Imaging a planetary power grid

Imaging a planetary power grid

With the development of carbon nanotubes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_nanotube), we may be just years away from a new industrial revolution that replaces our reliance on chemistry with molecular manipulation. Instead of waiting on new chemical combinations for better batteries, we could rearrange nanostructures to hold more electrons. Rather than launch rockets into space using tanks of fuel, we could lift ships on space elevators (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator) built from strands of carbon nanofiber. Sounds like science fiction, but these things are already being planned.

But why stop there? If we can capture electrons in nano carbon buckyballs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fullerene) and extend tethers into orbit, what about a vast sphere of interwoven nano fibers that floats above the magnetosphere (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetosphere), catching electrons from the solar winds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_wind), funneling them down the tethers to supply us with more electricity than we could ever generate on Earth.

Sure, we'll have to wait for nanotech capacitors and space elevators to pan out first, but I don't think a planetary dome is a far-flung leap from there. Carbon nanofibers are individually stronger than diamond and can be woven together for greater strength. Forming rings, they can be linked together to create a geodesic dome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodesic_dome), a structure that gets stronger as it gets larger. The rings would block far less than one percent of sunlight while harvesting mass quantities of electrons as they flow over the rings and bounce off the magnetosphere.

Hard to say when we'll be far along enough to see this being seriously planned. Would be nice to see it in my lifetime though.
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