Slashdot Mirror
Public Discussion Opened on Space Solar Power
eldavojohn writes "The National Security Space Office (NSSO), an office of the DoD, has taken a novel approach to a study they are doing on space based solar power. They've opened a public forum for it and are interested in anyone and everyone's expertise, experience and ideas on the best means to harvest energy in space. I suppose this is similar to the DoD's $1 million for an energy pack just without the award. Still, if you want to have an influence on the US's plans in space, this would be an easy armchair place to start. Space.com also has more on the details."
The proximate cause was that despite there being an obvious direction in place subsequent to the space race (remember the Apollo program?) that could have been followed through to space industrialization -- the launch service industry did not enjoy the same protection from government competition that the satellite industry enjoyed:
It wasn't until 1990, when a coalition of grassroots groups across the country lobbied hard for 3 years, that similar legislation got passed for launch services.
The fact that Malthusian paradigm didn't precisely follow the Club of Rome's "Limits to Growth" model doesn't change the reality of the Malthusian paradigm given a fundamentally limited biosphere undergoing its largest extinction event in 60 million years. The Club of Rome merely added academic fashion to the urgency of the Malthusian situation still facing the biosphere. The 1970s was the right time to start the drive for space industrialization based on a private launch service industry. It didn't happen, the pioneering culture that founded the US is being replaced by government policy with less pioneering cultures and now we're all facing some increasingly obvious difficulties -- not just pioneer American stock -- and not just humans.
The cost of getting silicon into space from the lunar surface would be orders of magnitude less than launching from earth due not only to the much shallower gravity well but also due to the absence of atmosphere.
No beanstalk needed.
At worst a Dyneema Rotovator might be needed but probably not even that.
First, the bulk of the materials are manufactured in space from lunar raw material transported to orbital facilities so you don't need to land those facilities on the lunar surface, and you don't have to worry about g-loading the raw materials you are sending to the orbital facilities.
Second, you don't manufacture everything in space -- only bulky materials like solar cells, reflectors, structural members and perhaps klystrons. Only residual materials (raw and manufactured) are of terrestria
Seastead this.
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
I've been thinking about this and discussing it for quite a long time. I've got some great ideas, some plans, and a friend who does genetic engineering has some complimentary ideas that seem promising.
But, quite frankly, I'd rather see humanity burn in flames than see the Americans in possession of the technology.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
This seems like yet another reason that first-to-file patents are a terrible idea. Such a system could mean that whenever we engage in a public brainstorming session like this, some a$$ho7E comes in patents any good ideas that get floated.
With the internet age of mass communication and cros-pollination of ideas, we are seeing the dawning of the democratization of science. Science, like religion before it, has enclosed itself within walls beyond public scrutiny. This age-old incestuous practice is in the process of changing before your very eyes. I hope we see more experiments like this in the future.
Dear Slashdot,
please do our homework for us.
Sincerely,
The National Security Space Office (NSSO), an office of the DoD
P.S. we won't use your ideas to kill or oppress people*
*actually, we will.
Anyone thought about just putting mirrors in space to concentrate and reflect higher intensity of sunlight back to solar power stations on earth?
I would imagine it would be cheaper than trying to hoist an entire solar power station into space, easier to upgrade as more efficient solar power methodology is developed and not suffer from trying to find the RF bandwidth to beam the energy back.
Kythe
I've been on-and-off interested in this subject for years now - the prospect of being able to gather solar energy more directly, even with horribly inneficient technique, would be a complete transformation in terms of our ability to gather energy for human use.
Three basic problematic areas:
1. Return Delivery for energy. A beam would be the most obvious approach, as no conventional matter would be easilly sustained without something like a space elevator bringing enriched material up and down constantly. An exception would be antimatter, though that would be horribly dangerous on a scale that would make any concentrated beam mishap look like nothing.
2. Energy effects on the earth. Increased energy use, in any form, is going to have various effects on our ecosystem. We'll have to devote a percentage of our global energy use to offset this in some way, hopefully without a tragedy of the commons effect leftover.
