...IT'S ALIVE....PENTAGON to Study Space Solar Power Program.

On Wed, 2 May 2007 14:29:03 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Henry Spencer) made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

In article ,
Fred J. McCall wrote:
If it was 'all about oil' we would have invaded Canada; we get more
oil from them than from anywhere else, it's a lot closer, and the
women are probably friendlier.

Maybe you were just afraid to, after what happened the last couple of
times that was tried. :-) :-) :-)

(For any newcomer who doesn't know what I'm alluding to: the US has twice
invaded Canada with the intention of conquering it, in 1775 and 1812, and
both attempts were complete disasters, humiliating total defeats. Each
time the balance of forces favored the invaders, but unpreparedness, inept
leadership, and overconfidence swung the outcome the other way. The
balance of forces has gotten even more lopsided since 1812, but whether
US preparedness and leadership have improved is less clear. :-))

Apparently not, based on Iraq, but we'd probably win anyway. I
somehow don't see Canadians as being very dedicated suicide bombers.
;-)

Actually, if we really wanted to conquer a close country for oil,
Venezuela seems like a more likely candidate. And with not only
friendly, but extremely beautiful women.

By the way, Henry, do you have a link to your previous debunking of
Heinlein's "bombard the earth from the moon" notion from TMIAHM? I
was googling for it and couldn't come up with anything. The subject
came up on my blog.

On Wed, 02 May 2007 15:47:55 GMT, in a place far, far away,
h (Rand Simberg) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Actually, if we really wanted to conquer a close country for oil,
Venezuela seems like a more likely candidate. And with not only
friendly, but extremely beautiful women.

Not, of course, to disparage in any way the pulchritudinous qualities
of the lasses of the Great White North.

On May 2, 4:37 am, (Rand Simberg) wrote:
On 1 May 2007 20:20:03 -0700, in a place far, far away, Michael Turner
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as
to indicate that:

(Not to
mention that higher prices/bbl tend to mean higher profits for oil
majors.)

There's no intrinsic reason that this would be the case.

By which you mean to say that it's not true, or that it's not a
reliable guide to future prices? If you think it's not true, it can
only mean you're not paying attention. If you think that tendency has
no intrinsic predictive power, I'll listen to someone with a PhD in
economics with specialization in oil markets before I'll listen to
you.

-michael turner

On May 2, 4:39 am, (Rand Simberg) wrote:
On 1 May 2007 20:03:58 -0700, in a place far, far away, Michael Turner
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as
to indicate that:

And let's face it: the Bush administration was and is packed with
people who had long advocated and supported active "regime change" in
Iraq, and who are well-connected with the American oil industry, AND
who know Saudi Arabia and its social problems quite well. So given a
pretext that could be easily trumped up, so why *wouldn't* they invade
Iraq with access to oil being a major (though downplayed/denied) part
of the agenda if they thought they could get away with it?

Because all they had to do to get access to the oil was lift the
sanctions.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

As if it were all about markets, rather than geopolitics. An
extraordinarily simplistic view.

Exactly. So it wasn't about giving the majors access to the oil. It
was about taking away Saddam's access from the oil.

snip

Saying that invading Iraq was about any one single thing like taking
Saddam's oil access away is as ridiculous as saying we invaded Iraq
for its cheap oil. The real question is: how big a factor was
securing long-term oil supplies in the Middle East as a whole, in the
face of a suddenly sharpened argument that Islamic revolution was
impending in major reserve nations like Saudi Arabia? I'd say it was
pretty big.

Even G.W. Bush has tried to sell staying in Iraq with the argument
that we can't afford to leave Iraq's oil controlled by Al Qaeda
(ridiculous, of course, given what a relatively minor player Al Qaeda
is in Iraq's civil conflict; but he did pretty well for a while making
ridiculous cases, so it's in character.) And Colin Powell, in a radio
interview, said that the invasion was about getting a friendly oil-
supplier nation in the Middle East (subtly implying that Saudi Arabia
might, in some post-Saud scenario, be quite a bit less than
friendly.) Powell of course backpedaled in the same interview, saying
that it was really about liberating Iraqis -- conflating "friendly" in
the diplomatic sense with "free, democratic, peaceful". The strident
denials of the oil motive made by other figures in this administration
aren't very interesting to me -- after all, in politics, you generally
say what's convenient and -- if that involves lying -- what you can
get away with. Occasionally, it even coincides with the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But that's usually just a
lucky coincidence. Or an unlucky coincidence, if telling the truth
amounts to accidentally shooting yourself in the foot.

-michael turner
http://www.transcendentalbloviation.blogspot.com

h (Rand Simberg) wrote:

:On 1 May 2007 20:20:03 -0700, in a place far, far away, Michael Turner
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as
:to indicate that:
:
:(Not to
:mention that higher prices/bbl tend to mean higher profits for oil
:majors.)
:
:There's no intrinsic reason that this would be the case.

It tends to be the case, though. What's curious is why people think
there's something wrong with this.

What the oil companies typically do is aim at a specific percentage
return. If oil is $20/barrel and I aim for 5% return (about what the
oil industry targets, I think), then my profit is $1/barrel. If the
price doubles, so does the AMOUNT (but not the percentage) of profit.

