On Oct 2, 10:13 am, Hop David wrote:
Damien Valentine wrote:
So I just got through O'Neill's "The High Frontier". There seem to be
some philosophical inconsistencies -- O'Neill claims to be promoting
individual freedoms and small-scale economies by building monolithic
power satellites and kilometer-scale orbiting cities, for instance --
but that's neither here nor there.

What really bothers me is that the entire scheme seems too much like
something out of a Rube Goldberg cartoon. "We'll build a base on the
Moon to deliver material to Earth orbit -- and we'll need at least
some mining ships scouting the asteroids for water and organics too --
which will be used to build a 3-million ton, 10,000-man space station
the size of Manhattan; then that will build 80,000-ton satellites, and
those will transmit solar power back to Earth." (He offers other
justifications for his "Islands" -- building space telescopes, for
example -- but it seems that we've achieved most of those goals
already without them.)

I suppose I want to start off by asking, "Would a Solar Power
Satellite work in the first place?" I know that the idea has gotten a
lot of flak recently; is it still viable or just hopeless?

Not sure what you mean by "flak". I've read valid criticism of the idea
and have also seen misinformed criticism.

There was this recent article:http://www.space.com/businesstechnol..._airforce.html

I believe they'd be a good long term investment. In the short term other
energy sources are more economical.

Hop- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Yes, "criticism" is what I ought to have said, but it was late and I
was tired.

Your article reads, "Rouge said that moving out on the proposed SBSP
effort would be the largest space venture yet, making the Apollo Moon
landing project 'look like just a small little program.' As a caveat,
however, he noted that the U.S. Department of Defense is cash-strapped
and is not the financial backer for such an endeavor." The US DoD
recieves some $300-$400 billion-with-a-B every year. I wonder if
anybody else can afford an SPS project, if they cannot.