3. Upkeep: Materials break down when they transfer the kinds of energy under consideration here. This won't just be a simple solar-panel install job in space. The materials involved will have to be self-repairing in some way if they're going to get closer and closer to the sun. Perhaps they'll function by 'flowing' with the solar winds, then reforming at the front. This promises to be a fascinating task for engineers and scientists looking to harvest such enormous resources safely and (relatively) efficiently.
Every aspect of this subject bristles with the various concerns of humanity - it'll be interesting to say the least what this group can go over.
Ryan Fenton
Warning: Giant Space Death Ray may lead to premature combustion.
Build a giant parabolic mirror on the moon, from moon material and use (solar powered) motors to make it point to a specific location on earth. Alternatively, point it on the Whitehouse unless they pay $1,000,000,000,000,000,000
\u262D = \u5350
I'm reading the public forum, and someone ran the math and said that it would take 10,000 years to build a solar array large enough to replace our current energy use. The limiting factor is how hard it is to move something that large and heaving into orbit.
If these figures are accurate, then this is a pointless endeavor.
time to start playing harvest moon again!
http://werbos.com/space.htm
The collection SHOULD be a separate issue from the transmission of it. In fact, They would be making a mistake in trying to build a single unit to do it all. By definition, a collector is going to be pretty big and will probably be located at in very high orbits. Rather than move it around, it should have small relay points which are cheap and easy to move around. More importantly, you would be able to set up multiple power points and beam them in various areas. Such as we need power not only in Iraq, but in Afghanistan, and perhaps even Japan could use some supplemental boosts.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
But this is NOT about replacing. It is about giving emergency and quick response times a hand. Such as when Katrina (or any hurricane) happened, or earthquakes, etc happens. If power can be sent to these places BEFORE emergency crews have started in, then it gives them a fighting chance to help ppl.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This represents an extraordinarilly expensive solution to a non-existent problem. We already have access to cheap, clean, and reliable power production facilities right here on Earth. It's called nuclear power.
None shall be permitted to cite, copy, reproduce, or distribute information from the website without the expressed written permission (email) of the author and the team leaders Never mind that this ignores fair use and probably is an overstatement rights the website can actually claim, I think that such restrictions keep it from being truly public. The public isn't even allowed to cite the discussion, much less criticize it on a seperate forum. I mean, if this rule is somehow in enforcable, no arguments or data turned up in the discussion is actually usable by the public -- not that I can see how the rule is actually enforcable.
Of course, they simply be trying to encourage people to speak up, and I like the idea of the discussion itself, but a truly public discussion must be usable -- not just accessible to -- the public.
--sabre86
The traditional way to think about it is 'beaming' energy back to earth in some fashion (microwaves? laser? etc). But another way to harvest energy is to use it to refine resources in space ... use the energy to harvest or refine near earth objects (NEO) or lunar regolith. The refined material can be very valuable (there are high concentrations of rare and precious metals in NEO's), and then shipped back to earth more conventionally. Or used to construct in orbit.
The light wouldn't have to be beamed back with the intensity of a magnifying glass on a bug. :) I'm not even sure normal photovoltaic cells would be able to handle that, for one thing, and for another, it could be dangerous as you describe.
:) Slashdot does have a sense of humor, after all.
Double normal intensity or less would still produce significantly more power, and not instantly fry an inadvertent target.
P.S. -- Ironically, the captcha word for this post is "disaster"
Kythe
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Microwave Rectennas would enable the transport of power back to the Earth's surface just fine. The radiation is relatively diffuse, non-ionizing, and would do no more to birds flying overhead than heat them up.
e
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_satellit
Unlimited Solar Power, a burgeoning Space Program, and free cooked poultry falling from the sky! What more could you ask for?
As an avid SimCity 2000 player, I know that constructing large microwave dishes that receive concentrated ion beams from satellites is the best way to harvest solar energy from space. For more on ion beam satellites -- and their military uses against shadowy quasi-nationstates led by enigmatic bald men - I refer you to Command&Conquer.
ps: I suggest building these microwave power stations far away from cities, as they occasionally explode. They're also frequent targets of large, mechanical alien spider robots.
