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Some in the environmental community advocate dramatically reducing all forms of energy use. But this poses a moral dilemma. Boosting the quality of life in undeveloped and developing nations will require more energy, not less. We believe the solution is to lift the resource burden off the earth. Literally.
How? Bring space to life by bringing life to space. Use space solar power to establish an ecology beyond earth’s atmosphere, an exoskeleton for the planet and for humanity. Dr. Gerard O’Neill at Princeton University in 1969 conceived of The O’Neill Colony, a cylinder of glass and steel assembled in space from lunar rock and from the minerals of asteroids, a cylinder of massive size, a cylinder that houses gardens, farms, parks, and 30,000 human beings. An O’Neill Colony could bring ecosystems to environments that have never before been exposed to life. A single asteroid has between one and seventeen trillion dollars worth of resources. Those resources can be used to give life new niches in the heavens. By offering biomass new challenges, we can increase bio-diversity in ways that life has never known.
LEFT OUT – THE DISCUSSION ON HOW REDUCING POPULATION GROWTH WOULD PROTECT HABITAT.
The media have ignored this story and so public have seldom been let in on this energy secret. The National Space Society (NSS), North America’s largest space advocacy group, has strongly endorsed space solar power. In 1997, Mark Hopkins, Chairman of the Executive Committee for the National Space Society, scored a coup. With help from Buzz Aldrin and Edgar Mitchell (the sixth astronaut on the moon), he convinced a legendary scientist/publicist to found the Space Development Steering Committee. Bloom mapped out a publicity campaign for space solar power. But we have never had the budget to implement it.
Meanwhile Bloom has put together a National Space Society Initiative with the former president of India—Dr. A.P.J. Kalam, one of the founders of India’s space program--to make space solar power a joint Indian-American project. What’s more, the on-line professional Journal for Space Communication ran an entire issue on space solar power in 2009. The missing element is not technology or expertise, it’s a budget for publicity.
The construction and operation of Space Solar Power satellites is well understood; the concept was extensively studied for 35 years by many researchers around the globe since its invention by Dr. Peter Glaser. There are no significant unknown problems that block construction of functioning SSP units themselves. Large solar arrays have successfully powered satellites for decades. By the time such satellites are built, high efficiency, thin film solar material should exist. Implementation has been blocked by the continuing high cost of space launch. With sufficiently low cost launch services, the satellites can be built in sections on the ground by mass production and launched as modules which will automatically dock to a previously launched “spine” with power cables and transmitting antenna and then deploy the collectors. Depending on efficiencies at the time of construction, either microwave or laser frequencies would be used to transmit the power to the ground. The bulk (about 80%) of solar heat striking the solar panels in Geosynchronous orbit would radiate into space, while mostly usable power is sent to the ground on an essentially 24/7 basis. It would be received by either rectifying antennas (rectennas) for a microwave beam or photovoltaic cells for a laser beam. Only a few percent of power is lost as heat at the ground receiver.
Our group does not advocate attempting to implement Space Solar until launch costs are reduced. We do advocate reducing launch costs by privatization of launch services, and limited in-orbit technical demonstrations to prove out all required equipment. Space Solar can replace a large portion (but not all) of all existing energy sources, since depending on a single global energy source is too risky. Therefore multiple other clean energy sources need to be created, especially until a large Space Solar energy system can be built.
to develop new angles on space solar power weekly, to take those angles to key press people like Maggie Fox, science correspondent for Reuters, Malcolm Ritter, science correspondent for AP, James Gorman, editor of the science section at the New York Times, to the Washington Post, NPR, PBS, CNN, Fox-TV, and USA Today. Raise public awareness of space solar power via the media. And through public fascination, put space solar power on the priority list of power brokers and policy makers. Put it on the list of energy sources we need for the human future along with solar, wind, and geothermal.
Meanwhile, we and those affiliated with us have set up conventions and symposia on space solar power in China, Washington, Colorado, Toronto, Seattle, Japan??, France??, and Chicago. Those hosting the conferences have included the Foundation for the Future, the Canadian Space Agency??, the China Renewable Energy Association, The US Air Force Academy, the Counsel for Strategic and International Studies, and the International Astronautical Congress. Our next major convention focusing on space solar power is the National Space Society’s International Space Development Conference, in Huntsville, Alabama, May 18-22, 2011. At the heart of this gathering will be our joint space solar power initiative with India’s former president, Dr. A.P.J. Kalam. Again, the only missing element is a dedicated publicity team.
Ground Based Solar Power, Wind Power, and biofuels are the three main green alternatives to Space Solar. But they are not competitors. A conference on the next thousand years of energy held at Seattle’s Foundation for the Future in 2007 and involving representatives from England (Sir Crispin Tickell, Director of the Policy Foresight Programme at the 21st Century School, Oxford University), Switzerland (Gustav Grob, President of the International Clean Energy Consortium), the United States (George Muller, one of the men who ran the Apollo Program), Italy, and Canada concluded that we will need ALL of these energy alternatives. But the pr efforts for solar and wind began over 30 years ago. Publicity savvy organizations like Greenpeace ?? and the Sierra Club?? have put their media machinery to work on these energy alternatives. And the publicity for biofuels has been financed and led by one of Silicon Valley’s most successful venture capitalists, Vinod Khosla.
But solar power harvested in space--space solar power--has been a public relations orphan. NASA is afraid space solar power will take money away from core NASA programs and sees space solar power as the province of the Energy Department. The Energy Department sees space solar power as a NASA matter. And the major aerospace contractors are afraid that space solar power will deflect money from their existing government contracts. So the only nearly infinite, clean, green, energy source has had no funded pr team.
Most media people have never heard of space solar power. Few realize space solar power’s vast ability to change the global warming picture. Even fewer realize its potential for lifting the poor and the oppressed. Some even believe that space solar power satellites can be used as weapons. They don’t understand that space solar power is transmitted to Earth using harmless radio waves like those received by your cell phone.
Few mainstream journalists realize what developing a space economy will do for the Earth. It will accomplish what the opening of the Americas did for the citizenry of Europe: it wiped away the earth-centered view of the cosmos, changed our philosophies, and led to modern science. It will do something radically new in the history of man’s migrations: opening a frontier in which both life and humanity can advance without displacing indigenous peoples and without threatening indigenous species. It will upgrade the quality of life in ways that are today beyond our imagining.
Current launch costs are too high for Space Solar to be practical. Successfully focusing the attention of world leaders on the urgent need to reduce those costs to enable Space Solar could also enable the space economy.
In fact, we have been harvesting solar energy in space and transmitting it to earth since 1962 when the first commercial satellite, Telstar, was launched. Telstar looked like a beach ball encrusted with medallions: panels that harvested solar-power —photovoltaics. Today harvesting solar power in space and transmitting it to earth via electromagnetic wave is a quarter of a trillion dollar industry. You tap solar power harvested in space whenever you use GPS or turn on satellite radio or TV.