Re: Billy, stop feeding your robot scraps from the table.

  • From: Hunter <hunters@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: technocracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 20 Jul 100 12:26:32 -0500 (EST)

> Pedants, the lot of you!   Geez people, I'm not trying to _REALLY_ justify
> it, I just think it's something sort of 'The Matrix'-like (I mean, using
> humans as _batteries_ to power computers...using humans as _food_ to power
> computers...see the similarity?  hmm??)  Of course it's not bloody likely,
> I'm talking about fiction dammit, suspend that disbelief mister!

Hey, I completely agree! :)
 
> >   Virtually every deep space probe we've ever launched was equipped with a
> > nuclear pile, and several moon missions carried along nuclear piles to power
> > the many scientific instruments that were left behind.  How they worked and
> > much power they produced is unknown to me but they must have been designed
> > to produce at least 8 watts for at least some 20-30 years, which they did,
> > and all were small enough for a single man to lug around.
> 
> Ah, so there were, I stand corrected. =)

Well, according to the JPL, the Galileo probe's power supply is a radioisotope
thermoelectric generator running on the natural decay of Plutonium. It generates
570 Watts at the beginning of the mission, and 485 Watts at the end of it. It's
mission ran from launch in October 1989 to Dec 31, 1999. (Includes a 2 year
extention.)

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/facts/galileo.pdf

-- 
Steven Hunter  | hunters@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Hyrdoplanning towards infinity... Just some drag-queens and, me." - Olly

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