Energy From the Ionosphere

How much current? On a sustained basis?

Ye olde kite experiment....
http://www.codecheck.com/cc/BenAndTheKite.html

Want to drill a hole in your safety net or want to shoot all Cosmic rays right in your body all over? There are billions of people and trillions of other life on earth and you will be left over by cockroaches to use that power.

Good luck for cockroaches and you are the game by your acts if you do so and enough food may be left over for cockroaches.

NASA tried to collect the charge in their many experiments and finally might have given up by now. It is not impossible but why on earth you want everything to be used up. Not satisfied with global warming yet?

Perhaps I have this all wrong, and please correct me if I do.The ionosphere is created by the interaction between the Earth's magnetic field and the solar wind.It is dynamic,and not a fixed quantity.If a charge were removed, it would be replaced,unless we lose our planet's magnetic field.So how could removing energy have an effect, unless wee removed more than the solar wind/magnetic field reaction could replace.I am sure the total amount of energy required would be astronomical.

The source of any energy in the ionosphere is incident solar radiation, which is essentially a fixed-per-time quantity. One could compare the incidence of solar energy on an 8000-mile diameter disk (earth cross-section) with that of annulus represented by the ionosphere. The energy might be large, but not vast, and certainly not unlimited. I think this is one of those ideas with the decimal point about 4-5 places off, maybe even more unfavorable.

Just Google HAARP and see what the government has already done in this endeavor and what they plan to do. Then look at several books written about this (not published nor endorsed by the gov't.). Tesla first published his ideas of reaping vast amounts of energy from the ionosphere but they were never finished or found.

For all his genius in some areas, Tesla was a fruitcake in others, like this one.

Actually, it is what a "Tesla coil" was for. But his papers on it were not found because he did most of his design work in his head. But Wydenclif tower was the size it was so that it would be resonant with the Earth at a base frequency of 7.86 Hz. The coil would produce a standing wave of enormous potential if driven directly by a signal generator, OR it could be tuned to receive a per-existing signal. Tesla coils of this type are what he called "magnifying transformers" and one coil is only one half of the transformer. Tesla's big idea here was to use the Sun-Earth signal source as the primary signal and tap the energy with his secondary tower setup to resonate with the Earth. As the sun fluctuated, the Earth would fluctuate and that modulation in the resonant frequency "carrier" could be tapped for power.

Tesla was very interested in the standing potential between the Earth and Sun. He saw the Sun as a source of positive charge, and the Earth as a negative pole. He wanted to tap that potential like a battery.

Tesla's ideas were revolutionary,and he imagined free power for the entire world.The powers that be at the time did not like this idea,(no money in it)and when Tesla died, all of his notes were confiscated and classified by the government,the towers were immediately removed and destroyed,and oly a partial remnant of one of the towers is on display at the Smithsonian.

I know that resonant coupling works, and it will eventually be used to charge EV's on the fly,with the primary embedded in the highway, and the secondary in the vehicle.This will solve the range problem with EV's.Individual usage will be debited from your account, similar to the scan-fast toll lanes now do.

The EV's computer will determine when a charge is needed and notify the coils ahead.No need to totally discharge the batteries, simply top them off at certain intervals.This will reduce the instantaneous demand.There may even be a time when the vehicles are powered entirely by the coils. The spacing of these coils will be determined by needs and placed accordingly,like gas stations are now.Most of the primaries will be either private owned or franchised.To get a feel for the future, simply replace petrol station logos with coils-power vendors' logos.

You will be able to select from many vendors from which to buy your power,and competition will favor the most environmentally concious sources.

I realize there will be an intense infrastructure required,and that the pollution will simply be shifted elsewhere,but smog in cities could be reduced or eliminated,and clean power will have some contribution in the equation, more and more as time goes on and solar and wind,and eventually,fusion,(using H3 mined from the moon)becomes more efficient.

That is just my take on the future of energy, and transportation,and as always, I could be wrong.

Well, for one thing it would have to be made out of 'UNOBTAINAIUM' in order to stay intact, let alone carry the current from the nearly constant lightning strikes, that it will be attracting. On top of that, there 'ain't no battery big enough' to store that amount of energy. Nor is there any current technology that could even regulate it.

Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

Well, we have the means to do that already, catching lightning etc, it's the matter of storage. How do we store massive amounts of potential energy? It would take massive linkages to the entire North American grid network, with wires and blimps in every county. The sky would be a complete hazard to navigation. It's all in the storage of more remote conductors and the resulting power. It sure would be a great way to have every national department finally working together instead of ideas like this being thought only as science fiction fantasy.

Actually lighting is not as powerful as most people think. It is mostly just a huge capacitor discharging a small amount of energy rapidly.

The average lightning strike contains between 100 and 300 watt hours of electrical power which when compared to what the national power grid carries is tiny.

I think the NASA has done some work in this area, dangling long wires from satellites to measure such potentials.

And the space elevator of "The Fountains of Paradise:" if we built it with carbon ribbon, the voltages possibly present could be a critical design factor. Might even power the elevator and the far end station with it.

Disney could do the whole job in a year and be operating a tourist attraction before any govt got it beyond a concept.

NASA's tether experiment generated far more energy than they anticipated and blew out the connection to the craft.Subsequent tests used larger cable and maintained integrity.They discovered that by absorbing power from the tether,they could reduce their speed and lower their orbit,and by pumping energy into the cable they could increase speed and raise their orbit.

This feature is now used to maintain positions of the newer generation of commercial and military satellites without burning fuel.They use solar energy stored in fuel cells, and make corrections as necessary.Neat,huh?

Always fascinated by theoretical possibilities...Seems tesla would have if he could of...Many scifi writers use this elevator to the stars approach...Imagine suspending a huge enclosed vertical bridge defying gravity based on the stress strain parameters (could be done but it would be huge)...i like the notion of lifting out of the what did teilhard de Chardin call it,the noosphere i think,in an actual elevator/tube device)climbing on board an interplanetary/perhaps interstellar spaceship and zipping around the cosmos...Could yet happen if earths resources were focused as one race,which we are,instead of multibordered/multi military regulated by rule maker states...just saying..

We all dream free..:)

Googling your question gets several resonses:

http://home.netcom.com/~sbyers11/RFenergy_iono.htm

http://www.teslasociety.com/cosmos.htm

http://www.ann-geophys.net/25/2529/2007/angeo-25-2529-2007.pdf

But, according to some, you don't need the ionosphere:

http://www.keelynet.com/energy/reac.htm

http://worldtracker.org/media/library/Free%20Energy/Creative%20Science%20&%20Research%20-%20Free%20Energy%20From%20The%20Sky%20(12p,%20maybe%20interesting).pdf