- Member since Oct 23rd 2015
Posts by Paradigmnoia
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This real estate site claims the property is off the market. There is a new sign on the front and back of the unit , but I can't read it.
(Note the Red Control Room and Scat-X laboratory visible in the doorway.)
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Well mass, velocity and inertia haven't gone out of style.
Voyager 2 popped through the asteroid belt from Earth in something like 80 days, was moving at something like 55000 km/hr, but was quite small and light (720 kg) compared to a decent sized (worth getting) nickel-iron asteroid, and had no means to slow down, stop, and turn around (two out of three of which need to happen on both ends in order to deliver an asteroid).
True that a lump of metal-rock can be pushed around a lot harder without breaking it, but a lot more pushing is needed to move it and 'stop' it effectively also.
There must be a cool spreadsheet or graphic display somewhere that lets one fiddle with the parameters to see what would be required in terms of time, energy, accelerating and decelerating, etc. for moving heavy objects from one place to another in the solar system.
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Obviously technology will improve, and must improve or we would have colonized off world places more often already. However, once we start to pull new technologies out of a hat, then everything else becomes a fait accompli also, since we are inventing whatever needs inventing to allow the preconceived goal of Mars colonization.
People won't probably be beamed to Mars, etc, but maybe they will. (Star Trek used beaming people to places as a device to eliminate television air time potentially wasted in constantly boarding, driving, and disembarking from shuttles that might otherwise be necessary sometimes several times an episode.) Beaming only the desired parts of asteroids to a factory of one's choice, and then beaming the finished product to the customer would also be a great time saver.
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I am thinking about using today's technology, more or less, because that is essentially what will be used. Newer stuff will come, spurred on by the needs exposed by the failings of what is used beforehand, eventually. But people will go to the Moon, Mars and beyond, even with inferior or even inappropriate technology. The Earth is full of risk takers, and impossible challenges appeal to many. Some of the impossible challenges are surviving Out There, and some are making the technology to make thriving feasible Out There. But waiting for all the answers before beginning the expansion is extremely unlikely. There are far too many Firsts out there waiting to challenged and claimed by the intrepid and/or foolish.
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Prediction: The first financially successful asteroid mining company will be paid to not ship their rich finds to Earth. This model will attract many copy-cats, (although this will take decades), until the financial economy of Earth completely collapses and is totally re-organized. This re-organization will be precipitated by a renegade asteroid miner that breaks the blockade on delivery of precious and strategic metals by delivering an unusual and rare proto-planetary core into a near-Earth orbit.
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It is not the making of waste that is the potential problem, it is the scale of material moved in general, most of which ends up as waste. A typical mine now can process 5000 to 20000 tonnes per day. (It will be lighter on Mars). This is equipment and personnel intensive. For the recovery of just one or two elements. The example of robots doing it all at some point is possible. I don't see why colonizing Mars and other planets and moons is impossible, but we are creating a rather large wish list if we think that the unlimited supply of raw materials will easily yield to our demands.
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With unlimited energy, it is more effective to assemble the elements from less useful elements than go great (solar system scale) distances to fetch them. The time required due to massive distances to go to, capture, and return an item from the asteroid belt to near the moon (for example) is extremely significant. Mars is about 3 light minutes away. Jupiter is about 30 light minutes away. (When these planets are close to Earth in their orbits). Many years will required to get something sent from the asteroid belt. It's not like you could order a load of metals and expect them to show up in a couple of weeks, unless you don't mind them arriving at nearly unstoppable velocities.
The Earth and Mars have a huge gravity well to overcome, so shipping stuff from one planet to the other is extremely costly. It becomes not the material shipped, but the shipping cost that will determine the price. The energy spent is better spent at home (Whether on Earth, the moon, or Mars, etc.) than moving things about up and down planetary scale gravity wells, if possible. Best to get it right where you are than using interplanetary shipping.