The reference designs from when this was a new idea had a microwave beam power density about a quarter that of sunlight. With the beam on for 24 hours and near 100% conversion efficiency, the receiving station could be smaller than an equally powerful solar photovoltaic system, and cheaper because it would consist of antennas and diodes as opposed to acres of refined silicon. Figure a few square miles of low-value land for an antenna farm.
If you need a lower-powered beam, spread out the antenna farm into some more desert and spread out the beam to match.
What ever happened to the huge orbiting magnifying glass to beam energy to an energy facility on earth idea?
The Space Frontier Foundation believes there are energy and environmental benefits that could come from space-based solar power - collecting solar power in space and transmitting it back to Earth
Oh, yeah, that minor detail of "transmitting it back to Earth" might be a bit of a hitch. Given that we have yet to find a way to reliably, efficiently, and safely "transmit" energy (particularly in these magnitudes) over any significant distance, I'd say this discussion is a little premature at best.
A huge magnifying glass will do. I would burn you like an ant. How cool would that be?
However, once there is a space elevator, there is no need for using dangerous microwaves, when you already have a direct wire going from earth to space. Just send the electricity down the wire like any terrestrial power line.
I'm thinkin' maybe a giant space station gathering solar power, then beaming it down with focused microwaves to special reception stations safely away from the population such that they won't get incinerated.
The space station will be manned by one guy assisted by some remote-control robots and computers from the ground. The robots will be able to do things like move things around and maybe pick up a blow torch for cutting or burning, or a hammer or something for pounding, for example, as controlled by people on the ground.
There should be radar on the station to detect incoming asteroids so they can swing the microwave magnetron around to disintegrate it, or maybe some lasers if that won't work. But the station should be able to incinerate any incoming high speed object just for safety.
Yeah, I like the sound of that plan!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
As we've witnessed, digging carbon from the earth (as crude oil and coal) and putting it into the atmosphere along with the heat energy from using it can have serious side-effects from injecting outside energy to a system in equilibrium.
Power needs to go somewhere as some form of energy. It might do some work, but usually ends up mostly lost as heat. All lights, stoves, heaters, etc would essentially mean nearly all of the solar energy collected was as if the sun were simply shining brighter on the earth. Imagine if they were researching how to make more sunlight hit the planet just to harness it with solar cells -- this is almost exactly the same thing.
Space energy is energy being brought into the system that wouldn't have normally entered. I don't see this as a viable form of energy. It will potentially lower greenhouse gasses, but will still screw up the ecosystem.
I know and I apologize in advance......
Could something like this be used in the same way DISH sends TV down? Blanket a city with a weak enough beam not to hurt anyone, but if everyone had a receptor on their roof they could at least supplement their energy usage? At least enough to make some type of significant cut in fossil fuel/coal usage? Like I said, I know nothing of this and am really just curious.
All points of time and space are connected.
The units are messed up: in several places the usage of watts, watt-hours and watts/hour just don't make sense.
About damn time. The state of our energy and environment affect more people now and in generations to come than any other issues on the news, period. I challenge you to find anything of such widespread and serious interest.
Not so long ago India announced that it is serious about the space solar option. I'm glad there's enough good sense in Washington to do likewise. We should get Europe and China on board, because unlike the ISS, this is the real deal and more significant to our future than going to the Moon or Mars.
Plus, it's damn cool.
It becomes a lot less expensive if there's a cheaper way to get stuff to orbit. Something like this.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Oh, yeah, that minor detail of "transmitting it back to Earth" might be a bit of a hitch.
That detail was figured out almost half a century ago:
- Use radio waves with wavelengths of about a millimeter. These penetrate the atmosphere well and are not strongly absorbed by water (i.e. no major losses in clouds or cooked birds falling from the sky at design power densities.)
- Use synthetic-aperture techniques to form a beam centered on the ground-based rectenna and pilot-carrier transmitter. Loss of the pilot signal causes the transmitters to desynchronize and the beam to defocus, becoming annoying narrowband background radio noise, rather than staying focussed and tracking sideways.
