While doing Space Power Sat research, I often come across all sorts of crazy energy, and enviornmental concepts.  Most of the time they’re small potatoes compared to SPS/SBPS, but this one is a good idea.

If we’re going to solve our worlds problems we need big ideas like this, but ultimately the failure to inspire others to follow through on any of these dreams will result in all those chicken littles being at least partially right.

This energy system matches up pretty good against SPS. However, I like to think that if we’re building giant towers in deserts. It wouldn’t be hard to put receivers on top of them, much like some advocate building SPS recievers on OTEC plants. Both combo technologies would produce massive amounts of energy and fresh water. However, OTEC is the only concept on the table that has heavy carbon sequestration as a side effect. Bahhh, getting to much into the details.

If you’re into alternative energy OTEC, and Space Power Sats are some things that you need to know about. This concept might seem off the beaten path, but it’s a testimate to the fact that there are solutions to the worlds problems other than windmills and solar panels. I’m going to add this one to my stack of world changing concepts.
http://inventorspot.com/articles/energy_tower_power_15_earths_9102

Copenhagan  Suporbitals is a company getting some things right. They’ve been in the blogosphere for a while now, and it seems that their efforts have gotten a lot of people really excited. Sure it may be a small effort, but for it’s size they’ve got some really good things to show for it.

Look at the pictures that they generate. It’s not that they’re building a super secret rocket. It’s cool, and they’re sharing that with people. This publicity is huge for them.

It’s about the people dummy, not the technology. This is the face we should all be putting on… something we can relate to…

http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/

We have ambitious plans on how to use space resources. We’ve practically drawn up enough plans to fill libraries. Where is the passion? We’ve got world changing ideas… Even well known scientists are saying things like, “We must spread into space.” There’s great things to happen if we can get private enterprise into the game. We’re starting to finally cut loose of the financial reigns that the Space Shuttle had put on us. Change is afoot, and somehow nobody seems to be noticing. Apparently 40 years of little accomplishment has run the public dry of enthusiasm.

There’s an awful lot of chicken little’s out there in the world stirring up fear about all sorts of notions. We have solutions to a great many of their grievances. Even if a few of them are successfully executed, we can save a great many people from the impending dooms some are suggesting. It may be that we only have 30, or 50 years of fossil fuels left, but it’s no reason to be waiting for the opportunity. We’ve been shoved aside for advocating humanity take to the stars for so long now. When are we going to push?

We have the ability to start and today, we are breaking some of the great barriers, and yet silence. We have plans that can solve a great many of the worlds problems, and we’ve been keeping them on a shelf. What are we waiting for? Who is going to step forward and say we’re doing it wrong?

It’s scary enough for the department of defense to take note. Yes believe it or not, the military does do research on how to avoid wars. These guy’s job is to make reports on how to avoid future wars, or at least win them. Not that they’re always right, but somebody has to fill the job. The same guys reading through the piles of information available stumbled upon a particular concept. Space Power, referred hereto after as SPS.

SPS has the potential to provide more power than all other sources of energy combined. The concept is fairly old, first being promoted in the 1970′s, and it drives space nerds mad that it hasn’t been done. Here’s the rundown as quick as possible. A solar panel in space receives the full brunt of the sun 24 hours a day, 7-days a week, somewhere between 3 to 5 times the energy of a land based solar panel. The idea is to lauch gigantic amounts of solar panels, attach them to a satellite, and beam the energy down to a receiving station on earth. The energy of the beam would not be unlike the cell phone signal we put near our faces every day. Yes it is true that SPS can provide practically infinite, location independent, renewable, base-load energy. Remember SPS is location independent, meaning that it can be beamed anywhere it needs to be.

So the department of defense guys in charge of space security asked the question. Since there’s a looming threat of war over fossil fuels, and heck we have already had a few over the stuff, who is looking into this crazy idea? They did research, and found out that the claims about the potential were true. The idea could provide enough energy to make oil and coal obsolete. They started asking around about the idea. NASA: We do space not energy. Department of Energy: We do energy not space. Great NASA lied, they fund green energy initiatives, and the Department of Energy lied, they fund technology studies on spacecraft.

