Author Topic: The swiss cheese moon  (Read 7169 times)

Offline monstermaschine

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Re: The swiss cheese moon
« Reply #20 on: 07/22/2012 01:39 pm »
A revised solution may look now like this:

A 5km diameter spherical cave provides 1,500,000kT * 1,162 GWh/kT = 1,752,000 GWh thermal energy, 876,000GWh electric energy on the moon and 438,000GWh electric energy on earth. A 2-cylinder version is the smallest solution now. It provides 50 years 1GW electric power on average earth and 2GW on the moon with two detonations for building it and one detonation for heating up the water steam. It is also possible to run several pairs of cylinders in an in-line configuration (but not in a star arrangement as in the first version).

After the building of the two 5 km spheres, both are immediately vented. Then one of them is filled with (precious) water. The 1500MT detonator is activated to produce steam. This runs the turbines 50 years to produce 1GW for a city on earth or 2GW for moon industries. After 50 years the remaining rest of the water steam is actively pumped from the first to the second vessel. A new, a third vessel is blasted now behind the second vessel. After 50 years the old turbines are off duty. New or refurbished turbines are built between the second and third vessel. A detonator is activated in the second vessel, the hot steam goes from the second to the third vessel. And so on.

We build vessel after vessel and the turbines between them any 50 years. We can build several lines in parallel, if we want. There should be at least two, that are staggered, to enable a continuous operation. The lines are not exactly linear, but proceed in a wide circle. After, say 30 vessels or 1500 years, we connect to the first vessels again and close the system. But it can also be 50 vessels in 2500 years or other values, this doesn't matter, as long it is long enough that the first vessels and the bedrock around them had time to cool down. The only reason for closing the chain of caves is, that we not build caverns forever to get a literally "swiss cheese moon". We use allways the same water. This is the important detail and connects it to the older idea, that had the intention to reuse precious water in a closed system.

The system should be now o.k. from a thermodynamic point of view, because I use the 218K (average) cold bedrock around a new cave as heat sink and long time radiator to release the heat into space. It doesn't matter if this needs centuries of time.

The energy of the thermonuclear detonator sounds really monstrous now. But as it was before, no human being will never see, or hear, or feel the thermal energy, released deeply beneath the lunar surface. There's one good side effect with that minimum size now: The percentage of uranium fission energy for igniting the deuterium will reduce further, say below 1% of the total energy released. So it becomes now a nearly 100% fusion device, more than any tokamak can ever be, considering the needed energy for ignition. In the older version it was at least 3%. From this point of view, and by recognizing that the number of caves has reduced from at least four caves to only two at the beginning, later allways one cave, the energy should be even cleaner and maybe 3 times cheaper per kWh. The cost per kWh should fall now below 3cents per kWh. This is the effect of size, I mentioned in my proposal. But of course, the energy release seems scary.
« Last Edit: 07/22/2012 03:34 pm by monstermaschine »

Offline monstermaschine

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Re: The swiss cheese moon
« Reply #21 on: 07/23/2012 04:23 pm »
[This discussion should be closed now. There was still a thermodynamic trap in the concept, that I've hopefully escaped now. Please refer to the new topic "The Nomad Fusion Reactor" in "Advanced Concepts"]

Offline DMeader

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Re: The swiss cheese moon
« Reply #22 on: 07/25/2012 01:22 pm »
This isn't spaceflight related, and neither is that. At the top of this forum, James Lowe1 wrote:

Quote
This is an advanced section for space flight, not off the wall science. Remember where the line is drawn please.

These posts are so far across the line that they aren't even in sight of the line.

Offline DMeader

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Re: The swiss cheese moon
« Reply #23 on: 07/25/2012 02:47 pm »
I think that now you've totally changed the subject, and that your thread STILL isn't spaceflight-related. If you want to talk about launch costs, go off and start a thread in an appropriate forum about launch costs, and stop trying to drag all this silly science into it.

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