Posted on 06/29/2007 5:50:52 AM PDT by Uncledave
“A political decision to require MANNED spaceflight.”
‘It’s either us or the monkey’. Remember that one from The Right Stuff? This argument has been going on since day one. The Soviets always had almost no on-board human control from day one, that was their philosophy and still is. In reality it makes more operational sense.
“Yes, the technology is difficult but USA and CCCP showed that it can be done.”
They have lots of smart people in India but they don’t have legacy designs and experience to build on. They can’t do it quickly without some input from us or the Russians IMHO.
This has been possible for 1/4 century. India will not make it pay unless they combine it with two other things:
1. Put energy intensive industry in space;
2. Initiate space mining.
Space mining is effectively prohibited by the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty, which makes the program unfeasible. All this was discussed in detail when the L-5 Society was active long ago. India has had a grassroots interest in space development stronger than any other country, but they haven’t been paying attention.
The space-based solar panels would be positioned between the Earth and sun so the panels can collect 24/7.
The system would beam the collected energy down to a stationary antenna on the Earth’s surface...
While the Earth is spinning?
I wondered the same thing. Unless he’s talking about putting the collectors so far out they’re out of earth’s shadow.
I remember reading a few years ago that the receiver on the surface of the earth would have to be huge - 100 miles in diameter. Maybe technology has changed since that was written.
Maybe they plan to have multiple panel systems (4?) in space at different angles that would hand off to each other based on the Earth’s rotation?
Why add the expense of that? I presume the energy loss from being an extra several thousand kilometers away wouldn't be that steep. If you're going to spend money to add more equipment up there, make additional collectors and not "hand-offers"
Disclaimer -- I don't know what I'm talking about.
The problem of transmitting power to ground should not exist because all the energy should be used in space. About 1/3 of the power of the present power grid is used by industry, and that industry should be in space.
The futurist, Alvin Topfler, claims in a recent book that if we were to send the space shuttle to the moon, we could load it with enough helium to power the USA for a year. Anybody know if that sounds right?
The Toflers are not right if they claim that about He3. It is astonishing how these folktales seem to live on long after they are debunked. Tofler is okay, though, even if his Waves are simplistic. Just right for China.
Little, tiny parachutes.
Now if most of these countries could harness energy from BO, they would have all they needed.
Yeah; and if every nation follows suit, by 2050 the sun will be the equivalent of a 100 watt lightbulb and we’ll all freeze to death.
He thinks that there is harvestable He3, and assumes that if we had lots we’d be able to figure out helium fusion (He3 is much more “fusable” than hydrogen or tritium).
He assumes a landing/takeoff system to get a crew or robot down to the moon and back up with the He3.
Other than a dozen more unfounded assumptions, he’s dead on, once we have a fusion power plant burning He3 on Earth, a lunar trip could fuel it if there’s helium-3 available on the moon.
Cool. Reducing the world’s dependency of oil is a worthy goal. The more different ideas about how to accomplish that goal, the better.
It’s called a geosynchronous orbit. Meaning that its position is always the same relative to the Earth’s surface, which coincidentally makes satellite like this much harder to use as a weapon since you can’t move it anywhere. You could however “point” to almost any location in a particular hemisphere of the Earth. This has the trade off of increasing the distance which the energy must travel also decreasing its effectiveness as a weapon since there will be energy loss do to that travel.
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