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World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

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Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#141

Post by legulere »

epistasis wrote: post #108
jordanb wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone I know in environmental activism hates hydrogen and sees it as green-washing the petrochemical industry.

There's two types of hydrogen: 1) ammonia for fertilizer production and perhaps other industrial decarbonization, and 2) fantasies of energy storage, fuel, etc. Environmentalists know of the necessity of ammonia, but push back hard on the second. Michael Liebreich's hydrogen ladder is fairly good at summarizing an honest assessment of where hydrogen will be useful: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hydrogen-ladder-versi…

You state that energy storage is a fantasy, liebreich puts Long Duration Grid Balancing as a B on the hydrogen ladder. Sure it's going to be extremely expensive, but I don't see any cheaper alternative for countries without dark winters where also the wind can sometimes be not enough.

I agree though that it gets pushed in lots of inappropriate places, where better alternatives exist.

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#142

Post by exe34 »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #130
Dylan16807 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They said it's low importance to a ton of people, not that those people want the opposite .

I don't think that's really supported. It's not number one above all else, but I don't think you can infer ranking from action. I would argue that for most people their personal safety and that of their family is near the top of the list over 90% of the issues. Gun murder still exist, but that just goes to show that safety isn't the number one goal

> I don't think you can infer ranking from action.

classic case of watch what they do, not what they say.

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#143

Post by [deleted] »

kurthr wrote: post #140
topspin wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> green hydrogen in a fossil fuel shill talking point I'll stipulate that. None if this is my sacred cow. Apparently, however, your view isn't operative among establishment Powers That Be. Otherwise "they" wouldn't hesitate to name it, and instead employ euphemisms like "huge industrial complex" and "industrial megaproject." If this were some evil, no good, very bad mining operation or gas and oil field, it would be…

I can really understand. It's quite clever marketing and non-experts (media and politicians) are quite easily drawn in. Then of course, they can't admit they're wrong so they'll build a multi $B boondoggle with little to show at the end. And maybe they'll destroy the dark skies while they're at it. Lot's of horrible outcomes are just stupid mistakes that profit no one. If they CAN discredit solar for a while longer t…

[deleted]

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#144

Post by s1artibartfast »

exe34 wrote: post #142
s1artibartfast wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's really supported. It's not number one above all else, but I don't think you can infer ranking from action. I would argue that for most people their personal safety and that of their family is near the top of the list over 90% of the issues. Gun murder still exist, but that just goes to show that safety isn't the number one goal

> I don't think you can infer ranking from action. classic case of watch what they do, not what they say.

what does that mean in this context? What do you think it is above or below?

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#145

Post by koverstreet »

bobthepanda wrote: post #114
koverstreet wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're going to get a 4x energy density improvement from lithium sulfur batteries, just as soon as production ramps up.

Wikipedia lists the energy density of kerosene as 9.7k Wh/L, and lithium sulfur at 550 Wh/L, which is not great.

But burning kerosene is much less efficient, and turbine engines have a much lower power density than electric motors, so knock 2/3rds off the the kerosene number.

550 Wh/L would also be for the first lithium sulfur batteries to market, they'll double that down the road.

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#146

Post by Galaxeblaffer »

post-it wrote: post #132
Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hydrogen definitely not the only way for long distance sea, nuclear would just make so much more sense. and for place travel it also such the same as batteries, first of all its an explosive gas and second we only get less than 20%. hydrogen is just not a good solution to anything other than being a byproduct in the natural gas industry.

Nuclear would not make sense at all for long distance sea travel. Naval reactors require highly enriched fuel in order to be compact enough, so they could never be widespread on civilian ships for fear of proliferation. They're also extraordinarily expensive and require a specialized crew, and their power output is overkill for a cargo ship (but they can't really be scaled down much further).

The only real synthetic alternative is ammonia which brings it's own host of problems and potential for malicious use. while your arguments are valid, i think we can overcome most of the problems you mention with more research. at some point we'll need to make the hard decision to either give up on the environment or go nuclear and accept the extra cost of safeguarding it. It simply seems there's no other realistic alternative.

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#147

Post by fastball »

justlikereddit wrote: post #91
fastball wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "destroyed". If a dire need for dark skies arises, you can always... turn the lights off.

