If energy was free....

[Benengo]

What would we do with it all?

Say we crack nuclear fusion (not fission!) giving us an unlimited, clean source of energy, what would or could we do?

My daughter has a school project and has started with: desalination plants and pumping stations to irrigate deserts.

Anyone got an amazing idea that’s not practical today due to it being unaffordable from an energy perspective?

[The Moose]

A/Cing my house to 74 during the height of summer!

[foggy]

Have a big tropical greenhouse style home/garden with some awesome plants amongst my extremely powerful stable of cars.

That and long showers til I got bored...

[Chris Hinds]

Reverse the increase in CO2 by extracting it from the atmosphere and storing it...

[loafer123]

Benengo said:

What would we do with it all?

Say we crack nuclear fusion (not fission!) giving us an unlimited, clean source of energy, what would or could we do?

My daughter has a school project and has started with: desalination plants and pumping stations to irrigate deserts.

Anyone got an amazing idea that’s not practical today due to it being unaffordable from an energy perspective?

I guess interstellar travel becomes a bit easier...

[Benengo]

loafer123 said:

I guess interstellar travel becomes a bit easier...

How so? Did I read something about some sort of earth based laser or such?

[Benengo]

Chris Hinds said:

Reverse the increase in CO2 by extracting it from the atmosphere and storing it...

This would be great and exactly the sort of thing the class Are trying to think of!

[Xaero]

Can remove reliance on fossil fuels, and go full (free to run) electric vehicles, or hydrogen cars for old school feel but emission free (except water vapour). Free energy = free transport. Which helps in a lot of ways too.

[Whoozit]

Benengo said:

How so? Did I read something about some sort of earth based laser or such?

Problem with the laser proposal is how to slow down at the other end...

With onboard unlimited power, the remaining problems are "trivial". Such as carrying and recycling water for an entire ecosystem for a few hundred years with zero losses or contamination, controlling bacteria and viral mutations, maintaining diverse food sources, carrying genetic material to reintroduce a diverse animal, fish, insect, and vegetable population, maintaining the genecode stability in the face of nonstop radiation, even radiating away the excess heat of a few hundred living beings and the machinery....

But yes, having perpetual power generation does address one of the big issues. The rest is engineering.

[loafer123]

Benengo said:

loafer123 said:

I guess interstellar travel becomes a bit easier...

How so? Did I read something about some sort of earth based laser or such?

Worth losing some time here*:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_trave...



*This reference will become clear if you read it!

[Whoozit]

Benengo said:

This would be great and exactly the sort of thing the class Are trying to think of!

Going further...terraforming on Mars and other vaguely suitable planets. Stick a few thousand self-repairing atmosphere generators on it for a few hundred years, and revisit.

[Brainpox]

We all know it would be turned into a mega weapon before any of these nice things happen though right??

[jules_s]

Benengo said:

This would be great and exactly the sort of thing the class Are trying to think of!

Just plant trees then

[Benengo]

Brainpox said:

We all know it would be turned into a mega weapon before any of these nice things happen though right??

Disappointingly, you are probably right!

[anonymous-user]

Chris Hinds said:

Reverse the increase in CO2 by extracting it from the atmosphere and storing it...

what about earth quakes etc, you could end dumping a st load all at once back into the atmosphere, much better to convert into diamonds and carbon nano tubes.

[finlo]

I think if we just turned off the taps of fossil fuel consumption it would cause some sort of climate disaster possibly maybe?

[Shiv_P]

fkloads of altcoin mining

[EDLT]

Brainpox said:

We all know it would be turned into a mega weapon before any of these nice things happen though right??

The atom bomb used nuclear fission, the hydrogen bomb and "modern" thermonuclear weapons use fusion. So we've actually created the mega weapon first this time.

[foggy]

And actually wire up the heating thermostat I put on the wall for the missus to the boiler controller!

[Ed.]

Grow food anywhere with hydroponics, plenty of water with desalination and lots of frivolous flying machines.