Transmission losses from geosynchronous orbit to ground are comparable to those in high-tension lines from ground-based power plants to cities.
Meanwhile you can grow grass and graze cows under the rather lacy structure of the rectenna. So you don't even lose the use of the land where it is constructed.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
We got us a copy and paste-er
? entry_id=3880
http://www.futurepundit.com/mt/mt-altcomments.cgi
Mass drivers up the gravity well. I barely know what that means, but it was one of my favorite lines from Count Zero. :)
power sources become weapons. space shoudl be weapon free.
It's a pity they didn't get around to opening a public discussion on the subject back when one of the major figures in such planning was available to comment.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You can just use long, dragging wires in space to generate current ... but its coming from the kinetic energy of your vehicle, so you will deorbit. Conversely, you can pump current into the wires and give your station a boost ... check out the experiment (STS-75 IIRC)
Dropping them down to the ground has the problem of needing to self-suspend. IE, a geostationary satellite has to suspend 35,768km of copper wire. That's why the space tether people are constructing from carbon fibre...
Here are several bullseyes for you:
1. Put a giant magnifying glass in space and point it at an ocean. Then harvest the steam from the ocean as it boils. Make sure to choose a lazy ocean like one of the ones that just sit there and take up space.
2. Put a giant solar cell in space with a really long extension cord that plugs into a power station here on Earth. Or, if you don't have a long enough extension cord you can just build a really tall tower and use a regular extension cord.
3. Put several giant mirrors in space that reflect the Sun's rays onto all the dark parts of the world. That way places that aren't suitable for solar power, will be. This would be great for the dark side of the planet. The sun never shines there.
I saw Dr. O'Neill give a presentation on this in 1976 at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago (I was 9). Damn, when I think of what I thought of the Space Shuttle then, and what I think now - what a disappointment!!!
Honestly - I don't know if the idea is feasible.
Maybe it's technically possible, but I don't think human beings can operate and maintain such an infrastructure without individual interest trumping group interest.
Any one of a zillion things could prevent it (individual-interest-wise):
- incomplete funding (this is what killed the ISS, yes, look up, see that light flying across the sky? It's dead).
- inability to agree on proper technical direction (engineering pissing contest - this is what killed the Shuttle).
- space junk (inability to police industrial/military space activity such that we can keep space safe for large power stations to exist without getting clobbered by debris).
- whack-jobs (inability to police religious fundamentalist groups, like "Free Market Fundamentalists" who will sabotage the project because it offends their faith).
etc.
in short, I'm very down on my fellow man today.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
What aspect of terrestrial based solar power would this replace?
World power needs well into the next century can easily be met with currently available terrestrial based solar power generation technology. Granted, it's not big, shiny, and new. I'll take what works, thanks.
I don't want any of my tax money to fund sweetheart projects for DOD cronies.
Plenty of sun falls on unoccupied land around the world. Moreover, that sun comes through the atmosphere in a form that does not upset the environment; the world has evolved to handle the suns energy exactly the way it does.
Seems to me it's just someone trying to centralize power. Big central systems. The kind easily owned and controlled by an elite.
The money spent just on research and development for space based could actually build terrestrial solar. And if terrestrial solar malfunctions, sending a repair guy around to fix it is quite cheap. It won't crash into the planet. And there is no "beaming the energy to earth" issue. What happens when your space spaced power station hits a piece of space junk? Or is easily taken out by a small kinetic projectile. Or is taken down by the owners to get the people to give up even more of their rights?
It's a red-herring.
The money spent by the US in 1 month for their middle eastern wars could probably have set up enough terrestrial based solar power capacity as to make reliance on imported oil a non-issue. And that's based on the rates being charged for residential installations.
The energy controllers don't want decentralized power. And they keep trying to find a way to centralize solar. Which becomes harder and harder to sell.
Look who's doing the selling. The DOD and NSSO. Controlled by the same people who brought you not just one but two middle eastern wars. I wouldn't trust these guys alone in a room with their own mothers.
