Re: forests on orbit

Anything is possible, given sufficient resources, of willing
intelligent bodies and loads of time, neither of which we have to
spare.

The terrestrial birth-to-grave pollution generated per tonne in LEO is
staggering, not to mention the extra push it takes of GSO stuff. It's
especially testy, spendy and polluting because we still don't have any
of that cheap Mook H2, much less any of that spare Mook PV energy
going into our inefficient and badly overloaded national power grids.

BTW, Earth needs at least 10 fold more diatoms hard at work, sucking
up and/or converting and safely storing our human soot of CO2 and
NOx. Got any of those Mook diatoms to spare, or any better way of
making those we've got left to better survive and multiply in spite of
what we're doing to their environment?
.. - Brad Guth


On Jan 31, 6:51 pm, Willie.Moo...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Jan 31, 8:30 pm, BradGuth <bradg...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On Jan 31, 12:59 pm, Willie.Moo...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

On Jan 31, 2:10 pm, BradGuth <bradg...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Jan 31, 2:33 am, Ian Parker <ianpark...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I think it would be far better to grow a forest in the Sahara. Energy
for the desalination of sea water to be provoded by solar power,
possibly SSP. If we assume SSP (terresrial SP merely adds to the force
of the argument) we need far less material in space doing it this way.

- Ian Parker

It's not lord Mook's idea, so without a speck of remorse it simply
can't be done, no matters what.
- Brad Guth

Reality doesn't need my defense. I am telling you why I favor
asteroid development over stripping and modifying the natural systems
of Earth with industrial disease. If you have a better idea and I'm
wrong - go out and do it. No one's stopping you.

Your idea isn't just wrong,

In what sense?

it represents a net loss of energy

From compared to what?

Are you talking about moving stuff from the asteroid belt to your
dinner table? or the shirt on your back? You think that takes a lot
of energy?

Well let's see.

To move a metric ton to Earth orbit most energy efficiently from the
asteroid belt requires that 1.72 tons of propellant be ejected at 8 km/
sec.

That takes 55.04 GJ of energy per ton of payload.

The average American consumes about 1 ton of food per year and 0.6
tons of wood products (0.4 tons softwood, 0.2 tons hardwood) Another
0.05 tons in other consumable products. That's 1.75 tons of
materials.

The processes I use are about 50% efficient - that means we need to
process about 3.5 tons per year per person in consumables imported
from the asteroid belt.

Every ton processed per year requires about 6 tons of standing capital
equipment - amortized over 12 years - so, that's another half ton per
year to the total

That's a movement of 4 tons per year per person at an energy cost of
220.16 GJ per person per year.

To eject 3.5 tons per year from LEO directly to a consumer on Earth's
surface requires that the products be accelerated to a speed of about
0.2 km/sec - relative to the station. That's another 0.07 GJ - double
this for efficiency losses in the rail gun - raising the total to
220.30 GJ per person per year. This is equivalent to 36.1 barrels of
oil equivalent in terms of energy per person per year. This is
equivalent to less than 7,000 watts of continuous power.

A solar panel located in the sun 24/7 - generating laser energy with
40% overall efficiency - would need to cover 12.77 sq meters of are.
That's a disk 4 meters in diameter. At $0.01 per watt - this has a
capital cost of $70 - and costs about $5 per year with my
technology.about a dime a week.

Not costly at all.

and
viable resources,

There are no resources used on Earth at all. In fact, the materials
are all biodegradable (food, wood, fiber)

not to mention further pollution and spendy decades

Its part of a development progam to use hardware to make energy
cheaper that would otherwise sit idle.

Check it out.

The world currently consumes

28.3 billion barrels of oil
5.5 billion tons of coal
2.2 billion tons of natural gas

each year! To generate 15 trillion watts of power continuously. This
can all be replaced with with solar panels creating 3.34 billion tons
of hydrogen gas from 30 billion tons of water using solar panels.

