Quote:
Originally Posted by Whale biologist
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I would guess the energy you lose from doing the physical work is more than is lost in conventional power generating systems.
Also, wind would fuck it up.
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they may not be as efficiant as burning gasoline to power pistons and magnetic coils
however,
energy storage isn't always 100% about efficiency
i mean we can't effeciently store large amounts of energy with electrochemical batters, we can use energy to grow stuff to turn into gasoline and sugar and that is a storage method too
however, we can also use stored energy from non hydrocarbon or non-radioactive sources to crack hydrogen and lift cement or like jibby was pointing out we can build pyramids that use the natural resonance of a water or aquaduct system or the earth to generate that energy to be stored over time and or continuiously transmitted
the thing is we don't need efficiency we need to stop killing ourselves with the endless thirst for throughput and get some quality
like ancient windmills and waterwheels you don't need a shitfuckton of throughput to feed 10,000 people or grind flour
and we can store for later use and high throughput usage to launch vehicles into space it just takes time and scale
and our human bodies can construct these things with the aid of our more convential approaches which we can than leave behind or depricate, maybe we lost the use of those conventional means and we had a cataclysm which wiped out a lot of our mass generation and storage potential and our ancesters were just unable to rebuild and we are finally at a stage were we can start thinking about doing things on scale again
we should reach for the stars and build habitats in places other than the earths surface (maybe in the core, the oceans, other planets, orbits) and we need energy to that - and when we can we will diversify as a species to fulflill other niches
they don't need to last 16,000 years
they need to last a few hundred years on the scale that lets you build and lauch space vehicles with stuff as simple as iron and hydrazine or shoot microwaves or w/e else around or do lasers and light work or run low power computers and processors
we are ever creating more and more efficient computers the goal is to run automated and self replicated machines that can 'do the work for us' that are small and efficient and eventually the size of cells (however there are things smaller than cells, and single cellular organisms at play, science is just begining to understand biology on the subatomic scale but there is a lot more there than just fuzzy quarks happening (which are purely a mathmatical conceptulaization of what we think may be happening))