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Extracting various elements on Mars, regardless of the energy cost, is not a simple problem. On Earth, in order to have an effective mine, one mineral phase needs to be found that is amenable to extraction, concentration, and purification. If other mineral phases can be found that do not interfere with the processing of the primary phase, then these too might be mined as a byproduct line. The vast majority of raw material mined is waste: only a tiny amount is the target element(s). The waste needs to be dealt with. The typical free energy fantasy is that raw rock or ocean water can have all its elements selectively captured and concentrated, somehow making stockpiles of almost the entire periodic table readily available at no cost. That requires more than two new technologies. It is hundreds of new technologies, and a entirely new type of economy as well.
Mining asteroids is a hugely uneconomic venture, unless those elements extracted are needed in the immediate vicinity, or maybe downgravity. At some point the cost in energy is so high to find extraterrestrial mineral stockpiles it would be better to make the elements from scratch. And who cares about a boulder of platinum the size of an apartment building when the fact of of its existence and accessibility devalues the price of platinum? Better to carve a space station out of it then send it to Earth. In the early days of immediate pre-colonization, perhaps dropping a few asteroids of rich in various metal contents somewhere convenient on the surface might be a helpful plan. Might also inspire some nefarious plans...
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Yes. My purpose in asking was not to rehash the Lugano debates. It was to ask how one can go about confirming an IR camera with a TC. That seems like a useful technique in some future experiment. Based on the answers here, I gather it might be a challenge because of IR camera resolution limitations, and because physically holding the TC against the cell at high temperatures might be difficult. This I did not know.
Like most things, from software and operating systems to choice of fuels to heat something, spectral thermography has advantages and disadvantages compared to other ways to do the same task.
A thermocouple may be more suitable for checking the temperature of a computer chip or a room, but spectral thermography can check the temperature of a star, or detect leaks in the insulation envelope of a building more easily than a thermocouple.
A certain level of accuracy and precision might have to be sacrificed depending on the situation and the level of sophistication required to do a given job. Sometimes the level of detail can exceed the requirement.
The important point to consider is, "Does this method tell us reliably what we need to know? Is the level of detail sufficient for the purpose? Are we using the method with best practices, and mindfully?" If the answers to any of these questions is "no", then the 'information' provided can range from anecdotal evidence at best, to garbage-in, garbage-out uselessness, and could extend to a source of misdirection (intentional or otherwise) at the worst end of the scale of credibility.
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Perhaps we have been going about this quite backwards, although it is an informative and intellectually stimulating exercise to work out the thermodynamic minutiae of the Lugano device.
Regardless of the inexact replication of the MFMP Lugano simulacrum, it is indeed made of alumina, and therefore the total emissivity of alumina should apply grossly if not closely to the device. Using as closely as applicable the output calculation methods used in the Lugano report, whether these are entirely accurate or acceptable or not, and applying the (silly) re-iterated emissivity procedure as described in the Lugano report to the MFMP .rav files, using the equivalent measurement boxes for the Optris software, the COP can be calculated. If it is quite close to the Lugano COP at the same re-iterated emissivity-temperatures, then either the MFMP have demonstrated a > 3 COP device built without a secret recipe, open sourced to all, or the Lugano demonstration should be tossed into the dustbin of history. And attempts to scavenge a COP of 1.1 or similar from the Lugano report should be equally applied to the MFMP data. If that acts similarly, then the fraction above COP 1 is most likely an error. Or mundane objects do produce COP >1, counter to a few hundred years of experiments.
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One rib on a cylinder is not at all similar to many parallel ribs. I suspect that at a minimum 5 ribs would be required, with measurements of the center one, to deal with the multiple absorption and emission effects, and insulating vs conducting effects of the base of the ribs. However after casting and testing with several ribs, the surrounding ribs could be ground off to in order test one by itself easily enough.
