Roy, you are a pessimist.

================================

"Roy Lewallen" wrote in message
...
What evidence is there that they've defeated skin effect? If they
haven't, the advantage drops to the square root of the DC advantage
(e.g., a little more than 3:1 if the DC advantage is 10:1). Also, I
wonder if the bulk resistivity of these gadgets remains constant
with
frequency like solid copper, or rises with frequency like
superconductors. If it rises with frequency, then the advantage
becomes
less yet, potentially even becoming worse than copper at some
frequency.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Frank wrote:
"Hal Rosser" wrote in message
...

"I.Care" wrote in message
st.net...

NASA is funding a new type of wire that can transmit power 10
times
better than normal wire. Will this make a difference in Audio?

Does this mean that the resistance per ft for nanotubes is 1/10th
that of
copper?
Are they comparing this performance by weight or by volume of wire
("pound-for-pound", or "cross-sectional-area" )
Then we have to talk about tensile strength of this stuff for
supporting its own weight between trees to use as an antenna
Then ya gotta conjure up a way to solder the feedline to it. (or
make
feedline out of it)


If the resistance is 1/10th that of copper then it should be
possible to
manufacture helical inductors with Qs approaching 10,000. Not
only that,
but open wire transmission lines would have very low loss,
therefore making
it feasable to feed antennas with very small electrical
dimensions. How to
handle the votages involved would be something else!

Frank

Reg Edwards wrote:
Roy, you are a pessimist.

In my career doing electronic instrumentation product development, I
learned to look for all the potential problems I could think of, as
early as possible. A lot of them turned out to be non-problems, and
could then be ignored. But the ones which were real had to be overcome,
or at least had to have a good probility of being overcome, before the
project could proceed. If it couldn't be, another approach usually had
to be found or the project abandoned -- or at the very least an
alternative approach had to be identified in case the problem couldn't
be overcome. Too often, a naive ("optimistic") project manager wouldn't
do this, and would run into a project-killing problem 90% of the way
into the project. That can be a disaster, and I've seen it happen many
times. Of course, it's ok to go into a project knowing there's a
potential program-stopper, as long as you know it up front and are
willing to accept the consequences if it can't be overcome. This is the
approach often taken by startup companies, but the high risk of failure
is too often conceled from the suckers, um, investors. A great number of
announcements of revolutionary technology tend to ignore, deny, or
minimize potential problems, limitations, and risks. So I don't consider
it pessimistic at all to assume they exist. Once in a while, the serious
problems are overcome and a new and useful technology emerges. More
often, nothing emerges but a lot of investors with thinner wallets and
more critical outlooks.

I really hope the nano-tubes will bring us amazingly high Q coils. Then
all we'll have to do is figure out how to keep them far away from
anything else. Gee, maybe some new magical field-masking technology will
emerge in the nick of time to solve that problem. There, was that better?

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

ONLY if his caution in accepting this notion is proven wrong is it
pessimism... otherwise it is wisdom!!! grin

Warmest regards,
John

"Reg Edwards" wrote in message
...
Roy, you are a pessimist.

Roy has a point.The article was very sparse with real fact, but rich in
speculation and totally void of specifications.
They were working on a 3 ft piece of this conductor for testing - so they
didn't have their eye on making a dipole for 160m - more than likely. :-)

For NASA to hand that off to a college with an initial eleven-million dollar
grant, I'd speculate that they have already confirmed the effect in
question...
I am thinking they are now working on producing it in sufficient quantities
and dimensions to make it applicable to practical use...
Indeed, it looks like the length they have in mind will reach space--if so,
that monopole will make a good muli-wavelength antenna for ultra-lowfers!!!
Perhaps it will be naturally resonant at the Shuman frequency and Earth
itself will begin to CQ DX! grin

Regards,
John

One more thing, when you start swinging a wire around in a magnetic
field--you begin to generate a current and voltage/power... although the
Earth's magnetic field will be moving with the wire, and so produce little
or no effect (there are "wobbles" in this planets magnetic field of course)
there surely must be some kind of magnetic field from the sun and/or other
planets which reach Earth--"free energy?"

The circumference of the Earth is 25,000+ miles and it does one revolution
in 24 hrs--unless I am mistaken that wire will be "whirling" at greater than
1,000 mph--if nothing else, a wire spinning at that speed sounds impressive,
especially when you figure in it will be a superior conductor!!!



I seem to remember one of the shuttle missions letting out a very long
tether--it, somewhat, "mysteriously" burnt or severed--and, if I remember
correctly, they noted a large current in the tether they did not expect....
perhaps someone else remembers this incident more clearly?





Regards,
John