Perpetuating Space Policy Myths

This kind of article drives me up the wall:

NASA Ames’ main goal now is to transfer technology for commercialization and the betterment of mankind… However, over the years, government and popular support for further space exploration has dwindled, despite its many benefits. So, I’ve made a list of the top 10 reasons we should continue to explore the outer depths, “to go where no man has gone before”.

It then goes on to list a number of earthly spin-offs, few if any of which have much to do with going “where no man has gone before, and at least one of which that isn’t related to space technology at all, other than it may have been helped by NASA on the aeronautics side. This irritates at least two of my pet peeves.

First is the notion that what NASA does or should be doing is “space exploration.” JPL does that, but it does it by sending robots where no robot has gone before, not man. The vast majority of NASA’s budget, and particularly the human spaceflight budget, has little-to-nothing to do with space exploration. Now, I don’t actually mind that this is the case, because I’m not that big on space exploration myself. I think it’s a worthwhile thing to do, but it’s a means to an end, not the end itself. But people who think that “exploration” is the be-all and end-all of what NASA does, or should be doing, are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Unfortunately, the public (and the media) has appropriated the word as a catch-all for orbital research, technology development, launching rockets (even for defense or commercial satellites), etc. — anything having to do with space. And as long as we misuse the language in such a way, we’ll continue to be unclear in our goals and our policy.

Second is the notion that spin-offs are a good argument for “space exploration,” even if space exploration actually results in the spin-offs (as already noted, they didn’t). The first reason is that they don’t generally come from “exploration,” even if they were a serendipitous result of some NASA expenditure. The other is that serendipity is by definition too unpredictable to use it as an argument for efficient technology development. The third is that it assumes that the technologies wouldn’t have been developed absent the space application. One of the favorite false myths of the spin-off crowd was that we wouldn’t have had large-scale-integration of semi-conductors in the absence of Apollo, which is simply nonsense. The technology was driven much more by military satellite requirements and miniaturization of warheads than by human spaceflight.

When I saw the headline, I expected to see the word “exploration” misused, because it seems as though it’s almost a professional requirement on the part of the media to do so, but I hoped to see some actual compelling reasons for continuing to fund spaceflight. For example: develop the ability to divert asteroids, utilize extraterrestrial resources beyond the silly example of “gold,” provide humanity backups in case things go sour on this one planet where we evolved, offer a new frontier for human freedom, even philosophical ones such as helping the planet to reproduce and spread the seed of life throughout the universe. But no, with the exception of orbital gold mines, it comes off as just more teflon and tang (both of which existed before NASA was formed).

17 thoughts on “Perpetuating Space Policy Myths”

  1. I was struck by the way the writer viewed our use of earth’s natural “resources.” At one point he wrote that we endeavor to squander our natural resources. This kind of thing drives me up a wall.

    First, “resources” don’t exist apart from human beings. Resources are the material human beings use to fulfill their needs and desires. But that supposes that we have figured out a use for them. For example, uranium compounds have been used to color glass yellow for 2,000 years. So it was a resource for a tiny part of humanity starting 2,000 yeasrs ago, and not a resource before then. It was only in the last century that it became useful – and thus a resource – to all of humanity in the form of a source of enery.

    The writer then broad brushes our use of resources as “squandering.” That’s a value judgment of all of the uses to which we put our resources, and implies not that resources have been put to use in a wasteful manner, but that their use at all is a waste.

    If we didn’t use them, though, they wouldn’t be resources. So we can either not have any resources, and just return to being hunter-gatherers, or we can use the material at hand to provide more than subsistence and be squandering resources.

    This is why the utterances of “broad-ranging thinkers” are pretty useless, in my book.

    1. The implication is that humanity if fundamentally evil.

      We could take a toxic, carcinogenic, teratogenic, mutagenic, fairly uniformly biohazardous material and convert it into plant food and water – and be the heavies in the story. And wait, we do.