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How does one effectively measure the temperature of a fin at the scale of those in the Lugano device with a thermocouple? I have attempted it, but have never assured myself that the measurement was very accurate. The best that I have managed is the spring pressure of the thermocouple wire against a fin. At very high heat, that too does not last long.
Anything affixing the thermocouple to a fin tip externally affects the measurement. I may be able to cast a thermocouple into the near-fin tip, but the fin would be weakened considerably, the closer to the tip the thermocouple is cast. I have managed to cast a thermocouple into a flat surface, with the thermocouple wire a couple of cm from the junction dipping deeper into the Durapot a bit to keep it from pulling out easily.
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LDM,
I don't think that the view factor has much effect for the camera, as long as the resolution is is not such that individual valleys and ribs can be clearly imaged. (And even then I wonder.) Otherwise the Lugano reactor images of the main tube area would appear hotter in the middle (normal to the camera lens, valleys visible to the lens) and cooler towards the caps (oblique to the lens, valleys obscured by ribs).
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LDM,
Did you integrate the radiant power for the in band emissivity at various temperatures, and then determine a suitable in band emissivity, or just average the in band emissivity values?
From 0.86 to 0.95 over a very wide temperature range does not seem out of line, however.
Is that 3% error in temperature or in output power?
With the Durapot, the apparent in band emissivity moved about 0.02 - 0.03 from 20 C to (I think) about 1200 C. I would have to review my notes to confirm that. I believe that I posted the results a while ago, immediately after testing it. There was a fairly sudden change, rather than gradual, at around 750 - 800 C, detectable both when increasing and decreasing the temperature.
My point was more that the local temperature differences at any given time, for example between the ridges and valleys, would not have a large deviation in the in band (or even total) emissivity. It is not likely that immediately adjacent parts of a similar structure would have a large enough temperature gradient to require independent tuning of the local emissivity. Between the Caps and Main Tube, (obviously different structures), there could be a minor correction required.
By your estimate, how much deviation in the in band emissivity is there from 450 C to 900 C?
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I doubt that the in band emissivity required for the IR camera changes significantly with temperature. The broad band (total) emissivity required to calculate radiant power may change a small amount between a valley and ridge, but probably not very significantly either, at any given simultaneous valley and rib temperature.
The camera can select a very small measurement area, and this can be matched to a thermocouple position, assuming that the thermocouple does not conduct a significant amount of heat from the attachment location, and the thermocouple (which will have a different emissivity) is not direct imaged.
In general, thermocouples can indicate whether the IR camera is reporting a temperature that is reasonable for a specific area, but exact matching of temperature requires considerable thermal homogeneity of the surfaces being compared. A thermocouple only measures a very tiny area, and is quite limited by that fact. Several thermocouples could be attached, and the IR camera is roughly equivalent, when calibrated effectively, to hundreds of thermocouples being operated at one time.
Comparing IR to a thermocouple is like comparing the taste of two types of apples to each other. Not apples to oranges, but more like how two independent tastes of the same bite of the same apple are also not possible.
Additionally, two band pyrometers are not as effective as one might think when dealing with objects that have complex selective emissivity profiles. The pyrometers are attempting to determine a single temperature compatible with two different and simultaneously measured IR band radiant powers. It estimates an emissivity slope from that information to calculate a greybody equivalent. If the broadband selective emissivity profile of an object is complex, then the slope may be estimated poorly. 3 (or more) bands will improve the estimate. A greybody, which in general includes most materials (to some level of effective detail) can be very accurately tested, however.
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@jed,
The camera resolution is pretty much the problem. This can be compensated for by getting closer to the object, within a safe temperature distance for the camera. However, this creates problems with the many cells required to acurately calculate radiant output if there are many different temperatures in the camera view simultaneously. Backing off and getting the camera to average over a larger area is probably simpler and probably nearly as effective as attempting to manually calculate a composite average over many small areas, such as individual valleys and ribs (and what about the rib profiles? At what point should one cease dividing the measurement areas?)
