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"I love that computer science has made mathematics into something like an experimental science. I was never all that good at proving things, but I love doing computer experiments."
- Rudy Rucker
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| Sunpower Screen | ||
| A solar cell array used to provide power for a vehicle. |
The Sunpower screen was the motive power for a special kind of explorational vehicle. Today, we would call this kind of "screen" a photovoltaic cell array, or solar panel. A variety of solar panels are available commercially.
| The vehicle he had chosen was not an unreasonable substitute for burros. It was extremely rugged, easy to operate, and almost foolproof. It drew its power from six square yards of sunpower screens on its low curved roof. These drove a constant- load motor, or, when halted, replenished the storage battery against cloudy weather, or night travel. The bearings were 'everlasting', and every moving part, other than the caterpillar treads and the controls, were sealed up, secure from inexpert tinkering. |
| Technovelgy from Coventry,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1940 Additional resources -
|
At present-day rates of efficiency, six square yards of Amorphous silicon-based solar cells would produce about (100 milliwatts per square inch) x (6 x 36 x 36 square inches) = 780 watts of power.
For comparison, the Ford e-Ka uses a battery pack which consists of 180 individual cells, and is capable of storing 28 kilowatt hours (kW/h) of energy, and weighs a mere 280 kilograms. This vehicle goes zero to sixty in about 12 seconds and is capable of eighty miles an hour. If you are interested in the science, take a look at this solar energy experiment.
Be sure to read about the vehicle described above: Steel Tortoise - grandfather of the ATV from the same novel; that entry has a slightly extended quote.
The same term is used in Blowups Happen, which was published in Astounding in September, 1940:
They had
saved the country from impending
famine of oil and coal, but their
maximum output of approximately
one horsepower per square yard of
sun-illuminated surface put a definite
limit to the power from that source
available in any given geographical
area.
That estimate of one horsepower per square yard is four to five times what is possible with solar panels today.
The demand for commercially usable, cheap power had never been
satiated. Even the Douglas-Martin
sunpower screens, used to drive the
roaring road cities of the period and
for a myriad other industrial purposes, were not sufficient to fill the
ever-growing demand.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Coventry
More Ideas
and Technology by Robert Heinlein
Tech news articles related to Coventry
Tech news articles related to works by Robert Heinlein
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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
