03-30-2018, 09:47 AM
Rynn - Regarding the basket argument I probably agree with you, but taking care of a basket doesn't help much if you take it into a military training area and someone drops an incendiary grenade in it by accident or design. (To stretch an analogy perhaps too far.)
And IMHO, the Moon is much better as a resource than any part of the Earth is - because it doesn't have an ecosystem to ruin.
And finally, a significant space presence is one component of the procedures necessary to protect the ecosystem of Earth. An SPS rectenna does take some resources to create, true. But it doesn't preclude other uses for the land it sits on, because the antenna is going to be open meshwork and not solid. And it is a source of clean power, without any of the problems associated with other "clean" power sources.
The shortcomings of ground solar and wind are well documented and I won't repeat them here. But even such apparently benign power sources as geothermal and hydro have problems of their own - having to dispose of big piles of toxic minerals leached from subsurface rocks in the first case, and gross disturbance of river systems and erosion of river deltas, combined with silting of reservoirs, in the second.
And finally: Space colonisation has two very great advantages. Living space, and energy for our use. There is four hundred trillion terawatts of power going to waste at present, and the potential to build living space for quadrillions. Which pushes out the long tail of human potential a very long way; think a hundred Einsteins.
And IMHO, the Moon is much better as a resource than any part of the Earth is - because it doesn't have an ecosystem to ruin.
And finally, a significant space presence is one component of the procedures necessary to protect the ecosystem of Earth. An SPS rectenna does take some resources to create, true. But it doesn't preclude other uses for the land it sits on, because the antenna is going to be open meshwork and not solid. And it is a source of clean power, without any of the problems associated with other "clean" power sources.
The shortcomings of ground solar and wind are well documented and I won't repeat them here. But even such apparently benign power sources as geothermal and hydro have problems of their own - having to dispose of big piles of toxic minerals leached from subsurface rocks in the first case, and gross disturbance of river systems and erosion of river deltas, combined with silting of reservoirs, in the second.
And finally: Space colonisation has two very great advantages. Living space, and energy for our use. There is four hundred trillion terawatts of power going to waste at present, and the potential to build living space for quadrillions. Which pushes out the long tail of human potential a very long way; think a hundred Einsteins.