August 19, 2010 • 27 mins
MARS stands for Magenn Air Rotor System, but a MARS turbine isn't your typical windmill. It's a blimp floating hundreds of feet in the air. Tune in as Josh and Chuck explain how this turbine works -- and whether it will become the future of wind power.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Charles W. Chuck Bryant is picking his no. No, but
you know what, I had to be off color. I
had all these jokes about me generating wind, ready to go,
(00:24):
and then i'd like the red light came on and
I just went blank. I think it's probably good. I
think it's for the best. So can I just say, Josh,
I'm I'd love to generate wind. Yes, you can't. Okay,
that's my that's my joke. It's a good one. Chuck. Yeah,
you want to talk about wind generation, let's do it. Well,
let's go a different direction. First. You know bats have
(00:44):
been taken a hit lately, right as in flying bats. Yeah,
I thought you meant like baseball bats. No, I've been
taking a hit. I know. I wouldn't say something like that.
Didn't take stuff, buddy. Um bats have been taking a hit.
There's a um. This white fungus that basically has been
wiping out entire bat colonies and coming close to wiping
(01:07):
out entire species around the United States. Is the fungus
on the bat? Yeah, it's on the bat snows muzzle.
It's really horrible. Um and it's it's kind of a
big deal. If you study bats, you're alarmed right now. Right. Sure,
that's not the only thing that's probably the biggest risk
to the bat population in the United States. But there's
(01:28):
another one that UM was mysterious for a little while,
and it was bats dying near wind turbines. Really yeah,
but the weird thing was is you could walk up
to a dead bat on the ground near this, near
a windmill, right, a wind turbine that's used for generating electricity,
um and the bat would be totally uninjured. There's nothing
(01:51):
wrong with it. It wasn't bleeding, it didn't have any
um signs of trauma. So I thought the radar might
have said, like, this is food and it's smacked into
one of the propeller budes. No, it did not actually
um that that's addressed in this article. Wind turbines kill
bats without impact on the Discovery channel um and and
it says that bats don't run into things. This This
(02:14):
expert who's quoted into it says that he's like, they're
really good at with sonar, so they don't run into
things that they didn't mean to write, which is weird
because so that means when bats come down and hit
you in the head, they meant to write. What they
found out finally that solved this mystery was that their
lungs were exploding because of a pressure drop. Yeah, the
(02:38):
pressure drop from the rotation of the blades. When they
got close enough to the blades, their lungs would explode. Um.
It would take about a four kilo pascal change kilopascal.
A pascal is a measure of pressure. A kilo pascal's
a thousand measures of pressure um to kill a bat,
(02:58):
it said in the article. And the wind turbines above
the turbot and right above it, um it generates a
five to ten kilopassical drop. So these baths are just
getting near and then boom, their lungs were exploding. And
then they were hitting the ground. Their little tiny lungs
would just pop. It's like the saddest thing I've ever heard.
So what do you do, Chuck? I mean, like wind,
(03:21):
wind energy is just it's wonderful. It's it's generally a
very green type of energy. I got some updated stats
for you. You want to hear some stats. Let's talk
about it. This is some wind energy stats, Josh. Last
year in two thousand nine, UM we produced worldwide a
hundred and fifty nine thousand, two hundred and thirteen mega
watts of electricity thanks to wind. It's pretty good. It's
(03:45):
enough to power Italy for a year, the whole country
for the whole year. But that's a drop in the
in the bucket for overall electricity production, right, Yeah, very
small percentages is produced by wind. Um. They do predict
by the end of this year that it will crack
two hundred thousand. And they have also said that since
they started this whole wacky wind capturing stuff that uh
(04:11):
it's it doubles every three year's capacity does so we're
heading in the right direction, it sounds like. And wind
is a great way to get energy because you put
up the thing, the wind blows, it produces. I mean,
it's as easy as it gets, right, It's very Dutch,
very very dutch. Um. The problem is, Chuck. As I said,
it was a very green technology, but there's a lot
(04:31):
of overlooked environmental impact. If we may jump around to
Tad right, these things are enormous. I've never seen what
I've seen pictures on the TV. We're on the internets, right,
and rain Man, did they have did they pass a wind? Yeah?
Like if you could drive to Palm Springs from l A,
you go by that huge like famous wind turbine farm. Chuck,
I'm glad to hear the h is back. Did I
(04:53):
say huge? Yes you did? Sorry I met huge, you
didn't huge? Um, okay, yeah, but they're they're enormous. The
turbines apparently are about the size of a seven forty
seven thousands and thousands of pounds and they're catching wind
at about two feet up. They're enormous. Just one single turbine, right,
(05:13):
there are a lot of bat and bird deaths. And
to get these things in there, um, you have to
basically construct new roads. In a lot of cases, you're
promoting soil erosion, uh and habitat fragmentation. So not quite
as green as people would like to believe. Yeah right, yeah,
(05:34):
Josh that it can be. It can have a big
impact on the environment in setting it all up, and
you kind of don't think about that when you're like, oh,
I could get free wind energy or not free. Obviously
it's pretty expensive, but it's it's it's a gift from nature,
isn't it there? You go? Yeah? Um, so what what
do you do though, chuck? Because everybody wants this more
(05:54):
than say, fossil fuels, Well, everybody outside of the oil
industry wants this more than aussil fuels. And by oil,
of course I mean coal as well and natural gas,
but I mean in the greener quarters of the globe. Um,
wind energy is a winner, right, So how do you
overcome these problems, these obstacles to make you know, a
(06:18):
wind energy truly green? I'm glad you asked, Josh. Potentially,
my friend, we may see little tiny blimp like balloons
hovering in the air about a thousand feet harnessing wind
much higher. And as I said, it's floating in the air,
(06:38):
so it doesn't have some huge foundation that needs to
be built and erode the ground. It's just tethered to
the ground by a tether, a tether that serves as
an electrical cable. Right. Yeah, So that's that's the Mars
turbine M A R S. It does not have anything
to do with the planet, the red planet. It stands
for the is it major? I did not know how
(07:01):
to pronounce it. I didn't want to touch that one
for the same. M A G E n N is
the name of the company, the Major Air Rotor System
m A R S. So it's an acronym, right, and
basically it's a well the CEO of we're gonna go
with majorin Okay, I'm down with that. Okay. Um. He
likened them to floating white sausages with paddle boat wheels, right,
(07:23):
So that what he said. That's what it says. It's
like a floating white sausage. Yeah, okay, it's just a
little blimp with some turbines on it. It looks like
a blimp with paddle wheels on it, right, Yeah, it's
sort of like I'll call a football before I called
white sausage. I don't know where this guy's head is,
but he's hungry, I guess. So he's ready for some
broad worst and you're ready for football season, Yes I am,
(07:46):
which also includes brought worst. So yours is all encompassingly
it is chuck. Yes, uh you you said that this.
