Solar Wind as an energy source?

[Joshua Buffone]

I was reading about solar flares in one of my "Space" books, and I came across a section on solar wind. I read regular info that I mostly knew; it causes the aurorae borealis, its caused by solar flares, ect. What I thought to myself, though, is that if we have solar winds containing electrons and protons with energies between 10-100 eV, and with large amounts of internal and kenetic energy touching close to our ionosphere, why havent we sent something up in our atmosphere to harvest what could be an endless and abundant energy source? Dont we have the technology to do such a thing?

[JSEverex]

Technology? Sort of. For the mass amounts of energy that would be required we're talking superconductive materials, the possibility to store this energy, and the methodology of transporting this energy to ground level.

 

Now after technology you have other things that affect decisions of things like this. Economy, share holders in current energy markets, systematic buying and then repressing of technological patents to increase market outputs of current energy sources, fear of the new, etc..

 

The best thing I can tell you is that if you think it's something that you can propogate, do the foot work. Don't wait for things to happen, make the first steps yourself.

[insane_alien]

the solar wind is hardly an abundant or endless source of energy.

 

the energy density of it is positively crap.

 

you have maybe 10-20 protons per cubic meter moving at upto 650 km per second. that translates to 13million protons per second per meter squared AT BEST.

 

so at 100eV a piece that 1.3 billion electron volts per second per meter squared which is 2.08*10^-10 W/m^2

 

that is a really low low number. so you'd need a collector with roughly tha area of france to power a single 100W lightbulb. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=100W%2F2.08*10^-10W%2Fm^2

 

this idea is doomed from the get go

[Mr Skeptic]

I don't think it can compare to plain old sunlight. The reason solar wind might be useful for spaceships is not the energy, but the momentum.