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What do we use to power cities, towns, and space stations anyway?

Luca

Luca

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I'm just doing a bit of prewriting for something I want to put in the NTSE and the ISC Phoenix 2 after the current mission's done and a question has crossed my mind. What powerplants do we use to power cities, towns, colonies, and possibly even large installations like Dawn Station?

I'm in the look for something capable of supporting a town - but I begun to wonder what all the other towns, cities, and colonies are powered by.
 
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Well I didn't have much to contribute on the subject of wind farms since I honestly hadn't looked into the downsides and was unaware of the noise pollution. My general opinion largely sits around, "Let the animals modify their behaviours." anyway...

As for heat... I question whether for all the technological marvels in the SARP universe... Why hasn't anyone figured out how to capture and convert ambient heat? Yes heat always flows from 'hot' to 'cold' but would it not be possible with the much better understanding of physics in SARP to create a 'cold' spot that converts the absorbed heat into something useful?
 
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The short answer is: no

If you are on yamatai and you make a cold spot with your super-tech, then you've really just pushed the heat around to make one spot cold. The heat is still there. The same is true regardless of what you do with the heat.

You can't destroy heat, you have to get rid of it by moving it somewhere.
 
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You have broken my suspension of disbelief. We have tech that turns energy into mass, and the ability to poke holes in the very fabric of reality. Yet we can't do something as comparatively simple as create a pyroelectric material that when it heats up to something around 20C (68F) it produces a current, and that cools off when you remove the electric charge from it?

I'm not suggesting destroying the energy. I'm merely suggesting converting it from ambient heat into something useful or converting it into mass which could be moved off world rather than relying on radiator arrays since the amount of energy that goes into a kilogram of mass is huge.
 
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I guess what Zack is saying is that we haven't made that material yet, because we haven't discussed this problem before. That doesn't stop us from making something like you are suggesting now, far from it. Super-science ftw! :D
 
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What Aendri said the exact reason why the Neshaten will be abandoning wind-farms, it matters little if they can use some other piece of tech to create a free area - it is still using power from another source to provide power to a different. Now, admittedly, the energy crystals that teh Neshaten have 'do' create heat constantly which is why area's that have a high abundance of those crystals tend to be hotter while those that do not are cooler.

There are other methods that the Neshaten can use to create power; but the cleanest form for them is actually their crystals - so long as they control the amount of radiation it generates they are fine.
 
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The material you describe would still just be moving the heat around. Both the material itself and the current it generates will both have heat. No matter what you do with the heat it will still be there, making things all hot.

You could get rid of excess heat by throwing hot things into space, but that is just another type of radiator.

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The longer answer involves getting into a physics lecture. Heat has a lot of rules that are very well understood, and it is more reasonable to think FTL travel is possible in our lifetimes than it is to think that heat transfer can be cheated. Rule number 1 of heat is that heat can not be created or destroyed. Rule number 2 of heat is that temperatures will always try and equalize. If you put a hot thing and a cold thing next to each other you'll end up with two things of equal temperatures.

So you can't just transfer all the heat off Yamatai into a cube and blast that cube into space because your lukewarm yamatai won't transfer heat into anything warmer than it.

Nor can you convert that heat into mass without also making that mass very hot, so hot that you won't be able to put the heat from your luke warm Yamatai into your now super-heated cube once you've made a cube using Aether.

But what if you were to take a bunch of ice-cubes and launch them into space? Well, you'd still cool down the planet! Those ice cubes still have heat in them, heat that is now leaving the planet. Now there is less heat in Yamatai per square foot, and that heat will all spread out, lowering the overall temperature... but we don't want to send all of Yamatai into space just to get rid of a little heat.
 
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I don't know how to properly articulate the disappointment that has stemmed from my intention being completely missed, however given that everyone I talk to that has some interest in thermodynamics has an unhealthy fascination with the 2nd law I really shouldn't be surprised. So I'll try to say it again.