The claims were not entirely true by all three parties. However, there is no way on earth to make it financially feasible unless the only customer is the military, or resources from the moon are used. Yes, there’s a twist in the plot ladies and gentlemen. To put the satellites into the desired orbit it takes a rocket, rockets expend above 90% of their mass to achieve orbit.

To get this massive amount of solar panels into space costs a lot of dough. Since the military pays top dollar for supply chains of fuel, why not bypass the need for a supply chain and beam it to wherever the troops need it. I’ll let you make the judgment call on that one. It doesn’t sound like the best idea.

However, NASA and the Department of Energy also had ulterior motives in the plot. The Department of energy has as it’s darling Nuclear Energy. They’re not about to advance any other notion. NASA, however, is where the story get’s interesting. They’ve known for quite some time about the potential. Their reply was just for expediency. There’s no reason to explain extremely difficult subjects like orbital mechanics, solar weather, or rocket science to the military…

There’s a few Achilles heels to SPS. NASA knows this fairly clearly. First problem, the concept is not popular. People don’t know about it, so there’s not much political cost in marginalizing the idea. Second, launch costs are at a choke point. The Space community is going through an upheaval over how to get launch costs down. Politics have kept launch costs at a high premium ever since the inception of the space shuttle. However, no matter how low launch costs get, there seems to be no way to make a geostationary SPS platform profitable using materials from earth. Third, there’s a pesky technical problem with coronal mass ejections frying an SPS system if it’s not shut down properly when the space weather gets bad.

This is where it starts to get interesting. Take note that the moon is very important in this, as insane as that may seem. Geostationary orbit is the preferred location for an SPS system.  It just so happens that it’s easier to get from the moon to geostationary orbit, than to get there from the ground on earth. This is an interesting factoid to keep in mind when looking at the Constellation Project, a Mars Mission, and the 1967 Space Treaty.

So what does this have to do with SPS? It just so happens that if a facility was built on the moon, it would have the capability to produce solar panels. It would make the financial feasibility of SPS a reality.

The roadblock is the 1967 space treaty. It bans governments from claiming territory in space. This is something that a moon base would have violated. We had a president that was willing to bend the rules to get what he wanted. However, his opposition is much more courteous to the international community. The hope and dream of a Mars Mission, SPS, and much more hinged on the Constellation Project. Even though some of NASA management had made bad decisions in the early stages of the design, there was still hope that it would have some success.

Enter a new set of characters. Elon Musk, Google, Bigelow, Virgin Galactic, and a long list of others. The Space treaty forbids governments from setting up shop on the moon. How novel of an idea that in the future colonial revolutions can be avoided by simply removing the colonial power. However, this places the burden of blazing the frontier on private individuals and companies. The new characters’ general purpose is to wrest some of the market of space away from the government, and in exchange reduce launch costs. Part of a greater effort to privatize space.

Why would these companies be interested in the moon? The common sense notion is that the first company to get a foothold on the moon will make the first trillionaire. This company, or set of companies will have access to energy and mineral resources in excess of a million times earth’s. Imagine being able to sell energy worldwide, and your supply is practically infinite, and that’s just the tip of an enormous iceberg of things that are possible. To explain the potential would take volumes of text, but the simple explanation is this: it would solve a lot of problems we have down here, if they did that up there. Again, It would solve a lot of problems we have down here, if they did that up there. The pressure we place on earth’s resources would be greatly relieved. Not just the energy demands, but the mineral, and ecological demands.

This is why many get excited about space, it’s why Stephen Hawking says we should go into space, it’s why Elon Musk risked some of his fortune to found SpaceX, it’s why Google is sponsoring the Lunar X-prize, it’s why space is so important to so many people. Not just people who are excited about space for it’s possible altruistic environmental impacts, but rich men who want to build a better world, and powerful men who don’t want to be left out of the next big game.

