Invitation to dialogue to learn YOUR views of how humanity could coherently meet the 7 big challenges
Paul Werbos
that book used serious mathematical analysis to disprove a lot of the tacit assumptions made by many people about the process of evolution. (Of course, many of us built on the insights of George Gaylord Simpson in understanding this. In the risks paper by Ward, Wadhams and Werbos at build-a-world.org, we discuss important more modern work.)
Amalie Sinclair
My best guess is that a "ban on space weapons" would go a long way.
Russia and China had re-proposed a comprehensive ban earlier this year to the UN security council.
The US in principle supports a ban, but says the Russia/China proposal is not acceptable because it does not include mechanisms for verification.
The ban can be properly broken down into set of agreement/verification objectives, but this work does not seem to have been taken up yet by entities such as PAROS,
the Conference on Disarmament and UN security council. Logical perspectives could be enabled via consolidation of expertise within the community of space advocates.
Indicating the linkage between various technologies, and feasible guidelines and parameters now and in the future that might be applicable.
Perhaps the space weapons ban is an issue that we could focus on in a consolidated way. A paper might be written or a letter or declaration of intent produced.
A ban would eliminate a fair amount of threat, and help clear the way for peaceful and globalized space development,
lunar settlement and other inspirational projects that can bring the peoples and cultures of the world together.
Best wishes
Amalie
Paul Werbos
Dear Paul,
My best guess is that a "ban on space weapons" would go a long way.
Russia and China had re-proposed a comprehensive ban earlier this year to the UN security council.
The US in principle supports a ban, but says the Russia/China proposal is not acceptable because it does not include mechanisms for verification.
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james...@aol.com
The primary challenge facing the world is undertaking an orderly transition to practicable clean energy—with “clean energy” being energy that is sustainable with acceptable environmental harm or hazard. Absent being successful in undertaking such a transition, warfare to seize and/or control the world’s diminishing supplies of fossil carbon fuels will most likely erupt while at the same time the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration will climb to likely hazardous levels. The world needs to have transitioned to clean energy prior to this happening.
For a world of 10 billion to achieve a European middle-class standard of living powered by clean electrical power, each person will need about 7–9 kW of continuous electrical power depending on the proportion of the baseload to intermittent primary electrical power source. Thus, the world will need on the order of 70,000–90,000 GW of equivalent continuous clean primary electrical power generation capacity if we are to avoid devastating global war.
(Note that the U.S. per person clean energy need would be more than twice that of the EU. But that is a topic to discuss another time.)
It is infeasible to achieve this level of clean energy by relying on terrestrial renewable energy sources. Further, it would be unwise to consider doing this with nuclear fission power. Where would 70,000 1-GW nuclear power plants be built? Where would the 3X this in waste thermal energy be dumped into the environment?
Space(-based) space power supplied astroelectricity is the only feasible way to enable the world to undertake a transition to clean energy. A balance of 80 percent astroelectricity and 20 percent ground solar minimizes the land area needed.
As the world recognizes the need to change to astroelectricity, astroelectricity will become the new “oil” in terms of its geopolitical importance. This means that the control of access to space, settlement in space, utilization of the natural resources of space, and the building and operation of the space solar power platforms will be contested by those Great Powers and allies that seek world hegemony—specifically, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea but also potentially some of other nations now off the radar screen by under the control of dictators.
To assure America’s future energy security and that of our allies and friends, the U.S. Space Command has the operational responsibility to deter and, if necessary, defeat aggression against the U.S. in space. This will require an offensive space warfighting capability for the same reasons we have offensive terrestrial warfighting capabilities. Such warfighting capabilities are the protectors of liberty. The notion that a proposal to ban space weapons is reasonable and rational disregards history and ignores the already fundamental space technological capabilities of nations that seek our destruction. Many already have the ability to wage space war.
Verification of a ban on space weapons is meaningless without an ability to, if needed, locate, identify, and destroy a threatening capability. Nations ignored treaties they signed banning nuclear weapons. Verification did not get rid of the banned weapons.
