#ivanpah

Even in dreams you cannot fall forever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4DYB1H_NLA

Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in Nipton, CA.

Ivanpah Solar

This is an image taken from the ISS of Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station in the Mojave Desert outside of Las Vegas.

This facility has three towers and a series of 173,500 mirrors known as “heliostats”. The towers pump water through them which is heated by sunlight reflected off the mirrors and focused on the towers. That hot water is then turned into electricity. The mirrors are specially designed and computer-controlled to individually rotate during the day, keeping the maximum amount of sunlight focused on the towers. At the time this image was taken the facility still appears to be under construction; it is nearly complete today.

The linear gash cutting through the image is Interstate-15, the main linkage between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

The mountains to the west are the Ivanpah Mountains, the valley itself is known as the Ivanpah valley. I believe you can see the small town of Primm, Nevada, towards the right side of the image.

Along the side of the mountain range you can see many dry channels where water occasionally pours out of the mountains into the desert, typically during events that are almost flash-floods. In this area, those events probably happen every few years or even every few decades.

There is also a drainage basin coming northward from the New York Mountains, which sit to the south of this site. It is clearly different material, possibly more fine-grained than the other rocks (since it’s farther from the range) and it is draining right towards the town…which probably sits at that site because it’s the location where the water drains to from that valley. That area has all the hallmarks of being a “dry lake bed” out in the Mojave, and has been proposed as a possible site for a new airport in the area.

-JBB

Image credit: NASA/ISS http://ivanpahsolar.com/

and if you find the place the one that made you grow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21Qj7uexFr4