Solard Death Ray: Power of 5000 suns! [SLYT] The R5800: made from an ordinary fiberglass satellite dish, it is covered in about 5800 3/8" (~1cm) mirror tiles. When properly aligned, it can generate a spot the size of a dime with an intensity of 5000 suns! This amount of power is more than enough to melt steel, vaporize aluminum, boil concrete, turn dirt into lava, and obliterate any organic material in an instant. It stands at 5'9" and is 42" across.
posted by Fizz
on Jan 30, 2011 -
59 comments
Space-based Solar Power beamed down to earth sounds pretty far out, but the technology is further along than many suppose, the sun never sets in space, and space is a Saudi Arabia of unlimited energy for the nation with the technology to harness it. PG&E (California) in conjunction with
SolarEn has
announced a 200MW space solar project to be up by 2016.
posted by stbalbach
on Apr 20, 2009 -
87 comments
How Africa's desert sun can bring Europe power. A £5bn solar power demonstration project called
Desertec is being developed by Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (
TREC) that would send solar energy northward from African deserts. The goal is in 30 years to provide a significant fraction of Europe's electricity needs.
posted by stbalbach
on Dec 13, 2007 -
35 comments
Popular Science has named
Nanosolar the
#1 innovative product of the year. Finally, cheap and ubiquitous solar power has arrived, “You’re talking about printing rolls of the stuff—printing it on the roofs of 18-wheeler trailers, printing it on garages, printing it wherever you want it,” The only problem is demand, so they're building
the world’s largest solar-panel manufacturing facility in San Jose. See 96 other innovations in PopSci's
Best of 2007.
posted by stbalbach
on Nov 17, 2007 -
25 comments
The
Zephyr, a solar powered plane, has smashed the record for the
longest duration un-manned flight, staying aloft with engines running for 54 hours. This was just a test run at the US military White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, according to the UK developers, "You ain't seen nothing yet". Meanwhile in Switzerland, development continues on the
Solar Impulse, which has a goal of flying around the world, manned(!), by 2010.
posted by stbalbach
on Sep 11, 2007 -
11 comments
The Solar Decathlon 2005 winners announced. The Solar Decathlon brings together 18 teams of college and university students from around the globe to participate in an unparalleled solar competition to design, build, and operate the most attractive and energy-efficient solar-powered home.
posted by mathowie
on Oct 17, 2005 -
9 comments
Nearly half of the world's population cannot read. Many people live in remote areas without electricity. But that's no excuse for being non-Christian, right? What would Jesus' marketing department do?
Introducing the
GodPod.
(Who knows... if it's successful, maybe Apple will make that Billy Graham iPod after all!)
posted by miss lynnster
on Feb 2, 2005 -
33 comments
A viilage to reinvent the world : Gaviotas "In 1965 Paulo Lugari was flying over the impoverished Llanos Orientales, the “eastern plains” that border Venezuela. The soil of the Llanos is tough and acidic, some of the worst in Colombia. Lugari mused that if people could live here they could live anywhere.....The following year Lugari and a group of scientists, artists, agronomists and engineers took the 15-hour journey along a tortuous route from Bogota to the Llanos Orientales to settle.""...they would need to be very resourceful. So they invented wind turbines that convert mild breezes into energy, super-efficient pumps that tap previously inaccessible sources of water [powered by a child's playground seesaw!], and solar kettles that sterilize drinking water using the furious heat of the tropical sun....They even invented a rain forest!" (from
"Gaviotas - A village to reinvent the World", by Tim Weisman) Amidst the strife of war torn Columbia,
Gaviotas persists and even flourishes.
" "When we import solutions from the US or Europe," said Lugari, founder of Gaviotas, "we also import their problems."....
Over the years Gaviotas technicians have installed thousands of the windmills across Colombia....Since Gaviotas refuses to patent inventions, preferring to share them freely, the design has been copied from Central America to Chile."
Gaviotas is
real, yes, but it is also a
state of mind - as if Ben Franklin, Frank Lloyd Wright, Leonardo Da Vinci - all of the great
those giants who reinvisioned the possible - were reincarnated : as a small Columbian village on a once-desolate plain.
"Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez has called Paolo Lugari the "inventor of the world." "
posted by troutfishing
on Apr 16, 2004 -
12 comments
