4 ms·

And if the beam fails, everyone is expected to die? Nevermind the feasibility of such a beam. These are highly implausible ideas. On the order of aerial batter

by _hypx 4y ago

And if the beam fails, everyone is expected to die? Nevermind the feasibility of such a beam. These are highly implausible ideas. On the order of aerial battery swapping. You can imagine such things, but they won’t happen in any sort of practical way. Far less than just figuring out a greener fuel.

pfdietz 4y ago
You could select a wavelength that doesn't penetrate the troposphere. Why is this implausible? Mere assertion of incredulity is not sufficient, especially at long time horizons.
- _hypx 4y ago
  A wavelength that doesn’t penetrate the troposphere will make it impossible. You don’t seem to take your own idea very seriously… You are confusion implausible with impossible. Sure, it is not “impossible.” It is just absurdly unlikely. I mean seriously, you will need lasers on the order of hundreds of MWs in power, beaming to tens of thousands of planes flying at any given time. It doesn’t take much effort to realize the sheer cost and unreliability of such an idea. And your appeal to “long time horizon” is just an excuse to not think through the issue. At long time horizons, other ideas become viable, and ones that are much more practical.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    The aircraft could get to altitude on batteries, then switch over to beamed power. You need to expand your imagination when you're trying to rule out a technology: you are arguing all possible ways to do it don't work. This is difficult task and one you are not taking seriously. Facile dismissals of the kind you are spouting here are not sufficient. You are the one who is writing checks his thinking can't cash.
    - _hypx 4y ago
      Now it becomes doubly complex. The is both an self propelled vehicle while also able absorb many MWs of power from lasers or whatever. Sorry, but you are one fantasizing here. Everyone can imagine what this is. You're the one who actually thinks this is possible for a real aircraft. Again, the alternative is simply figuring out a greener fuel. So no matter how much you insist that over a long enough time horizon that this is possible, it will be quickly displaced by far more plausible ideas first. As a result, it's highly unlikely to happen on any time frame.
      - pfdietz 4y ago
        Yes, aircraft are complex. I'm glad you realize this. It's not a justification for facile dismissal of possibilities. Yes, a green fuel is another possibility. I'm not ruling that out. Perhaps you could also refrain from ruling out a possibility when you don't have a good argument?
        _hypx 4y ago
        Again, your idea is vastly more complex. It falls in the same category as aerial battery swapping and global spanning vactrains. Sure, it could be done, but under any realistic scenario, it is not going to happen. It is far more likely that we will find a much simpler solution in the meanwhile, such as a greener fuel, rendering this idea totally unnecessary and uneconomical. No one is "ruling it out," merely pointing out that it is absurdly unlikely. In fact, the only reason you are even giving your idea credence is because it is so far from reality that you can handwave the details. There are no serious studies nor experimental vehicles to criticize. Just a vague idea of how it might work on paper, with no hard challenges since you are free to imagine whatever technology you want. No one has even built any mechanism of beaming MWs of power via lasers before, but you are allowed to imagine such a system anyways. And apparently, a global network of such systems with built-in redundancies, all already working in your mind. The whole idea reminds me of the space elevator, which was another grand concept that works on paper, but was only seen as plausible until people started doing real calculations on it. Meanwhile, in the real world, real engineers have to overcome real world problems that are encountered in the development of real systems. These things only look hard because you have to see the gory details of real technologies. But in reality, they're far simpler than the crazy ideas you sometimes hear about. Which is why the greener fuel idea is far more plausible. It is far simpler, but only looks more complex because people have to solve the real world problems of it.
- neltnerb 4y ago
  I think you are assuming the danger is the beam hitting the ground, whereas the most obvious danger is the plane no longer having power? Different scale of course, but wireless power to a device that kills a hundred plus people if it loses power seems like a risky proposition. Seems farfetched compared to replacing the liquid fuels, and I'll stick by that, fully acknowledging that the liquid fuels don't (presently) have a perfectly closed carbon cycle. Don't focus on it being perfect in two decades when vastly better is available today... Of course that gets a lot better when fertilizer is made from renewable hydrogen instead of natural gas and the transportation is electric from renewables instead of gas cars, and if we used electric/solar heating for the thermal inputs it seems like the CO2 losses can get an awful lot better. Hydrogen is theoretically closed cycle (though displacing fossil fuel electricity on the grid is obviously superior most of the time), but only if you redesign and rebuild the entire fleet of commercial airplanes. I think as long as coal plants are operational a lot of these details are almost besides the point, and as soon as fossil fuel plants are all offline the solution will be obvious from the experience we gained in getting there. I maintain that swapping equivalent liquid fuels into the existing fleet is most likely to actually happen at scale.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Oh, surely synthetic liquid fuel is much closer to reality. The aircraft would have limited backup power (those batteries for climbing to altitude, say, or an APU), and presumably there would be extra backup laser sources in orbit. One could even have multiple lower power lasers targeting each aircraft for redundancy (this would also cause a beam that hit the ground to have lower power, as the beams would diverge from one another.) The economics could well kill it, but it would be really nice to have unlimited range due to not needing to burn fuel.

by _hypx 4y ago

pfdietz 4y ago

You could select a wavelength that doesn't penetrate the troposphere. Why is this implausible? Mere assertion of incredulity is not sufficient, especially at long time horizons.