The proper path forward for the U.S. is twofold.
First, establish a robust national astrologistics program to make the U.S. (and its allies and friends) true leaders in opening space to true commercial human operations with all of the appropriate “duty to care” safety obligations this involves. This will enable American leadership in undertaking space solar power.
Second, provide U.S. Space Command with a true manned space warfighting operational capability to (1) undertake “special missions” needed to, with minimal force, protect U.S. interests in space and protect the U.S. from attack from space, and (2) to have a “Space Guard” capability to render assistance to U.S. (and allies and friends) human space operations while enforcing applicable space law.
My best regards,
Mike Snead, PE
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Amalie Sinclair
it does not really seem necessary to rely upon massive new infrastructures for deterrence, satellite hardening, unique cyberspace defense, AI influence, extensive quantum encryption and so on, when agreements between the big three on outer space usage could serve the same purpose. The "protectors of liberty" may not be carefully guarded advanced technologies, they might be well established mutual consensus and verification techniques, that would have the same or similar results and be far less expensive to implement.
After all who really has the ability to ensure an overriding war fighting capacity in or from space. Only the nuclear space-faring countries and these are the principles that hold the balance of power and the responsibility for global stability in today's world.
PAROS was established to prevent an arms race in space, the logistics of PAROS need to be properly analysed and discussed by the high level international security forums. Either that or PAROS is defunct and the space arms race is inevitable.
SBSP is a complex issue, no doubt very possible, but a time frame to implement the work might be faster or more extended, in the meantime US reliance on high ground supremacy assumes a difficult pathway, which may eventually lead to further fragmentation of well-intentioned international perspectives for peace and stability. SBSP is also a candidate for highly internationalized and global projections, which might eventually include partnerships between US, Japan, India and perhaps also Russia and China.
We see two leading initiatives for lunar settlement, and cis-lunar industrialization, Artemis and ILRS, Given that Russia and most probably North Korea, Iran and others considered as rouge nations, will align with China for development of this type, it would be an appropriate moment to consider some reset of the underlying dynamics . Inclusive lunar perspectives together with focus on PAROS and a shift to interchange, collaboration, detente and the space weapons ban could see the emergence of a new holistic, inclusive and peaceful paradigm dedicated to human development.
You mentioned " nations now off the radar screen by under the control of dictators" .... but is it actually America's role to act as world policeman and pursue "democracy" for all. All nations are partner to the UN and most are participating in the COPUOS forums. A hands off approach might see much better results, if that was coupled with US alignment for PAROS and the space weapons ban. Global space governance is considered to be an evolving issue, but what does that actually look like. Significant US leadership for global space governance might also be considered within the benign terms of international consortium alignments.
These are important policy decisions that may or may not be investigated, the point of view of space advocacy groups is also important, as they represent highly informed levels of expertise. It would be helpful to explore many points of view.
FYI - August 2020
https://www.spacecom.mil/Newsroom/News/Article-Display/Article/1948103/us-space-command-establishment-ceremony-launches-new-era-of-space-superiority-c/
April 2022 ...
https://time.com/6168148/space-weapons-ban-harris/
June 2024
https://vienna.usmission.gov/u-s-statement-agenda-item-6-67th-session-of-the-copuos-june-2024/
Amalie
Amalie Sinclair
james...@aol.com
Amalie,
I do not wish to be disrespectful, but your presumptions of peaceful existence with tyrants is well proven to be unsupported by history and current events. I have seen comparable wishful and, in my opinion, naïve statements for a half-century. Yet, it has only been American resolve and militarily technological and operational superiority that has maintained some semblance of world peace.
The clear way to disprove my disbelief in your path is to show your path works somewhere by returning liberty to those who are now at the mercy of tyrants or under constant threat of losing their current American-enabled liberty to threatening tyrants.
james...@aol.com
Amalie,
NASA was created as a consequence of vital national security priorities within the Eisenhower administration in 1953–60. At that time, the Apollo program of the scale undertaken by Kennedy was not foreseen.
