America, and the world, is in your eternal debt.
My fond memories from this time would not be complete without the mention of another person.
Thanks Walter, to you too, wherever you are.
America, and the world, is in your eternal debt.
My fond memories from this time would not be complete without the mention of another person.
Thanks Walter, to you too, wherever you are.
Re CodeTech (09:56:32)
Anorak Pedant here, B52’s first flight was 15th April 1952, 6 years after the contracts were signed. A mighty achievement.
jeez, I’ve read several comments (on other fora) that the 30 GW is a typo. I’m guessing they are aiming for 30 GWhr, as that makes more sense from an engineering viewpoint.
Sandy, these guys at Power Tree are not newbies. As a famous American* said, this is not their first rodeo. Give them some time, let them build this and see how it turns out. You may be eating those words!
While this is not in the same league as landing on the Moon and returning safely (few things are!), it is a highly significant breakthrough in the renewable energy field.
* Famous American = George W. Bush
Science fiction scenario:
What is it the organization to which all who defend these “peculiar” ideas of GW, CCH, GHGs, cold sun, world government, belong to?
If such a kind of organization exists, it must be recruiting not so clever and easy to drive people, cheating them they are wise and that only wise men “as they are”, are supposed to rule the earth…and will do it…
But as in any conspiracy story they are not expected to survive after being to close to knowing the “truth”, so…beware..🙂
@Urederra:
“I believe they use Hydrazine as a combustible and dinitrogen tetroxide as a comburent (Oxygen substitute, why the firefox spell checker doesn’t recognize comburent?) The combustion gases were mainly nitrogen and water.
A quick google search gives me that they may have been used methyl hydrazine instead of hydrazine”.
Yes it was 50/50 Hydrazine and Unsymmetrical Dimethyl Hydrazine with dinitrogen tetroxide
I remember gathering around the TV set to watch the launch, and at the time we were living in a rental, and the owner had hired a couple of guys to paint the house. My mom had me go outside and ask them to come in so they would not miss it, and they watched with us.
Then, several nights later my dad came in, woke us, and had us come out to watch the landing and walk. I’ll never forget any of it.
>>>No longer, given a recent breakthrough in energy storage
>>>via high-speed flywheels.
A power storage company that does not know the difference between GW and GWhr, and a website that has gone missing. Output from 30 power stations in one flywheel! Tosh tosh and more tosh.
.
Back to the thread, though, the young lads in our junior school were all herded into the assembly hall, and we watched the landing on a surprisingly wide-screen telly. I thought it was just a film for a while, but was eventually persuaded it was for real.
The mission nurtured a new generation, a better generation who looked forward with hope for both technology and mankind. Why we then went backwards, I still have not figured out.
.
Roger Sowell (13:16:28) :
Allan M R MacRae (12:24:19)
“Wind power also requires big subsidies, and almost 100% backup with conventional power generation. Wind power can also cause critical instabilities in the electric power grid.”
No longer, given a recent breakthrough in energy storage via high-speed flywheels. The device is under construction, and it is a bit premature to celebrate, but we should know by December or January if this works as advertised.
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/grid-scale-energy-storage-flywheel.html
This is an “old cow” Roger.
A lot of investments are made in high speed flywheel energy storgage, also in cars, and they all have been terminated.
But I really hope this one becomes a success.
Does it really work? I am trying to access their webpage by clicking at the link in your blog, but all I got is a “404 page load error”. I am reading the wikipedia entry about flywheel storage and my common sense tells me that this thing may lose energy via friction quite rapidly. I guess that is why vacuum and magnetic fields are needed.
BTW, a brother of mine works as an engineer at Gamesa, a Spanish Wind turbines manufacturer. Have you heard about this company? I think it is part of Iberdrola and they are building this huge wind farm in Scotland.
By courtesy of the American Embassy in Lusaka we in Zambia were able to watch, live, this incredible event. The TV only station in the country came on-air especially for this.
My parents insisted that we watched. I’m so glad that they did. I cannot see the Nation which put those men on the Moon doing anything anywhere near comprable now.
The whole world is mired in a risk averse, politically correct, green agenda driven mire. We have ceased to progress.
Errata “Science fiction scenario”: where “to close” it must be read “too close”
….and following this scenario: chances are that there are many “not to blame” freaks….but what about their master minds?.
All the prophets, for sure, are but freaks…
Roger Sowell (13:16:28) :
Allan M R MacRae (12:24:19) said:
“Wind power also requires big subsidies, and almost 100% backup with conventional power generation. Wind power can also cause critical instabilities in the electric power grid.”
Roger said:
No longer, given a recent breakthrough in energy storage via high-speed flywheels. The device is under construction, and it is a bit premature to celebrate, but we should know by December or January if this works as advertised.
