[ExI] Is Mr. Henson somehow involved in this?

[spike]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org 
> [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of 
> Henrique Moraes Machado
> Sent: Friday, December 04, 2009 11:41 AM
> To: ExI chat list
> Subject: [ExI] Is Mr. Henson somehow involved in this?
> 
> Solar Plant in Space Gets Go-Ahead
> http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/solar-plant-in-sp
ace-gets-go-ahead/
> 

Henrique, it isn't clear to me why the California Public Utilities
Commission needs to have any input into this.  Any ideas?  If it means the
commish is putting up some of the money, well, don't count on that:
Taxifornia is broke, and it isn't going to get any better any time soon.
Hint: it will get worse sometime soon.  If the Cal PUC is not putting up
money, I don't see why they have any say in the matter.  It would be between
Solaren and Pacific Gas & Electric, ja?

I see other things in this article that raise red flags.  If they are using
an inflatable mirror and concentrating solar energy on PVs, that looks to me
right up front to be a loser: the PV life would surely be shortened by a
concentrator, which is not what you want to do with anything you have paid
to loft into space.  

I could imagine on the other hand using a huge inflatable mirror to create
one hell of a Carnot cycle generator, and oh what fun we could have
designing something like that: plenty of cold space to exhaust the waste
heat, noooo restrictions at aaaallll on what we could use for working
fluids, haaa that would be a fun project on which to be a design engineer.

spike