mxeffIf God had wanted us to have nearly unlimited clean energy, He would have placed a fusion reactor into the sky.
A_Chilean_CyborgYeah about that.
Those are termosolar powerplant, they use the sun to boil water and spin a turbine.
Although they’re falling out of use these days, both because they’re not very environmentally friendly on account of being instant bird death-rays, and also because regular solar panels are cheap enough that it’s not worth it to make a big thermosolar plant.
MousePotatoDoesStuffI wonder if it could be worth it to make one of those on other planets/the Moon one day. No birds to worry about there.
Not a lot of atmosphere on the moon.
Transmitting heat across distances in effectively a vacuum doesn’t work too well.
Just look a the size of the radiators the ISS has to have, and they’re not even sending heat anywhere in particular, that’s just getting it off station
You’re getting thermal radiation and convection confused. The ISS has giant radiators because it’s a right pain in the ass to turn heat into thermal radiation, and it cannot rely on convection to cool things like you can here on earth. Turning thermal radiation into heat on the other hand is pretty trivial. Just don’t reflect it and it’ll turn into heat. These things aren’t transporting heat across distances. They are transporting thermal radiation across distances. That works as well in a vacuum – if not better – as it does on earth.
If thermal radiation doesn’t work in a vacuum, how is the sun heating anything up?
I stand corrected