*************
Hope you are right Roger, but will not hold my breath.
Here is another such idea which I proposed in March 2008 in an email to Benny Peiser:
Hi Benny,
Re Robert Bryce’s idea of a “superbattery”.
First, I know a fair bit about energy and agree with Bryce’s views on corn ethanol. I had a corn ethanol plant in Wyoming in the 1990’s. The energy input to produce such fuel often equals or even exceeds the energy output when the fuel is consumed. Hence the foolishness of such technology, and the need for huge subsidies. Also there is the water consumption issue.
Wind power suffers greatly from the lack of a superbattery and requires almost 100% conventional backup. However I am not convinced that anything, even a superbattery, will save wind power from being a total boondoggle.
Nuclear energy also suffers for lack of a superbattery, since nuclear plants reportedly are not easy to ramp up and down, even overnight. I expect that even large coal-fired plants are somewhat inflexible in this regard. Natural gas-fired plants are most flexible for providing peaking power.
Back to the superbattery:
If a significant percentage of the vehicle fleet were (over time) powered by electric motors and batteries, which could be refueled overnight during non-peak periods, this would significantly level-out electricity demand. Added benefits would include significantly lower urban air pollution. Adequate batteries exist today, but are not inexpensive, and there is always room for continued technological improvement.
My “guess” is that moving in this direction would be vastly more beneficial for society than the current governmental mania to subsidize wind power and ethanol-from-food, both expensive boondoggles that produce no energy benefits and cause significant societal and environmental damage.
Just a thought…
Best regards, Allan
I was a 21 year old Kiwi living in Bondi, Sydney and watched the event live, (it was a delayed telecast back in NZ) . My 2 flatmates (JH from Minnesota, and AH from NZ) and I were enthralled.
As the song says…those were the best days of my life…
Funny thing, I don’t remember the science being done by “consensus”. Bad memory, I guess…
Best,
Frank
“Sandy, these guys at Power Tree are not newbies. As a famous American* said, this is not their first rodeo. Give them some time, let them build this and see how it turns out. You may be eating those words!”
Or they may be eating tax payers dollars.
30GW is a measure of power so for how long can they give that power reliably to a grid? An hour or less makes this an expensive bauble.
What is the efficiency? So if I pump in 10GWhr of electricity how much can I claim back, 5GWhr would be a technical achievement but still represents 50% waste.
How long can the energy be ‘stored’? If I put in energy now how much will be lost in a week, a month?
These questions, though easily calculable will not be answered rather like the GISS dataset corrections because they will give away holes in the engineering. Expect plenty of puff pieces about how it ‘solves the problem of renewable energy’ and bugrall figures. The only figure given so far has the wrong units!
This is a subsidy cash-cow just like windfarms and a downright hindrance to an adult approach to power generation.
If you don’t get grumpy as you get older then you aren’t paying attention.
Thank not only Neil, Buzz and Mike but the hundreds of thousands of others who “fashioned cold refined steel into the dreams of spaceflight” as the song goes.
And gave their lives along the way. It wasn’t only astronauts who died.
“”” AN ENERGY STRATEGY FOR AMERICA
By Allan M.R. MacRae
5. Re-examine hydrogen. It is an energy medium, like electricity, but if implemented would require a huge new hydrogen infrastructure to be built at great cost, for no environmental or energy gain. “””
Yes tell us where your hydrogen mines are located. The only ones I know of are 93 million miles away, and the mine working conditions don’t meet OSHA safety standards.
Why do people keep pushing hydrogen as a new source of energy?
Super fly wheels have been around for a long time. Why haven’t we seen more of them? If they were so good I’d expect utilities to be using them for load leveling now.
Windmills are pathetic at the best of times, add the capex of super flywheels and what will they look like?
The anti nukes will clutch at any straws I guess.
Roger Sowell (13:16:28) :
given a recent breakthrough in energy storage via high-speed flywheels. The device is under construction, and it is a bit premature to celebrate, but we should know by December or January if this works as advertised.
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/grid-scale-energy-storage-flywheel.html
“Round and round went the bloody great wheel
In and out went the prick of steel”
Sounds fun. What are they going to construct these from?
urederra, and ralph ellis, the weblinks work ok for me…I’m using Google Chrome. Power Tree Corp’s website is http://powertreecorp.com/
@Ralph ellis, tosh, and tosh? How about waiting to see if these guys can produce, before bashing them a prioi? Why not wait for the measured data on their apparatus? They may fail. Or not. Even if they fail, they may learn a key point that produces future success. Or not. In any event, these guys out of Boca Raton, Florida, USA, are in the game, giving it their best shot. Sorta like three American heroes pictured at the top of this blog entry. Not whining “it can’t be done” and casting stones from the sidelines.
