[phat tony]

I am working on a project and I need help in the form of answers to some questions, I think I might be asking this in the wrong place but I like how people think in this part of the site. If putting this thread here upsets anyone then I say sorry in advance but it is leading to something bigger and is of huge importance to a project that is taking up a lot of my time. I have placed other threads here and they are also in some way connected to my project. Before I ask I feel I should say my project is simply a design I am testing in a 3d program.

My first question is how far from earths surface would you need to travel to be able to use cheaper and not the fuel guzzling engines/thrusters we use to escape the gravity of earth at the moment????? .
ion sounds good, I know they use their power fast, but electricity can be made on site/in space. The same with the gas. I am asking because I am having trouble finding a good answer searching online.

My second question is about electricity. The net is full of people claiming they have invented free electric generators but I don’t believe any of them. One I say was so funny. A dude ( dude is all I could call him) with a pipe standing up straight and lots of stuff around the outside about the middle of the pipe and he then drops a magnet down the pipe and is so happy with the very small amount he made. Wow he made free electricity, I laughed and called my wife in and got her to watch. She laughed too, he picked up the magnet and dropped it again and looked so happy with him self. He was ignoring the fact that if he needed to keep picking up the magnet and dropping it then it was sure as hell not free and depending on the value he would place on his time it could even be very expensive.
Without perpetual motion or a fuel source or input from some other force then you can not generate electricity. You need power to make power, I could be wrong and that is why I am asking this question.

Does anyone know of a free electricity generator that 100% works and is proven to do so????.

I do feel the answer is no, simply because if so the world would be using it and NASA would not be complaining about ion using too much electricity too be the best option for space travel.

[Lancashire Astroguy]

Originally Posted by phat tony

Does anyone know of a free electricity generator that 100% works and is proven to do so????.

Is solar-generated electricity (e.g. from photovoltaic cells) not free, at least from our perspective? I'm sure this is how NASA generates the electricity to propel the ions in the few space probes that have used ion propulsion thus far.

[phat tony]

thank you astroguy for a quick reply. you are right but they are full of problems and not exactly what i ment. if NASA was doing the mission to mars and using a ion engine the size of the solar panel would be crazy. a small generator would be needed but the fuel supply today would be too much to carry to make the ion engine a good idea.
you could say the same about wind or water but also they need a power source. the solar needs the power of the sun.

[phat tony]

perpetual motion, something that you start but don't need to feed for it to keep going. is what i mean about not needing a power supply.

[phat tony]

sorry astroguy, i forgot to say welcome to the site. i hope you enjoy it here as much as i do.

[JulianO]

In answer to your first question, the force of gravity drops off with the inverse square law. Its simple to calculate how much graviational force an object experiences. So you just need an engine that produces more force than that.
As the equation shows, this force changes with the distance from the Earth (or later the Sun) and with the mass of the object. It never quite goes away, but soon becomes irrelevant for most considerations.

[FraserClarke]

Originally Posted by phat tony

My first question is how far from earths surface would you need to travel to be able to use cheaper and not the fuel guzzling engines/thrusters we use to escape the gravity of earth at the moment????? .
ion sounds good, I know they use their power fast, but electricity can be made on site/in space.

Ion engines offer a lot of potential for long journeys because, as you suggest, the fuel isn't very heavy and you can run them for a long long time. The trouble is that they don't produce very much thrust ; they achieve high speed by producing low thrust for a long time. That's fine in space, as there isn't any resistance. It won't work in the atmosphere though, where you have to overcome the air-resistance. So, I think as long as you're outside the atmosphere, you could use the lower thrust engines like Ion drives. That's probably from about 1-200km altitude I'd guess.

Something else you might want to look up are "solar sails", which could potentially do very long journeys -- but are little more than concepts at this stage.

Re: generating electricity on spaceships. Solar panels can be used for missions in the inner solar system, but if you want to go to Jupiter or beyond, solar power is too weak (for feasibly sized solar panels at least). In this case, most (all?) missions use radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs). These use radioactive decay to generate heat, which you can then convert into electricity.

Without perpetual motion or a fuel source or input from some other force then you can not generate electricity. You need power to make power, I could be wrong and that is why I am asking this question.

Does anyone know of a free electricity generator that 100% works and is proven to do so????.

No, you're right. There is a basic principle in physics called the "conservation of energy" -- energy can be neither created or destroyed. It can only be converted from one form to another. As you eluded to in your example, the dude was converting chemical energy from his food into kinetic energy to move his arms to pick up the magnet from the floor, therefore giving it more potential energy in the Earth's gravitational field, which turned back into kinetic energy when he let go of the magnet, which his complex tube eventually turned into electrical energy. None of those steps will be 100% efficient, so the whole process cost a lot of energy (which is basically converted into heat).

Fraser

[foundaplanet]

You are probably looking for something like cold fusion.
2006 - Excerpts from Cold Fusion: Fire from Water - YouTube

[phat tony]

f planet thank you for the link i enjoyed watching it. sadly they have not yet fully mastered cold fusion but it will be a new world when they do.
Fraser if you had a craft in a very low orbit, say 50km (i know it would need a lot to stay in such a low orbit due to decay from a collection of factors) would a ion engine from a standing start be good enough to continue on the journey to a proper high orbit say 50,000km out????.
i knew i was right about no generator but prayed i was wrong.
thank you for your help.

