While watching the latest ep of Gundam 00, I had a sudden cunning plan jump out and assault my brain.
It went thus: The biggest problem with operating at the deep underwater level is that the pressure difference can get insane if you want to try and build something a human can survive in. If you don't, though, and your machinery can survive getting wet, then there is, theoretically, no reason why the design problems can't be solved reasonably.
Wherever there is a continental boundary, particularly a spreading one, there is energy being released into the environment. Most such boundaries are underwater, thereby providing not only heat but working fluid.
The gadget I'm seeing in my mind's eye shouldn't really take any new technology even in a modern-day setting - you have a house-ish-sized 'generator' of maybe a couple MW capacity with a neutral bouyancy that gets ferried down by a remote-control rover and glued or anchored in place over a lava vent. Cable is run to a collector box on the seafloor nearby, which is, in turn connected to other collector boxes that eventually plug into a seafloor line leading to the mainland. Installing enough of the things to run a nation's full energy needs would be a massive undertaking, of course, but still far less than Gundam 00's Solar Power System... and would start paying off far sooner, too.
Thoughts?
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"Reseeestunce ees fiutil. Yoo weeel bee Useemooletud. Borg Borg Borg."
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."
It went thus: The biggest problem with operating at the deep underwater level is that the pressure difference can get insane if you want to try and build something a human can survive in. If you don't, though, and your machinery can survive getting wet, then there is, theoretically, no reason why the design problems can't be solved reasonably.
Wherever there is a continental boundary, particularly a spreading one, there is energy being released into the environment. Most such boundaries are underwater, thereby providing not only heat but working fluid.
The gadget I'm seeing in my mind's eye shouldn't really take any new technology even in a modern-day setting - you have a house-ish-sized 'generator' of maybe a couple MW capacity with a neutral bouyancy that gets ferried down by a remote-control rover and glued or anchored in place over a lava vent. Cable is run to a collector box on the seafloor nearby, which is, in turn connected to other collector boxes that eventually plug into a seafloor line leading to the mainland. Installing enough of the things to run a nation's full energy needs would be a massive undertaking, of course, but still far less than Gundam 00's Solar Power System... and would start paying off far sooner, too.
Thoughts?
===============================================
"Reseeestunce ees fiutil. Yoo weeel bee Useemooletud. Borg Borg Borg."
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."