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Whilst reading (why do all of my posts start with whilst?) reading the Gravespinners notion (see link) I was taken with the idea, but it had a major drawback.
The point is that they all spin in their graves, due to the rotation of the Earth, its rotation around the Sun, and the whole shebang rotating
around the galactic centre.
What is really lacking is a fixed point to help harness the energy, with a generator and a very long piece of string, which would then run to each individual grave.
The problem with that is, it would have to be a large mass, sufficiently far enough away from the sun to avoid the being dragged along with the solar system.
Pondering on it, I came up with perhaps a better solution. What we really need is a counter-rotating planet, or at least a large body, to fix the generator too. That way it doesn't have to be outside the solar system.
I rest my case, and a couple of Tesco's carrier bags at the same time.
Although thinking about what would happen if it strayed from orbit, and the chunks floating around from what used to be the Fifth planet makes me think that maybe I am not the first entity to come up with the idea...
(?) Gravespinners
[not_morrison_rm, Mar 15 2012]
prior art....
http://allisonprior.webs.com/
[not_morrison_rm, Mar 15 2012]
Ponder Stibbons
http://wiki.lspace....iki/Ponder_Stibbons
For [not_morrison_rm] [normzone, Mar 19 2012]
[link]
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It will be difficult for me to provide you with a contra-rotating planet upon such short notice, but for a small fee I can let you have Neptune's moon Triton as a loaner. |
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There was ne'er a planet 'twixt Mars and Jupiter. In its stead was
the jovial gravity, which rent asunder any orbs-to-be. |
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Venus spinneth widdershins. Were that of use, belike through
the
ejection of projectiles from her countenance? |
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>Venus spinneth widdershins. |
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Useful but still not the entire planet contra-rotating orbit-wise...I'll have a Stibbons on that one... |
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Maybe Phoebe then? Rig up something between it and Iapetus. |
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Do I take it from your previous replies that actually
you mean contra-orbiting planet, as opposed to a
contra-rotating one? |
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It would be possible to work out how much energy Phoebe and
Iapetus had relative to each other. Presumably, launching
projectiles just beyond the former's escape velocity in the
anticipated direction of Iapetus would transfer energy to it.
Maybe that could be used to generate power through something
like a reverse railgun. The magnetic projectile is aimed at the
limb of Iapetus very accurately, shoots through a metal tunnel
and yanks a few electrons along with it as it brakes to a
standstill. Good for anyone who might be living on Iapetus i
suppose, but the metal would have to be gotten to Phoebe in the
first place. |
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In a post far, far away... I questioned whether those
gyro-balls (the wrist excerciser thingies) managed to
extract energy from the rotation of your wrist,
without reference to a fixed point. I think my
conclusion was that the conclusive answer was that
it's inconclusive. |
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>conclusive answer was that it's inconclusive |
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I love those kind of conclusively inconclusive findings... |
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>you mean contra-orbiting planet,
Aha, I knew that, I was just pretending to be completely stupid, of course. |
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Thinking more on the idea, if it was possible to get a close enough pass to the planet Earth it might be possible just to use a very long stick, attached attached to a generator and as contra-orbiting planet hits it, the energy can be turned into electricity. |
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Wonders if it might not be possible to alter the trajectories of asteroids, comets etc to bring them within a usable range...goes and plays with orrery made of sticks and pieces of turnips,, |
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//, if it was possible to get a close enough pass to
the planet Earth// |
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What we need is to get the two planets to orbit
eachother sufficiently closely that their surfaces are
almost in contact. We could then cover Earth's
equator with cat fur, and cover the equator of the
contra-rotating planet with nylon, and harvest the
resulting charge. |
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If we can find a planet with a big strip of naturally-formed
amber around its equator, we won't have to buy all that
nylon and can allocate more to our cat-skinning budget. |
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Or cheese. Few people know this, but mature
cheddar cheese, with a moisture content of less
than 5%, can develop a huge static charge when
rubbed with nylon. |
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(This phenomenon has been to blame for at least
three major fires in cheese processing plants, and is
suspected to lie behind several others.) |
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If you start extracting energy from orbital systems, all sorts of bad things are going to happen; since your species combines the dubiously beneficial traits of greed, indifference and short-termism in almost equal proportions, any prospect of keeping the amount of energy harvested to sensible levels is nonexistant. You'll just keep taking power until your whole system disassembles itself. |
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You have an enormous fusion energy source a mere 150 million kilometers away, and it's good for several billion years yet. What part of this don't you get ? |
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I should think it was obvious. That fusion energy
source is stable. Won't do anything interesting for
billions of years. Booo...ring. What are we
supposed to do for fireworks in the meantime? |
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Smash planets together, obviously. |
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Smash? or Combine and improve? |
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