  2. They lost me at “…the betterment of Mankind”. I’m an American taxpayer, I want my tax dollars to go to the betterment of the United States of America. If the transnational collective wants to be bettered, they can cough up the bucks.

    1. How’s that workin’ out for ya?

      Hint: no-one else’s taxes go to their betterment either. That’s the thing about taxes, they can never be used for good because they’re taken by force.

  3. For me the most interesting spinoff would be cheap lift. And that would be so easy to accomplish with an exploration program (and several alternatives like otherwise useless SSP) if it were run with real results rather than pork in mind.

  4. “Now, I don’t actually mind that this is the case, because I’m not that big on space exploration myself. I think it’s a worthwhile thing to do, but it’s a means to an end, not the end itself.”

    Ok, if exploration involve agency going where no one has gone before.
    Or NASA is about being the first to climb a MT Everest.
    But if you not misusing the word exploration, NASA doing exploration would be important- it’s what NASA is suppose to do.
    A problem with government is they are perverts. So you get things like NASA being a job program. It’s supported by the politicians because it is buying votes- as long as it’s buying votes, NASA could be doing anything.
    And what NASA is mostly doing is not exploration.
    NASA needs to find something in space which is valuable- something the citizens of the US need.
    What would be valuable would be being able to use the environment for more things than satellites are current using it for.
    Satellites are currently using the space environment as “high ground”. Putting stuff high in the sky, so satellites can relay communication signals and observe things from the height. And GPS is creating points which known which allows thing on Earth to know their location. Or various things you can do from “high ground”.

    Another “high ground” aspect of space, is one could put solar panels in space to generate electrical power, and beam this power to anywhere on Earth. The problem with this is it’s too expensive to ship solar panel from Earth into space for this purpose. But if it wasn’t too expensive, this
    could provide Earth with endless and abundant electrical energy.
    The high ground aspect of space permits one to get constant solar power [24 hr and 365 days a year]. The earth atmosphere with it’s clouds is not blocking this solar energy. And the not constant source of solar energy of solar and wind on Earth, make solar and wind on Earth impractical sources of any significant amount of total energy needs. And the nature of harvesting energy in space is it is global. Meaning potentially, anyone, anywhere on Earth could be shipped any amount, any time, the electrical power they wanted it.
    Getting energy in space and shipping anywhere on Earth is a world changing as the original invention, implementation, and distribution of electrical power [it radically changed and improve living on Earth].

    The path to harvesting solar energy in space, and beaming it to Earth surface, is to create a electrical market in space which first provides electrical needs in space.
    Competitive free markets are the only known mechanism of lowering costs. And one needs to dramatically lower the electrical costs in space, in order to get near the point where one can ship electrical power to Earth’s surface and do at a price which competitive in Earth’s electrical market.
    So you need an electrical market in space which is competitive and a free global market.

    And what is needed most in space is rocket fuel. And LH & LOX is rocket fuel, it is a means of storing electrical energy as chemical energy, and by using electricity it can be made from water.

    The space environment has far more water than Earth has water, despite Earth being a “water planet”.
    What NASA should exploring is where in space is the cheapest water which can be mined in space. With idea that by NASA exploring space to find cheapest minable water such discovery will enable a competitive and free market of water in space, which lead to lowering the price of water in space, and lowering the price electrical power in space.
    Which is opening and will open the space frontier [and leading providing Earth will all the electrical power it will need in the future].

    1. Really, this is nothing more than a fluff piece designed to generate advertising revenue for the website. That is why they have ten reasons. Ten reasons on ten pages equals ten times the advertising revenue than on one page.

      The best way to address is to ignore it. Not looking at the ten pages means no ten pages of advertising revenue which sends a far stronger message that rewarding them by generating revenue with advertising.

    2. And what is needed most in space is rocket fuel. And LH & LOX is rocket fuel, it is a means of storing electrical energy as chemical energy, and by using electricity it can be made from water.

