Re: International Energy Agency accepts Peak Oil (sortof)

From: Fred McGalliard (frederick.b.mcgalliard_at_boeing.com)
Date: 11/30/04 

Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 15:49:52 GMT

"Pete Lynn" <pete@peterlynnkites.com> wrote in message .
...
> For various economic reasons SPS is not quite the answer you think it
> is. For space most definitely, for earth based centralist power
> production, maybe but probably not, for distributed earth based energy
> production, no. Most definitely SPS will not happen anytime soon

Let me give you a rough idea of what we need. Automated manufacturing at an
unprecedented scale. Launch capability at some small fraction of the
current. Which implies automation of the rocket assembly, test, erection and
launch, at a level that is hard to imagine within the next 40 years. Then
you need to actually launch several thousand small satellites into an array
(I really don't think a massive monolithic SPS would work). You need more
automated assembly and maintenance on the ground receiver arrays (but this
is pretty simple and might even be done today). And finally, you need some
automated way to capture broken sat elements and drag em out of the array
for repair or deorbit. If we work hard on several of these key sticking
points, we might be able to at least decide if it can be practical in around
40 years. Anything faster would take an absolutely incredible research
effort.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: International Energy Agency accepts Peak Oil (sortof)
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  • Re: International Energy Agency accepts Peak Oil (sortof)
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  • Re: SPSs and the candidates
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