https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gasbuggy
Regarding drilling operations that destroy value: you're forgetting that drilling is 1D while oil fields are 3D (technically quasi-2D with horizontal dimensions 100x to 1000x larger than vertical dimensions). If your drilling messes up everything in a 10 meter radius from the drill string, you don't care.
Likewise, everything that conceivably could be done with nuclear was tried or at least designed for a while there - lighting watches with radium, digging canals with nukes, space travel by continuously exploding nukes behind you... good times. (Horrifying times, but w/e;])
"The top secret plan to explode a nuclear bomb in Yorkshire", by Tom Scott: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceWZslOfEjs
It would buy controlling interests in all the companies that make some critical, specialized and heavily patented piece of modern internal combustion engines or coal turbines. Then, it'd wreck the factories, and patent troll everyone else into not producing.
Money is speech, and that would be protected political speech, right? :-)
That's just not true. Misery and suffering is it's own reward, to some. This is arguably the main point of Orwell's 1984, when O'Brien explains to Winston Smith why they bother torturing people before killing them. O'Brien says that to knowingly cause suffering in someone is the ultimate expression of power, and it is axiomatic to him that power is good in-and-of-itself.
I've never actually thought about whether patent protection covered just the sale, or the manufacture, or exactly what, so thanks for bringing that nuance to my attention!
That is only one explanation to why a technology would be among the most under-investigated-in-industry approaches. There are many others, such as:
- It does not work at all.
- It is more expensive than traditional methods
- It is illegal in some way
- It is incompatible with the rest of oil&gas processing.
Whereas for geothermal, conventional drilling isn't useful enough for it.
Geothermal heating provides unlimited fuel for people in houses, staying still.
The technology is similar, and it's boring ;-) The market is different. This is an opportunity for entrepreneurs to hire expert drilling engineers out of the oil industry!
This sounds like the beginning of a great sci-fi novel.
A future where Earth's core has cooled because of excess draws to power humanity. Now, the planet is losing it's magnetic field.
To save humanity, humans need to re-heat the core, build biospheres, or leave the planet.
Has anyone done the napkin math for how long that would take?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/04/28/the-center...
Core of earth: 6,000 ºC
https://www.space.com/why-sun-atmosphere-hotter-than-surface
Core of sun: 27 million ºC Surface of sun: 6,000 ºC
"The leading idea among experts is the sun's magnetic field is actually bringing energy from inside the sun up through its surface and into its atmosphere."
The "napkin math" will involve gathering some data about RF power harvesting, and some assumptions (e.g. cosmic rays)
https://news.mit.edu/2020/energy-harvesting-wi-fi-power-0327
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_law_of_thermodynamics
Do you believe in the 1st law of thermodynamics, that energy is neither created nor destroyed?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe
We could just balance the system:
core of Earth too hot -> use geothermal
core of Earth too cold -> use solar power
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30476002
It's even more interesting that you mention the magnetic field, could we use solar panels to draw more energy from the sun to power a tesla coil and microwave the core?
(it was not great)
To flip that around: this would imply that the most under-investigated-in-industry approaches to deep hole boring would be the ones that destroy the economic value of any oil-and-gas in the ground, no? Ones that make the ground radioactive, perhaps. Or that would set any potential oil fields on fire, or react them away, or irrevocably mix a combustion-inhibiting azeotropic solvent into them.