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Imagine: Trash airships that can deposit loads at flying solar furnace platforms (equipped with co2 capture technology) to burn everything. Use various stages
by robbedpeter 5y ago
Imagine: Trash airships that can deposit loads at flying solar furnace platforms (equipped with co2 capture technology) to burn everything. Use various stages of processing to chemically or physically extract commercially valuable material, like phosphorous, then turn the rest into slag - not perfect, but one helluva lot better than burying and wasting the raw trash. Use the captured co2 and solar power alongside the artificial leaf tech to produce synthgas and other fuel.
Solar and wind platforms could anchored to cables on the ground, with municipal battery storage on the ground, then use airships to swap charged battery packs from centralized power stations.
A cellular/modular approach to ship design could prevent hindenburg disasters. Individual carbon fiber balloons could be made to link together, and they'd be during enough that even if you detonate a cell, its neighbors remain intact. Cells as small as a cubic meter would still provide lift while limiting the explosive potential - make the cells "smart" and you could design resilient airships that failed gracefully, even under fire, for military and security sensitive applications.
Platforms could be made huge, big enough to build houses, factories, hospitals, or resorts.
Airships don't have to be blimps. It's more practical than seasteading and probably multiple orders of magnitude cheaper in combined maintenance and development.
- tintor 5y agoWould cubic meter cells work? You'd have a lot of material for small cells, compared to one large cell blimp.
- dredmorbius 5y agoWhat possible advantage is there to lofting furnaces and trash transport rather than accomplishing both on the ground?
- Synaesthesia 5y agoYou know hol little CO2 you capture with solar power right? And whats the incentive to buils these fantastical structures?
- robbedpeter 5y agoIt can be solar concentrator style generation and furnaces if you think big enough. Mobility and new frontiers could be enough incentive, but cargo transport, power infrastructure, hydrogen generation, and waste recovery would be advantageous. Large fixed platforms could solve a big part of the offloading problems. If the cells use standardized fittings, then cargo stations could swap hydrogen for co2 as ballast during offloading. Aerial platforms would be great for telescopes and helicopters, too.
- hutzlibu 5y agoYes, we could build floating cities above the clouds with always sun for energy and little wind. (people would have to be indoors, though above a certain height) Air nomads.