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Originally Posted by TLAM Strike
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Originally Posted by Skybird
I think there is more important and more urgent things to think about, than this.
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I don't think you have thought about this enugph Sky. Dirt cheep costs to transport stuff in to space means any company could put thousands of solar cells in orbit and transmit that energy back to earth. But sufficent cells in orbit and two things happen A) No more mid east oil since energy is nearly free and B) Block out a lot of sun light reducing global warming.
Plus we can start building cheap orbital habats to reduce population in crowed areas of the world and micro-grav argiculture to feed everyone on the cheap.
So its eather a space elevator or a bunch of Orion launches to save the Earth...  |
I tend to agree with skybird on this one.
Even if the costs of transporting things into orbit was cheap, totally excluding the astronomical cost of a space elevator, thousands of photovoltaic cells, a system of orbital habitats and greenhouses, and all the training, personnel, and materials to make those things possible certainly would be prohibitively expensive. Especially right now. That is even more true if we had enough of said facilities to actually affect the amount of sunlight reaching earth in any significant fashion.
IMO, the most pressing issue right now is economic and state reform. Poor countries can't build space elevators.:hmm: