any chance light pressure could turn paddles attached to a generator that is in orbit, so as to generate electricity?

In article ,
joe licht wrote:
any chance light pressure could turn paddles attached to a generator
that is in orbit, so as to generate electricity?





Yes. It wouldn't generate much electricity, but in principle
electricity could be generated that way.


--
"Don't try to teach a pig how to sing. You'll waste your time and annoy
the pig."

Yes, light pressure, and even zero point energy, can be used to do
work, or generate electricity, but right now, it's so much more
efficient to use other means, like water pressure, or the energy in the
light instead of the momentum.

Light pressure will work, but you'll get more electricity from hard
pressure.

In sci.physics joe licht wrote:
any chance light pressure could turn paddles attached to a generator that is in orbit, so as to generate electricity?

Theoretical toy, yes, practical device, no.

--
Jim Pennino

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wrote in message
...
In sci.physics joe licht wrote:
any chance light pressure could turn paddles attached to a generator
that is in orbit, so as to generate electricity?

Theoretical toy, yes, practical device, no.

Fancy working out the efficiency compared to say a solar cell? Just curious
how inefficient it would be.

"joe licht" wrote in message
...
any chance light pressure could turn paddles attached to a generator that
is in orbit, so as to generate electricity?

Nope. Solars sails work better, who needs to replace bearings?
http://www.shuttlepresskit.com/images/iss/iss_top.jpg

Androcles.

In sci.physics, joe licht

wrote
on 4 Nov 2005 20:20:46 -0000
:
any chance light pressure could turn paddles attached
to a generator that is in orbit, so as to generate electricity?

And this is better than having photons kicking electrons in
a current generation silicon or carbon matrix precisely why? :-)

--
#191,
It's still legal to go .sigless.

If by "paddles" you mean "electrons" and by "turn" you mean "move
against a charge gradient" then yes, it works fine.

But, let's see what the best we can do with this terrible idea is! To
get power out of a solar sail, you want to be moving fast and you want
to be close to the sun. If we stick our sails about as far from the sun
as mercury we can have them orbit at say 50 km/s. We can get maybe 81
n/km^2. Let's angle them at 45 degrees....
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...%281000%5E2%29
2.86 watts per square meter, ideally. You would need to change the
angle of the sails with gyros and extract energy somehow. say with
stripes of aluminum and insulator

but you can improve this performance quite a bit if you can accelerate
the sails inward at the same time. say you have 1/10^5 of the path
devoted to this and you want 10000 km/s. you'll need to do 2 million
g's. so let's use sails of (waves wand) room temperature type 1
superconductors with a 1 MA/cm^2 crit current. the supports can be
weighed down with asteroids. then you can get 20 times the power - 570
watts/m^2. compare to solar power of 1300 w/m^2 in earth orbit at 100%
conversion, with solar thermal reasonably hitting 50%. how do I put my
money in these solar windmills?

In sci.physics CWatters wrote:

wrote in message
...
In sci.physics joe licht wrote:
any chance light pressure could turn paddles attached to a generator
that is in orbit, so as to generate electricity?

Theoretical toy, yes, practical device, no.

Fancy working out the efficiency compared to say a solar cell? Just curious
how inefficient it would be.

Ever seen the little toy thingies with the paddles inside a vacuum
that spin in the light?

Efficiency isn't even among the running as a concern for this scheme.

How do you keep a generator in space from spinning up with the paddles
for a net output of zero after a short time?

--
Jim Pennino

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