I figured that our floating Venus habitats - "aerostat" in the jargon - will be doing jes'faaahn for power, getting 1.911 flux as they get. Larger ones can supplement that by heat-differential, dipping 10s-km conductive cables through the clouds. How about smaller ones?
It's a question I hadn't thought to ask, but the first Venereal habs will be small, aiming to scale-up; also, not everyone wants to live in a large city. For the floating suburbs, power can be beamed point-to-point. ToughSf is more considering tethering a balloon to the ground and running a current. There's no need on Venus' surface (wind power will do better) but I can easily this being nice for, say, highland Mars over those pesky dust storms.
The paper's source of the laser-beaming would be GEO. That orbit exists for Mars (Deimos is almost there already) and of course for Earth. Not so much Venus, absent an orbital ring; but as I noted, not much need.
For Mars they'll want a larger balloon painted gold - which as a side-effect means more surface-area.
No comments:
Post a Comment