      This is my personal preferred approach. Shipping water or ice is just that much easier. Photocells just aren’t the approach for industrial space power though. You need to be able to expand without billion-dollar fabs. Brayton-cycle turbines – all the peripheral bits are doable.

      1. “Photocells just aren’t the approach for industrial space power though. You need to be able to expand without billion-dollar fabs. Brayton-cycle turbines – all the peripheral bits are doable.”

        I see harvesting energy from space as something not possible in near term.
        It’s so far in the future, it’s hard to predict how it will be done.

        It seems to me making pure silicon in vacuum of the Moon has certain advantages.
        And where nanotechnology [or 3d printing] will be after decades of activity on Moon, Mars, or wherever, is even more challenging in terms of predicting- as I think it’s reasonable to assume there would an explosion technological innovation- similar computer/internet era.

        So I am looking at cost to ship to GEO.

        And cost to ship from Moon to GEO seems like it could be fundamentally cheaper than from Earth. Mining asteroids may be cheaper.
        But whatever is going to shipped from the moon, needs to made in the Moon- and that simply, require time. Just it required time to get a cheap smart phone- decades.
        Or to get to point of lunar rocket fuel on the Moon being $2000 per lb, which about 1/10 of existing costs could be achieved in less than 1 decade or year or two, from now. To again 1/10th the costs to $200 per lb, seems like it would take more than decade after it’s 2000 per lb.
        And take decade or more to 1/10th that price to $20 per lb.
        Or in terms of dollar amounts, probably require 1 trillion dollars or more of investment and more than 1 trillion dollar made in terms of profit, before getting to $20 lb.
        And/or I expect somewhere 10 billion dollar invested in first decade [in total], and next decade somewhere around 100 billion dollar or more [in total]. Or the exponential growth has limits.

        But at moment [within 10 years- and I doubt NASA will manage to get it’s act together [or some party other than NASA] within 10 years to do necessary exploration]. But at the moment, I expect PV panels to be used to begin the electrical market in space.
        So even if NASA did it’s job, and everyone else was doing everything possible, it seems at least 3 to 4 decades into the future, before electrical power from space could sold at the 5 – 10 cent range per kW hour on earth.

        So the Moon is means bootstrapping to solar system. What is harvesting the solar energy. Where it’s made [probably not on Earth].
        Is yet to be determined.
        But from the moon, one possibility is to make rather large PV panels- say 10 meters square [or 100 meter square] and ship them to GEO as single “already deployed piece”. Which is joined into 1 km square solar farms.
        It seems they would probably be designed for limited lifetime [less than 15 years] and their replacement will be cheaper, and perhaps have longer design life.

        Now once one has electrical power in space beaming to Earth. If 5 cents per kW hour on Earth, means same power in space is available at 1/2 this price {at the location of the solar panels one should be able to get power without the cost of transmission to Earth].
        Or if one is shipping electrical power to Earth, it’s cheaper in space.

        But before this, at prices 10 times more, or 100 times more, but one has availability of buying any quantity needed, you will see stuff like beamed power, so powering spacecraft and all kinds of stuff.
        So, ion engines having a lot of thrust [chemical rocket type thrust]
        So going to Mars in about couple weeks.
        Manned Europa missions. Lot’s of stuff.
        One could have Amazon shipping books [or ice cream] globally within an hour from space, before one is shipping electrical power to Earth.
        It’s long term goal.
        So additional reason why we want human settlements in space.
        So by NASA exploring the Moon and providing information about possible locations to mine lunar water. NASA will playing an important role towards lower the costs of getting into space. Lunar commercial rocket making 1/10th the current price to getting to the Moon. Any type of commercial activity involving space will lower the cost of launching rocket from earth and lower the cost doing anything in space. Lunar rocket fuel
        will make the costs of settling Mars cheaper. NASA exploration can make it cheaper for Mars to be settle in future. And NASA should explore Mars with the idea of discovery aspects about Mars that results in lowers these costs. NASA Mars exploration can lower lunar rocket fuel costs, human settle to Mars will lower lunar rocket fuel costs. Lunar rocket fuel will lower GEO satellite costs. GEO business will lower lunar rocket fuel costs.
        Around and around it goes, where stops no one knows.

