A few posts ago, I said that Japan was investing $21 Billion in Space Solar Power (SSP). I was very excited, until I read a blog post from the Land Art Generator Initiative called Total Surface Area Required to Fuel the World With Solar. SSP should be a long term goal. We only need about 500,000 kilometer squared of solar panels to power the world until 2030. I think $21 billion is a great investment for a multi-generational project, be we must have a stable sources of power now. If we have this it will lead to a space faring society faster. If we have that we can stabilize human society for 20 years. If we can ensure everyone has plenty for 20 years, then we will be able to focus more on education and species development and less on survival.
We need energy now, every major economy is based on the assumption of cheap energy. Look around in the room you are in, there are thousands of joules of energy represented in the items you see before you. Consider the internet.
We think about information that goes across the Internet. And we never think about the hidden connection. But I brought along here a lump of coal -- right here, one lump of coal. And what does a lump of coal have to do with the Internet? You see, it takes the energy in one lump of coal to move one megabyte of information across the net. So every time you download a file, each megabyte is a lump of coal. What that means is, a 200-megabyte file looks like this, ladies and gentlemen. OK? [He pulls out a bag of charcoal] So the next time you download a gigabyte, or two gigabytes, it’s not for free, OK? The connection is the energy it takes to run the web and to make everything we think possible, possible.
Energy is critical in a creating a space faring. Computer Aided Engineering will be the tool of the design of space habitation, the same process that brought the Boeing 777 to life will bring space habitation into reality. We need energy to do this, we need to keep the internet alive to allow humanity to work collectively on a project all at the same time. We need to keep lights on for the students who study into the night. I will gamble and say we can not achieve space habitation or SSP without the internet and without computers.
Thus, we should push Earth based solar power to it’s limit will working on SSP to replace it when Earth based solar power can not provide all of the energy. To get access to space, a stable energy supply must be secured. It will not happen without this. We can not lake a risk on SSP when we will have trouble powering the future.
Reactions
-Is there such a thing as a stable energy source?
Sources
Walker, Jay. "Jay Walker's library of human imagination” Feb 2008. Online video clip. TED. Accessed on September 16, 2009. <http://www.ted.com/talks/jay_walker_s_library_of_human_imagination.html#> 6:06 – 7:06
Ferry, Robert. Elizabeth Monoian, “Total Surface Area Required to Fuel the World With Solar.” Weblog Entry. Land Art Generator Initiative. August 13, 2009. September 16, 2009.
In Case You Skimmed
-We need energy to develop space assets
-SSP is a long term goal that must be developed to replace any short term solutions we have
-But, we needed alternative, short term energy solutions yesterday and SSP can’t get developed in a short time frame.