So we've got a floating white football sausage with turbines.
It's connected to a tether at each end, right, and
the wind hits it and it spins the whole thing spins.
(08:06):
It's not like a it is like a pin wheel.
The whole thing, The whole thing rotates as if a
football were spiraling, right like. So the turbine is connected
to the blimp, So the whole blimp is spinning. Turbine,
blimp and all right. And then at the ends there's
electrical generators. So the tethers, like I said, actually are
double as electrical cables. It's not just a rope, right um.
(08:30):
And so the blimp is spinning, it's generating electricity. It's
sending the electricity down the tethers to a transformer which
serves a power station which is connected to the grid,
or stores and batteries. There's other things you can do
with it. And it's really that simple. It runs on
the the It runs an electromagnetic induction, right which I
(08:50):
looked this up a little bit. Let's hear it. Remember
Michael Faraday, he was on a genius list, could I forget?
So Michael Faraday one came up with this heat I guess,
was just sitting around his house, drunk on scotch um,
screwing with wire coils and magnets, and he discovered that
you could generate an electrical current. By passing a magnet
(09:12):
through a series of wire coals, you're actually changing what
should be ecstatic electrical field. Right. That was a very
big discovery, it was. And he also found that the
faster you passed the magnet through, the faster you move
the magnet, the higher the current or the higher the voltage,
stronger the current. Right. So what the the Mars turbine
(09:33):
is doing is the faster it turns, the quicker it
moves this the magnets through their wire coils, the stronger
the electrical current, right, which is one reason why they
float so high up, because the air speeds at a
thousand feet are significantly stronger than they are at uh,
you know two hundred feet where the ground based wind
(09:56):
turbine is located, right. Yeah, every time you double your elevation,
there's a twelve increase in wind speed, and every doubling
of wind speed there's an eight times eight fold increase
in wind power. So a two ft turbine and touched
the ground is just not nearly as effective as it
one that's floating a thousand feet up in the air
(10:16):
with And the reason obviously is because there's no trees
or buildings. There's no wind resistance, so it's just free flowing.
But yeah, and it's UM. It's pretty constant up there
as well. It's it's kind of windy up high, Yeah,
which helps because inconsistent wind is one of the problems
with wind generation obviously, but not only that. The Mars
turbine UM. Also we should say here that we're getting
(10:37):
no UM money whatsoever for this. We're just fans UM.
But the Mars turbine is is sensitive enough to be
able to produce usable electrical UM voltage with wind speeds
of as low as seven miles an hour. But it's
it can also UM withstand really strong winds that you know,
(10:58):
land based turbines are designed to shut down in so
I think a LAMB based turbines designed to shut down
at about forty and the Mars turbine can continue to
produce electricity in sixty three winds, I think yeah. And
anything above that, anything above sixty three to sixty five
they have UM just like blimps do. They have controls
(11:20):
on it, like overspeed controls and uh bait emergency deflate,
so if it gets they can do two things. If
it starts spinning way too fast they can has has
a system that kicks in that reels it in automatically
and like lowers it. And the wind might not be
as you know, as great at like three feet, so
they can keep running it. If it's really out of control,
(11:41):
they'll just reel it in all together. The system will
um or if there's some really big emergency like the
tether brakes and all of a sudden it's flying, you know,
over your neighbor's farm, it will automatically deflate, which is
what blimps have this emergency system, right, And and that's
one of the things that we uh should probably mention
is it's designed. Uh it floats because it's filled with helium,
(12:05):
right or lighter some lighter than air gas, but I
believe they use helium. They use helium, and the blimp
itself is made out of um, as the writer Jennifer
Horton put it, the same material used in bulletproof vest.
I was wondering, is that kevlar? Is that chicken feathers
or spider silk harvested from goats? I actually know the answer.
What is? I checked into this because it was slightly vague. Um.
(12:28):
The outer fabric is dacron, woven dacron, and that is
what's used for boat sails. The actual fins that catch
the wind to spend the football is vectoran and that
is what is used in bulletproof vest these days, apparently
some of them, all right. And then the coating it's
(12:49):
also aligned with something called ted lar, and that's the
same kind of plastic coating you find on like house sighting.
So that's what protects it from UV damage, abrasion, stuff
like that. And your new nickname is Chuck Tran. Chuck
Trot and check your hands, no, Chuck Tran. And then
the inner portion of it is have you ever seen
(13:11):
those little uh milar balloons. Yeah, it's a little funny
aluminum looking balloons. It's not aluminium, it's milar. And that's
what this thing is lined with because that holds in
your helium really well. They found it and just to
keep it even greener. If you look closely inside the
Mars turbine, you'll see little um sentiments like get well soon,
(13:32):
or your one year cuter. It's a boy I did.
That was one of my big questions when I was reading,
and this was wait a minute, what about the helium?
Because I've had those milar balloons and they don't hold
it forever. No, they don't see weeks later. It's sadly
hovering it like your kneecaps. The helium um. I think
helium being held in uh milar space is greatly increased
(13:59):
in cold temperatures. It's cold at a thousand feet okay,
that helps much colder um and the pressure there's less
air pressure at a thousand feet as well, right, so
there's less um. Well, there's less pressure trying to force
it out. Good point, I think. But I did find
out how much leaks because it does leak, well, yeah,
I would think it would have the point five per month.