This is where our story ends. It’s pretty simple, yet there are many details left out for expediency.

image via: Comic Website

I really love this cartoon. You can find it all over the internet, it was made by xkcd.com, a very good website for comics. It’s a very cartoonish way of depicting the solar system’s gravity wells, but it’s much more true than other things we usually see. When we hear about the solar system, usually we see this map with rings. Yeah it displays position, but in space position doesn’t really matter as much as other things. It’s not like you can walk or drive anywhere. Everything is different, and it’s very difficult to communicate many of the effects. Another example of a difficult to explain concept would be orbital stability. Orbital mechanics is a really boring subject, and the meaning of a lot of it is hard to communicate.

Gravity wells are a good way of estimating the energy required to get from one spot to another. Keep in mind that that there are tons of ways to bend the rules. For example, a space elevator could get one from earth to GEO, or from the moon to lunar orbit with relatively little energy. Another example would be orbital gravity assists that can expend more time to reduce the energy required to get from earth to mars. However, orbital assists cannot be used for launching from the ground… and again they add a lot of time to the travel. Truth be told, there is no way yet to break the rules yet, but there’s lots of corners!

Let’s start with our own neighborhood. First off notice that when on a planet you’re essentially at the bottom of a huge well. Something that’s not well communicated in the cartoon is that to get from earth to LEO takes a rocket composed of about 90% fuel and structure to hold said fuel. Simply to get out is a monumental task. This is also true of mars, but since it’s smaller than earth it takes a little less fuel, but still a lot. The whole reason space costs so much is the need to build these gigantic rockets just to get to LEO… and even bigger ones to get here Geostationary orbit.

Another thing to take note of is that the geostationary orbit is easier to get to from the moon than from the ground on earth. This is why people want to go back to the moon and set up permanent camp. It’s just being practical. Well, what if people were living on the moon. What would they do?

For the answer to that we’ve got to look at what the moon has, and doesn’t have.

HAS (MOON TRADES)
MASSIVE ENERGY RESERVES
MASSIVE MINERAL RESOURCES
CHEAP ACCESS TO SPACE
List not comprehensive

DOESN’T HAVE (EARTH TRADES)
AIR
WATER
FERTILIZER
LIFE (NITROGEN, CARBON, HYDROGEN)

So if men were living on, rotating to/from, or had some kind of presence on the moon, they would have to trade what they have for what they need. It’s pretty obvious that minerals, energy, and access to space are in high demand on earth. So the trade would be simple. The details are a little more interesting, I went over it a little in a video of mine. The benefits are monumentally huge, and in exchange a prospective Lunan would want things that are rather abundant on earth. Trade is what I’m talking about here!

The answer to the question, “Why don’t we have a moon base?” is rather simple. The 1967 Space Treaty forbids governments (but not individuals, and companies) from setting up shop in space, or claiming territory. Since space has been a realm exclusively of governments until fairly recently, it’s not hard to understand the press, and good will that efforts like the Google Lunar X-prize, Virgin Galactic, Bigelow Aerospace, and Elon Musk have received. It’s fairly clear that the first man/company on the moon will be a trillionaire trading valuables for dirt, air, and water.

Well that’s the moon. What about all those people who talk about the mars or asteroids?
Ah! Glad you asked.

Mars , and asteroids tend to hang out mainly in this area a little up the hill from earth, but they’re all over the place. There’s earth-crossers, trojans, the belt, and more… comets too! Here’s a sweet video that went viral recently on asteroids. They’re all over the place.

The best thing in the solar system is asteroids. I know that sounds strange, but they’re space candy. A great many of them contain enough minerals to shut down terrestrial mining for a long time. Trillions of dollars worth in all sorts of minerals, and it’s a basic fact… it’s not even challenged as basic knowledge. It makes some men drool. Imagine mountains of gold, silver, platinum, iridium, cadmium, iron, chrome, aluminum, and the list goes on. However, I’m not so sure landing millions of tons of ores from space is particularly a good idea. Maybe thousands of tons of precious metals, but even that’s a bit strange.

So NASA’s current scheme is to land a man on an asteroid. Probably an earth crossing asteroid. Truth be told it’s for political reasons. China is hell bent on a moon landing, as soon as they can. They see the value in the moon, they’re convinced. They don’t just want to go for the sake of planting a flag. They want to land there for the resources.

