I'm writing a story set in the near future on earth (the next century or so). The world weather is rapidly detiriorating(sp?), due to pollution, global warming, and loss of ozone.Governments have sent up weather sattelites to try to control it.

What I want to know is if this is even possible, whether it would work, and to what extent.

thanks for your help.
Ni!

There are already weather satellites up there tracking storms and such.

What would your weather satellites do?

I think that first you have to come up with something for them to do to reverse the problems you're talking about.

For example, to replenish the ozone layer, you could have satellites that would send bolts of electricity (lightning) into the upper atmosphere (I leave it to you to find out why that would produce ozone).

What kind of pollution are you talking about, and what has caused it? It might be cheaper (weather-changing satellites would be very expensive--really a last resort) to try to prevent the pollution and reverse it from the earth's surface. How would you reverse pollution from space?

Do you know all the causes for global warming and what could be done here to slow it down and maybe even reverse it without an expensive satellite?

(You see, the ozone-creating satellites are the only ones I think might even be feasible, and the logistices of that system would be a challenge even so.)

If you really need the satellites for your story, it might be better if you only concentrated on the ozone-creating ones?

Anyway, I hope this helps. The point is, you have to be sure you know what exactly the problem is that you want to fix and how your satellites would be used to fix it (and that satellites would be the best way to do it).

If they're not the best way, but you really want them for your story, then you have to come up with circumstances that force them to be the best way.

Also, lighting jumps because there is a potential between the ground and the cloud; it would be hard to build a potential between the atmosphere in general and a rapidly moving tiny object far above it.

Third, lightning jumps fairly easily because the "breakdown potential" of air is only on the order of ~1M volts. I'm not sure if sparks can be sent through vacuum like this.

Perhaps: use high-altitude, long endurance aircraft flying in formation and strike sparks between them. Run a superconduting wire between the craft, too. If you keep shooting spark from A to B, eventually B gets such a huge charge it repels any nearby flow. The wire completes the circuit. (This is why non-conductive samples are so hard to image in a scanning electron microscope: they quickly charge to the same potential as the beam.)

Here's my suggestion: Dump fine dust into the stratosphere (or higher?). Nuclear-winter-like cooling.

Use lunar regolith (soil), grind it into a powder of the proper size, and lob it to your space stations in LEO. (This shipping is cheap -- all downhill). The space stations are bases for satellites, or small shuttles servicing the sats, etcs. They refill the sats with ground regolith.

Good problems to inflict upon characters:
-how to keep the dust in the air, instead of setteling, etc.
-dust blocks the light plants need for photosynthesis (sp?)
-if a ship, satellite, etc., spills its load, the cloud of dust will immolate any nearby spaceships, etc, as they pass through it at orbital velocities.
-dust in the stratosphere might (might! I've not done the math) chew up reentering space craft.
-raindrops, etc, nucleate on dust particles. More dust might make clouds, rain, etc, easier. Less humidity is needed. (Note: global warming will increase evaporation of water, increasing global humidity. It'll be damn rainy! See _World Building, by Gillett)

Feel free to email questions, or inform m of mistakes.

[This message has been edited by chad_parish (edited June 14, 2001).]

[This message has been edited by chad_parish (edited June 14, 2001).]

Ni!

Arthur C. Clarke had sattelites micromanaging the weather in "The Fountains of Paradise." They used powerful lasers to create a warm front here or there, preventing violent storms and bringing rain to places that needed it. They literally controlled the weather all over the Earth, all the time. It was sheduled like programs on television.

The idea seemed implausible to me, but it was just a side element to the story.

A bunch of really enormous orbitting mirrors could do all sort of things to the climate. In theory they could put extra light and heat on cold places or cast shadows over places that got too much heat or radiation. This could lead to even greater disasters, or humor, depending on how the system was managed.

You may want ot see if you can find out the idea behind that shield.

But hey, if you can sit through the flick with attention focused on how the shield was supposed to work and why, and it gives you ideas for your story, go for it. Just don't expect much of anything else.

The way I look at it is this...you probably saw it because you are a fan of the first, and no one who's seen the first before the second could possibly think itwas any good at all (I suppose there are a few out there who could have seen the second movie first, liked it, and don't like the first because it "didn't jive") . I just make that assumption right off the top, so you were never in any danger of being labeled a fan of Highlander 2.

I was merely wanting to warn Ni that the movie smells of elderberries.

Ciao!

[This message has been edited by JP Carney (edited June 15, 2001).]

It just didn't fit---

As for Highlander 2: it was fantasy, not SF. As such, I liked it. Certainly, however, not to be taken seriously!

However: "space mirrors" (Doc Brown, above) might not be too hard. They're weightless -- so you can make them very thin, and light. Speculations for solar-sail ships involve Texas-sized sails weighing (correction: massing) practically nothing. Microns -- perhaps just molecules -- thick.

Of course, the easiest way to make our planet a garden spot -- while improving the standard of living -- is to put all our industry in orbit or on the moon. I'd like one ticket to Vesta Mining Base, please!
(See _The Third Industrial Revolution_, by Stine. Published in the 70's, a little dated, but still right-on.)

Also: this occured to me after my first post. Lightning might produce chemicals other than ozone. Nitrogen oxides (NOx, x=1 or 2), if formed, would eat the remaining ozone alive, I think. (Anybody remember?) That would be a good way to kill everybody off, I suppose.