When I first saw an article about this on CNN (website), I couldn’t help but think it was something from a book I’d read long ago by Gerard K. O’Neil. It was called ‘The High Frontier’ and outlined the hows and especially the whys of doing things in space to benefit those still located on the surface of the Earth.

It seems the concept was not from that book, but from an article I’d read in Scientific American many years ago.

American scientist Peter Glaser introduced the idea of space solar power in 1968.

The concept is simple, the execution is the sticking point. It will cost enormous amounts of money.

Well, welcome to the 21st century. The amount of money needed to do this in the ’70s is trivial today, when a president can throw away that much money on a war of his choosing.  A trillion dollars was some real money back then, as money was then based on something real…gold. Now, money is a concept that mystifies everyone, because when we run out we seem to simply print some more.

The beaming of solar radiation from a large set of mirrors in geosynchronous orbit is nothing new, many science fiction projects had it as the preferred weapon of a mad scientist or organization of evil. But now that a few years have passed, and science fiction has a probability of becoming science fact, we need to look at a few things.

The very first might be why this country is not at the front of the line to develop such a system. With the space shuttles and NASA, we certainly have the means for delivery into space for  the construction of the project. We certainly have the need. The use of oil is killing our economy, and the use of coal to fire power production is choking the skies with noxious fumes and contributing thousands of tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each month. Not to mention what the effect does to change the way we live due to global warming and sea level rise.

The article on CNN goes on to say that the driving force behind this effort is India. The country needs vast amounts of power to keep up with the population explosion within its borders. If India produces this, it will allow them to do exactly that, but it will also allow them to move into the territory of another area and regimes, the Middle East. If India becomes the provider of massive electrical power, it will supplant the Middle East as the area of the world we are beholden to.

While this may be a pleasant change, it is far from ideal. If this country puts forth the effort and gets this type of energy production program going, we then become the masters of our own destiny once again, and perhaps regain enough self respect in so doing to change the way we conduct ourselves on the international scene.

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Quote of the day:
Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river. - Nikita Khrushchev

Technorati Tags: energy production - solar energy - space based energy - ‘The High Frontier’ - India - global economy - global warming - carbon-less energy production - NASA - space shuttle - construction in space

[tags] energy production, solar energy, space based energy, ‘The High Frontier’, India, global economy, global warming, carbon-less energy production, NASA, space shuttle, construction in space [/tags]