Turn the windmills off too because turbulence. Actually turn the entire facility off because again being a hotspot causes turbulence. Why don't we build an all night biker bar next door to your home? It won't cause you any problems like noise or nuisance because they cal always turn off the music or keep closed all night?

Energy for the many is more important than astronomy for the few. Hopefully in the future we have more robust energy production (this is a great example of why green energy proponents need to support nuclear – it has far fewer externalities like this) and then we can reclaim the area for astronomical use. That is my point. Nothing is actually destroyed, unlike with other types of pollution. Light pollution is literally the most reversible disruption I can think of. "Destroy" is definitely the wrong verb, unless your goal is for people to ignore you due to histrionics.

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#148

Post by Galaxeblaffer »

kbolino wrote: post #129
Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hydrogen definitely not the only way for long distance sea, nuclear would just make so much more sense. and for place travel it also such the same as batteries, first of all its an explosive gas and second we only get less than 20%. hydrogen is just not a good solution to anything other than being a byproduct in the natural gas industry.

Though it may never prove viable, hydrogen from electrolysis of water creates no emissions other than oxygen. While large ships may be able to use nuclear power directly, the risks of a tenfold increase in small floating nuclear reactors in civilian hands are not trivial. Hydrogen provides a way to keep power generation centralized, secure, and efficient while also distributing it where needed. But this assumes an ex…

I don't disagree that nuclear propulsion has a long way to go before becoming safe enough for civilian use and might require extra security and regulation forever, but we need to do something other than dumping bunker fuel waste into the sea and atmosphere even coubting in several terrorist attacks and accidents it might still end up killing less people using nuclear. As you say going with hydrogen and by extension ammonia, which is probably the only viable way to fuel ships, will require unthinkable amounts of renewables which is mostly intermittent energy meaning hydrogen electrolysis plants will have to be ramped up and down as the wind blows or the sun shines. this makes the efficiency calculations even worse for an already super wasteful undertaking. i guess we could potentially use nuclear but why waste 80-90% of the energy created by converting and then using hydrogen ? My opinion is that we need to throw much more money at making nuclear fission safer.

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#149

Post by fastball »

saddat wrote: post #85

Pair this with impact of mega constellations with 10k+ satellites , which not only destroy optical imaging, but also interfere with radio-astronomy

Luckily we can stick telescopes in space (partially enabled by those constellations), where the sky is even darker and clearer.

Re: World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

#150

Post by watersb »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #67
watersb wrote: post #59

On another piece of the electromagnetic spectrum, the ALMA radio telescope is also in the Atacama desert, north east of Paranal. The government agreed to a radio quiet zone in the areas surrounding ALMA. But now there's Starlink and other satellite constellations coming on line at an unprecedented pace.

Are those satellites broadcasting while over those areas? I don't see the connection here. In fact it looks like there's extra effort to let them keep running without causing problems https://public.nrao.edu/news/astronomers-satellite-internet-...

Thanks for the press release link. My knowledge is outdated. So reading the linked research paper:

The 2023 experiment with the single-dish Green Bank Telescope (GBT) demonstrated that Starlink beam-forming could reduce radio interference at the primary telescope beam (the "boresight") by as much as two orders of magnitude.

This experiment required coordination between StarLink and the GBT operators at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).

Another NRAO telescope in North America, the Very Large Array (VLA), has been conducting experiments of its own, in coordination with StarLink and the Navajo Nation. An enclave of the Navajo Nation, the community of Alamo is northeast of the VLA site. Isolated from the main extent of the Navajo Nation, Alamo has close ties to the nearby village of Magdalena, home to many of the VLA workers. This region surrounding the VLA could benefit greatly by StarLink internet services.

The VLA StarLink tests showed that most of the interference comes from the satellite, rather than the terrestrial user terminals.

Tests to automate the process of avoiding interference are ongoing. It will involve sharing observation scheduling and telescope configuration data from NRAO to derive beam shaping modes for the StarLink satellites.

I know that the VLA RF chain has the flexibility to handle this, and that the VLA correlator was built specifically to handle interference of this nature. The design stems from the early 2000's and was informed by increasing interference from GPS satellite constellations.

The process has yet to be automated, but there's cause to believe that it can work.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ad6b24

(I worked on the VLA monitor and control system software design 1999-2005. Many design reviews. Shared an office with the engineer who designed the correlator configuration API.)

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