"Sylvia Else" wrote in message
...
jonathan wrote:


I fear I'm not succeeding in making my point properly. Nothing new there.


I understand your point of view. It's a bit like a debate between
the single "Big Fix" vs. a wide diversity of smaller fixes. And I
agree that your preference is far more practical and market friendly.
But those kinds of solutions will take care of themselves
in the normal course of a free market. So I don't see it as
an either an .Either/Or situation. I assume your view will happen.

The question is, will that be enough?

Or is the Big (long term) Fix also needed ? The big fix is needed
in this case because market forces tend to be reactionary and
short term in perspective.

While the problems of climate change, fossil fuel shortages
and increased coal burning are twenty or thirty years in the
future. I'm a day trader as a second job, and markets are
very good at anticipating, but not for that far out. They look
a couple of years out, farther and no one reasonably can
predict outcomes. A market approach will adapt, but not
far enough in advance for the problems we face. By the time
the markets reacts, it'll be TOO LATE with climate change
and fossil fuels.

And remember, market panics are all alike. Just like the stock
market crash last year, a stressed system takes but a good rumor
for confidence to be lost. And overnight 'The Panic' happens.
They can come out of nowhere and POOF...goes stock prices
cut in half overnight. With the oil crash, it'll be POOF goes
half the world's standard of living overnight, and with it
the industrialized world for a generation or two.

Unless we maintain a sufficient excess in capacity to maintain
confidence. As Saudia Arabia has served to stabilize the oil
market by being such a large player. Soon, the oil market will
lose that kind of stabilizing excess, and then almost anything
can cause a panic, or hoarding.

We need a NEW energy source, a new large player capable
of cushioning whatever short term disturbances that might
come along. We won't have that in twenty years or so
unless we go out and start building it right now.

It doesn't have to be cheap by today's standards.

It has to be perceived by the market as something that is credible
and will exist in the near future. We need that kind of confidence
and soon. Or any minor disturbance will cause one tripling of
oil prices after another, preventing action, until it finally crashes.


If a point is reached, or has been reached, at which the use of fossil fuels,
or the increased use thereof, is not acceptable because of the effects on the
environment, and/or climate, then an alternative needs to be found.

But that doesn't mean that because space based solar power is an alternative,
that it's what must be used.


What we really need is low cost to orbit, so we have the possibility
of using space as a solution to any future problems. So any NASA goal
should have low cost to orbit as the very first and most important
prerequisite. I really don't care what comes after that, except that is
somehow connects to providing an abundant clean energy source for
the future.



Land based solar power is also an alternative.

And the price of land does what over time?
Not a favorable trend for more than short term
or limited applications.


Fusion power is also possibly an alternative, but it's twenty five years away,
and always has been.

Fusion is a monstrous pipe-dream. Makes nuclear look cheap and easy
by comparison.



But of the acceptable alternatives, you want to use the cheapest. To do
otherwise involves throwing money away. I don't see how space based solar
power can be cheaper than land based solar power, even after you've address
the particular issues that the latter has.


There's been virtually no money spent on SSP research. I've read NASA
papers suggesting that laser transmission is probably not far off, with
receiving rectennas as small as a meter...the size of a car (hint).

Given the world that satellite communication has given us, just
imagine for a moment what the world could become if our energy
fell from the sky, like a cell phone signal does today.

Anywhere, to anyone on the planet. Clean and endless energy.
Dial it up!

That kind of future is out there just waiting to be created.
If we want it bad enough, it can happen.


Jonathan




Sylvia.