We can build 19 trillion watts of solar collectors on orbit and beam
the energy to Earth, or we can bild 115 trillion watts of solar
collectors on Earth and arrange to operate the equipment when the sun
shines.

The space based system produces 546 MW per square kilometer and costs
$0.01 per peak watt - the terrestrial system produces 180 MW per
square kilometer and costs $0.07 per peak watt.

So, in terms of system costs;

SPACE: 19,000,000 MW
546 MW/km2
34,800 km2
$0.01/watt
$190 billion total

EARTH 115,000,000 MW
180 MW/km2
638,900 km2
$0.07/watt
$8,050 billion total

Now the interesting thing is that by choosing the laser energy
appropriately, we can actually drive terrestrial solar panels with
very high efficiency and operate them at 360 MW/km2 - continuously.
So, we need a total of 52,800 sq km of terrestrial panels to make the
space system work.

So, here's the game plan... when I build out over 52,800 sq km of
solar panels,9.5 trillion watts and $665 billion ... rather than
build more solar panels for use on Earth, it makes more sense to start
building power sats to agument the output from those panels already
existing with power from space. For less than 1/6th the cost of what
I have already spent, I can increase power output 10x and dominate the
energy market.

Since I have options on 100,000 sq km of desert lands, this is a
perfect solution.

The $20 billion development cost for the launchers and so forth are
well worth it.

Now to enter the space business what other 'low hanging fruit' might
you pick to build up your space capacity before doing the powersat
deal. Well, there's communications networks like Teledesic. ITs
something thats profitable and could sustain the development of a
entry level system.

So, we launch 660 communications satellites to put up a communications
network.

Then we launch 2,000 power satellites at 20 GW each - to provide all
the power we need for the hydrogen economy AND space launch.

The first system would consist of a flight every two weeks - and put
up 1 twenty billion watt power satellite per month. That's 12 per
year. That means 1000 would take over 80 years.

Using power satellites themselves to beam laser energy to a propulsion
unit powered by laser energy - increases the efficiency tremendously.
Instead of one vehicle consisting of 7 flight elements - we can take
each flight element equip it with a laser rocket - and have 28
elements operational. Simpler logistics also means we can shorten
turn around from 8 weeks to 3 weeks.

So a fleet of four vehicles launching a payload every two weeks - with
one kick stage and one satellite - turns into a fleet of 28 vehicles
launching a payload direct to GEO without a kick stage - launches
every 18 hours. Increasing the fleet to 60 elements permits 3
flights per day with spares.

In the latter case we can deploy 1000 power satellites in less than 10
years.

Now, after the power satellites are fully deployed, there will be a
need to grow the system at a rate of about 4% to 7% per year - this is
40 to 70 launches per year to maintain growth.

What do you do with the spare capacity?

Look for other jobs it can do!!!

What is a worthy job?

Well having ended the energy shortage the world economy will take off
(like a rocket) and there will be shortages in other commodities.
Using the US European and Japanese populations as representative
examplars for growth worldwide, we can see that there will be a
shortage of strategic materials, food, fiber and wood. - these.

Could the laser and propulsion systems described above be turned to
that task?

YES!

In fact...

we can for less than HALF the cost of the ALL TERRESTRIAL solution
above - provide not only all the enegy the Earth needs, but all of
every other strategic material as well - at levels far higher than US
per capita.

Check it out - vvvvvall terrestrial: $8,050 billion
space terrestrial;vv $850 billion

That leaves $7,200 billion spare cash sitting around... to provide
enough energy food, and other materials for eveyr man woman and child
to live like a milionaire.

What a HUGE market development opportunity.

Why not do it?

of which we do not have such spare loot or time to work with,

It costs less to build up all the strategic materials in space once
you have a core terrestrial system to work with - than to just blindly
expand the terrestrial system without considering the space
component..

especially if we keep pissing off those mostly nice Muslims or of
whatever's represented by China.

Nonsequitor.

- Brad Guth- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -
.

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