Re: global warming: is it us, or is it the sun?

From: Henry Spencer (henry_at_spsystems.net)
Date: 07/27/04 

Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 18:14:18 GMT

In article <d81e59c9.0407270404.4514ef72@posting.google.com>,
Alex Terrell <alexterrell@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Powersats are *not* current technology -- not one has ever been built and
>> operated, nor has any space structure within orders of magnitude...
>>
>The definition of "new" as opposed to "current" technology is
>relative, but by and large, Powersats are a massive upscaling and new
>application of exisiting technology. Building them would not require
>huge amounts of new patents.

Massive upscaling and new application will almost certainly generate a
*bunch* of new patents, because the change of application and scale will
produce an array of new problems which will have to be solved.

The F-1 was just an upscaling -- a rather more modest one -- of the H-1.
Making it work required several years of concentrated effort, new test
techniques, serious improvements in several technologies, and whole new
approaches to some problems. Methods that worked on the smaller engines
weren't good enough on the big one.

I would predict a whole salvo of patents just on attitude control and
shape control. (Do bear in mind that a powersat kilometers across will
have about the structural rigidity of a rubber glove.)

We're talking major R&D work here, not straightforward engineering design
with existing technologies.

>Where new technology is needed is in assembling the required material
>from NEO / lunar resources. But even here, no fundamentally new
>technologies are needed.

There will be a bunch of rather new technologies down in the details, such
as dust-infiltration control for lunar-surface hardware. Again, maybe not
"fundamentally" new, but the pile of patents will be large.

>Some of the newish technologies we might
>need, such as VASIMR, are being worked on.

Only in a rather limited way. (VASIMR, for example, is still a paper
engine -- nobody has ever actually built and tested one.) 

-- 
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend."    |   Henry Spencer
                                -- George Herbert       | henry@spsystems.net

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