Re: SSTC As a transmitter.

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Ed Phillips by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <evp-at-pacbell-dot-net>

Tesla list wrote:
> 
> Original poster: "John H. Couture by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <couturejh-at-mgte-dot-com>
> 
> Paul -
> 
> It is my understasnding that Tesla was trying to mimic the earth's
> electrical system of which lightning is a part. This system does not use
> hertzian waves and Tesla made a point of this fact. This system uses
> currents that flow thru the ionosphere as one conductor and the earth as the
> other. These two conductors are connected by currents flowing thru the
> atmosphere during fair weather and by lightning strikes during storms.
> 
> The lightning strikes are a fantastic automatic voltage control method of
> keeping the earth to ionosphere voltage at a certain level. When the voltage
> is too high there are more lightning strikes and vise versa. Tesla said he
> had worked out the details but never revealed what these details were.
> 
> John Couture

	If he HAD worked out the details he would have discovered that the
maximum voltage difference between the ionosphere and ground is only of
the order of 400 kV, very much less than the 25 MV he talks about in his
writings.  Even if the ionosphere were the almost perfect conductor he
envisioned (of course it isn't, as known from direct measurements) the
lightning bolts would create a low-resistance path to ground which would
have absorbed most of the power he proposed to transmit, illustrating
yet another fallacy in his scheme.

Ed