Re: Tesla's orphans

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

Original poster: Ed Phillips <evp-at-pacbell-dot-net> 

"Ed -

You are asking me to find the capacitance around the whole world!
I have not even been able to find the capacitance of a small toroid on
my
Tesla coil! Refer to my reply to Paul regarding toroid reduction on
Tesla
coils.

Many years ago I did some calcs to find the possible voltages required
to
reach into the ionosphere from the earth. My notes are long gone. As I
recall I decided not to build a Tesla coil to produce those voltages.

John Couture"

"Matt -

Tesla's world electrical system would be a challenge to anyone including
the
US government. The ionosphere was implied in Tesla's time because of the
"northern lights". Tesla was very familiar with light outputs in plasmas
having designed and built dozens of light tubes to be energized by his
Tesla
coils. His air pressure guestimates were probably based on his work with
the
evacuated light tubes.

Note that I related lightning only to the atmosphere in my post.
Lightning
actually originates as charges in storm clouds located in the
atmosphere.
Tesla's 100 million volt estimate of the voltage necessary for his earth
to
ionosphere energy beams appears to agree with the estimated typical
earth to
storm cloud voltage of 30 million volts involved with lightning.

John Couture"

John:

	I don't have a formula for the capacitance of two concentric spheres so
just calculated the capacitance of a flat plate capacitor with the two
planes the area of the earth and the spacing about 50,000 feet; simple
enough.  I don't have the calculations at hand (I'll look them up and
send them later), but it showed the impracticability of the whole idea.
In order to sustain his 100 MV with the power loss he mentions would
have required a Q of the order of 10^8!!!  As for the conductance of
ionized gasses, he should have realized that it's pretty low if he'd
bothered to calculate it based on the voltage drop in his tubes and
their cross section.  My copy of "Neon Signs" shows a limiting minimum
voltage drop of about 100 volts/foot (at 60 ma?) as the area is
increased.  That's about 1500 ohms/ft and would have introduced
astronomical losses with his system.

More later if Terry doesn't shut this off,

Ed