[ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power

[ben]

The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> aka Stuart LaForge inquired:

 > What country are you citizen of Ben?

One of the cloudiest. Good ol' Blighty*.

 > It is certainly worth thinking about but tethered balloons have a
 > large number of problems of their own. Everything that is at all
 > useful to humanity can be used for death. You can kill somebody with 
a > pencil. If you are afraid of MW death rays, you
 > should be afraid of explosive oil refineries not to mention
 > hurricanes, floods, and other symptoms of climatic instability.

Heh. It's bizarre that some people foam at the mouth at the idea of 
nuclear power stations, but are quite complacent about the hundreds of 
millions of tanks of highly flammable hydrocarbons whizzing all around 
them at high speeds.

Pencils?  I'm dreading the day when airport security catch on to the 
fact that shoelaces can be deadly weapons (or socks, in some cases).

Anyway, granted that tethered balloons would have lots of practical 
problems to be solved.  I just thought it would be a cheaper (by 
approximately a LOT), and thus more likely to be a near-term solution 
than powersats.

If people are willing to dedicate parcels of land for those lumbering 
great stupid wind turbines, they'd be willing to dedicate a patch of sky 
to a big raft of solar collectors, surely?

Ben Zaiboc


* The UK, just in case 'Blighty' means nothing to you