The high cost of energy

At the risk of beating this to death, here's a spreadsheet calculation which shows how kinetic energy increases with increases in mass and velocity.  Kinetic energy is defined as mass in motion.  For example, in the spreadsheet near the bottom, a jogger going 5 mph has kinetic energy in the amount calculated according to the formula indicated.

By the way, my apologies for any mistakes.  I'm running on a tight schedule.  I have to work a little later today.  If I am going to put anything up on this blog, it may have more mistakes than I would like.  Anyway, any mistakes do not detract from the major point being attempted here.

Now, compare how much energy a jogger requires for his velocity as compared to an auto traveling at highway speed.  There's a couple more comparisons there too in case you're interested.

The point is that kinetic energy required to reach a velocity increases rapidly with changes in velocity.

That's why the Saturn V required enough energy to supply the entire United Kingdom with power just for the purposes of getting a relatively small amount of mass that housed only 3 astronauts with enough kinetic energy to get to the moon and back.

That's why a baseball thrown at the speed of light will do some very nasty things ( because of all that energy).

That's why nuclear reactions are so powerful.  A split atom will fly apart at a velocity that is comparable to the speed of light.


That's why a spacecraft that can do anything serious like going to Mars is likely going to need nuclear power to get the necessary kinetic energy.

That's why to live at the standard of living we are accustomed to and are dependent upon for our very lives is going to require nuclear energy to sustain it at some point in the future.  We need the kinetic energy for our machines.

jogger's kinetic energy compared with various other objects and velocities

Now, an auto at highway speed requires 711, 111/ 172.8 times the energy of the jogger.  Doing the math gives 4134 times more kinetic energy.  The auto may be traveling about 10 times faster, but you need all that mass for the machine to get that kind of speed going.

The benefit of speed is time saved.  You can drive much faster than you can walk.  But that speed and time saved comes at a great cost.

You can survive on light energy from the sun.  But by the time it gets here, some 90 million miles from its source, it is safely diffused enough so that you and I and the Earth aren't vaporized.  You can live on that energy, but you can't power an advanced civilization with it.