When Eisenhower became president in 1953, his first national security priority was to protect against a nuclear “Pearl Harbor” attack by the Soviet Union—a tyrannical regime that had stolen the liberty of millions in Europe after World War II. The Soviets were aggressively trying to catch up with the U.S. in terms of nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.
Eisenhower tried to convince the Soviets to not pursue a nuclear arms race. He made several offers, including at the UN, to enable mutual observation and verification—all rejected by the Soviets. As it became clear that there was no peaceful path forward with the Soviets through agreements, Eisenhower initiated multiple top secret (black) programs to be able to surveil the Soviets to determine the degree of their nuclear capabilities. This involved unmanned surveillance balloon flights across the extensive Soviet Union, launched from Europe—technically an act of war. This also involved the development of the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes. It involved the development of the B-52 strategic nuclear bombers. Finally, it involved surveillance satellites, the means to launch them into orbit, and versions of these launch systems to be used as ICBMs (land-based) and Intermedia-Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs) to be forwarded deployed to NATO. This was what a war-experienced president believed necessary to deter aggression by a strong tyrannical enemy.
In the early 1950s, an International Geophysical Year was proposed for 1957–58 with the intent to launch the first scientific satellites into LEO. The U.S. Navy was given the lead on this. Why? Because the Army under Von Braun was developing the IRBMs and the Air Force was developing everything else. Also, Von Bran carried the stigma of his German World War II work under that German tyrant.
The U.S. Navy was tasked to develop a non-military expendable launch system to deploy a small scientific satellite to orbit. The Navy had initially taken an interest in rockets after WW II, but this did not go anywhere other than scientific efforts. Thus, their work was outside the sphere of carefully guarded military capabilities being developed by the Air Force and Army.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the potential use of satellites for surveillance was well understood. However, a military satellite overflight would be perceived as an act of war just as if a military aircraft overflew a nation without permission. Hence, it became a national policy to let the Soviets be the first to orbit a satellite to establish a new international law precedent that orbital flight was alone not an act of war. Thus, the responsibility to launch an American satellite was given to the Navy but with no funding priority. This meant that doing work for the Army and Air Force came first from contractors and suppliers. The Navy effort creeped along as was intended.
Von Braun lobbied heavily to be given the IGY launch responsibility. He even worked to develop a small scientific satellite for this purpose. But he was told to not pursue this. In fact, when he was launching rockets to test warhead reentry materials, his rockets were inspected on the launch pad to make sure they would not “accidentally” achieve orbital velocity. The Air Force also lobbied to do this job but were told to keep out because of the black nature of their work.
The Soviets developed their first ICBM and in late 1957 used it to launch the first two satellites—Sputnik I and II. This was not a surprise to the U.S. government. In fact, the Soviets were in Washington DC at the time telling everyone of their upcoming IGY launch. What caught Eisenhower by surprise was the American public’s fearful response to the Soviet success. Anyone with a shortwave radio could hear the satellite going overhead. Public fears of a Soviet nuclear attack were already a political issue being raised by people such as a young senator named Kennedy. When Eisenhower dismissed the Soviet launch as unimportant, this brought substantial political backlash.
The Navy attempted to launch their satellite, but the rocket blew up on the pad, live on national TV. Von Braun then stepped forward to propose using a modified version of one of his rockets with his small satellite to launch America’s first satellite. This he successfully did. America was in the “space race”.
While like the first American satellite, the first Soviet satellite was quite small, the second was substantial. It demonstrated that the Soviets had an ICBM capable of launching a nuclear weapon to strike the US. The talk of a missile gap and a nuclear Pearl Harbor suddenly became quite real.
