Hearing has started, with an introduction from Chairman Cruz.
[Update a couple hours later]
NASA Administrator Nominee Jared Isaacman delivers a powerful and urgent opening message at his confirmation hearing:
“The last time I sat before you, I introduced myself, my qualifications, and the challenges and opportunities ahead. This time, I'm here with a message of… pic.twitter.com/DRsJFxt9ZY
The political gloves are off now. The left is being openly accused of promoting, deliberately or through idealistic ignorance, an deal of mass Third World migration into the West in exchange for electoral gain.
The replacement vote idea has gone from taboo in polite conversation…
It’s time for the Federal Government to pass the baton. California’s current GDP is approaching the GDP of the US in 1958 of a bit more than $2 trillion in current dollars. All NASA money should be distributed to States according to Congress’s favorite formula for use “To provide for research into problems of flight within and outside the [E]arth’s atmosphere, and for other purposes.” The States would then have a chance to further freedom as a laboratory of aeronautics and space policy just as they have been a laboratory of democracy.
…Soylent green. The miracle food of high-energy plankton gathered from the oceans of the world.
Soylent Green, 1973
The New York Times predicts that “if current fishing practices continue, the world’s major commercial stocks will collapse by 2048.” Their solution: lower energy content by eating sardines instead of feeding them to farm-raised salmon.
Mistaking energy content for price is a common mistake. Chew on this: organic lettuce is more expensive than a hamburger.
Wild fish will be eclipsed by farm-raised fish just as farm-raised beef has eclipsed free-range beef. Get used to it, perhaps by preparing to pay an extreme premium for free-range fish. Don’t expect the Chinese middle class to prefer wild cod once a year to farm-raised salmon once a month. Expect the coastal waters to be fenced into fish farms just as the Great Plains was fenced in during the 19th century.
It’s time to manage the pollution and reserve the wild fish parks upcurrent. This tide isn’t going to be turned back by pondering how the old days were until we’re eaten up.
On p.38 of this presentation, there’s a breakdown of the contributions to the cost of Space Solar Power (SSP). Not surprisingly, the installation is more than half of the cost and another 20% is manufacturing cost of the solar array.
If we extract out the solar generation from SSP and instead of an antenna, have a passive microwave reflector, we can potentially get the cost of the reflector down to less than $1 billion. Let’s say it’s a flat spinning <8 gram per square meter perforated mylar single-mission heavy payload to GEO straw man.
If we spend $1 billion on a ground-based microwave antenna and another $1 billion on a rectenna, we have a 1 GW system that can function as transmission for a 40-year straight-line cost of 1.5 cents/kwh which is about 30% of the cost of SSP per watt with the viable scale of capital needed much smaller. (If you need a VC return, the price must be closer to ten cents per kwh.) The reflector would not be at capacity so additional transmission can be achieved for 2/3 of that. 1 GW beaming for $3 billion would be a pretty satisfying proof of concept.
There's plenty of power on the ground to beam to space that's cheap so the proof of concept can be economically viable at this scale. At Hawaii's buy price of more than $0.30/kwh and New Mexico's sell price of less than $0.10/kwh it would pay for itself pretty fast.
Space power beaming would therefore be shown to be economically viable without the space generation and thus be valuable as a proof of concept for transmission alone.
Obama is still trading as a 2-1 favorite on Intrade after the debate and has even moved up a point since yesterday’s close to 66 cents (for a security that pays one dollar if he wins) as of press time. But Palin has earned her stripes. The “Palin to be withdrawn from the ticket” security has dropped from ten cents yesterday to 4 which is a penny less than “Biden to be withdrawn from the ticket”. My opinion? Palin’s the best of the four and should have been thrown to the media wolves so they could patronize her and have it backfire, so she could continue framing the debate, and so she could dominate the late-night talk shows and comedy shows. It’s not too late for her to make a circuit of the late night TV shows. Parody is a high form of praise. CNN reported that she did less than five interviews to Biden’s 100+. I don’t see McCain changing that now. I hope she runs in 2012 and if necessary 2016.
