Solar Power

The latest articles related to Solar Power

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Cruising (maritime) – Equipment

Cruisers use a variety of equipment and techniques to make their voyages possible, or simply more comfortable. The use of wind vane self steering was common on long distance cruising yachts but is increasingly being supplemented or replaced by electrical auto-pilots. Though in the past many cruisers had no means of generating electricity on board [...]

Solar Power

Skylab – Operational history

On 8 August 1969, the McDonnell Douglas Corporation received a contract for the conversion of two existing S-IVB stages to the Orbital Workshop configuration. One of the S-IV test stages was shipped to McDonnell Douglas for the construction of a mock-up in January 1970. The Orbital Workshop was renamed “Skylab” in February 1970 as a [...]

Solar Power

AWS Truewind – History

AWS Truepower was started in 1981 under the name Associated Weather Services. Initially, the company, composed of research meteorologists from New York State University at Albany, provided atmospheric field measurements, air quality studies, forensic meteorology for law suits and insurance claims, and solar and wind energy feasibility studies. The company became a subsidiary of W.S. [...]

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Starwisp – Description

“Starwisp” is a concept for an ultra-low-mass interstellar probe pushed by a microwave beam. It was proposed by scientist and author Robert L. Forward in 1985, and further work was published by Landis in 2000. The proposed device uses beam-powered propulsion in the form of a high-power microwave antenna pushing a sail. The probe itself [...]

Solar Power

BrightSource Energy – History

BrightSource was formed with seed capital from VantagePoint Venture Partners. It secured $115& million in additional corporate funding from its Series& C round of financing in May& 2008. This brings the total the company has raised to date to over $160& million. Investors include Google.org, BP Alternative Energy, Morgan Stanley, DBL Investors, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, [...]

Solar Power

Peter Glaser – Professional

Glaser’s areas of professional activity have included solar and arc imaging furnaces, high temperature research, solar power satellites, solar heating and cooling, photovoltaic conversion, rural electrification systems using renewable resources, lunar surface missions, commercial space power, remote sensing, extra-vehicular activity on the moon, launch site selection, space station habitation module appliances, advanced space transportation devices, [...]

Solar Power

Solar thermal rocket – Introduction

Solar thermal propulsion is a form of spacecraft propulsion that makes use of solar power to directly heat reaction mass, and therefore does not require an electrical generator as most other forms of solar-powered propulsion do. A solar thermal rocket only has to carry the means of capturing solar energy, such as concentrators and mirrors. [...]

Solar Power

Actinometer – Introduction

Actinometers are instruments used to measure the heating power of radiation. They are used in meteorology to measure solar radiation as pyrheliometers. An actinometer is a chemical system or physical device which determines the number of photons in a beam integrally or per unit time. This name is commonly applied to devices used in the [...]

Solar Power

Direct current – Applications

Direct-current installations usually have different types of sockets, switches, and fixtures, mostly due to the low voltages used, from those suitable for alternating current. It is usually important with a direct-current appliance not to reverse polarity unless the device has a diode bridge to correct for this (most battery-powered devices do not). DC is commonly [...]

Solar Power

Terraforming – Economic issues

The initial cost of such projects as planetary terraforming would be gargantuan, and the infrastructure of such an enterprise would have to be built from scratch. Such technology is not yet developed, let alone financially feasible at the moment. John Hickman has pointed out that almost none of the current schemes for terraforming incorporate economic [...]

Solar Power

Citadel Media – Becoming environmentally friendly

On April 16, 2008; Citadel Broadcasting (the now parent company of ABC Radio/Citadel Media) has become the first organization-wide radio company to join the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Green Power Partnership Program” and committs $1 Million (USD) in Educational Green PSAs. As of April 2008, ABC/Citadel’s KGO in San Francisco, California has switched to solar power [...]