LOL! It was!

:)... after a while, an old friend of mine and I began to call it "Voyage to the Bottom of the Barrel..."

That bad science fiction led to a same submarine TV series about--Oh, look out! Here comes another sea monster!

It's a great school and I learned many wonderful things and techniques there. I also flunked out at the end of my sophomore year (0.86 or so GPA for the second semester)... Never needed to learn how to study in high school... caught up with me in my second year there.

Got back into RPI just in time to NOT go to 'Nam and learned how to study... Made Dean's List my last semester, just as I'd made High School Honor Roll my last semester there, too! (Basically bright but lazy, given the opportunity).

And I'm not ashamed of any of it.. it's just who I was, who I am and what I did.

Actually, I'll confess I learned how to do homework the first semester of my senior year when my main squeeze and I agreed to not hop into bed until we'd both finished all of our homework or studies... Great motivator! Worked for me!
:)

They can't catch fire. What's there to 'burn'?
Bad Science leads to Bad Science Fiction, though Barbara Eden WAS really cute!
:)

Ok, John... if, like many folks, you don't like windmills extracting energy from the wind, how will you feel about locating 'lightning energy collector antennas' (glorified lightning rods) all over the place in order to give that energy a path TO the storage elements of the future?

Where should the collectors be located? Obviously in all places more prone to lightning! Your front or back yard or mine? Tops of mountains? Tops of buildings, church spires?

And, 'pray tell...' if that energy is siphoned off into super capacitors or mega-batteries, what might just happen as a result?

Ecological changes unforeseen because we don't know what would happen if all that energy were directed to our TVs and air conditioners instead of dissipating into the earth or blasting some tree apart?

Be careful what you seek... :))))))))

rensselaer? l am impressed!!! -- j
.

hear, hear!!! . I hate waste also -- and want a way to capture the
energy of lightning, to use it as we need it!!! -- j
.

Metaphor, more likely, but I was commenting on all the Bad Science that was being laid down to explain or defend or support the idea OF Galt's 'motor.'

Hell, some scientists are starting to think that a 'warp drive' may actually be feasible, but to debate the details of the scripts or diagrams in Star Trek (any Generation) is mental masturbation. It may be fact some day, but at the time of the writing, it was fiction! Ditto, Galt's Motor!
I don't like wasted energy... mental or hydrocarbon! :)

I took the motor to be an allegory for any powerful future technology. The details are unimportant. The point is free people will invent things to help one another, and some people produce great inventions.

Regarding heat pollution, all the energy we could want is trifling compared to the sun.

I was hardly more than a hatchling when I saw those belts catch on fire in a movie called Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea. Barbara Eden later of I Dream of Jeanie TV fame and another lady scientist tried to save the world by constantly scribbling what looked like longhand on pads and pads of paper.

I made one of those when I was a kid. Then a double-E gave me a simple diode to replace the Galena crystal, and no cat's whisker poking around was needed.
In my freshman year at RPI, I got a TRF (tuned radio frequency) AM receiver which was like a glorified crystal radio, jacked it into my amplifier and had wonderful quality music at my beck and call.
Everything else is a refinement. :)

Dino, the Van Allen belts were there back when your ancestors roamed the earth... :)

Google harder, CG... Lightning is still not fully understood, but there's quite a bit known about it.
Things like 'leaders' that pass from ground to cloud establishing the path for cloud-to-ground lightning, and so on (I think I got that part right...)

Just like electrical energy storage for solar and wind, we ain't nowhere near anything that could take the amount of energy in any lightning strike and store it for future use. Maybe in a few decades...

and, from the patent and articles, " [0013] The ideal energy source for mankind will not add heat to the planet's ecosystem, will not produce by-product green house gases; will not deplete our food and water resources; will not produce toxic wastes; however, it will be portable, self-replenishing and constantly available in real time anywhere on Earth and in useful quantities. " .... Bullshit. Taking piles of energy from any new source and converting it to electrical power WILL eventually dissipate ALL that additional 'power' as heat into the biosphere.

It's got nowhere else to go. ALL electrical power is eventually dissipated as heat, as are mechanical losses to friction, etc. Thermodynamics still rules. Neither Tesla nor the imaginative power source can avoid that.
Heat will still be added to the biosphere. It just won't produce combustion byproducts.

And as for 'clean nuclear,' nobody mentions ALL of the energy that goes into fabricating ALL of the components of the reactors and their fuel. It's not a clean, free lunch.

As for Galt's motor, can any of you get that it was a fiction story? Tell me that, since the era of Tesla and other inventors, NOBODY has come close to duplicating the mysterious power supply?

And just about every report y'all have linked smells suspiciously of Pogue Carburetor Conspiracies, which are cute and indefensible since you can't prove they're NOT true... but where's the beef?

You have not converted this skeptic at all.
More data, please! More tangible proof.
Thanks!

the Cu and Al galvanic reaction gave you the half volt,
I bet, yet it wasn't strong enough to push much
current. . I just wish that we could send a couple of
weather balloons up when it's stormy, hook 'em up
to some Li-ion batteries, and run our lives until
it's stormy again. . dreaming. -- j
.

great work, and Thank You!

I once worked with an alloy called astralloy-v, a
high strength low alloy weldable steel. . it reminded
me of Rearden. -- j
.

If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you'll find links to other character and situation sketches I made. The best way to describe a character, I always say, is to retell the story from his POV. And to discuss other feasibilities. If you follow the link to Henry Rearden's page, you'll find a discussion of what kind of alloy Rearden Metal might have been, and what it might really have been able to do.

As a kid I made a few of these too. Agree they are very cool, and as you note, powered by the radio wave itself. My kids have no interest!

I have done some experimenting with energy out of thin air and the ground. I put a copper rod next to an aluminum rod, isolated from each other and I got a positive 1/2 volt DC with no measurable amps. It seems to vary with environmental conditions; humidity, pressure and the like. Same with earth experiments...seems to vary with moisture content. Seems to me it would take some sophistication to gather enough power to be of any use. Maybe using a 'regeneration' circuit perhaps; like the one used for boosting radio signals. I have no clue, do not have much knowledge in this area.

Yes! . very interesting!!!
do you know what a "hexacopter" is? -- j
.

beautiful job, Tem!!! -- j
.

as a retiree, one of the things which I wanted to do
was to build a good crystal radio. . it was fun, cheap
and a total success. . kits, instructions, mounted
crystals and diodes are all out there. . ebay!!! -- j
.

it's the reason for this post -- so many smart people
here, and so little time!!! -- j
.

Stan, Thank You for relating this! . I just wonder how
Dr. Moray arranged his antenna. . 5 kW is nothing
to sneeze at, and I am wondering how he did it.
Thank You Again!!! -- j
.

Yes! . it is potential energy which is stored, and we
desperately need something which can store it more
conveniently than a reservoir on a hill. . if we could
push electrons up to a higher energy state without
having them drop back down and emit a photon,
or if we could charge a capacitor without having
it self-discharge ... what a challenge for the young-
at-heart Galts of this world !!! -- j
.