        1. I mostly agree if you’re talking strictly space-power sats.

          But as a depot/base technology, you don’t care about the difficulty of getting the power back to Earth. You’re using it on site. Whether that’s for just maintaining cyrogenic fuels, manufacturing cryo-fuels from lifted water, or use at a base for any number of “energy required” reactions.

          Getting energy cheap in space, for the sake of use in space, is the difference between relying upon Earth fro every flipping bolt and having your own ore-to-metal-to-tool industry. Which really just is not that difficult for aluminum. Iff you have reasonably priced energy.

          1. “I mostly agree if you’re talking strictly space-power sats.

            But as a depot/base technology, you don’t care about the difficulty of getting the power back to Earth.”

            Depots can and should be started right away.

            But depots are needed before you can have market for rocket fuel in space. [which would be shipping from Earth, moon or wherever]
            And you need depots and/or market for rocket fuel space BEFORE you make rocket fuel in space [you need some kind of market to sell to and you need customers who have vehicles that can be re-fueled.
            And by having re-fueling as routine/operational one retires most of the perceived risk associated with re-fueling.

            Or depots aren’t just cans in space, there is technology involved, and this technology should brought operational
            use- rather than remain it’s experimental use.
            This isn’t inherently expensive, but it better to remove such hurdles- as making rocket fuel on the Moon is going to challenging without any unnecessary obstacles hindering any possible success.

            Of course this has little to do with how government programs work- as gaining needed capital, being on budget, and making profit is unrelated to government programs.

            As can be observed, government waste billions dollars going and getting no where.

            I see no realist path of a government doing much with space environment. I doubt a government agency could
            do all that what is routinely done by satellite market.
            And having something like actual human settlement on Moon, Mars, LEO, or wherever, is larger enterprise, than the current satellite market.
            Or socialism can’t open space frontier- one has to involve markets.
            So NASA should be seeking to encourage markets in space.

            Depots are one step towards mining and making rocket fuel in space, making rocket fuel in space is step towards making electrical market in space, and electrical market in space, is needed step to get to point making electrical power in space and selling this electrical power on
            Earth.

            To demonstrate it, let’s reverse the process. If you make a power satellite in orbit to provide electrical power to Earth, if make the electrical power cheap enough to sell to earth say at 50 cent a kilowatt hour. One would done something amazing and/or impossible, but it’s expensive electrical power on Earth.
            But in space, 50 cent per kW hour is incredibly cheap. You would get a limited amount of demand for it, anyone wanting electrical power for any purpose in space would like the opportunity to buy in space for same price as the electrical power is sold on earth.
            And it costs more for the SPS to beam it to earth.

            One could say making a power satellite to beam power to Earth, might start a market for electrical market in space, but
            I would say it’s accidentally colliding with reality, rather doing something resembling a plan.
            Assuming some billions of dollars government program would allow parties operating in space to access such generated power. And assuming it would ever be done at all.
            And if it was done at all, the chances are the generated power would cost more than is routinely available to any party shipping solar panels in space.
            If government had access to launch vehicle cheaper than any available from private sector, it could different, but the reality is it’s the opposite and they never have had nor ever will have such a launch vehicle.

            “Getting energy cheap in space, for the sake of use in space, is the difference between relying upon Earth fro every flipping bolt and having your own ore-to-metal-to-tool industry. Which really just is not that difficult for aluminum. Iff you have reasonably priced energy.”

            Right. [and more just price, but the quantity you need when you need it. And if making rocket fuel is “on the grid” that is easier to do- assuming making rocket fuel pays lower price for unit of electrical energy and others less constant users have higher priority, and pay a bit more].