I am suggesting that you create a material, meta-material, or system that using pyroelectric effects at a somewhat low temperature converts ambient thermal energy into useable electricity. This isn't a completely foreign concept, we're developing inefficient pyroelectric generators for applications IRL. With SARP's abundance of really high temperature superconductors and much more advanced science in general (which allow things like PA) it shouldn't be too difficult to reduce the ambient thermal energy with a decent efficiency by converting it into electrical energy. This could then be converted from energy into mass. Which would condense the energy into a much smaller form.

While giant radiator arrays, or hopefully enough white/pale grey starport pads would possibly work, the option of getting useful work out of the increasing abundance of thermal energy is something that should be considered.

The bleed of energy through heat still exists. It isn't being prevented, sidestepped, or destroyed. It is just using that ambient heat in the atmosphere to provide useful work. It is a little frustrating that this is so difficult to get across.

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@Doshii Jun : Since I was in the middle of typing anyway and can respond: Not really. As has been mentioned the "Aether Dimension" is 'hotter' than SARP's dimension. Meaning that it likes to flood energy into 'real space' and putting energy back in would be like trying to poor water upstream in a river. Unless Yamatai makes something that dumps energy into a low energy dimension there isn't really any way to get rid of it.
 
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Heat tries to equalize.

If you open up a portal to the Aether you end up with the very hot aether next to your luke warm Yamatai. This will cool the Aether slightly and warm Yamatai a lot.

You could open up a portal to a universe that has already experienced heat death and end up with a very cold portal next to your luke warm Yamatai. This would slightly heat the cold universe and greatly cool Yamatai. Of course space is just about as cold so you could cut out the middle man and send the heat there instead of punching a hole in the universe.

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@Eistheid I completely understood your idea, but that isn't how those materials work. What you are suggesting is like digging a hole in the sandbox that you can put all of the sand in, or in picture terms what you are describing is an over unity machine : View attachment 3454

Or this:
View attachment 3455

The gist of it is that this doesn't work because 1+1 = 2 instead of 3. Pyroelectric generators don't turn heat into energy, they turn a heat gradient into energy. You have to have something colder than the generator in order for the generator to generate power. As you use your Pyroelectric generator you're going to be moving the hot spots around to the cold spots on Yamatai until Yamatai is luke warm all the way through. At this point you can't generate any more power with your Pyroelectric generator. You could turn your Aether taps on again to make new hot-spots and start generating power again but you're just making Yamatai hotter and hotter each time you do this.

Eventually you have to get rid of that heat.
 
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I believe in all this, nobody answered my question of what the average Nepleslian uses to power cities and towns. I need one too.
 
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Nepleslians generally use the Hyperspace Tap as their super power source of choice. The hyperspace tap was Derran Tyler's originally and was chosen over Aether at the time because it was a bit harder on the sci-fi scale. It works by 'burning' hyperspace, reducing 4 dimensional space to 3 dimensional space to create energy. Byproducts include heat, energy, and warping of local space since that 4d space unfolded makes a lot more 3D space. By-products include accelerating the heat-death of the universe but we have a loooong time before we have to worry about that.

The distinction between this and Aether is a lot less important since Aether was changed to being a separate universe long long ago.

When Wazu set up Nepleslia's energy grid and infrastructure during the start of the NSS Alliance plot it was mainly this and fusion being used to power the planet but for up to date information you may want to speak with their FMs.

This was eventually used as the standard tap back in the day

and here is an emergency briefcase sized generator

and I think this is the more recent one
 
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Eistheid said:
Well I didn't have much to contribute on the subject of wind farms since I honestly hadn't looked into the downsides and was unaware of the noise pollution. My general opinion largely sits around, "Let the animals modify their behaviours." anyway...

As for heat... I question whether for all the technological marvels in the SARP universe... Why hasn't anyone figured out how to capture and convert ambient heat? Yes heat always flows from 'hot' to 'cold' but would it not be possible with the much better understanding of physics in SARP to create a 'cold' spot that converts the absorbed heat into something useful?
Click to expand...
I like messing with casimir dislocation. Its only short range but it stops my gear from cooking itself by moving messy heat "over there" : it's how I explained the energy density and performance of the engines for the original winter frame. Its only good enough for units less than ten meters across.

Why don't we make this an in-character concern with some organization's pretending nothing is wrong?

A Sarp era environmental energy crisis.
 
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