RE: Tesla's orphans

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

Original poster: "John H. Couture" <couturejh-at-mgte-dot-com> 


Ed -

I agree that Tesla would have a major engineering problem connecting the
earth conductor with the ionosphere conductor using the atmosphere for his
world electrical system. However, my understanding was he would be using
energy beams (low resistance?) to make these connections. Tesla said he had
this all worked out but never revealed any of the details.

The losses in the ionosphere might be fairly low because of the volume of
the ionosphere. It would be interesting to find out what NASA found for the
electrical losses in the Thether experiments. I read somewhere that in one
of the experiments the tether was 12 miles long, 5000 volts, one amp, 5000
watts. The impedance would be 5000 ohms for the complete circuit. Most of
this impedance would be in the tiny wire tether of 63360 ft. If the
equivalent copper wire size of the tether for carrying current was #29 AWG
this resistance would be close to 5000 ohms. The return circuit in the
ionosphere would then be close to zero ohms! Note, I am only guessing at the
value of the variables.

This discussion may have a relationship to Tesla coils in the future because
very high voltages are required in the ionosphere. Only small currents are
needed and this has the advantage that losses would be low.

John Couture

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-----Original Message-----
From: Tesla list [mailto:tesla-at-pupman-dot-com]
Sent: Friday, December 26, 2003 2:42 PM
To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Re: Tesla's orphans


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

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