From: Ross A. Finlayson (RAF@tomco.net)
Date: Thu Apr 22 1999 - 23:36:44 MDT
Gasoline is the explosive driver of pistons in a conventional internal
combustion engine, which prevents battery drain through the alternator. Any
fuel of an internal combustion engine does so by exploding.
Piezo-electric materials can generate electrical current from pressure, and
vice versa. Very high pressure, eg, from high explosives, would probably tend
to destroy the piezo-electric materials.
Spike Jones wrote:
> Michael S. Lorrey wrote:
>
> > ...b) There is a new power source that one of the Russian Institutes just
> > sold to the US military which uses a small charge of conventional
> > explosives to generate 1 megawatt for a tiny fraction of a second. They
> > are evaluating it now for space defense weapons use. Don't know the
> > technology behind it.
> >
> > Spike? Any ideas?
>
> None that I am willing to talk about, even if I did know, which I
> am not claiming to. {8^D Gotta hand it to those commies, they are
> pretty clever with their shape charges, are they not? spike
Most nuclear reactors used for power generation do so by heating water, ie,
steam turbines create the electricity.
The Sun blankets the Earth each day with enough convertible power for pretty
much any power needs. A satellite farm in orbit with large solar panel arrays
and a microwave downlink might be an efficient generator of power.
In atomic (fission) explosions, a tiny amount of the mass is converted to
energy. This energy is somewhat uncontrollable, and has negative side effects
such as dirty radiation particles.
A device that could controllably convert minuscule amounts of matter to energy
in a harnessable fashion, would be the end-all be-all of power generation,
again barring extra-dimensional power sources.
Ross F.
-- Ross Andrew Finlayson 202/387-8208 http://www.tomco.net/~raf/ "C is the speed of light."
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