#Solar Man of the Atom

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Solar, Man of the Atom Vol. 1 #3 (Valiant Comics, November 1991) cover by Barry Windsor-Smith

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Solar Man of the Atom #48

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Spindle Comics Presents:

STOLAS: Prince Of Hell.

Blame Blitz for spending the budget on weaponry and crack for the cover.

(Black and White variants.)

Original Cover:

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Andrew Wendel Solar Man of the Atom #42 (1995) Source

Colors by Mark Pusateri

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Solar, Man of the Atom

by Barry Windsor-Smith

Valiant

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Unity #0 & 1 (1992) by Valiant Comics

Written by Jim Shooter and Bob Layton, drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith and Bob Layton.

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DOCTOR SOLAR, MAN OF THE ATOM (vol. 1) #13 (July, 1965). Cover by George Wilson.

Asteroid, shmasteriod! It urns out Doctor Solar is the real reason the dinosaurs were wiped out!

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Art EDIT Credit to Roberto Coltro

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iauahejsahahj???!

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Solar Man of the Atom #50

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First post in a while. I have since made many things, but for now have my Godzilla work. The First King of the Monsters, The original Godzilla. He first rose from the depths in 1954. He suffered great pain from the nuclear bomb testing's in Bikini Atoll. He took his pain and wrath out on the people of Japan, or any unfortunate neough to find themselves at sea in his territory. He terrorized Japan for years, occasionally battling off other gargantuan monstrosities in his time, before his inevitable demise. He was killed by the Oxygen Destroyer, a super weapon created by the late doctor Daisuke Serizawa, who took his own life after destroying his work on the Oxygen destroyer to keep it from being recreated.

The Second King of the Monsters, Godzilla Though Godzilla perished in the 70's with the first and only ever use of the Oxygen Destroyer, his offspring survived. Godzilla Sr.'s offspring, simply called Godzilla during his time, had taken to his mutations much more easily than his father. Though he was born in his current form, and his body had adapted to its current form so he lived without pain, he knew the ones responsible for leaving him alone, without his father. In 1985, this Godzilla surfaced to unleash his own fury on Japan. Tho he was still destructive, after a few years he settled into life on Infant Island, and only came to Japan when he felt his territory was endangered. He died when his internal nuclear reactor had a melt down, irradiating all of Infant Island.

The Prince of the Monsters, Godzilla Junior The current Godzilla, and son of the previous. It's unknown where he, or his father, came from, but his presence on Infant Island was known prior to Godzilla's death. The radiation from his Father's death empowered him, allowing him to grow into a more powerful form. Jr. is notably more agile and faster than his father and grandfather were, having adapted perfectly to his new form. His atomic breath is also considerably more powerful than both of his predecessors. Unlike his family, Jr. never grew to hate humanity. Though he does not go out of his way for the express purpose of saving man kind, he doesn't actively seek its destruction.

The Golden Demise, King Ghidorah. A three headed alien from an unknown planet. He ofund his way to the Solar System landing on Venus. He eradicated all life on the planet, draining the energy from all of the beings on the planet, before moving on to the next planet, Earth. King Ghidorah however did not expect the planet to be crawling with other, equally large, equally deadly monsters, and often found himself unable to drain the life from Earth. Most often he would face either Mothra or Godzilla, the pair eventually forcing him to flee back into space, before Godzilla's death. Once he has absorbed enough energy, he plans to return to Earth and finally wipe out all life on the Planet.

Multi-Puprose Fighting System 3, Mecha Godzilla With the ever rising presence of giant monsters across the world, the people of Earth came together with a plan to deal with them. The UN formed the AMF, Anti Megalosaurus Force. This military force was made to combat any and all giant monsters that appear, when they appear. The AMF, using state of the art tech, advanced computers, and the bones of the original Godzilla as a base to work off of, created the Multi-Purpose fighting System 3, or Mecha Godzilla. It is piloted by a single person remotely. Mecha Godzilla comes with numerous armaments. On its right arm is a pair of rail guns. The base structure of the rail guns can also extend an electrically charged blade. The left arm comes equipped with the most powerful Maser Cannon ever built. Mounted on either shoulder is a more recently created weapon, high power twin plasma cannons, designed with the purpose of burning through hardened shells. Finally, the most powerful of Mecha Godzilla's abilities is dubbed the Proton Scream, a beam fired from the mouth with enough power put into it to slice many monsters clean in half. This ability is rarely used due to the amount of power it consumes. Though the machine has no life nor will of it's own, many of maintenance crew believe it to be haunted, often making reports of it moving, or activating on its own. One particular report from an engineer claims that Mecha Godzilla came online and watched the Engineer as they worked. These reports are unsubstantiated and assumed to be untrue.

