NASA and US defense contractors have in the last decade started dumping money into sterling engines as a way to build zero maintenance, failure proof, and idiot proof nuclear fission reactors for spacecraft or lunar base operations.
Thing is that Sterling Engines aren't some kinda magic revolutionary way to create power, it's one of the oldest engine designs, and just about every other engine design outperforms it in practical applications.
On a side note:
post apocalypse if we lose the ability to make PV solar.
We wouldn't have the ability to make new solar PV panels in such a situation. Solar PV are the same as modern computer processors, ie they are a silicon semiconductor devices that require the same advanced foundries used to make computer chips. Without a developed industrial base the size of the US, EU, or China... there will be no solar PV. Hundreds of major companies or state enterprises producing equipment and feedstock that goes into the operation of the few dozen silicon foundries around the globe that have to harness massive economies of scale to make their production viable. This is why I always chuckle at anarchist solar punk stuff that imagines some kinda utopia built around solar PV power without the kind of state apparatus or mature industrial economy that is required to make such devices possible to be built.
yeah, maybe "if" was the wrong word. That's what I meant. Although PV cells are more different than computer chip manufacturing than you imply, they still are a complex process that would not be easy to maintain without a large industrial base.
Maybe relevant in the post apocalypse if we lose the ability to make PV solar. otherwise completely irrelevant for most applications
NASA and US defense contractors have in the last decade started dumping money into sterling engines as a way to build zero maintenance, failure proof, and idiot proof nuclear fission reactors for spacecraft or lunar base operations.
For example NASA, Los Alamos, and the Y-12 Nation Security Complex built KRUSTY just a few years ago.
Thing is that Sterling Engines aren't some kinda magic revolutionary way to create power, it's one of the oldest engine designs, and just about every other engine design outperforms it in practical applications.
On a side note:
We wouldn't have the ability to make new solar PV panels in such a situation. Solar PV are the same as modern computer processors, ie they are a silicon semiconductor devices that require the same advanced foundries used to make computer chips. Without a developed industrial base the size of the US, EU, or China... there will be no solar PV. Hundreds of major companies or state enterprises producing equipment and feedstock that goes into the operation of the few dozen silicon foundries around the globe that have to harness massive economies of scale to make their production viable. This is why I always chuckle at anarchist solar punk stuff that imagines some kinda utopia built around solar PV power without the kind of state apparatus or mature industrial economy that is required to make such devices possible to be built.
yeah, maybe "if" was the wrong word. That's what I meant. Although PV cells are more different than computer chip manufacturing than you imply, they still are a complex process that would not be easy to maintain without a large industrial base.
deleted by creator
Fear the electrical deamons promising power without turbines, for their spinless sorcery will fail you in the days to come.