(14:22):
So if you buy one of these things, and we
should point out that theoretically these are gonna be available
to consumers like early, that's what they're looking at right now,
and you it does not. The price of the thing
does not come with a helium. Just like when you
buy a new car, they don't necessarily have it full
of gas for you. You have to provide your own gas.
(14:44):
And the hundred kilowatt version requires two hundred thousand cubic
feet of helium, which is about wow. To fill it
up with helium. That's how they get you that, Yeah, exactly,
that's where they get you. But um, if it leaks
point five or month, that means they say on the website,
like every four or six months, just top her off
with helium for five grand and you'll be fine. Right,
(15:06):
But these things are built to last. The company I
think estimates it said. Um that they can float there,
I guess without being patched is what they meant for
maybe fifteen years without a need for magtenance because of
all the tough stuff it's made of, um and chuck.
If you happen to wonder, this thing is spinning in
the air right on an axis, how does the Magnus
(15:30):
effect factor in? Does it factor in at all? The
answer to that one, buddy, is yes. Are you talking
about the Magnus von Magnus effect or just the Magnus
effect the Magnus effect, Because the Magnus von Magnus effect
is when you are able to lift a beer keg
made of concrete in your overalls and carry it a
hundred feet. Well, yeah, everybody knows that. Much lesser known
(15:52):
is the regular old Magnus effect, right, and you see
it in every day. It's the spin on a curveball. Yeah. Basically,
as a UM, a spherical, round ish object travels through
the air as it's spinning on an axis UM, it
creates an actual area of high pressure beneath it that
(16:13):
creates lift, right, that stabilizes it right, so well, it
stabilizes that if the thing's tethered, right, which is how
the UM. So that combined with the fact that it's
filled with helium, which is lighter than air, UM allows
this thing to stay vertical pretty much vertical all the time. Yeah,
they said on the website that UM, but the helium
(16:34):
and the magnets effects will not allow it to lean
more than forty five degrees from vertical at any point. Wow,
even if it's like when swirling in all different directions,
it still stays pretty stable. Owner if there's a money
back guarantee on that, there's a lot of money, but
they don't pay you back for the helium. That's where
they don't, you know. Yeah, um and actually chuck that.
There's this thing called the Magnus airship that operates on
(16:57):
the magnets effect principle that was invented in the seventies
that gave rise to the Mars turbine, right, yeah, Freddy
Ferguson who was the founder of this company, Old Fred Ferguson.
He yeah, he invented the Magnus airship, patented it in
the nineteen eighties, and then that later became he was like, hey,
I can actually use this thing to generate wind. I
(17:19):
bet it's pretty awesome. It's very awesome. Every once in
a while you were run across like a green idea
that's like, wow, this could actually work really well. Oh yeah.
The bad news is it's going to be really pricey
at first at first, like all wind power. This price
is already going down, right, right. So the initial the
(17:40):
initial cost when this article was written, Um, the initial
expected cost is about five to ten dollars per what right, Yes,
and it's actually less now as of right now. Yeah,
look today it's four fifty to seven dollars. So it's
already dropped. And this was upfront cost. Yeah, this is
like two years old. It's already gone down much so
(18:01):
the take away the ten it's not five to ten anymore,
it's five or less. It's say four four dollars and
seventy cents a lot. That's way more than what you
pay for electricity as it is now. Um, but you
know you don't generally pay unless you're a Georgia Power
customer upfront costs to create electricity. You're paying for the
electricity generated, right, Um, this is you're paying for the turbine.
(18:24):
Like you buy this turbine and hey, here's your turbine.
Go create your own power. Right So um, again, the
price probably will come down dramatically, but once you've got
the thing up and running, the operating cost is about
fifteen cents to kill a watt hour? Is that which
is still more than what we pay now, but it's
(18:45):
half of what wind energy used to cost it when
it first really started to come along. Saying the rain
Man era, it was thirty cents to kill a watt hour.
So as wind power, as electricity generated by wind becomes
more ubiquitous, that the price for it's going to drop
across the board no matter how it's generated. And it's
(19:05):
for God's sakes, it's a green technology. It's always a
little expensive at first, but typically the people that outfit
their houses with solar panels, it cost a little dough
to do that. Typically there are people that want to
do a little uh, favor to the environment and they
realize over time they're going to make their money back. Probably,
but not many people are going out and outfitting their
house with thirty dollars with the solar panels because you know,
(19:28):
they want to save a dime. You know. Well, yeah,
that's true, but it would be helpful if there were
I don't know, rebates for buying something like this, like
government subsidies. I think they all expired. I really yeah,
we'll have to look into that, and I bet there's
still some out there. I have another question I don't
know if you know the answer to does the do
(19:49):
these things show up on radar airplanes? Yeah? They do.
I'm glad you asked that. You really didn't know. I
really didn't. Well, the Air Force and the government uses
uh tethered balloons up to like thousands of feet up
in the air, and so they're they're they're cleared with
the f a A. And in order to get one
of these things, you have to get a special permit
(20:12):
from the f a A. And you have to have
a blinking tether. It's a system that it blinks once
per second. That's an extra fifty dollars blinking blinking tether. So, um,
there's some other rules to that f a A has
already put forth uh here too. Um, you cannot have
one within five miles of an airport at all or
(20:32):
within any flight path in North America, do you know?
I mean flight pass are? I imagine there's quite quite
a few that you have to avoid. There's at least
seventeen or eighteen seventeen or eighteen flight pass and um,
you have to have the lighting system, like I said,
and then you can't have it, Like you can't have it.
You got to live out in the open. You're you're
not gonna be able to put one of these up
(20:54):
in your neighborhood in suburban Atlanta. Well, originally the thing
was designed to be used in very remote places that
are off the grid, like if you're on an Antarctic
expedition or an Arctic expedition, whichever one. It could also
be used in a disaster situation. That's the one I love.
