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emfennelly

The Future Of Solar: Solar Power To Surge in 2014? | CleanTechnica - 0 views

cleantechnica.com/...e-solar-solar-power-surge-2014

APChem FinalProject Solar

shared by emfennelly on 15 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • with a limited income, most people will choose to take care of their own immediate needs before they address the needs of the planet.
  • Between 1977 and 2013, the overall cost associated with solar power dropped an amazing 99%
  • dropped 60% since the beginning of 2011
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • new materials (such as perovskites) are becoming even cheaper to manufacture, more efficient at converting energy, and could eventually supplant current silicon cells by absorbing only specific wavelengths of light—thus making it possible to “layer” semi-transparent sheets to increase the amount of energy being generated.
asfldkj

NASA Eyeing Nuclear Fusion Rockets for Future Space Exploration | Advanced Propulsion C... - 0 views

www.space.com/-rocket-space-exploration.html

shared by asfldkj on 16 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Nuclear fusion rockets could slash travel times through deep space dramatically, potentially opening up vast swathes of the solar system to human exploration
  • You could get to Saturn in a couple of months
  • Traditional chemical propulsion systems can get humans to destinations in deep space, but with a lot of travel time. For example, a roundtrip manned mission to the vicinity of Mars, which NASA aims to execute by the mid-2030s, would require about 500 days of spaceflight.
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  • So NASA and researchers around the world have been investigating advanced propulsion technologies, including space-bending "warp drives," enormous solar sails and matter-antimatter engines. Nuclear fusion is perhaps the most promising of these possibilities, at least in the relatively near term, proponents say.
  • Fusion rockets would harness the energy released when the nuclei of two or more atoms combine. Our sun and other stars are fusion-powered, converting this energy to light; the same principle also gives hydrogen bombs their immense destructive power.
  • NASA has funded several early-stage fusion ideas recently via a program called NIAC (NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts). One of these groups, led by scientists at the University of Washington, recently calculated that a fusion rocket could make it possible to get astronauts to Mars in as little as 30 days.
emfennelly

HowStuffWorks "Photovolatic Cells: Converting Photons to Electrons" - 0 views

science.howstuffworks.com/...solar-cell1.htm

APChem FinalProject Solar Photovoltaic

shared by emfennelly on 03 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Photovoltaic cells are made of special materials called semiconductors such as silicon,
  • when light strikes the cell, a certain portion of it is absorbed within the semiconductor material. This means that the energy of the absorbed light is transferred to the semiconductor. The energy knocks electrons loose, allowing them to flow freely.
asfldkj

NASA Researchers Studying Advanced Nuclear Rocket Technologies | NASA - 0 views

www.nasa.gov/...ntrees.html

shared by asfldkj on 16 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • A nuclear rocket engine uses a nuclear reactor to heat hydrogen to very high temperatures, which expands through a nozzle to generate thrust.
  • The team recently used Marshall's Nuclear Thermal Rocket Element Environmental Simulator, or NTREES, to perform realistic, non-nuclear testing of various materials for nuclear thermal rocket fuel elements. In an actual reactor, the fuel elements would contain uranium, but no radioactive materials are used during the NTREES tests. Among the fuel options are a graphite composite and a "cermet" composite - a blend of ceramics and metals. Both materials were investigated in previous NASA and U.S. Department of Energy research efforts.
  • A first-generation nuclear cryogenic propulsion system could propel human explorers to Mars more efficiently than conventional spacecraft, reducing crews' exposure to harmful space radiation and other effects of long-term space missions. It could also transport heavy cargo and science payloads. Further development and use of a first-generation nuclear system could also provide the foundation for developing extremely advanced propulsion technologies and systems in the future - ones that could take human crews even farther into the solar system.
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