Power Pipeline

Dear 11thHourAction Team, This latest blog essay is a recap of several R & D ideas, entitled "Power Pipeline" and "Goff's Hair" that I have already submitted to pretty much all of the pertinent global warming links on the Internet. Anyway, by accident, as I was reading about global warming, I remembered by accident, part of an old science fiction short story by the late SF writer Gordon R. Dickson, a 'hard' science fiction writer, as opposed to the rubber physics science fiction writers who write a kind of fantasy really. In that novella, he wrote about a future in which virtually all of the electrical power in the world came from 'free', clean electrical power generation systems, like windmill farms or hydroelectric or ocean power facilities, which do NOT emit greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming like our present electric power system, using lots of coal burning power plants does. The big problem was getting the electricity from isolated areas, like the windswept areas of middle America to the big citites on the USA coastlines. It's been proposed that we should invent superconductive Nanotubes (more on that later in this essay), to make a powerline with room temperature superconductivity, that will transmit the electricity superconductively, that is, without any power loss due to electrical resistence in the powerline cable, so that the very expensive step-up transformer depots along the way could be avoided. That is, presently, it costs too much to wire the juice from windmill farms or hydroelectric devices like Pelamis or related ocean wave power electrical power generation systems, placed in isolated areas, or the deep oceans, over vast distances, to the cities where the big electric power requiems are. So, only by having superconductive powerlines could such a plan be cost-effective. That is, a cost-effective electrically superconductive powerline could be a powerful tool to fight global warming, by enabling us to get electricity from non-polluting windmill farms and the like over great distances. They are still trying to invent that special superconductive Nanotube cable, (they CAN make superconductive Nanotubes, but only in tiny lengths, the trick is to make them longer) but in this science fiction short story, Mr. Dickson proposed a "Power Pipeline",  in which a group of travelling troubleshooters went around the globe, to install a vast networking or power grid, of special flexible pipelines, that had multiple layering of composite materials, to enable liquid nitrogen to supercool an Aluminum cable electric powerline to MAKE it electrically superconductive. OK, that was a science fiction story, but, the thing is, what if we have the established technology and hardware, to do that right now? Install vast windmill farms in the American midwest, and create a 'Power Pipeline' based on this fictional one, to convey the electricity it makes to the USA coastlines cost effectively? Of course, this powerline design would be very costly, but on a very large scale, it should prove cost-effective for everyone involved. THINK BIG.The sheer scale of the project is a major stumbling block, but you could roll over part of the electricity provider profits, from an initial, relatively small installation of this project, into expanding the whole system or 'Power Pipeline' grid later on. Further, the electricity from this project could be used to empower compressed gas plants for free, give them a zero elelctric bill, to enable them to convert air into its component gases of Nitrogen and Oxygen, and liquify them, (the Oxygen could be piped out to any coal burning electric power plants to make them burn as cleanly and efficiently as is possible) to supply all of the liquid nitrogen to be used by this system, to supercool the powerline to make it superconductive. If you decide to look into this project, you should talk to a Mr. Sam Brumande, of Shesam Compressed Gases, Inc. in Cumberland, Maryland, because he practically invented the whole compressed gas industry, and if anyone could design this 'Power Pipeline' mega-system power grid using liquid nitrogen, he's the guy you should talk to. Now the other idea, "Goff's Hair" was inspired by an article in the December 5, 2005 issue of the Sun tabloid, which was printed as part of an article, "Top 10 UFO Encounters", on pages 24-25, which was printed as: "7. Goff's Hair On November 18, 1961, Nebraska farmer Theodore Goff watched a UFO zig-zagging and leaving a trail of metallic fibers, thinner than a strand of human hair and only visible in bright sunlight. The mysterious hairs were unbreakable except by fire." Look, I think that what Mr. Goff actually saw was a type of ball lightning, which is often mistaken for UFOs. Remember, nobody truly understands what ball-lightning is, but everyone's afraid of it. The 'Goff's Hair' apparently was some kind of 'ash' or Nanotube-like excretion from this ball-lightning. They MAKE Nanotubes out of pure Carbon subjected to intense electricity. What does this have to do with superconductive powerlines? Well, perhaps if the experts in the new emerging field of Nano-Technology, the art/science of making very small things for scientific and industrial applications, obtained this 'Goff's Hair', and subjected it to the same laboratory analytical tests that they do to carbon Nanotubes, perhaps that research would give them something, some technical insight into a way to mass-produce very long superconductive Nanotubes, so that we could simply use that thing to transmit electricity over great distances with no power loss due to electrical resistence, WITHOUT all of this stuff with liguid nitrogen, etc. Further, although this 'Goff's Hair' was apparently stable at room temperature, it was apparently a very rare occurence, we may not be able to obtain this 'Goff's Hair' after all, and there is a far more commonplace 'Fortean Event' (which is the term for weird things falliing out of the sky) called 'Angel Hair', which I believe might be created by clusters of ball lightning in the upper atmosphere, and which falls to earth, and simply evaporates away. It's been theorized that 'Angel Hair' might be spider web threads, but nobdy's ever found spiders in them, and unlike webbing, it evaporates. Perhaps if the whole world was put on notice, to stay alert for the next 'Angel Hair' fall or Fortean Event, they could grab it, and put it into a deep freeze in their iceboxes, or put it in a cooler with dry ice, to preserve it under cold conditions like that in the upper atmosphere where it was formed, so that the 'Angel Hair' would last long enough, to likewise be analysed by the Nano-experts to see if it could also provide some kind of technical innovation towards mass-manufacturing room temperature superconductive Nanotubes for this "Power Pipeline" purpose. Anyway, I send these ideas all over the Net, and I am repeating it here for your perusal. Please feel free to forward these R & D ideas to the REAL scientists you know. That covers it. Best Regards, Techrex