That's pretty cool. It makes a lot of sense. So
(21:14):
if you if you um have the Mars turbine and
that um, remember that that water manufacturing device like sucks
it out of the ambient air. You're set. You're done. Yeah,
build a bomb shelter and you're you're all set for life.
Um I should also point out before we leave, they
do um envision one day, probably five to ten years
(21:36):
from now, Josh, where there is a four kilowatt backpack
model that you can actually carry with you, dude, take
it camping out in Yosemite and the TV fly that
sucker up. Yeah, take your TV and your your computer
and you can online gamble out there in the woods
just like everyone else, just like home. Pretty cool. Yeah,
So that's the Mars turbine. Um I saw on the
(21:57):
site that they're taking orders for them. Yeah, and you
can also if you fit requirements, you can be a
test um location for these things. There's a lot of
requirements and imagine a lot of people that live on
farms in North Dakota by like, hey, I'll test it
out of my house, right, you come out and set
it up. I'll bet being photogenic has is one of
(22:18):
the requirements. And no bare midri of shirts. Yeah, nothing
see through. So again, if you want to see some
cool illustrations of the Mars turbine, you can go to
how stuff works dot com. Type m A R S
and the search bar and I'll bet it brings up
a lot more than just this article. Yeah yeah, um chuck, Yes,
(22:38):
that means it's time now for a listener mail. Correct. Yeah,
I got a couple of short ones today. We're going
right into it. You want to plug nah, okay, south
By Southwest, Yeah, we should say. We're trying to go
to south By Southwest next year in Austin, Texas. Um,
and we are trying to get on a panel, and
(22:59):
apparently they're d cent of whether or not they determine
we can go to a panel is decided by votes. Right,
so you can go to h T T P colon
slash slash panel picker p A N E l P
I c K E er dot s x s W
dot com. Yes, and then you register and then you
(23:20):
vote for the stuff you should know panel under interactive panels. Right. Yeah.
When you go to click on our little thing to
two thumbs up and vote for us, it'll um, it'll say, wait,
you're not signed up yet, and it'll walk you through
how to sign up. And they promised that you won't
start getting email from south By Southwest's just to verify
you that you're a human. Yeah, just explore the interactive panels,
(23:40):
and on the interactive panel page you can search for
panels and under title put stuff you should know and
it should bring up ours and just ours right. Yeah,
and even if you're not in Texas, we would appreciate
your help here to get us to Texas. So um,
we can go to south By Southwest and like hang
out with bands. That's what I'm looking forward to. That's awesome. Okay, Josh,
these are two short ones. And it's funny that you
(24:01):
said the word search bar, because David from Sunny Canton,
did you see this one. I'm sorry, David, this is
a good one. Darn you. Josh is how he opens.
I work at one of the state universities of New York.
We are a week away from classes beginning, and my
office has been besieged by calls from students and staff
related to working on campus. This morning, I took two
(24:22):
calls in a row of which I referred to callers
to information on our website by saying you can type
work study in the handy search bar. You're totally right.
It is an awful phrase, because remember you had a
big problem with us. Hate it. I hate handy search bar.
After two hundred plus times you've said you hate it,
I love it. Uh, I don't love it. I love
it that you said that, Um, Josh is an awful phrase.
(24:45):
But it's awful because it's awful and campy. It's like
Karma Chameleon. I hate that song, but if I hear
it just once, it's in my head. You know. I
think Culture Club is one of the more underrated bands
that came out of the eighties. They get lumped in
with like crappy bands from the eighties, but they like
They and Dream and Duran, We're actually very talented musically.
I would like to add Adam and the Ants on
that list too. Okay, they were awesome, uh and not
(25:07):
at all camp too. You know, he's in He was
in a mental institution for a little while. You had
a breakdown at a benefit concert. He started railing on
Christians and they took him away and said you need
some rest, really, and he's like, no, I just don'tly Christians. Yeah,
He's like, I'm rested, Fine, Let's finish this email. He says,
these things are like gray matter super glue. With great
(25:27):
power comes great responsibility. Josh, you started this, you need
to finish it come up with a better meme. Help us, Obi,
Josh Kenobi, your only hope. That is David from Cooney
I'm sorry, Sunny Canton right, and David from Sunny Canton Um,
which I assumed means State University of New York. You
got it? Okay, Um, I am taking your email quite seriously.
(25:49):
I'm already beating you to the punch. I haven't come
up with anything yet, but I will get handy sorted
far out of everyone's head, including my own. Okay, yeah, okay,
And I got another quick one, Josh. This one made
me laugh. This is from Kurt, Minnesota. After listening to
the tick episode, Guys, I was reminded of one of
my most disgusting memories. When I was little, my neighbor
and I were sitting on his front porch playing with
his dog. Out of nowhere, the neighbor kid gets really excited,
(26:13):
has this look on his face, pulls a tick off
the dog and eats it. Who you didn't see this one?
The memory still haunts me today. After looking online about
similar cases, I came across someone calling them dog berries,
which makes it even more disturbing. I hope this hasn't
ruined your day, Kurt from Minnesota. It takes a lot
more to ruin our day than that, doesn't it. I
(26:34):
don't know, dog berries, it's pretty gross. What's sad is
our days are consistently rumoring? Yeah, every day. So thank
you for that, So, Kurt and then David, right, Yes,
thanks for sharing. We appreciate that. UM. I promise you
I will come up with something to replace handy search bar.
I've just kind of gone to the sterile search bar.
(26:55):
Now have you noticed Hinky search bar? No, not Hinky either.
Hinky's in that same group, the same ballpark as Handy.
We've been over using it. We're gonna mix it up.
We will, all right, Frank, Okay, Jimmy, So if you
want to send Frank or Jimmy an email, you can
do that. And don't forget Chuck's new nickname is Chuck Tran.