            So, cheaper energy which available in space will enable all kinds of commercial activity. And such cheaper energy in space can be 10 or 100 times the price of electrical energy in Earth.

            Having access to any quantity of electrical power one needs in space is better condition *even* at current high costs of electrical power in space, and being at 1/10th or 1/100th this cost and being accessible for use in any quantity and time one needs it, makes much more economical to do anything in space.
            And that would be a market of electrical energy in space.

            Markets tend to provides electrical power to customers who are charged for the energy they use, rather than some sort of fixed rate which is charged because they could choose use more energy and/or have some arbitrary limit to how much they can use.

    3. Another aspect about space electrical power generation, related to earth
      “green energy solutions” of solar and wind is that terrestrial wind and solar require large areas of the Earth surface. Plus we mostly live in cities [and cities normally aren’t in good regions to create solar and wind energy.
      So to use terrestrial solar and wind to generate a small fraction of energy needs requires vast surface areas. If you were to trying to generate 5% or more of the world energy using terrestrial solar and wind
      you would “consume” large surface areas.

      To keep it simple, let’s be generous and say one can get 2 kW hours of sunlight per day per square meter on average [in space it is 32 kW hours per day].
      Then generously assume one can convert 30% into electrical {solar thermal btw, is cheaper and converts 60% of solar energy- and whereas solar thermal is something close to be an alternative source of making hot water and perhaps home heating- but I am talking about PV panel- which what the governments of this world have wasted hundreds of billions dollars [and hundreds of billions dollars on wind energy foolishness] due to their corruption and sheer stupidity.}
      Anyhow, 2 Kw per day with 30% efficiency, and we to ignore or include
      all the “costs” with managing the distribution of this energy by using the simple metric of 2 Kw per day [or the solar capital of the world, Germany is getting less than 2 Kw per day but in certain circumstances one could twice, perhaps 3 times as good as 2 Kw per day- as in might be possible {maybe}. So 2 times .3 is .6 kW per “an averaged” 1 square meter of surface.
      Times 365 days: 219 kilowatt hours per square meter per year of electrical power.
      Current global electrical use [which different than capacity] so:
      “Electricity – consumption: 19.09 trillion kWh (2008 est.) ”
      So 5% is 1 trillion kWh. And divided by 219 is about 4566 square km- so only 67.5 km square.
      It seems to be a fairly insignificant area compared to Earth’s 511 million square km of surface area.
      But urban areas are about 1 % of land area or about 1 million square kilometers.
      http://www.newgeography.com/content/001689-how-much-world-covered-cities.
      One could say that roads and transport systems consume about about 50% of urban area, and above area for solar panels indicates only about 5%.
      http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/12/we-are-25-looking-at-street-area.html
      A problem is you need roads and solar panel are not replacement for roads, and the existence of area used for solar panels would tend to increase the amount of roads needed [unless we you want to put tunnels under solar areas]. One could argue that solar panels could be put on roof tops and used to cover areas [such roads] which are already being used- and thereby use no additional land area.
      But there are numerous fundamental problems with this.

      One could ask, why aren’t all roads put underground- half of cities real estate could be saved?
      [I am all for it, and could be done- in terms of engineering it. But my point
      is why isn’t done.]
      There are reasons why people don’t all use solar panels. And the motivation of using solar panels generally because of subsidies- rather than a good way generate electricity.
      Basically we get electrical power cheap and with little effort for the consumers.
      One could collect water in cisterns, but most don’t because getting water piped to your house is cheaper and requires little maintenance and effort involved.
      Now some people desire to be more “self sufficient” but it’s easily seen that this isn’t popular, nor because it’s not popular, does not mean most people doing the wrong thing. Or that evil electrical companies are source of “the problem”.
      If want to have garden, make your own clothes from a herd of sheep, have system which makes independent, this is all fine- but the idea you have force everyone to do this “to save the world” is, shall we say a bit religious [and not in a good way].
      Or solar energy doesn’t get you constant source of power, and if everyone had solar panels on their roof [without a means of storing the energy- tons of batteries over a lifetime] means you will require a system to distribute power.
      And the biggest cost of any of electrical power you get on the grid is the cost of a company to distribute the electrical power. Or if you paying 10 cent per kilowatt hour, probably half of the 10 cents is due to the cost of distributing the cost, rather than cost to make to power at it’s power source.
      Or if some entity is bring electrical power to your door, here idea, let them provide all your electrical needs, as it’s cheaper.
      Otherwise it’s like ordering pizza, and expecting a discount because you going to add the cheese [or tomato sauce or dead fish].

