Really Scary Concentrations of Power?
SpaceRef.com reports yesterday’s testimony by Dr. David R. Criswell at the Lunar Exploration hearings before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space.
Dr. Criswell says that the USA could build lunar solar power collectors that would beam energy back to earth to be received into and distributed by existing local power grids. He says the first beams could be coming to earth in just a few years, assures that they would not need to me more powerful than 20% of our sun’s usual radiation, AND that these amazingly powerful (but harmless) systems will be produced primarily from moon dust and rock, so that we won’t have to fly so many missions there! Then he turns into an economist and suggests that this project will create thousands of “new, high-value American jobs” and lower energy costs so that American incomes will quadruple and incomes in developing nations will increase eightfold. It’ll even power electric cars! He stops short of saying that it’ll keep accidently-dropped toast from landing buttered-side down, but clearly the potential is there!
Is it just me, or are others of you wondering why we can’t build same systems here on earth, since the sun hits us pretty much everyday at about the same distance as the moon? Anybody wondering what happens to those power beams on cloudy days? …how much the Space Station and Shuttle (models of cost efficiency!) would receive for this work? …about the potential for (or even the perception that) America has built and/or controls a solar-powered, robot-controlled system that can hit the earth with targeted beams powerful enough to replace nuclear and other power systems here on earth? …how this spaceman gets away with forecasting phenomenal economic growth?
Should we be worried about these apparent concentrations of power or did I miss the science fiction disclaimer at the bottom of that webpage making this nothing more than another bad movie waiting to happen?