Sandy and others, high-speed flywheels work and work quite well, and have done so for several years. A patent attorney friend wrote the patent for one (but not for Patent Tree Corp) just a couple of years ago. The patent is US 7,187,08. The abstract reads:
” A flywheel system incorporates a variable speed synchronous reluctance motor-generator and a variable speed permanent magnet generator for providing backup power. Rotating elements are supported by electromagnetic bearings and electric power provided by the backup generator maintains electromagnetic bearing operation during that portion of a coast down period when shaft speed falls below the minimum speed required for operation of the synchronous reluctance motor-generator.”
What is new about the Power Tree offering is the large size, and apparently the increased time of useful discharge.
Disclaimer: I have zero interest in Power Tree Corp., and do not now represent nor have I in the past represented Power Tree Corp. I do hold a small position of common stock in a battery company, Ener1 (ticker HEV).
I also wrote a bit about the Grand Game changing as a result of the Power Tree Corp. flywheel, if it is indeed successful.
http://energyguysmusings.blogspot.com/2009/07/opec-reaction-to-energy-storage-systems.html
I have to be happy for the crew of three making it to the moon, because, doing the math, I can be pretty sure that my parents were celebrating that night.
In short, without Apollo 11, I wouldn’t exist.
Mike Borgelt,
Re high-speed flywheels, and not seeing more of them.
First, they do work, but are expensive. The limit for large sizes is the strength of the material of the rotating element. As the diameter increases, centrifugal force (or is it centripetal? I can’t recall) increases so that the flywheel literally flies apart. One solution was to make tall, narrow flywheels. This has obvious disadvantages.
Another drawback is friction, which is reduced greatly by using magnetic bearings, while some use air bearings. Some place the rotating element in a vacuum chamber to reduce friction further.
What is desired is a rotating element with great mass (power goes up as mass increases), rotating at very high speed (100,000 rpm or so) because power also increases as rotating speed increases, that maintains dimensional integrity (does not fly apart), has very low friction and thus parasitic losses (hence the air bearing or magnetic bearing plus vacuum chamber), and is controllable to absorb excess grid power and release a very high percentage of the stored power back into the grid upon demand.
As with the Apollo program 40 years ago, today’s engineers are solving these problems. I applaud these engineers. I grew up in Houston in the 1960s and well remember the excitement of having astronauts among us. If anyone has not seen the movie The Right Stuff, it is worth seeing. It really was that exciting, as depicted in the movie. I went to a Boy Scouts summer camp with one of Gus Grissom’s sons, in 1968. The “can do” attitude from that era and those men and women was infectious. It instilled in me (and many of my friends), the will to never give up even when faced with a temporary setback.
Sorry, that US patent referenced above should be US 7,187,087. Dropped the last digit somehow. Apologies.
I was one and a half years old at the time. Watching this event on the tv is the earliest experience I can remember in this life. I grew up watching Apollo and Skylab, watching the politicians gut the space program to pay for bread and circuses (the failed War on Poverty) to get reelected. I had hoped Reagan had relit the fire in the 80’s, despite the shuttle contracting being let out primarily based on congressional district, with a deficient design, then Challenger happened and it got mired in lawyers, nay saying reporters, and continuous corruption among the politicos. We’d hoped X-33 would lead to the venture star, but it was intentionally screwed up to “prove” the impossibility of SSTO RLVs. Then Bush cancelled GTX and every other air breathing, high density fuel, and RLV related program and took us back to the 60’s as a payoff to Cheney’s ICBM-Industrial Complex in Wyoming with the Constellation program.
Government space is an utter failure and people need to recognise that. If we are going to make space travel by the common man as common as airliner travel, the whole program should be put out to X-Prize type competitions with prizes and contracts as awards for the winners of every category of contract. Then create a national space lottery, awarding orbital flight tickets as prizes in lieu of cash, with half the revenues going to pay the prize money to the winning contractors.
Damn.
Thanks for posting that video, Anthony – I’m sitting here blubbering like an idiot watching it.
I was 11 years old, and was driving back from vacation with the parental units somewhere north of Austin. I remember that we were listening on the radio, and stopped at a roadside hotel to watch.
Later I remember the drive home, and I was gazing up at the moon, full of the wonder of it all.
Roger Sowell:
IIRC, you are describing the Lockheed proposal for a new passenger bus engine. The flywheel was supposed to run at 100,000 RPM. It would use brake generators to spin up the flywheel while going down hill or braking, then use the flywheel’s power as needed.
The Lockheed model never made it to production. As I recall, one of the objections was what would happen if a heavy flywheel turning at 100,000 RPM was let loose in a crash, to go spinning down city streets.
But I do remember the Lockheed proposal, so this idea has been around for at least 15 – 20 years.