The earth has about 2000 thunderstorms at any given hour. Although thunder may be god's praise for a giant beach and motel in the heat, lightning causes 100 fatalities a year, and harms a thousand. The NASA site says the main problems of lightning for power are that it would take lots of high towers, which would cost too much and the second problem is, while a lightning bolt has lots of power fast, most of it is sound and light, both of which are uncollectable by our machines, i.e. we must go up to the clouds and return just to collect the power if most of the bolt is above the ground with light and sound collectors. And no doubt by collection of the power of bolts it would take a giant fuse box unless there were a more gradual trickle that would collect almost as much power without the giant boost, the same way lighting rods are safe for residential dwellers. According to calculations high towers would have to be built. A much cheaper method has been devised via particle beams all the way from the ground up. These are beamed from small robot helicopters, moved to the scene of approaching storms from a "mother ship" airplane sent out to cover each region from central stations. While many stationary towers are unfeasable, using and reusing lots of these small "towers" may make lots of money for the owners of this business. The power as it would trickle in before the charge could build up would be sent by another particle beam from the small robot helicopters to nearby power wires. The field around the outside of wire then carries the power to regional collectors or directly to the power co.
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If many towers were used and all the bolts flowed always to safer realms by the guidance of the beams this may reduce the risk of lightning fatalities in nonrural areas. (My realtor has the divine right of site managers, where she parks her house boat when she drives to work and our living is by the shore.) A lightning bolt in a storm has about the power of a kiloton of fusion power and if all of it were collected gradually this is enough stored heat to heat the whole region via the stored up heat with perhaps lasers from a few central towers, or cool the area with cooling beams or electric coolers in summer. A laser beam from a tower using some of the stored power would beam a wide cone shape around a whole region, while stopping heat loss from a larger area. It would melt the snow in the winter as it falls (the main method of removal of heat from lawns from walks of me was always to wait for Christmas!). If lightning were stopped the earth would lose it's charge of about 270 volts in an hour, so long term it may be of worth to limit the amount of power collected. The beam of this second plan of a weather control tower would be turned off a bit if planes were between the lightning and the laser. To seal in the heat the cone would have a collecting wire where the laser would reach on the top of insulation wall around the outside of the area to be heated or cooled to recycle the power and keep the temperature praised for the rain by the farmers and praised for the heat by Aleutians. This urban zone would stop wind and melt snow as well as retain heat in winter, it would need more lasers to actually stop rain. Many in prehistoric times may have walked far for the hot and cool weather, it would just have taken 200 days a year of walking to stay without the heat in summer. We have this now, on June 21 we all go to OHIO!

Another possibility for lightning power collection is via electric generators for individual lightning protectors of residential zones. Like the portable towers above they wouldn't have to use superstrong wires or generators anymore than it would take to save a usual residence from storms since lightning won't strike a house because it absorbs all or most of the charge before it builds up, so with a continous connection, the imbalance of charge that a bolt of lightning rewires is mostly relieved by a more unified flow. This reduction of flow before it builds up might be aided by computer so it's powerful enough but not unsafe. So with just a small flow of power a small collection machine would find lots of power over a period of months or years . If the machine just cost 200 and if one storm a year hit and collected 600 (returned to the power vendor by just rewiring it with power wires beside the house where the power was boomed with a sigh) this would be 600 in profit per house a year. A franchise of these machines where they would offer the machines to others for part of the cash might be a good business. Or one business might lease out machines of either capacitors or generator gyros at no cost for a sort of calm sleep in storms if the cash is good for sleep.
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.. Did you hear about that boater this week (Aug 10 06) who was fishing up in Ontario in his boat and a bear climbed up out of the lake and into the boat-So the boater jumped in the water and the bear accidentally hit the throttle so the boat sped away with the bear in it! And when the bear sped away in the boat, the boat was pushing the Van with TravelV.web at the Wheel!
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