Anyways, back to asteroids. Why would men want to go there? What would men do with asteroids? For the answer to that we’ve got to look at what the asteroids have, and don’t have.

HAVE (ASTEROID TRADES)
EXTREMELY MASSIVE MINERAL RESOURCES
SOME VOLATILES [code for water, air, and fertilizer]

DOESN'T HAVE
GRAVITY WELL

I love asteroids, people would love to go mine them because they're chalked full of valuables. However, where are we going to send that asteroid mining ship from? Earth? The moon is much more capable of constructing and launching an asteroid mining ship than earth is... except there's nobody on the moon currently. So there's only the specter of some theoretical ghost... that could compete, oh wait am I playing the xenophobia card against China? Remember they want to go to the moon. They would be in specific violation of the 1967 space treaty if they set up camp, but I doubt they'd care about it.

For a long time we heard about a mission to mars. It's all you would hear NASA officials talking about in the press. Still today we hear of the plan 20 years from now to put a man on mars. Somehow average people just don't believe it, they've heard about the plan for 50+ years, and seen no efforts bear fruits. So they just tune it out and consider any laid plan to be a lie.

So let's talk about a mission to mars. Before I start I've got to say I want them to go to mars, but there's some subtlety to the rules of practicality that are in the way. First, we've got to launch from earth to LEO. This will consume at least 90% of the mass of any rocket. So it's got to be huge! Then we've got to get from Low Earth Orbit to Mars Orbit. This will consume a large quantity of fuel, unless aerobraking is used. Then we land on mars, plant a flag, collect some rocks, and launch. This mars launch will consume another massive quantity of fuel, and then return to earth orbit will consume fuel. By this time we're talking about the craft being composed of entirely of fuel. It's just not possible.

Logistics is the word, the real plan is a little more intense. A robotic mission is launched to mars to assemble and fuel the mars launch craft. It would be much easier to launch said robotic mission from the moon. Let's also say that an orbital transfer ship is built on the moon. Men and possibly fuel are launched from earth (they may get some fuel from the moon). They board the ship built on the moon, and all those pesky rules of the practical universe seem to stop blocking the mission. This was the said purpose of the constellation project, but politics got in the way as usual.

So let's set it straight. The moon is very important in space. Yeah we're a big group of dreamers, so what. If we want to return a value to earth we've got to go to the moon. Also, if we want to get to the things just out of grasp, we've got to use some stepping stones. Banging our head against the wall for 40 years is not having any effect. Let it be known very clearly that a moon advocate does not disagree with a plan to go to mars, or asteroids, we just want it to happen so badly we're willing to compromise a bit with reality.

Just to give the short rundown: Global warming can be solved if space resources are utilized, and major world problems can be solved as well. How am I, or any other space advocate, going to break down this wall?

cartoon via: http://www.washingtonpost.com not surprising

I thought this graphic was hilarious. It’s a science fiction mockery of planets from general science fiction. The part that is hilarious is that the moon is THIS far away from earth… poignant pain I feel for it being so far away, yet so close. *TEAR* *SNIFF*

I’m all about the moon, and this statue concept is awesome. They want to build a clock that generates energy from the tide. I’m all for it because it stresses the importance of the moon in some deeply cultural ways. This one is serious too, they’ve raised about a quarter of the funding estimated to complete the project. They want to place the concept in a location to get tourist value out of the project, and it looks like the location is going to be on the Thames in England.
image via: http://www.alunatime.org/

I’d read and heard about celestia for quite some time. Honestly, I thought that it would be just as disappointing and hard to use as most “great” software is. I happened upon this site called celestiamotherlode that gave me some extras and I figured hey this thing might be worth a try. HOLY MOTHER! It’s a really sweet software. I think I’m going to keep this one in my pocket of tools for sure.

Image via: http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
sweet link: sweet space stuff

I usually don’t like posting apollo history lesson type stuff, but this one was top of the line. Broke all sorts of internet rules, like don’t make it flash. It’s still awesome and interactive, I could see how it might work with kids because it made me feel like a kid again.

http://wechoosethemoon.org/

pic via: some online model store