(27:18):
Just send us an email with you so we can
end this podcast, wrap it up and send it off
to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, is that
how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
(27:39):
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com home page
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Charles W. Chuck Bryant is picking his no. No, but
you know what, I had to be off color. I
had all these jokes about me generating wind, ready to go,
(00:24):
and then i'd like the red light came on and
I just went blank. I think it's probably good. I
think it's for the best. So can I just say, Josh,
I'm I'd love to generate wind. Yes, you can't. Okay,
that's my that's my joke. It's a good one. Chuck. Yeah,
you want to talk about wind generation, let's do it. Well,
let's go a different direction. First. You know bats have
(00:44):
been taken a hit lately, right as in flying bats. Yeah,
I thought you meant like baseball bats. No, I've been
taking a hit. I know. I wouldn't say something like that.
Didn't take stuff, buddy. Um bats have been taking a hit.
There's a um. This white fungus that basically has been
wiping out entire bat colonies and coming close to wiping
(01:07):
out entire species around the United States. Is the fungus
on the bat? Yeah, it's on the bat snows muzzle.
It's really horrible. Um and it's it's kind of a
big deal. If you study bats, you're alarmed right now. Right. Sure,
that's not the only thing that's probably the biggest risk
to the bat population in the United States. But there's
(01:28):
another one that UM was mysterious for a little while,
and it was bats dying near wind turbines. Really yeah,
but the weird thing was is you could walk up
to a dead bat on the ground near this, near
a windmill, right, a wind turbine that's used for generating electricity,
um and the bat would be totally uninjured. There's nothing
(01:51):
wrong with it. It wasn't bleeding, it didn't have any
um signs of trauma. So I thought the radar might
have said, like, this is food and it's smacked into
one of the propeller budes. No, it did not actually
um that that's addressed in this article. Wind turbines kill
bats without impact on the Discovery channel um and and
it says that bats don't run into things. This This
(02:14):
expert who's quoted into it says that he's like, they're
really good at with sonar, so they don't run into
things that they didn't mean to write, which is weird
because so that means when bats come down and hit
you in the head, they meant to write. What they
found out finally that solved this mystery was that their
lungs were exploding because of a pressure drop. Yeah, the
(02:38):
pressure drop from the rotation of the blades. When they
got close enough to the blades, their lungs would explode. Um.
It would take about a four kilo pascal change kilopascal.
A pascal is a measure of pressure. A kilo pascal's
a thousand measures of pressure um to kill a bat,
(02:58):
it said in the article. And the wind turbines above
the turbot and right above it, um it generates a
five to ten kilopassical drop. So these baths are just
getting near and then boom, their lungs were exploding. And
then they were hitting the ground. Their little tiny lungs
would just pop. It's like the saddest thing I've ever heard.
So what do you do, Chuck? I mean, like wind,
(03:21):
wind energy is just it's wonderful. It's it's generally a
very green type of energy. I got some updated stats
for you. You want to hear some stats. Let's talk
about it. This is some wind energy stats, Josh. Last
year in two thousand nine, UM we produced worldwide a
hundred and fifty nine thousand, two hundred and thirteen mega
watts of electricity thanks to wind. It's pretty good. It's
(03:45):
enough to power Italy for a year, the whole country
for the whole year. But that's a drop in the
in the bucket for overall electricity production, right, Yeah, very
small percentages is produced by wind. Um. They do predict
by the end of this year that it will crack
two hundred thousand. And they have also said that since
they started this whole wacky wind capturing stuff that uh
(04:11):
it's it doubles every three year's capacity does so we're
heading in the right direction, it sounds like. And wind
is a great way to get energy because you put
up the thing, the wind blows, it produces. I mean,
it's as easy as it gets, right, It's very Dutch,
very very dutch. Um. The problem is, Chuck. As I said,
it was a very green technology, but there's a lot
(04:31):
of overlooked environmental impact. If we may jump around to
Tad right, these things are enormous. I've never seen what
I've seen pictures on the TV. We're on the internets, right,
and rain Man, did they have did they pass a wind? Yeah?
Like if you could drive to Palm Springs from l A,
you go by that huge like famous wind turbine farm. Chuck,
I'm glad to hear the h is back. Did I
(04:53):
say huge? Yes you did? Sorry I met huge, you
didn't huge? Um, okay, yeah, but they're they're enormous. The
turbines apparently are about the size of a seven forty
seven thousands and thousands of pounds and they're catching wind
at about two feet up. They're enormous. Just one single turbine, right,
(05:13):
there are a lot of bat and bird deaths. And
to get these things in there, um, you have to
basically construct new roads. In a lot of cases, you're
promoting soil erosion, uh and habitat fragmentation. So not quite
as green as people would like to believe. Yeah right, yeah,
(05:34):
Josh that it can be. It can have a big
impact on the environment in setting it all up, and
you kind of don't think about that when you're like, oh,
I could get free wind energy or not free. Obviously
it's pretty expensive, but it's it's it's a gift from nature,
isn't it there? You go? Yeah? Um, so what what
do you do though, chuck? Because everybody wants this more
(05:54):
than say, fossil fuels, Well, everybody outside of the oil
industry wants this more than aussil fuels. And by oil,
of course I mean coal as well and natural gas,
but I mean in the greener quarters of the globe. Um,
wind energy is a winner, right, So how do you
overcome these problems, these obstacles to make you know, a
(06:18):
wind energy truly green? I'm glad you asked, Josh. Potentially,
my friend, we may see little tiny blimp like balloons
hovering in the air about a thousand feet harnessing wind
much higher. And as I said, it's floating in the air,
(06:38):
so it doesn't have some huge foundation that needs to
be built and erode the ground. It's just tethered to
the ground by a tether, a tether that serves as
an electrical cable. Right. Yeah, So that's that's the Mars
turbine M A R S. It does not have anything
to do with the planet, the red planet. It stands
for the is it major? I did not know how
(07:01):
to pronounce it. I didn't want to touch that one
for the same. M A G E n N is
the name of the company, the Major Air Rotor System
m A R S. So it's an acronym, right, and
basically it's a well the CEO of we're gonna go
with majorin Okay, I'm down with that. Okay. Um. He
likened them to floating white sausages with paddle boat wheels, right,
(07:23):
So that what he said. That's what it says. It's
like a floating white sausage. Yeah, okay, it's just a
little blimp with some turbines on it. It looks like
a blimp with paddle wheels on it, right, Yeah, it's
sort of like I'll call a football before I called
white sausage. I don't know where this guy's head is,
but he's hungry, I guess. So he's ready for some
broad worst and you're ready for football season, Yes I am,
(07:46):
which also includes brought worst. So yours is all encompassingly
it is chuck. Yes, uh you you said that this.