Most retail businesses work approximately the same way.

--
"Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute."
-- Charles Pinckney

On 2 May 2007 09:09:34 -0700, in a place far, far away, Michael Turner
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as
to indicate that:

On May 2, 4:37 am, (Rand Simberg) wrote:
On 1 May 2007 20:20:03 -0700, in a place far, far away, Michael Turner
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as
to indicate that:

(Not to
mention that higher prices/bbl tend to mean higher profits for oil
majors.)

There's no intrinsic reason that this would be the case.

By which you mean to say that it's not true, or that it's not a
reliable guide to future prices?

I don't know whether it's true or not, but it's certainly not a
reliable guide to future prices.

If you think it's not true, it can only mean you're not paying attention.

Let's just say I'm a skeptic.

On 2 May 2007 09:27:25 -0700, in a place far, far away, Michael Turner
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as
to indicate that:

On May 2, 4:39 am, (Rand Simberg) wrote:
On 1 May 2007 20:03:58 -0700, in a place far, far away, Michael Turner
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as
to indicate that:

And let's face it: the Bush administration was and is packed with
people who had long advocated and supported active "regime change" in
Iraq, and who are well-connected with the American oil industry, AND
who know Saudi Arabia and its social problems quite well. So given a
pretext that could be easily trumped up, so why *wouldn't* they invade
Iraq with access to oil being a major (though downplayed/denied) part
of the agenda if they thought they could get away with it?

Because all they had to do to get access to the oil was lift the
sanctions.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

As if it were all about markets, rather than geopolitics. An
extraordinarily simplistic view.

Exactly. So it wasn't about giving the majors access to the oil. It
was about taking away Saddam's access from the oil.

snip

Saying that invading Iraq was about any one single thing like taking
Saddam's oil access away is as ridiculous as saying we invaded Iraq
for its cheap oil.

Since I didn't say that, I'm not sure what your point is. I was only
discussing the factor that had to do with oil. I'm not sure how you
missed this, since you had already criticized me for saying that oil
was a minor factor.

In article ,
Rand Simberg wrote:
By the way, Henry, do you have a link to your previous debunking of
Heinlein's "bombard the earth from the moon" notion from TMIAHM? I
was googling for it and couldn't come up with anything. The subject
came up on my blog.

The subject has come up more than once, and I never saved a complete set
of my postings on it... However, I probably have a better idea of what
to search for. :-) Try these, especially the second (noting that they're
long threads and you may have to follow links forward or backward to see
all the discussion):

http://groups.google.com/group/sci.space.policy/browse_thread/thread/7484bf340481b254/a8f684391326b51e?lnk=st&q=Heinlein+Spencer+catapul t+lunar&rnum=1#a8f684391326b51e

http://groups.google.com/group/sci.space.tech/browse_thread/thread/83efaeb02c19eefd/51d13cfa5d703591?lnk=st&q=Heinlein+Spencer+catapul t+lunar&rnum=2#51d13cfa5d703591

(Apologies for the long URLs.)
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

On Wed, 2 May 2007 20:17:37 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Henry Spencer) made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

In article ,
Rand Simberg wrote:
By the way, Henry, do you have a link to your previous debunking of
Heinlein's "bombard the earth from the moon" notion from TMIAHM? I
was googling for it and couldn't come up with anything. The subject
came up on my blog.

The subject has come up more than once, and I never saved a complete set
of my postings on it... However, I probably have a better idea of what
to search for. :-) Try these, especially the second (noting that they're
long threads and you may have to follow links forward or backward to see
all the discussion):

Thanks, Henry, can't expect any more than that.

"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Fred J. McCall wrote:
The problem is that SPS energy is *NOT* particularly cheap. If it was
space would already be full of SPS generating and transmitting
stations.

Not exactly: the problem is that the *first* powersat is not particularly
cheap. The 50th could be the cheapest energy source around, depending on
what assumptions you make -- analyses claiming that powersat energy is
excessively expensive tend to make stupid assumptions like launching all
materials from Earth.


I've seen studies that indicate current SSP technology might already
be competitive with peak rates. And more importantly, SSP designed
to do that could be a much smaller and cheaper design. Allowing an
initial test system to be affordable to build and competitive at the
same time. And all this is assuming a large research program
wouldn't make plenty of breakthroughs along the way.



Reinventing the Solar Power Satellite
NASA/TM—2004-212743
Geoffrey A. Landis
Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio
http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/reports/20...004-212743.pdf

"The selling price of electrical power varies with time. The economic
viability of space solar power is maximum if the power can be sold
at peak power rates, instead of baseline rate."

Conclusion

"A space solar power generation system can be designed to work
in synergy with ground solar power. Previous Space Solar Power
architectures were designed to deliver 24-hour power; this design
constraint was relaxed. A non-tracking, integrated solar/microwave
Space Power system can be configured to match peak power demand.
The minimum system size decreases in power by:
• factor of 8 (face-on solar array)
• factor of 4 (4 PM/8 AM tilt)
The ground rectenna scales proportionately. Since the minimum
investment required to reach first power decreases, this design is
considerably more feasible than tracking system concepts.
viability."






--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |