[ExI] Dark Matter

[Adrian Tymes]

On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 11:12 AM, Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 11:55 AM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Nov 14, 2013 10:23 AM, "Kelly Anderson" <kellycoinguy at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 8:38 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>> >> Cool thanks Kelly.  It might be possible to transport the biomass
>> using seawater somehow,
>> >
>> >
>> > Only if you can desalinate it first. And if you do that, Los Angeles
>> will want to drink it. And when Los Angeles wants water, Lolita gets water!
>>
>> Indeed, a more viable product for all this electricity might well be
>> simple desalinated water.  At least if the energy production was near the
>> coast.
>>
> Correct. The problem now being that land near the coast in sunny areas is
> expensive. Spike's solution took advantage of existing infrastructure
> (i-50) that is underutilized and of low value, that happens to be in an
> area with a lot of sun. Also an area where people don't generally want to
> live, I might add.
>

Actually he said "highway 50", by which I assume he meant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Route_50_in_California as there is no
I-50.

But there is a lot of unused coastal land along
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Route_1 between Santa Barbara
and Los Angeles (assuming Los Angeles would be the main destination).  Not
all of it, of course, but more than enough to stick a few large solar
facilities powering a desalination plant out of sight of existing
settlements.  (South of Los Angeles, it seems to become mostly one long
sprawl - though perhaps someone w/Marine contacts could ask Camp Pendleton
if they'd be willing to host a major desal facility on their coast.)


> That doesn't require radical new technology.  In fact, it's somewhat
>> boring.  But if you could make the numbers work, it would be a viable first
>> step toward this sort of scheme.  Further, this step could quite readily
>> attract large private investment - if and only if the data and projections
>> are believable to said investors.
>
> Correct. And I don't think you can make the numbers work for Solar today.
> I would love to be proven wrong, as I love solar in principle.
>

IIRC, solar-powered desalination was tried before, many years ago.  The
numbers almost but not quite worked.  If that is the case, there's reason
to believe they could work today.
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