So we've got a floating white football sausage with turbines.
It's connected to a tether at each end, right, and
the wind hits it and it spins the whole thing spins.
(08:06):
It's not like a it is like a pin wheel.
The whole thing, The whole thing rotates as if a
football were spiraling, right like. So the turbine is connected
to the blimp, So the whole blimp is spinning. Turbine,
blimp and all right. And then at the ends there's
electrical generators. So the tethers, like I said, actually are
double as electrical cables. It's not just a rope, right um.
(08:30):
And so the blimp is spinning, it's generating electricity. It's
sending the electricity down the tethers to a transformer which
serves a power station which is connected to the grid,
or stores and batteries. There's other things you can do
with it. And it's really that simple. It runs on
the the It runs an electromagnetic induction, right which I
(08:50):
looked this up a little bit. Let's hear it. Remember
Michael Faraday, he was on a genius list, could I forget?
So Michael Faraday one came up with this heat I guess,
was just sitting around his house, drunk on scotch um,
screwing with wire coils and magnets, and he discovered that
you could generate an electrical current. By passing a magnet
(09:12):
through a series of wire coals, you're actually changing what
should be ecstatic electrical field. Right. That was a very
big discovery, it was. And he also found that the
faster you passed the magnet through, the faster you move
the magnet, the higher the current or the higher the voltage,
stronger the current. Right. So what the the Mars turbine
(09:33):
is doing is the faster it turns, the quicker it
moves this the magnets through their wire coils, the stronger
the electrical current, right, which is one reason why they
float so high up, because the air speeds at a
thousand feet are significantly stronger than they are at uh,
you know two hundred feet where the ground based wind
(09:56):
turbine is located, right. Yeah, every time you double your elevation,
there's a twelve increase in wind speed, and every doubling
of wind speed there's an eight times eight fold increase
in wind power. So a two ft turbine and touched
the ground is just not nearly as effective as it
one that's floating a thousand feet up in the air
(10:16):
with And the reason obviously is because there's no trees
or buildings. There's no wind resistance, so it's just free flowing.
But yeah, and it's UM. It's pretty constant up there
as well. It's it's kind of windy up high, Yeah,
which helps because inconsistent wind is one of the problems
with wind generation obviously, but not only that. The Mars
turbine UM. Also we should say here that we're getting
(10:37):
no UM money whatsoever for this. We're just fans UM.
But the Mars turbine is is sensitive enough to be
able to produce usable electrical UM voltage with wind speeds
of as low as seven miles an hour. But it's
it can also UM withstand really strong winds that you know,
(10:58):
land based turbines are designed to shut down in so
I think a LAMB based turbines designed to shut down
at about forty and the Mars turbine can continue to
produce electricity in sixty three winds, I think yeah. And
anything above that, anything above sixty three to sixty five
they have UM just like blimps do. They have controls
(11:20):
on it, like overspeed controls and uh bait emergency deflate,
so if it gets they can do two things. If
it starts spinning way too fast they can has has
a system that kicks in that reels it in automatically
and like lowers it. And the wind might not be
as you know, as great at like three feet, so
they can keep running it. If it's really out of control,
(11:41):
they'll just reel it in all together. The system will
um or if there's some really big emergency like the
tether brakes and all of a sudden it's flying, you know,
over your neighbor's farm, it will automatically deflate, which is
what blimps have this emergency system, right, And and that's
one of the things that we uh should probably mention
is it's designed. Uh it floats because it's filled with helium,
(12:05):
right or lighter some lighter than air gas, but I
believe they use helium. They use helium, and the blimp
itself is made out of um, as the writer Jennifer
Horton put it, the same material used in bulletproof vest.
I was wondering, is that kevlar? Is that chicken feathers
or spider silk harvested from goats? I actually know the answer.
What is? I checked into this because it was slightly vague. Um.
(12:28):
The outer fabric is dacron, woven dacron, and that is
what's used for boat sails. The actual fins that catch
the wind to spend the football is vectoran and that
is what is used in bulletproof vest these days, apparently
some of them, all right. And then the coating it's
(12:49):
also aligned with something called ted lar, and that's the
same kind of plastic coating you find on like house sighting.
So that's what protects it from UV damage, abrasion, stuff
like that. And your new nickname is Chuck Tran. Chuck
Trot and check your hands, no, Chuck Tran. And then
the inner portion of it is have you ever seen
(13:11):
those little uh milar balloons. Yeah, it's a little funny
aluminum looking balloons. It's not aluminium, it's milar. And that's
what this thing is lined with because that holds in
your helium really well. They found it and just to
keep it even greener. If you look closely inside the
Mars turbine, you'll see little um sentiments like get well soon,
(13:32):
or your one year cuter. It's a boy I did.
That was one of my big questions when I was reading,
and this was wait a minute, what about the helium?
Because I've had those milar balloons and they don't hold
it forever. No, they don't see weeks later. It's sadly
hovering it like your kneecaps. The helium um. I think
helium being held in uh milar space is greatly increased
(13:59):
in cold temperatures. It's cold at a thousand feet okay,
that helps much colder um and the pressure there's less
air pressure at a thousand feet as well, right, so
there's less um. Well, there's less pressure trying to force
it out. Good point, I think. But I did find
out how much leaks because it does leak, well, yeah,
I would think it would have the point five per month.
