Solar Power Satellites
In my rant against the use of space colonization as an escape from environmental stewardship, I referred to The High Frontier by the late Gerard O'Neill. To be fair, I should point out that one of the justifications for colonization of space that O'Neill provided was the amelioration of humanity's impact on Earth's fragile ecosystems, most significantly by the use of Solar Power Satellites (SPS) which, by converting solar energy collected in space to microwave energy beamed to the surface of the Earth, have the potential of supplying huge amounts of renewable energy with only the impact of microwave receiver antennas on the ground and the allocation of some airspace to microwave beams. Even more important to the overall plan is that the economic benefit of manufacturing SPSs in space provides an incentive to the investment required for building orbiting space habitats. Analysis showed that it is much cheaper to mine materials from the moon and build manufacturing facilities in space than to manufacture the parts for an SPS on Earth and lift them into geosynchronous orbit for assembly.

The problem, which is not overlooked, but underestimated by O'Neill, is that before private capital could be induced to support SPS construction, the technical feasibility of the complete system, from mining and manufacturing to power generation and transmission, will have to be demonstrated in space. Environmental considerations alone should be enough to get some government to fund such a program, if only there were the long term vision and political will. Again, there's the rub. Over the last thirty years, there has been very little public support for a program to develop SPSs, even though it would give NASA a concrete purpose. Private support, through the Space Studies Institute, founded by O'Neill, has been small though enthusiastic.

The idea is by no means dead. There is still time to do it before environmental catastrophe makes any large investment untenable. It won't cure all the ills of the biosphere wreaked by the infestation of man, but it could help an enormous amount. (O'Neill's environmental naïveté is revealed in his contention that ecosystems on Earth could be restored when space colonization reduced the terrestrial human population. Well, something would grow in to replace the destroyed, unique ecosystems. Likewise, he writes of saving endangered species by providing habitat in space, as if we could create ecosystems we were unable to preserve.) Clearly the project would be larger than the practically useless International Space Station, but probably close in size to the pointless exercise of putting a man on Mars.

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A Climate Change Disaster Scenario
With Gwynne Dyer back on the radar, and the connection I made between his take on Bush's space exploration fantasy and environmental disaster in the previous posting, I wondered what he thought about such questions. In one column he explains the process of ice age inception that is triggered by global warming.

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No Escape From Environmental Disaster

Do you think that mankind can escape an earth it has rendered uninhabitable by thoughtless environmental negligence, and rocket away to colonies in space? I know it's risky to predict what technology cannot accomplish, but feel so strongly about this that I will speak out anyway. OK, what do I risk, you ask. Being proved wrong? When? Who will know? Who will care? Who cares now? Can you see the irony in the ultimate absurdity of "wasting" the environment and then throwing the whole ecosphere away by leaving it behind, as if tossing a styrofoam, fast-food container out the window of an SUV, speeding down the interstate.

First, our destruction of the environment seems inevitable. Humanity is a virulent infestation, unlikely to be stemmed by anything short of a catastrophic collapse of the ecosystems it lays waste. By the time the crisis is reached it will be too late to save ourselves, the losses irreversible. It's not that living in harmony with the biosphere that we haven't yet ruined is technically infeasible, rather politically unattainable. I won't try to prove that. I couldn't anyway. I'll even admit that I might be wrong. The optimist in me sees that polls show that people generally want to save the environment. It's just simply and completely inconsistent with the way people have always behaved and continue to behave. The retrograde policies of the current U.S. administration reinforce my pessimism. Our strength is in our ability to exploit the world to satisfy our appetites. Even our environmental consciousness seems to be based on an aesthetic hunger that can be satisfied by little (on global scales) nature parks, which by themselves couldn't provide sustainable support for more than a handful of primitive humanoids. If there is any optimism in my view, it is that the destruction will not be complete. Life on earth will go on, even as it has in the deep past, following astronomical cataclysms, though certainly not as we know it. Among other species, small pockets of our infestation may even survive, as the uneven collapse leaves isolated populations some naturally protected ecosystems, perhaps a Pacific island for example. Life on earth will likely survive until the Sun heats up enough to boil it dry, though anything like humans will be gone long before then. Meanwhile, I'll be scouting Pacific islands.

Second, we will never accomplish the colonization of space. Again, not because it is technically impossible, though certainly much more difficult than most people seem to appreciate. How can one imagine that we could create artificial ecosystems that would be sufficiently rich and robust to support human life as we know it, when we could not prevent our own destruction of the natural world that gave us our existence to begin with? What potential return on investment would motivate the unimaginably huge expense of attempting the establishment of a self-sustaining colony? Or do you think that some government would have the political will and resources to accomplish it? There would not be enough resources if the crisis were reached, not enough will if not. In short, there is a better chance of saving our existing environment than creating a new one. Still, it's unprovable, only refutable by counterexample.

Last, given that the colonization of space is theoretically possible, or rather not provably impossible, its potentiality provides a psychological escape hatch that permits our self-annihilation. If you're availing yourself of that excuse, can you at least appreciate that it would be an awful exchange; our beautiful earth for some artificial environment? And, of course, what about the poor bastards we couldn't get off. All x billion just aren't going to fit in those shuttles you know. Well, there won't be so many left by then. Oh, that's not good either. We might even say, look, the earth is doomed by the eventual heating up of the Sun anyway, so we're going to have to get off sooner or later. Now that's taking a long-term view. But, why not go further? Unless there's an as yet unknown loophole in the third law of thermodynamics, life is doomed no matter what we do. Might as well live for today. My point is that there are lots of available escape hatches if that's what you're looking for. The colonization fantasy just happens to fit into a loosely imaginable time scale and relieves some scruples we might have for the lives of future generations that look pretty grim to the environmental pessimists.

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Jack Frost Caught on Radar Fleeing New England

All that's left of this weekend's snowstorm is in Maine. Is that Jack Frost in the gulf, fleeing the wrath of New Englanders buried under his early winter's work?

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