You make it sound like the space programs from the 60's was for pioneering cultures are all different from today. They're not. The space program was a political maneuver in direct response to the Soviet "threat." Its goal wasn't for the sake of science, it was for the sake of pride and a sense of protection from enemy threats. The closest things we have now are North Korea secretly building nukes, Iran doing the same, China destroying all of our satellites, and right-wing religious fundamentalists going from blowing up abortion clinics to blowing up the rest of the United States if/when the GOP loses the next presidential election.
The solution to free market whack jobs -- really just private sector rent-seekers -- isn't public choice rent-seeking; it is to collect and then redistribute all economic rent -- that cannot be allocated to their true source as positive externalities (PE's like public domain technologies) -- equally to all segments of society. Anything else creates positive feedback loops that cut out positive sum innovators from the system.
At the end of my political activism that's what I had settled on as the solution and then wrote a white paper analyzing the consequences of the policy at the macro and microeconomic levels.
Non-innovative rent seekers are the problem, whether in the public or private sectors. When I say "the problem" I mean it -- they could quite possibly fry the biosphere.
Seastead this.
I mean, if energy is heat, wouldn't increasing the amount of energy on the earth more than it 'naturally' already receives fuck up the planet even more? I wouldn't want any harvesting of energy from space unless we developed a way to controllably release heat from the planet in an equal amount.
If you speak from the standpoint of the public choice rent-seekers controlling government and centralized corporate structures you're correct -- but those people aren't of the pioneering culture -- they merely pushed the pioneering cultures buttons to get it to do their bidding during Apollo, etc. The Soviets pushed on space as a propaganda tool precisely because it was so powerful a mythic symbol for their own pioneering population as well as the people of their, then, primary adversary: The USA.
Seastead this.
Solar energy is available 24/7 in space, but it's only about 3 times better than on the surface of the earth.
If we could put solar cells into orbit at zero cost, then a SPS system could be cheaper than current tech.
One way to do that might be to manufacture them in space in the first place, say by using raw materials from a LEO asteroid.
But making SPS for power on earth isn't the low hanging fruit of space.
The first thing we should make is generic satellites.
Imagine a standard body satellite with a solar array, an orbital stability tether, a massive gyroscope, and already
in orbit.
Now if you're a telecommunications company, you don't need to launch all that extra junk, just the "brains" and maybe an antenna.
Perhaps they could even custom build satellites to order.
The savings in weight/dollars just from already planed launches would be in the billions.
Once we can make the satellites we're already paying millions to launch now in space, then making SPS should be cake.
-- Should you believe authority without question?
They're not. The space program was a political maneuver in direct response to the Soviet "threat."
Well, that was the mindset of the politicians who were conned into supporting and funding the programs at the time. But not of many of the fine people who did the engineering that got us there.
Yeah - sometimes I'm afraid that we, as a nation, peaked sometime back in 1973, and are gradually sliding backwards into "Banana Republic" status. A Banana Republic with nukes. But if our politicians can be conned into something as idiotic and brainless as the Iraq war, then there's hope for something as brilliant and visionary as SPS. (I'm just not convinced that once we build it, we can keep it running before the next set of whack jobs either de-funds it, or lets it get blown up).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I read your white paper and found it quite interesting, but rather difficult to understand as I do not speak economist speak. If you were to rewrite these wel thought out ideas and observations in very plain layman's terms it would be a valuable resource in explaining to people about the ever growing distance between the wealthy and the everyman.
increased CO2 emissions from coal burning that would mandate radical restructuring of global energy technology
As we are all aware, the whole global warming problem presented by rising levels of CO2 is that more energy is trapped here on Earth. So how is trapping more energy from the sun and sending more energy to Earth going to help the problem? Maybe the solar collector will be directly between the Sun and Earth, thus removing as much incoming solar energy as it is beaming down to our power station. But which countries are going to volunteer to give up much of their sunlight? Perhaps thousands of little collectors evenly distributed in the Earth bound Sunshine would solve the politics by giving an even reduction of sunlight globally, but if we can do that, why are we so worried about CO2 levels, just reflect the nessecary amount of incoming solar energy to counteract our increased atmospheric insulation. Don't even bother with the energy collection, we have an excess of Earth bound energy as it is.
We are all just people.