(14:22):
So if you buy one of these things, and we
should point out that theoretically these are gonna be available
to consumers like early, that's what they're looking at right now,
and you it does not. The price of the thing
does not come with a helium. Just like when you
buy a new car, they don't necessarily have it full
of gas for you. You have to provide your own gas.
(14:44):
And the hundred kilowatt version requires two hundred thousand cubic
feet of helium, which is about wow. To fill it
up with helium. That's how they get you that, Yeah, exactly,
that's where they get you. But um, if it leaks
point five or month, that means they say on the website,
like every four or six months, just top her off
with helium for five grand and you'll be fine. Right,
(15:06):
But these things are built to last. The company I
think estimates it said. Um that they can float there,
I guess without being patched is what they meant for
maybe fifteen years without a need for magtenance because of
all the tough stuff it's made of, um and chuck.
If you happen to wonder, this thing is spinning in
the air right on an axis, how does the Magnus
(15:30):
effect factor in? Does it factor in at all? The
answer to that one, buddy, is yes. Are you talking
about the Magnus von Magnus effect or just the Magnus
effect the Magnus effect, Because the Magnus von Magnus effect
is when you are able to lift a beer keg
made of concrete in your overalls and carry it a
hundred feet. Well, yeah, everybody knows that. Much lesser known
(15:52):
is the regular old Magnus effect, right, and you see
it in every day. It's the spin on a curveball. Yeah. Basically,
as a UM, a spherical, round ish object travels through
the air as it's spinning on an axis UM, it
creates an actual area of high pressure beneath it that
(16:13):
creates lift, right, that stabilizes it right, so well, it
stabilizes that if the thing's tethered, right, which is how
the UM. So that combined with the fact that it's
filled with helium, which is lighter than air, UM allows
this thing to stay vertical pretty much vertical all the time. Yeah,
they said on the website that UM, but the helium
(16:34):
and the magnets effects will not allow it to lean
more than forty five degrees from vertical at any point. Wow,
even if it's like when swirling in all different directions,
it still stays pretty stable. Owner if there's a money
back guarantee on that, there's a lot of money, but
they don't pay you back for the helium. That's where
they don't, you know. Yeah, um and actually chuck that.
There's this thing called the Magnus airship that operates on
(16:57):
the magnets effect principle that was invented in the seventies
that gave rise to the Mars turbine, right, yeah, Freddy
Ferguson who was the founder of this company, Old Fred Ferguson.
He yeah, he invented the Magnus airship, patented it in
the nineteen eighties, and then that later became he was like, hey,
I can actually use this thing to generate wind. I
(17:19):
bet it's pretty awesome. It's very awesome. Every once in
a while you were run across like a green idea
that's like, wow, this could actually work really well. Oh yeah.
The bad news is it's going to be really pricey
at first at first, like all wind power. This price
is already going down, right, right. So the initial the
(17:40):
initial cost when this article was written, Um, the initial
expected cost is about five to ten dollars per what right, Yes,
and it's actually less now as of right now. Yeah,
look today it's four fifty to seven dollars. So it's
already dropped. And this was upfront cost. Yeah, this is
like two years old. It's already gone down much so
(18:01):
the take away the ten it's not five to ten anymore,
it's five or less. It's say four four dollars and
seventy cents a lot. That's way more than what you
pay for electricity as it is now. Um, but you
know you don't generally pay unless you're a Georgia Power
customer upfront costs to create electricity. You're paying for the
electricity generated, right, Um, this is you're paying for the turbine.
(18:24):
Like you buy this turbine and hey, here's your turbine.
Go create your own power. Right So um, again, the
price probably will come down dramatically, but once you've got
the thing up and running, the operating cost is about
fifteen cents to kill a watt hour? Is that which
is still more than what we pay now, but it's
(18:45):
half of what wind energy used to cost it when
it first really started to come along. Saying the rain
Man era, it was thirty cents to kill a watt hour.
So as wind power, as electricity generated by wind becomes
more ubiquitous, that the price for it's going to drop
across the board no matter how it's generated. And it's
(19:05):
for God's sakes, it's a green technology. It's always a
little expensive at first, but typically the people that outfit
their houses with solar panels, it cost a little dough
to do that. Typically there are people that want to
do a little uh, favor to the environment and they
realize over time they're going to make their money back. Probably,
but not many people are going out and outfitting their
house with thirty dollars with the solar panels because you know,
(19:28):
they want to save a dime. You know. Well, yeah,
that's true, but it would be helpful if there were
I don't know, rebates for buying something like this, like
government subsidies. I think they all expired. I really yeah,
we'll have to look into that, and I bet there's
still some out there. I have another question I don't
know if you know the answer to does the do
(19:49):
these things show up on radar airplanes? Yeah? They do.
I'm glad you asked that. You really didn't know. I
really didn't. Well, the Air Force and the government uses
uh tethered balloons up to like thousands of feet up
in the air, and so they're they're they're cleared with
the f a A. And in order to get one
of these things, you have to get a special permit
(20:12):
from the f a A. And you have to have
a blinking tether. It's a system that it blinks once
per second. That's an extra fifty dollars blinking blinking tether. So, um,
there's some other rules to that f a A has
already put forth uh here too. Um, you cannot have
one within five miles of an airport at all or
(20:32):
within any flight path in North America, do you know?
I mean flight pass are? I imagine there's quite quite
a few that you have to avoid. There's at least
seventeen or eighteen seventeen or eighteen flight pass and um,
you have to have the lighting system, like I said,
and then you can't have it, Like you can't have it.
You got to live out in the open. You're you're
not gonna be able to put one of these up
(20:54):
in your neighborhood in suburban Atlanta. Well, originally the thing
was designed to be used in very remote places that
are off the grid, like if you're on an Antarctic
expedition or an Arctic expedition, whichever one. It could also
be used in a disaster situation. That's the one I love.
