We need a new direction

I'd love a space vision. It appeals to the romantic aspect of exploration within me. The key to getting anyone to buy into a vision is getting them to help create it. It will be immensely difficult for a nation to try and sell a vision to those who don't care about it. Someone like me would be all for it, but the one who cares only about the new car or whatever couldn't care less. I like the idea of NASA over private companies for only one reason. I see NASA and the like as in the hunt for the joy of discovery, adventure and exploration. Private companies are in it for profit. I think the vision has to be one that appeals beyond money for those involved.

On an entirely different slant, I heard something many years ago regarding overpopulation and did a little conversion research. Assume with me one round number first. Earth's total population is 7 billion people.

Ok. If we then assume a four person family/household/whatever, then there are 1,750,000,000 households in the world. (Obviously, this varies, but stick with me for the sake of argument.) Now, in the state of TX, there are 171,891,840 acres (268,581 sq mi according to the state of TX website) which I will now round off to 175,000,000 for ease of division. Quickly, this means that TX in and of itself has room for 10 families per acre, or 1 family per .1 acre. This is one single state in the country. It has room to fit four people per 0.1 acre. Obviously, the planet is nowhere near "overcrowded." A city, perhaps. But not the majority of countries, and certainly not the entire planet.

Hope you enjoyed...
 
Like I said, profit is the only motivator that ever has any lasting effect. The west was settled due to gold and free land. The new world was found looking for a trade route to Asia. The great explorations of all time had no immediate effect on the world they occurred in. They were looked at with interest, then forgotten.

Exploration without profit is a deficit. That's never popular.
 
an armed mice society would have been a polite mice society :D

I took some Psychology courses in college one of them was Motivational Psychology. We watched the mice in the maze stuff too, I could have sworn our proffesor was achieving satisfaction when the mice did an uh-oh and got shocked. I got some of the other folks to watch her during these films and they agreed. I did pretty good in the class. I drew on my military experience in leading troops for each situation she gave and then wrote down the opposite of what that was on the test...lol. I didnt do great on her first test....thats when I reversed what I said. She simply ate it up and grin and giggled.

Years later I saw he name on a study the military contracted on the memorandum included with the survey.

Man must have a dream and hope....
 
"We don't need exploration - we need industry. I'd start by generating electricity in orbit solar arrays and transmitting it to receiving stations in Nevada and New Mexico with microwaves."

What problem does that solve? Why would we not just use the solar arrays here on Earth? How would you get the solar arrays into orbit? How big would they need to be? How much would they cost? How much energy would be lost in the transmission? How much would energy produced in such a manner cost? How would you make sure the transmitter didn't accidentally vaporize Elko? How would you build the transmitter? Etc.

Tim
 
Tim,

There are already such designs worked out. Solar arrays in orbit are far more efficient than ones under an atmosphere, good weather or not. On top of that, they are relatively maintence free, which is a big deal when you consider the maintenence necessary in windy desert regions. The collection system is no more than a grid of exposed wires.

The radiation is not like a beam weapon, but it would be easy enough to rig a fail safe that would absolutely prevent transmission if not locked on a reception station.

Either way, it would not be hard for such a system to produce all of our electricity without fuel, waste or continual maintence. In my opinion, that would be worth evacuating Elko, if necessary.


Solar radiation in space has been referred to as an "unlimited energy source" by people smarter than me for decades.
 
I really didn't know what to call it, Mike. Sure seemed to some of us that you disapprove of the topic, though.
 
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