Failure

A 6000 km long, 4000 kg/km rotor weighs 24e6 kg. Moving at 12.5 km/s, it stores 78 MJ/kg or 1875e12 ~ 2e15 J. A failure would take about 200 seconds, so the power level is 10 TW. A single cell thunderstorm dissipates about 1e15 J, and there are about 16 million a year. A hurricane is perhaps 600 TW.

Failure (last edited 2017-11-28 10:33:37 by KeithLofstrom)