That's pretty cool. It makes a lot of sense. So
(21:14):
if you if you um have the Mars turbine and
that um, remember that that water manufacturing device like sucks
it out of the ambient air. You're set. You're done. Yeah,
build a bomb shelter and you're you're all set for life.
Um I should also point out before we leave, they
do um envision one day, probably five to ten years
(21:36):
from now, Josh, where there is a four kilowatt backpack
model that you can actually carry with you, dude, take
it camping out in Yosemite and the TV fly that
sucker up. Yeah, take your TV and your your computer
and you can online gamble out there in the woods
just like everyone else, just like home. Pretty cool. Yeah,
So that's the Mars turbine. Um I saw on the
(21:57):
site that they're taking orders for them. Yeah, and you
can also if you fit requirements, you can be a
test um location for these things. There's a lot of
requirements and imagine a lot of people that live on
farms in North Dakota by like, hey, I'll test it
out of my house, right, you come out and set
it up. I'll bet being photogenic has is one of
(22:18):
the requirements. And no bare midri of shirts. Yeah, nothing
see through. So again, if you want to see some
cool illustrations of the Mars turbine, you can go to
how stuff works dot com. Type m A R S
and the search bar and I'll bet it brings up
a lot more than just this article. Yeah yeah, um chuck, Yes,
(22:38):
that means it's time now for a listener mail. Correct. Yeah,
I got a couple of short ones today. We're going
right into it. You want to plug nah, okay, south
By Southwest, Yeah, we should say. We're trying to go
to south By Southwest next year in Austin, Texas. Um,
and we are trying to get on a panel, and
(22:59):
apparently they're d cent of whether or not they determine
we can go to a panel is decided by votes. Right,
so you can go to h T T P colon
slash slash panel picker p A N E l P
I c K E er dot s x s W
dot com. Yes, and then you register and then you
(23:20):
vote for the stuff you should know panel under interactive panels. Right. Yeah.
When you go to click on our little thing to
two thumbs up and vote for us, it'll um, it'll say, wait,
you're not signed up yet, and it'll walk you through
how to sign up. And they promised that you won't
start getting email from south By Southwest's just to verify
you that you're a human. Yeah, just explore the interactive panels,
(23:40):
and on the interactive panel page you can search for
panels and under title put stuff you should know and
it should bring up ours and just ours right. Yeah,
and even if you're not in Texas, we would appreciate
your help here to get us to Texas. So um,
we can go to south By Southwest and like hang
out with bands. That's what I'm looking forward to. That's awesome. Okay, Josh,
these are two short ones. And it's funny that you
(24:01):
said the word search bar, because David from Sunny Canton,
did you see this one. I'm sorry, David, this is
a good one. Darn you. Josh is how he opens.
I work at one of the state universities of New York.
We are a week away from classes beginning, and my
office has been besieged by calls from students and staff
related to working on campus. This morning, I took two
(24:22):
calls in a row of which I referred to callers
to information on our website by saying you can type
work study in the handy search bar. You're totally right.
It is an awful phrase, because remember you had a
big problem with us. Hate it. I hate handy search bar.
After two hundred plus times you've said you hate it,
I love it. Uh, I don't love it. I love
it that you said that, Um, Josh is an awful phrase.
(24:45):
But it's awful because it's awful and campy. It's like
Karma Chameleon. I hate that song, but if I hear
it just once, it's in my head. You know. I
think Culture Club is one of the more underrated bands
that came out of the eighties. They get lumped in
with like crappy bands from the eighties, but they like
They and Dream and Duran, We're actually very talented musically.
I would like to add Adam and the Ants on
that list too. Okay, they were awesome, uh and not
(25:07):
at all camp too. You know, he's in He was
in a mental institution for a little while. You had
a breakdown at a benefit concert. He started railing on
Christians and they took him away and said you need
some rest, really, and he's like, no, I just don'tly Christians. Yeah,
He's like, I'm rested, Fine, Let's finish this email. He says,
these things are like gray matter super glue. With great
(25:27):
power comes great responsibility. Josh, you started this, you need
to finish it come up with a better meme. Help us, Obi,
Josh Kenobi, your only hope. That is David from Cooney
I'm sorry, Sunny Canton right, and David from Sunny Canton Um,
which I assumed means State University of New York. You
got it? Okay, Um, I am taking your email quite seriously.
(25:49):
I'm already beating you to the punch. I haven't come
up with anything yet, but I will get handy sorted
far out of everyone's head, including my own. Okay, yeah, okay,
And I got another quick one, Josh. This one made
me laugh. This is from Kurt, Minnesota. After listening to
the tick episode, Guys, I was reminded of one of
my most disgusting memories. When I was little, my neighbor
and I were sitting on his front porch playing with
his dog. Out of nowhere, the neighbor kid gets really excited,
(26:13):
has this look on his face, pulls a tick off
the dog and eats it. Who you didn't see this one?
The memory still haunts me today. After looking online about
similar cases, I came across someone calling them dog berries,
which makes it even more disturbing. I hope this hasn't
ruined your day, Kurt from Minnesota. It takes a lot
more to ruin our day than that, doesn't it. I
(26:34):
don't know, dog berries, it's pretty gross. What's sad is
our days are consistently rumoring? Yeah, every day. So thank
you for that, So, Kurt and then David, right, Yes,
thanks for sharing. We appreciate that. UM. I promise you
I will come up with something to replace handy search bar.
I've just kind of gone to the sterile search bar.
(26:55):
Now have you noticed Hinky search bar? No, not Hinky either.
Hinky's in that same group, the same ballpark as Handy.
We've been over using it. We're gonna mix it up.
We will, all right, Frank, Okay, Jimmy, So if you
want to send Frank or Jimmy an email, you can
do that. And don't forget Chuck's new nickname is Chuck Tran.
(27:18):
Just send us an email with you so we can
end this podcast, wrap it up and send it off
to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, is that
how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
(27:39):
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com home page
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.