🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan8.190043.24897@cs.rochester.edu> dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz) writes:
>In article <jfelder-080193105134@latvia.lerc.nasa.gov> jfelder@lerc.nasa.gov (James L. Felder) writes:
>
>>> is very hard to replace with some substitute.  Fossil fuels are
>>> an example -- there is no reason why we should not be able
>>> to survive indefinitely without them, if some other source of
>>> energy is available.
>
>> And no matter what we will have to learn to do without them.  And will
>> probably be cursed by future generations for burning such a useful
>> commodity simply to heat our homes.
>
>Just like we curse the shortage of whale oil?  Hardly -- they will
>view fossil fuel use as a curious historical anomaly, and pity
>us for being (so) relatively poor and ignorant that we could not
>use cleaner alternatives.

No, more like we curse the shortage of whales.  :-)

There are many useful things to do with petroleum products other
than produce energy -- they are useful as lubricants and are needed
for the production of plastics and other petrochemicals.

>...
>Powersats as usually described can't hack it as the primary energy
>source for earth, since there's not enough room in GEO.  They'd have

What does this mean?  Are you implying that powersats would be as restricted
as comsats in "orbital slot" width?  Why?

>to be farther away.  That drives up cost.  I am also not convinced the

There are reasons to think that a lunar surface-based solar power 
infrastructure could be considerably cheaper than GEO powersats, due to
the lack of a requirement to develop a very large-scale lunar surface-
to-GEO transportation infrastructure for delivery of lunar raw materials
for powersat manufacture.


--
Mike Matthews, ex-Tether Dude +------------->   matthews@ial7.jsc.nasa.gov
"Had the Shuttle on a String"  \_ Now accepting NeXTMail via KlugeNet(TM)!
Lockheed-ESC                  |  
Houston, TX                   |          *** WILL HACK FOR FOOD ***