Type 1 Maser Tank The original Maser Tanks invented in the late 60's to deter Godzilla Senior prior to his death. The technology has improved considerably since then, with modern Maser Tanks having a minimum power output nearly double the maximum of the Type 1's.

Size comp of Mecha-G, Ghidorah, Sr., Goji, and Jr.

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Peter Grau and Stan Drake Solar, Man of the Atom #18 (1993) Source

Colors by Paul Autio

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Solar Man of the Atom (Wizard #26)

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I agree that the rate of solar panel production seems to be the limiting factor on Terraformers.

Quotes from the whitepaper and my envelope math addressing your specific concerns are below the cut, plus a plea for someone to check my math.

1.

To convert carbon dioxide into a hydrocarbon requires, at a minimum, the same amount of energy yielded up by converting that hydrocarbon into CO₂ (with some fiddling involving the question of where the hydrogen comes from).

Yes.

2.

To convert CO₂ from the air into a solid form requires more energy than that, because you’re working against a concentration gradient. This is one reason why taking dissolved carbonic acid from seawater is a better choice.

Terraform Industries is not planning to convert their CO2 directly into a solid form, but they allow that it may be converted indirectly. See the note on ethylene reactors above.

3.

To draw out of the atmosphere, then, every year an amount of CO₂ roughly equal to the annual industrial emissions of the present day demands a commitment of energy pretty much equal to the whole world energy budget of the present day. This in turn seems to imply a society with an overall energy budget at least ten times that of the present day. A consummation devoutly to be wished!

A consummation devoutly to be wished, indeed! How much will it take?

We need a lot of solar panels. Something like 1000x current annual production. This will take 20-30 years, not 1000 years, because production is doubling every 33 months or so, and speeding up.

Statista says solar panel production was ~240 GW in 2021, and 116 GW in 2018. Our World In Data estimates the global energy production at 178,899 TWh in 2022, of which 3488 TWh was solar, and . TWh to TW at 8766 hours per year gives us 20,407 GW of total energy production capacity per year.

137,237 TWh to TW at 8766 hours per year gives us 20,407 GW of total energy production capacity per year. A one-megawatt Terraformer Mark One produces 2 million cubic feet of methane per year; a random energy.gov PDF says that a 3.5 MW nominal electric supply gas turbine burns 47.5 MMBtu/hr. The Energy Information Administration provides the helpful conversion factor of 1 Mcf = 1.036 MMBtu, so

2 MCf / 1 MW Terraformer-year 1.036 MMBtu / 1 Mcf 3.5 MW generation for 1 hour / 47.5MMBtu 1 year / 8766 hours x = 2 * 1.036 / 47.5 / 8766 * one 3.5 MW generator * 1/Terraformer = oops, slap a 1/(all that) = 200964.6 one-MW Terraformers per 3.5 MW gas turbine plant

That doesn't make sense to me; someone please check my math and units.

4.

Even with nuclear energy, far more compact (and thus harnessable to the wheels of industry) than any other source, we would find it difficult to expand the world energy budget by an order of magnitude in 25 years.

I agree, but if you take a pessimistic view of the rate of solar production, based on historical data over 2016-2021, doubling every 3 years, over 25 years, then capacity undergoes 8 doublings in the next 24 years, bringing us to 256 times current capacity, which is an increase by two orders of magnitude.

If we use Terraform's rate of doubling every 33 months, then we reach 6197.69 capacity units in 25 years.

Does that prediction bear out? Almost assuredly not; there's going to be a material constraint in there somewhere.

5.

With solar energy, noted for its extreme diffuseness, and thus, the large efforts needed to put it to work?

EIA again: the median natural gas well produces 400 million cubic feet of natural gas per year. The typical Marcellus Shale fracking natural gas drill pad is 5-8 acres, covering a radius of 2 miles via horizontal drilling. A circle of radius 2 miles has 8042 acres, and estimates for solar farms range at 1-2 acres per megawatt. At the ratio of 2 Mcf per Terraformer, 1 Terraformer per 1 MW solar, 1 MW per 2 acres, in 8042 acres you get a ratio of about 1 Mcf per acre, or 8042 Mcf per solar field, covering the same spacing as fracking wells but producing 200x the methane.

So in terms of McF per state, the Terraformer is denser. The Terraformer is also less dangerous to the local environment and watershed than a fracking plant, so you could conceivably cover your parking lot in a solar grid, and then use that to produce natural gas for your vehicle fleet, in the middle of a city.

when will we see the first reverse coal baron (negacoal?) who owns vast pits that armies of filthy labourers carefully stack full of carbon bricks spat out of vast capture machines sucking in CO2 from the sky