Anybody proposing launching solar panels into space and "beaming" the power back to earth via microwave not only failed high-school physics, they also failed high-school economics.
Three words: Free Space Loss
The loss of power through dispersal at 10 GHz over 220 miles is 163 dB. A reduction of 3dB is generally considered as halving your power.
This does not include atmospheric or ionospheric attenuation or conversion losses at both ends.
Let me see if I understand this:
The earth is heating up due to energy trapped within the biosphere, so now you want to capture energy from outside the biosphere, concentrate it, then insert that energy INTO the biosphere?
How does this help again?
(Now, taking material from space, using energy to make it refined, then placing that refined material within the biosphere - that I can understand and can 'get behind' FAR more than I can get behind the 'insert energy into the biosphere' plan.)
it's nice that thought and work are being put in to solar, and all, but putting solar collectors in space is missing out on the other major feature of solar that nuclear can't produce: decentralized generation.
//resilient//. If you put a solar platform in orbit, then either it or the receiving stations become expensive, centralized facilities that are vulnerable single points of failure to either intentional attack or accidental failure.
//you//. But, as usual, "consumers" have different priorities.
If anyone can generate their own electricity, it makes for a system which is much more robust from infrastructure failure. People can be independent and recover better from disasters, becoming more
Furthermore, they foster dependency among energy consumers, making them vulnerable to abuse by monopolies in the energy industry. Enron, Dick Cheney, California... you get the idea. Of course, if you happen to BE one of these industrial monopolists, the idea of centralized production is exactly what you want - a "good thing" - for
Let's get solar (and perhaps wind, which shares these properties) working on Earth first.
It doesn't necessarily mean that the figures are wrong, but it does make them somewhat suspect. If nothing else, using Watts where WattHours was meant makes a factor of 60 difference in the magnitude of the number..
Unless you can cut launch costs by two, possibly three orders of magnitude, it's not going to work.
So how about the DoD revive this launch technology if they're serious about the idea?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Instead of having a huge area of mirrors or receivers in space, with the consequential problems of building the array and transmiting the energy. How about a smaller near orbit lens. Focus the energy from a wide area to a narrow area and transmit to earth in one move. Like frying an ant but from space and a huge lens. The lens could be a huge inflatable flexible transparent sack of gas or some such. Use that focused energy and track a receiver on the earth. (c)2007 me
"Klystrons" - does he even know what to do with a Klystron? Secondly, the silicon needed for solar cells is the lightest part of a solar array. Where does he think the rest of the stuff is going to come from? Furthermore, to do any of that he propose you have to lift a great many factories and loads of mining equipment and people to man them into space - all of that is much heavier and expensive than just lifting the finished products.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Other than swapping out compact florencent light-bulbs in the home, solar hot water heating systems are about the easiest thing you can do that doesn't actually require a change over to a tree-hugging life style. You can hook them into a regular hot water heating system, even in freeze prone areas, and you won't even see a difference, other than you gas or electric bill will drop substantially.
We'll spend $3000 on a over-priced and over-hyped iPod (iPhone) that just end up in the trash in a year or two, but my God spending $5000 on a solar hot water system that will give a family of four most of their hot water for free for the next ten years is just too much too ask.
People have their priorities ass-backwards.
The Earth has a radius of ~6,400km. The energy from the sun at the top of the atmosphere is about 1.3 Kw/m^2. Thats ~1.7x10^17 Watts. Its about the same as a 40 Megaton of TNT every second of every day. The amount of energy we use, either from space or from oil or from anywhere is a drop in the bucket and will be for a long time.
The idea of blocking the sun to maintain the status quo on a climatic system we really don't understand yet, is stupid.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
What about putting giant solar panels up on the highest mountains where the clouds are (usually) below the peaks? the electricity could then be transfered using cables to ground stations. Could that be economically viable?
The best way to accomplish this I can imagine is to create some sort of manufacturing facility in space. We should be building a space station that is capable of constructing large space craft for long distance travel and other large projects, such as this, while we still can. The space shuttle is going away in a few years and we will be loosing our ability to construct a space station along with it. Why should we launch living quarters and a "workshop" every time we go in space. This is what space stations are for.
