wrote:
wrote:

And unless we do conquer hurricanes by building a Earth Air
Conditioner of Aluminum Sequin placed into orbit to reflect
Sun rays,

Apologies if anyone else has mentioned it further down in
the thread, but wouldn't Aluminum sequin be swept away in
no time by solar winds?


I am not sure of this myself, for I have nothing that I can point to in
the debris literature to prove it will not blow away. The debris
literature talks mostly about large pieces of rubble and not about tiny
things like aluminum sequin. This is important also for whether the
sequin spreads out or bunches up together.

Perhaps the meteoric dust that cools Earth recently reported by NATURE
magazine can simulate the behaviour of aluminium sequin and thus
provide a assuring answer that the winds would not blow it away or that
it is not bunched up. But then again also is where to place the sequin
in orbit and the distance can prevent the solar wind factor and prevent
the bunching up factor. So it is not as if the constraints are
prohibitive everywhere in orbit but rather we find the optimal orbit
for which aluminium works the best.

There is perhaps one particle already in orbit that can be the model
for aluminum sequin and that is the microorganisms in the upper
atmosphere. Of course the aluminium sequin is going to be a larger
surface area than is the microorganisms. And those microbes are not
affected by solar winds. Perhaps the final answer is some microbe that
loves living up there and reproduces itself, however, I wrote
extensively in past years that a microbe as Earth Air Conditioner could
be dangerous as a microbe could choke off Earth if it multiplies too
much in the atmosphere and we find ourselves in the situation of going
up there to "clean out the place by some microbe killer". But if a
microbe can flourish there, I am rather afraid or resigned to the fact
that it will establish itself without the help or intervention of
humans and we will face this prospect some future date no matter
whether we seed the upper atmosphere with microbes or not.



Even if not, all the space it occupied (and most likely
all space in the vicinity of the Earth) would be unusable
to satellites and spacecraft, and the whole sky would be
a featureless haze to radio astronomers!


My rough, very rough calculations is that 3 cargo hauled space launches
with the cargo full of Aluminium Sequin to the Space Station would
provide a full one year Earth Air-Conditioner that would last for 2
years and prevent all hurricanes from forming over the Gulf waters. And
would cool Earth on average 1 degree Celcius per year because the
reflectivity of Aluminium Sequin is 10^9 greater than the reflection
and absorption of either volcanic ash or meteoric dust.


A much more effective idea, suggested by Arthur C Clarke
I think, would be a diverging Fresnel lens a couple of
thousand miles in diameter and floating between Earth
and Sun at one of the Lagrange points, L1. See:


Actually, Clarke's is more of a pipe dream than an effective and
pragmatic idea. The energy to build it, to haul it, to keep it in place
is such a huge energy that it would cost more in energy than Aluminium
Sequin for the next thousands of years.

Some scientists have even worked the calculations showing that these
Lagrange points are very unstable and very energy consuming to keep
whatever is built there. The Lagrange points, in my opinion, have
become science myths and scientists should debunk them more, so that
people like John should never get caught up in these myths. For I
remember some poster many years back said that a structure built on a
Lagrange point would disintegrate in about a few months upon
completion.

http://www.physics.montana.edu/facul.../lagrange.html

Before anyone points out the technical hurdles to overcome
in grinding a glass slab of that size, let me add that a
Fresnel lens is flat and deviates light (or IR and UV?)
by means of a fine grating, usually circular. It can be
wafer thin and made from plastic, presumably by a small
army of miniature bots working round the edge each like
a spider spinning its web.


Cheers

John R Ramsden

I am convinced that in such a major project as Earth-Air-Conditioner
that the first one is closer to home-- the planet itself. And the first
one maybe crude compared to the future ones. But it is a progressive
stepwise technology for Earth-Air-Conditioner. The important thing is
to get the first one in place and then future improvements will accrue
thereof.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies