previous: SpeedRacer it would be interesting to research... -- 1112057491

Re: Gas prices on the rise, Bush help his buddies get ri

3/28/2005 8:14 PM

Wild Bill

Re: Gas prices on the rise, Bush help his buddies get ri The master energy solution was proposed over 25 years ago but the "powers that be" did not support it.     You might do a google for G. Harry Stine and solar power generation from orbiting satellites.     The idea is to have solar stations in orbit where the efficiencies are far higher and beam the energy down as microwaves. The neat thing is that on the ground you use huge sheets of chicken wire about 10 feet off the ground as collectors. The average density per square foot is so low as to be totally safe yet over acres of collectors you can get mega if not gigawatts of clean power. And the sun still shines through the chicken wire if you want to farm or graze cattle underneath it! Microwaves also pass through cloud and fog.     The technology was tried and proven in 1980. The initial investments are high but the returns in power are huge and immediate. Creating the infrastructure means jobs and what's more, you have to make a grid of satellites anyway so it's easy to sell power to other nations by steering a satellite's beam. Any poor African nation could afford to build a chicken wire collector system - they could buy clean power to industrialize and not have to build conventional polluting stations.     Space has the potential to clean the planet and feed every hungry mouth on the globe but as long as we have politicians whose technical knowhow on space enterprise is based on "Battlestar Galactica" it's not likely to happen for some time...     ---Wild Bill

 

Replies:

George W. Re: "Battlestar Galactica" -- 3/28/2005 10:00 PM