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Pentagon Urges Space-Based Solar Power
eldavojohn writes "The Pentagon issued a report indicating that space-based solar power 'has the potential to help the United States stave off climate change and avoid future conflicts over oil by harnessing the Sun's power to provide an essentially inexhaustible supply of clean energy.' The report, from the Pentagon's National Security Space Office, calls for funding the development of space-based solar power culminating in 'a platform in geosynchronous orbit bigger than the international space station and capable of beaming 5-10 megawatts of power to a receiving station on the ground.' The Pentagon's interest in such an effort stems from the need to acquire energy on the battlefield, which today often comes at a painful premium."
No, no, no - this means that the USA will be less reiliant on fossil-fuels, such as the oil reserves in foreign countries, but they need a battelfield power source for the times when they are on active duty in such foreign countries overthrowing evil dictators and securing those vital supplies of oil upon which they are now less reliant.
It's a bit like needing to go buy a battery for your flashlight because the trip to the store that sells flashlight batteries is on an unlit street.
Simple!
AT&ROFLMAO
Yeah, nuclear plants, blah blah blah.
But in the end the Democrats and the Green lobby make sure we are not allowed to build any nuclear plants.
They also make sure we are not allowed to build any oil/gas refineries. The reason gas prices spike and keep going up are because we haven't built an oil refinery in this country in 31 years! Oh, who was in office 31 years ago? Carter?
From a 2001 article:
No new refineries have been built in the US in the past 25 years. And petroleum industry experts say anyone would have to be crazy to launch such an effort -- even though present refineries are running at nearly 100 % of capacity and local gasoline shortages are beginning to crop up.
Why does the industry appear to have built its last refinery?
Three reasons: Refineries are not particularly profitable, environmentalists fight planning and construction every step of the way and government red-tape makes the task all but impossible. The last refinery built in the US was in Garyville, Louisiana, and it started up in 1976.
Energy proposed building a refinery near Portsmouth, Virginia, in the late 1970s, environmental groups and local residents fought the plan -- and it took almost nine years of battles in court and before federal and state regulators before the company cancelled the project in 1984.
Industry officials estimate the cost of building a new refinery at between $ 2 bn and $ 4 bn -- at a time the industry must devote close to $ 20 bn over the next decade to reducing the sulphur content in gasoline and other fuels -- and approval could mean having to collect up to 800 different permits. As if those hurdles weren't enough, the industry's long-term rate of return on capital is just 5 % -- less than could be realized by simply buying US Treasury bonds.
"I'm sure that at some point in the last 20 years someone has considered building a new refinery," says James Halloran, an energy analyst with National City Corp. "But they quickly came to their senses," he adds.
The satellite will largely be collecting light that would have hit the earth already, so no, it won't be increasing the total energy input to the earth. Also, the total solar energy absorbed by the earth is on the order of 89 petawatts. Even if we harnessed a few hundred gigawatts in space, we wouldn't make an appreciable difference in the amount of energy earth absorbs. This isn't like terrestrial pollution, where we actually affect how much energy from the sun we absorb vs. radiate away.
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
Erm, no. The ratio of "a couple of Gigawatts" to "total solar energy input to Earth" is a number with a lot of zeros (seven or eight of them) after the decimal point. That is very much negligible compared to other activities that contribute to global warming (i.e. greenhouse gas emissions), where the anthropogenic contribution can be expressed in percent while actually getting a nonzero number in front of the decimal point.