[Lancashire Astroguy]

Originally Posted by FraserClarke

Re: generating electricity on spaceships. Solar panels can be used for missions in the inner solar system, but if you want to go to Jupiter or beyond, solar power is too weak (for feasibly sized solar panels at least). In this case, most (all?) missions use radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs). These use radioactive decay to generate heat, which you can then convert into electricity.

Hi Fraser, and also thanks to Phat Tony for the welcome.

I don't know if you already know about this, but the Juno probe on its way to Jupiter is using solar cells entirely for its electrical power. This is now possible because photovoltaics have got more efficient over the last couple of decades. Its also good news for NASA because it is apparently running low on its supply of Plutonium for the RTG's. It also absurdly gets protests from the usual Greenpeace-types whenever it launches an RTG into space (when Cassini was launched for example).

Regards, James

[Space Bat]

HI Phat

OK it is possible to generate electricity free from the numerous radio emissions that are bouncing around our atmosphere and there are numerous examples on youtube of such devices that simply do that - grab free energy - albeit there was a source which is using energy...

However a similar project could be done to some degree to harness cosmic radio waves...

OK the experiments on youtube don't create a massive voltage or current capacity - but hey its a good start...and could be a possible answer for such free energy if it was progressed further to enhance the capabilities of the crude circuits as shown...

Also take a look at something called a Edison Device

Also I will get you the money no more threats of broken knee caps OK

[phat tony]

hi again bat but also thank you again. i looked at a lot of what you talked about before and found problems with the ones that just don't work right. but after seeing your post i looked again and found one from Argentina that i like. it looks good, close to something i was thinking about a few years back. i was thinking back then what i think now.it does not make much power but with work it will. the design has some problems but the need for a larger magnet force could cause some trouble. the force is weak. eg: you could stop it with one finger.
are electric companies that frightened, they would be able to buy large ones and save on fuel costs. also why are NASA not using one.???????

[Zakalwe]

They don't work because nothing is 100% efficient. There's a reasons why the Laws of Thermodynamics are called "laws" and not "theories", and Thermodynamics forbids perpetual motion in a closed system. Simply put, the 1st law states that you cannot create energy in a closed system, and the 2nd law states that you will always lose some energy (ultimately in the form of heat).

Grabbing "free energy" from radio waves? How does that work? You have to pump energy into creating the radio wave and then "pay" more energy to convert it back into electricity. It would be a hugely inefficient way of doing things...far better to use the energy more directly.

[Space Bat]

Originally Posted by Zakalwe

They don't work because nothing is 100% efficient. There's a reasons why the Laws of Thermodynamics are called "laws" and not "theories", and Thermodynamics forbids perpetual motion in a closed system. Simply put, the 1st law states that you cannot create energy in a closed system, and the 2nd law states that you will always lose some energy (ultimately in the form of heat).

Grabbing "free energy" from radio waves? How does that work? You have to pump energy into creating the radio wave and then "pay" more energy to convert it back into electricity. It would be a hugely inefficient way of doing things...far better to use the energy more directly.

In theory yes....but no

It is possible to generate electricity from all the radio emissions that are bouncing around the earth...you can make a circuit yourself and tap off this source....OK the reality is that energy was used to make these emissions and so you could argue isn't truly free in the sense its truly something from nothing...

However the cosmos is awash with various EM sources radio, microwave...etc it may be possible one day to harness this to put it to work...

[Zakalwe]

Originally Posted by Space Bat

In theory yes....but no

It is possible to generate electricity from all the radio emissions that are bouncing around the earth...you can make a circuit yourself and tap off this source....OK the reality is that energy was used to make these emissions and so you could argue isn't truly free in the sense its truly something from nothing...

However the cosmos is awash with various EM sources radio, microwave...etc it may be possible one day to harness this to put it to work...

The important part that you have missed is "in a closed system". If you are feeding in energy from an outside source then it becomes easy.

However, if you are doing a lot of work, such as reaching escape velocity, you need a lot of energy. That's why a controlled explosion in the form of chemicals burning in a combustion chamber is used.

[shellfish]

Solving your power problem.......

Infinite Improbability Drive

The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability by simply hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 sub-meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea) were of course well understood - and such generators were often used to break the ice at parties by making all the molicules in the hostess's undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance with the Theory of Indeterminacy.
Many respectable physicists said that they weren't going to stand for this - partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they didn't get invited to those sort of parties.
Another thing they couldn't stand was the perpetual failure they encountered in trying to construct a machine which could generate the infinite improbability field needed to flip a spaceship across the mind-paralysing distances between the furthest stars, and in the end they grumpily announced that such a machine was virtually imposssible.
Then, one day, a student who had been left to sweep up the lab after a particulary unsuccessful party found himself reasoning this way:
If, he thought to himself, such amachine is a virtual impossibility, then it must logically be a finite improbability. So all I have to do in order to make one, is to work out exactly how improbable it is, feed that figure into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot tea ... and turn it on!