Nukes, Coal and the National Security Argument

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  Galileo2100

  09/11/09 | Report as spam

  RE: Nukes, Coal and the National Security Argument

  Space-Based Solar Power has been the solution waiting for the problem. 99% of the mass of solar power satellites can be built from lunar materials with a 97% cost savings vs. earth-launched materials (these numbers are from a 1980s study by the Space Studies Institute). NASA awaits a new space directive. DOE throws stimulus money at bandaid local and regional schemes. DOD wants secure energy delivery to forward bases. Congress wants to do something that will get them re-elected. We all want a secure bisophere. Do SBSP and stop beating around the bush!

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  Galileo2100

  09/12/09 | Report as spam

  RE: Nukes, Coal and the National Security Argument

  A US-led SBSP program provides the breakout path and the industrial rationale for human settlement of space. It puts private enterprise and partner nations to work on a common goal. It replaces the fossil fuel economy as those supplies ramp down over the course of this century. It accesses the sun 24/7. The sun is the permanent central fusion reactor that transmits to the earth 10,000 times the amount of energy being consumed in all forms. Most of that potential is wasted now due to atmospheric reflection along with local issues like day/night cycles, latitude, and weather.
  
  The moon presents to us one face at all times, a fortunate gift of circumstances for the placement of mining machinery which can be teleoperated from here with only a short time delay. Lunar regolith is rich in the constituent elements needed for building large structures. The moon is a cost-saver by 97% as compared to earth-launched materials because its 1/6 gravity allows for the simple propulsion of lunar soil by electromagnetic means rather than by expensive chemical rockets. Electromagnetic mass drivers, prototypes of which were built and successfully tested by the Space Studies Institute, can operate on solar-fed motors or by other cheap means. Such mass drivers can also be adapted to manipulate NEOs (asteroids) into a parking orbit for processing.
  
  The cis-lunar infrastructure can build not only sunsats for the benefit of the earth, but also shielded 1-g free-space habitats for workers and shielded 1-g interplanetary ships of exploration.
  Such ships can carry many people to the Mars system and to other destinations throughout the solar plane. They can travel by propulsion beamed from sunsats and enter into parking orbit around a target system for a period of years, where the crew can do science and reconnaissance by probes, robots, and humans.
  
  SBSP, introduced in the US over 40 years ago by Peter Glaser of AD Little Corp., has been favorably reviewed by NASA, DOE, and DOD. The program can provide large potential civil energy benefits. DOD finds important national security benefits in a 2007 study by the National Security Space Office. DOD can save big money and still pay over-market prices for secure delivery of energy to its fighters in forward locations. DOD can be a steady anchor customer for SBSP, as it has been for other industries. NSSO sees another benefit: SBSP can possibly help mitigate future energy wars due to dwindling undergound supplies in unfriendly territory.
  
  SBSP is being pursued by Japan, whether we participate or lead or not. JAXA and its partners are investing $21B in their first sunsat program to provide continuous base load power to Tokyo homes and businesses.
  
  SBSP is the patient game-changer which the federal government, investors, partner nations, and the rest of us can fully weigh as we decide what our future will look like. Fear is easy, but we don't have to resort to it. In a single action, we can choose to tap into all of the clean energy that we will need for our cities and transportation from a known quantity that has an estimated 4-billion year reliability, we can protect the biosphere and end climate change (at least as an issue), and we can start thinking about homesteading our solar plane in habitats that will support swing sets and intramural football, while taking advantage of the resources that await us off the surface of the earth.