Stratospheric Solar Power Collector

It has been proved that supersonic zeppelins are possible. I'll have to find a link sometime. For now, just trust me on this, please.

:)

Actually, whether or not we really need supersonic zeppelins depends on the latitude at which this Idea is implemented.

Consider the rotation of the Earth. Since Equator is about 25,000 miles in circumference, and the world rotates once in 24 hours, we can figure that if you were on the Equator, you'd be moving around the center of the Earth at about 1042 miles per hour (1667km/hr).

Now suppose you got onto a jet at the Equator, at noon, and (after zero departure delay) flew westward at 1042mph (ground speed, not air speed, and supersonic, of course) for a while, and then landed. The local time would still be noon, because your westward motion would have exactly balanced the Earth's eastward rotation.

If you had enough fuel, you could fly for many hours westward at that speed, and it would still be noon when you landed.

Now suppose you were at the Arctic Circle instead of at the Equator. We can compute the cicumference of that circle easily enough; it is proportionate to the Equatorial circle in the same way that the radius of the Arctic circle is proportionate to the radius of the Equator; it is the "sine" of 23.5 degrees (0.3987) multiplied by that 25,000 miles, or 9969 miles (15950km). At the Arctic Circle the Earth's surface only moves 9969 miles in 24 hours, or 415mph (665km/hr). This is not a supersonic speed!

A westward-flying jet at the Arctic Circle could easily fly that fast. So could zeppelins, of course, if they were designed to also fly at supersonic speed.

We want to take our fleet of zeppelins and fly them so that the Sun is always in the sky, relative to them. We might even want to fly them very near the North or South Pole, just so they can dawdle along, not using much fuel or other energy, to keep flying at the correct speed for that latitude.

The zeppelins are built to be quite large, so that they can rise to the stratosphere and maintain their altitude nearly indefinitely. They can be unmanned, and we might even get away with using hydrogen as their lifting gas.

And of course the main reason for doing this at stratospheric altitude is because the zeppelins will almost always be above all the clouds. Thus do we bypass two of the biggest problems (night and clouds) associated with collecting solar power, without actually going into outer space.

Each zeppelin has a transparent outer bag. Inside the main body of every zeppelin (except one) is a long curved mirror, thin and lightweight and supported by the structural members of the zeppelin.

The fleet of zeppelins fly together in a formation that can be described as a series of nested rings. Stratospheric winds may or may not be a significant factor; there are "streams" which can probably be avoided, and possibly the stratosphere above the North and South Poles are almost always fairly still air (no Coriolois forces causing winds there). It should be possible for computers to automatically maintain the desired formation, with reasonable precision.

Every zeppelin in the rings of the fleet reflects sunlight onto the Main Central Zeppelin, which holds the solar power plant instead of a mirror. To anyone who thinks that it is not such a good idea to do solar power collection near the Pole, because the Sun's rays are diffused by extra atmosphere (Sun typically appears at the horizon), well, this is compensated-for by going to stratopheric altitude. The thinner air allows plenty of solar power to be collected.

To transfer the power to the ground, let's use superconducting rings. A fully-charged ring can be ready to go; another can be getting charged, and a ferry can be carrying a discharged one up to swap with the charged one.