      Or in free market, and if lots of people had solar panels [which were workable] there would be a business to maintain the solar panels [so these customers doesn’t need to be “self sufficient”- or they could have better things to do with their time- like play video games or something].

      So point is that in free society, and one in which one is depending on solar energy, business will centralize solar energy production, because that is cheaper to ship electrical power on wire, rather than do “house calls” scattered all over the city.
      Which means you would be consuming more urban area with stuff which isn’t particularly attractive look at with one more thing to drive around.

      So not a good idea to try to make renewable energy, provide 5% or more of electrical needs and gets to point of being very oppressive and stupid, if one trying for 20% or more of electrical needs. Plus global electrical needs are probably going to rise in the future.

      And the 2 kw per day per square meter is very generous assumption.

      And in space with it’s 32 kW per day, if [due losses of transmission and whatever] it was only 8 kW per square meter, that fact of it being constant more doubles it’s usefulness/value compared to 6 hours a day or whenever wind is blowing. And of course there is no shortage of space in space- 100% or 1000% of electrical needs on earth could provided from space environment. And have zero “environment concerns” unless by looking thru a telescope you could find them in space environment is regarded as problem.

    4. Another aspect about space electrical power generation, related to earth
      “green energy solutions” of solar and wind is that terrestrial wind and solar require large areas of the Earth surface. Plus we mostly live in cities [and cities normally aren’t in good regions to create solar and wind energy.
      So to use terrestrial solar and wind to generate a small fraction of energy needs requires vast surface areas. If you were to trying to generate 5% or more of the world energy using terrestrial solar and wind
      you would “consume” large surface areas.

      To keep it simple, let’s be generous and say one can get 2 kW hours of sunlight per day per square meter on average [in space it is 32 kW hours per day].
      Then generously assume one can convert 30% into electrical {solar thermal btw, is cheaper and converts 60% of solar energy- and whereas solar thermal is something close to be an alternative source of making hot water and perhaps home heating- but I am talking about PV panel- which what the governments of this world have wasted hundreds of billions dollars [and hundreds of billions dollars on wind energy foolishness] due to their corruption and sheer stupidity.}
      Anyhow, 2 Kw per day with 30% efficiency, and we to ignore or include
      all the “costs” with managing the distribution of this energy by using the simple metric of 2 Kw per day [or the solar capital of the world, Germany is getting less than 2 Kw per day but in certain circumstances one could twice, perhaps 3 times as good as 2 Kw per day- as in might be possible {maybe}. So 2 times .3 is .6 kW per “an averaged” 1 square meter of surface.
      Times 365 days: 219 kilowatt hours per square meter per year of electrical power.
      Current global electrical use [which different than capacity] so:
      “Electricity – consumption: 19.09 trillion kWh (2008 est.) ”
      So 5% is 1 trillion kWh. And divided by 219 is about 4566 square km- so only 67.5 km square.
      It seems to be a fairly insignificant area compared to Earth’s 511 million square km of surface area.
      But urban areas are about 1 % of land area or about 1 million square kilometers.
      http://www.newgeography.com/content/001689-how-much-world-covered-cities.
      One could say that roads and transport systems consume about about 50% of urban area, and above area for solar panels indicates only about 5%.
      http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/12/we-are-25-looking-at-street-area.html
      A problem is you need roads and solar panel are not replacement for roads, and the existence of area used for solar panels would tend to increase the amount of roads needed [unless we you want to put tunnels under solar areas]. One could argue that solar panels could be put on roof tops and used to cover areas [such roads] which are already being used- and thereby use no additional land area.
      But there are numerous fundamental problems with this.

