You hit the LIGHTNING nail on the head. The electrical capacitance between the earth and ionosphere is 400,000 volts with an average discharge rate, via lightning, of 1800 Amps. You puncture that capacitor with ANYTHING solid and you've shorted out that giant capacitor, the ENTIRE WORLD'S WEATHER changes when you remove that 50V/meter electro-gradient from the atmosphere. I've been in contact with liftport for a few months now, telling them to forget pie-in-the-sky space elevators and make useful LOWER atmospheric applications, all the governments of the world will STOMP on them asap if they screw up the entire world's weather just to get mass to LEO cheaper...by shorting out the GIANT CAPACITOR of the earth-ionosphere.
7.2 x 10^9 watts coming out of that filament, right?
It would make more sense to tap that power for a rail gun and launch a few tons of cargo into space every few minutes.
Noisy proposition that would be...
But if you put a HUGE Leyden jar at the bottom, and route that to...and then cross connect to...FREE ENERGY, right to the meter!
As an ADDED bonus, no more Global Warming...unless it heats up even quicker.
Or, we could just turn the earth in to a big space ship?
Or, we could build an elevator equidistant and opposite each other, a big pole through the world, sticking out into space on two ends. Then we could probably solve the worlds energy issues.
Would'nt it be easier if we dangled a long rope off the moon or mars or something, and threw it all the way down to earth?
Does the space shuttle get hot upon reentry because its hot in space, just before getting to earths atmosphere, or is it because the high rate of speed of the space shuttle? If the shuttle kind of drifted slowly into earths atmosphere would it get hot?
You need try decaffinated coffee. Just because I put a Langmuir probe in a plasma doesn't mean that the potential will change.
Just out of curiosity, have they been in touch with you in return?