure that some would never make it back if its sent off like I am suggesting. Or just shove it in your black hole made by your giant particle accelerator Split it into Carbon and Oxygen with Solar.

 

And yes all black holes were once plantary systems with their own Large Hadron Collider and a Uranium PU-36 space modulator. Ask Insane he was there.

[insane_alien]

right, first off, can i suggest to the mods that the discussion between louis wu and myself be moved to another thread, its offtopic and about to completely fail to get back on topic.

 

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf75.html read this.

 

known recoverable reserves ar about 5.5 million tonnes of natural uranium. if we consider unknown sources you could probably expand this to 10 or 15 million. but we'll just deal with 5.5 million as its the known reserves and doubling or tripling it doesn't improve the situation much.

 

Now, the current rate of usage of natural uranium in nuclear power is 65000 tonnes per year. at this rate of usage we have 84.6 years of reserves left not counting new plants or even current reprocessing.

 

when i gave the value of 4 years, was in reference to changing the worlds energy supply completely to nuclear and not changing our utilisation habits. nuclear is at roughly 5 percent of global energy production, so if we only had nuclear we'd be using 20 times as much. thats 1.3 million tonnes per year.

 

at that rate global reserves last 5.5/1.3=4.2 years.

 

are we done now?

 

remember, i'm not counting wide deployment of breeders or alternative fuels, just basing it on our current habits of nuclear fuels and known reserves.

 

so, i'm not saying this a hard limit and its not, there are many ways to get round it(one of the most immediate would be for the US to get its finger out and start reprocessing and for everyone to start burning plutonium as well) but these aren't happening now so if we were to immediately convert over to nuclear we'd have 4 years of useful fuel. maybe 12 with currently unknown/uneconomical deposits.

 

your turn.