      One could ask, why aren’t all roads put underground- half of cities real estate could be saved?
      [I am all for it, and could be done- in terms of engineering it. But my point
      is why isn’t done.]
      There are reasons why people don’t all use solar panels. And the motivation of using solar panels generally because of subsidies- rather than a good way generate electricity.
      Basically we get electrical power cheap and with little effort for the consumers.
      One could collect water in cisterns, but most don’t because getting water piped to your house is cheaper and requires little maintenance and effort involved.
      Now some people desire to be more “self sufficient” but it’s easily seen that this isn’t popular, nor because it’s not popular, does not mean most people doing the wrong thing. Or that evil electrical companies are source of “the problem”.
      If want to have garden, make your own clothes from a herd of sheep, have system which makes independent, this is all fine- but the idea you have force everyone to do this “to save the world” is, shall we say a bit religious [and not in a good way].
      Or solar energy doesn’t get you constant source of power, and if everyone had solar panels on their roof [without a means of storing the energy- tons of batteries over a lifetime] means you will require a system to distribute power.
      And the biggest cost of any of electrical power you get on the grid is the cost of a company to distribute the electrical power. Or if you paying 10 cent per kilowatt hour, probably half of the 10 cents is due to the cost of distributing the cost, rather than cost to make to power at it’s power source.
      Or if some entity is bring electrical power to your door, here idea, let them provide all your electrical needs, as it’s cheaper.
      Otherwise it’s like ordering pizza, and expecting a discount because you going to add the cheese [or tomato sauce or dead fish].

      Or in free market, and if lots of people had solar panels [which were workable] there would be a business to maintain the solar panels [so these customers doesn’t need to be “self sufficient”- or they could have better things to do with their time- like play video games or something].

      So point is that in free society, and one in which one is depending on solar energy, business will centralize solar energy production, because that is cheaper to ship electrical power on wire, rather than do “house calls” scattered all over the city.
      Which means you would be consuming more urban area with stuff which isn’t particularly attractive look at with one more thing to drive around.

      So not a good idea to try to make renewable energy, provide 5% or more of electrical needs and gets to point of being very oppressive and stupid, if one trying for 20% or more of electrical needs. Plus global electrical needs are probably going to rise in the future.

      And the 2 kw per day per square meter is very generous assumption.

      And in space with it’s 32 kW per day, if [due losses of transmission and whatever] it was only 8 kW per square meter, that fact of it being constant more doubles it’s usefulness/value compared to 6 hours a day or whenever wind is blowing. And of course there is no shortage of space in space- 100% or 1000% of electrical needs on earth could provided from space environment. And have zero “environment concerns” unless by looking thru a telescope you could find them in space environment is regarded as problem.

      [didn’t post, try again]

  5. What annoys me is this cheerful assurance that NASA space infrastructure will be made available for commercial development. Yet this is precisely what NASA has been trying to do for 30 years and failing to do, in the form of developing a reusable shuttle to “routinize” (Nixon’s word) access to space and open up new applications in orbit.

    Stephen
    Oxford, UK

  6. If you think this is Derp Rand, don’t go over to Ace of Spades and read the Elon Musk Bash post.

    Some serious shark-jumping over there going on right now.

    1. I missed that thread this afternoon, but I have added a couple of comments this evening.

      Everybody, go over there and put ’em some f’n knowledge.

    2. I almost never wade into a comment thread at Ace because everything gets buried soooo quickly under hundreds of other, unrelated, snarky comments, and there’s no nesting.

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