With a manufacturing facility in space we can simply launch parts and other raw materials into orbit using many inexpensive rockets instead of one massive rocket. The simplest such facility would only be able to do assembly work since it's the only thing we have figured out how to do in space. Components could be assembled at a space station in LEO and then moved to a higher orbit when they are completed. This facility would also be valuable for assembling a ship large enough to accommodate a crew comfortably for the long journey to mars and beyond.
I am stating my ideas and opinions on Slashdot instead of the NSSO forum because I am morally against using my personal talents to improve military technology. I don't want to end up feeling guilty like Oppenheimer, Einstein or Nobel. This should be a civilian program and I believe we at least have the technology and funds to demonstrate a proof of concept if not build the entire thing. So lets get working on it!
S.A.M.
everybody knows how high are the prices to send payload in space, so, the energy produced in space NEVER will be competitive with the earth produced energy (since the space energy price will always be THOUSANDS times higher) so, that kind of discussions is PURE NON SENSE and a good way to lose your time for NOTHING . . . . underside-LAS: http://www.gaetanomarano.it/articles/020newLAS.htm l
comparison image: http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/4808/lasow9.jpg
cellphone-CAR: http://www.gaetanomarano.it/articles/033cellphoneC AR.html
SuperSafeSkyscrapers: http://www.gaetanomarano.it/articles/032supersafe. html
.
http://www.ghostnasa.com/ http://www.gaetanomarano.it/articles/articles.htm
The idea of taking control of the earth's climate does indeed give one pause, but I think we're stuck. If you buy the idea that the industrial output of greenhouse gases has been modifying the earth's energy balance, you've got to make up you mind what that balance should be, and think about how you're going to work toward it.
The idea that we can just go "don't mess with mother nature" and we'll all be okay is an interesting religious attitude, but I don't see what it has to do with reality.
Even if we could find a way to reduce industrial C02 emissions to zero tomorrow (a massive build-up of nuclear plants plus radical conservation efforts?), it's not at all clear that that would be enough to fix the damage that's been done already.
You are making the assumption that our models are good enough to predict what would happen if we do X. Show me the data of predictive accuracy over centuries (Or even decades for that matter). You can't because we don't have any. Furthermore, even the worst IPCC predictions are vastly overblown by the media. This planet is not dying. We are not doomed, everybody is not going to die. Things may change..a little, and even then its going to take 100's of years. Sure cut CO2 emissions, its a great idea with a lot more going for it than just climate change and I do my part with energy bulbs and taking trains instead of planes when i can, run my heating cooler in the winter.
But for the love of science (or GOD if you prefer) don't add another perturbation to a nonlinear system, especially such a big perturbation...
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Hardly. I'm making the assumption that we're stuck: we need to make critically important decisions in the absence of anything like perfect information. Heigh-ho.
Unless you happen to be completely wrong. Note: the arctic region has been thawing out a lot faster than anyone predicted.
In any case: I think the time to start working on global warming amelioration tricks is now, not when we're (even more) desperate for them.
Sure does. Something like hundreds of thousands of American deaths annually can be attributed to coal burning.Perhaps folks who have no idea what they are talking about shouldn't make critical decisions, or assume that they can.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
You're missing the main point, dude: choosing not to mess with the situation is also a choice. And choosing not to have the capability of messing with things, in the event that the climate scientists decide that we really do need to do it, that is perhaps a tad irresponsible, no?
If you're trying to make the point that having a capability tempts people to use it in advance of any evidence of need... well sure. Should humanity then choose to remain powerless in hopes of minimizing it's mistakes?
(By the way: should the United States have an "economic policy"? After all, the US economy -- not to mention the global economy -- is an astoundingly complex system that no one understands in it's entirety, certainly no one can predict it's behavior with any accuracy. What right do we have to think we can mess with it with any degree of wisdom?)
And yet, you feel comfortable making critical decisions about the future of the human race, eh?
I've got a much shorter write up, but the idea could support a book-length description as well as a revolution in political economy.
Seastead this.