_hypx 4y ago
A wavelength that doesn’t penetrate the troposphere will make it impossible. You don’t seem to take your own idea very seriously… You are confusion implausible with impossible. Sure, it is not “impossible.” It is just absurdly unlikely. I mean seriously, you will need lasers on the order of hundreds of MWs in power, beaming to tens of thousands of planes flying at any given time. It doesn’t take much effort to realize the sheer cost and unreliability of such an idea. And your appeal to “long time horizon” is just an excuse to not think through the issue. At long time horizons, other ideas become viable, and ones that are much more practical.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  The aircraft could get to altitude on batteries, then switch over to beamed power. You need to expand your imagination when you're trying to rule out a technology: you are arguing all possible ways to do it don't work. This is difficult task and one you are not taking seriously. Facile dismissals of the kind you are spouting here are not sufficient. You are the one who is writing checks his thinking can't cash.
  - _hypx 4y ago
    Now it becomes doubly complex. The is both an self propelled vehicle while also able absorb many MWs of power from lasers or whatever. Sorry, but you are one fantasizing here. Everyone can imagine what this is. You're the one who actually thinks this is possible for a real aircraft. Again, the alternative is simply figuring out a greener fuel. So no matter how much you insist that over a long enough time horizon that this is possible, it will be quickly displaced by far more plausible ideas first. As a result, it's highly unlikely to happen on any time frame.
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      Yes, aircraft are complex. I'm glad you realize this. It's not a justification for facile dismissal of possibilities. Yes, a green fuel is another possibility. I'm not ruling that out. Perhaps you could also refrain from ruling out a possibility when you don't have a good argument?
      - _hypx 4y ago
        Again, your idea is vastly more complex. It falls in the same category as aerial battery swapping and global spanning vactrains. Sure, it could be done, but under any realistic scenario, it is not going to happen. It is far more likely that we will find a much simpler solution in the meanwhile, such as a greener fuel, rendering this idea totally unnecessary and uneconomical. No one is "ruling it out," merely pointing out that it is absurdly unlikely. In fact, the only reason you are even giving your idea credence is because it is so far from reality that you can handwave the details. There are no serious studies nor experimental vehicles to criticize. Just a vague idea of how it might work on paper, with no hard challenges since you are free to imagine whatever technology you want. No one has even built any mechanism of beaming MWs of power via lasers before, but you are allowed to imagine such a system anyways. And apparently, a global network of such systems with built-in redundancies, all already working in your mind. The whole idea reminds me of the space elevator, which was another grand concept that works on paper, but was only seen as plausible until people started doing real calculations on it. Meanwhile, in the real world, real engineers have to overcome real world problems that are encountered in the development of real systems. These things only look hard because you have to see the gory details of real technologies. But in reality, they're far simpler than the crazy ideas you sometimes hear about. Which is why the greener fuel idea is far more plausible. It is far simpler, but only looks more complex because people have to solve the real world problems of it.
neltnerb 4y ago
I think you are assuming the danger is the beam hitting the ground, whereas the most obvious danger is the plane no longer having power? Different scale of course, but wireless power to a device that kills a hundred plus people if it loses power seems like a risky proposition. Seems farfetched compared to replacing the liquid fuels, and I'll stick by that, fully acknowledging that the liquid fuels don't (presently) have a perfectly closed carbon cycle. Don't focus on it being perfect in two decades when vastly better is available today... Of course that gets a lot better when fertilizer is made from renewable hydrogen instead of natural gas and the transportation is electric from renewables instead of gas cars, and if we used electric/solar heating for the thermal inputs it seems like the CO2 losses can get an awful lot better. Hydrogen is theoretically closed cycle (though displacing fossil fuel electricity on the grid is obviously superior most of the time), but only if you redesign and rebuild the entire fleet of commercial airplanes. I think as long as coal plants are operational a lot of these details are almost besides the point, and as soon as fossil fuel plants are all offline the solution will be obvious from the experience we gained in getting there. I maintain that swapping equivalent liquid fuels into the existing fleet is most likely to actually happen at scale.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Oh, surely synthetic liquid fuel is much closer to reality. The aircraft would have limited backup power (those batteries for climbing to altitude, say, or an APU), and presumably there would be extra backup laser sources in orbit. One could even have multiple lower power lasers targeting each aircraft for redundancy (this would also cause a beam that hit the ground to have lower power, as the beams would diverge from one another.) The economics could well kill it, but it would be really nice to have unlimited range due to not needing to burn fuel.