The immediate knee-jerk move was to create what became DARPA to consolidate space efforts. However, to try to prevent a military space race, Eisenhower moved to expand the long-established National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as a civilian institution. With the focus of nuclear deterrence being with the Air Force’s ICBM work, along with their work on surveillance satellites (still black), he chose to use Von Braun’s Army effort to establish NASA. In the process, NASA took over manned space capsule work then underway in the Air Force. (The Air Force had also proposed a manned lunar landing program for the 1960s. At the same time, the Air Force was beginning development of the DynaSoar military spaceplane.)
NASA came into existence because the Navy failed, because the Air Force was up-to-their-chin in air and space development activities, and because it was Eisenhower’s last shot at preventing a military space race. It was his wishful thinking.
Kennedy, in part, won the 1960 election because he fed the public alarm over a Soviet missile superiority over the US. CIA U-2 flights over the Soviet Union disproved this. Nixon, as Vice President, knew that Kennedy’s assertions were untrue but it was all top secret. Kennedy didn’t care. When he became president, within months he green-lighted the CIA “Bay of Pigs” fiasco. Then within weeks, the Soviet placed a man into orbit. NASA had yet to achieve anything. Finally, Alan Shephard, aboard a converted Army IRBM, flew a suborbital mission. With the prestige of his administration on the line, Kennedy did a “Hail Mary” proposal for a manned lunar landing program within a decade. When Johnson became president, the nature of Kennedy’s death turned the Apollo program into national public obsession. Yet, Johnson noted that it provided the cover needed to advance the military space capabilities needed to surveil the Soviet Union and provide a successful nuclear deterrence.
Under Von Braun and his German team’s leadership and U.S. military pilots, NASA succeeded with the Apollo program. They then went on to undertake Skylab. They then technologically overreached with the Space Shuttle. After the loss of Challenger, NASA had been steadily declining in demonstrated manned spaceflight capabilities.
I’ve included a map of German V-2 hits on England in the final six months of the war. Had the V-2 guidance been better, these attacks, concentrated on the embarkation locations, would have ended the Allied invasion. Eisenhower acknowledged this after the war. Space has been a means of waging war since 1944. Space was foreseen as a means of waging war since the 1930s. It is still being used for this purpose in attacking Israel and Ukraine.
Opening space to the permanent human settlement needed to undertake space solar power will require an operationally safe and effective astrologistics capability. NASA has no interest or experience with this. For the first time in American history, a key national logistics capability—the Space Shuttle—was ended without a better replacement capability being brought into operation. They are about to do the same with the ISS. They have no acceptably safe means of transporting “passengers” to space. (“Passenger” is a specific legal term.) Their lunar logistics architecture is very poor and lacks assured capabilities—something that the Air Force lunar program of the late 1950s included.
NASA “won” the civilian space race in the 1970s but has been steadily losing it ever since, especially after Challenger. The NASA name of the badge they wear is more important than what they accomplish, it appears to me. I have worked directly with them going back to the 1980s.
My best regards,
Mike Snead, PE
From: Amalie Sinclair <ana...@yahoo.com>
Sent: Saturday, August 31, 2024 6:14 AM
To: 'Paul Werbos' <paul....@gmail.com>; 'Amalie Sinclair' <amalie....@gmail.com>; james...@aol.com
Amalie Sinclair
The UN is a peacefully existing global entity. There are many others. One reason why co-existence in space is not a naive assumption, is because any object placed in space, requires a number of prerequisites, including launch ability. Civilian payloads need registration and so on. Venturing into outer space is not like picking up a gun or planting an explosive, it is not a terrorist activity, it requires extremely complex negotiation and scientific and technological expertise.
The measure of a tyrant is often political, considered and defined by some but not others. Violators of human rights might have access to space, but if so they probably also have standing armies. The UN sets standards for human rights, while an entity like the Taliban is far removed from compliance, they are also a long way from achieving space-faring capacity. North Korea is a different sort of problem, they have launched a few satellites but are under compulsion by the UN security council to refrain from missile tests.
There is no reason why outer space should be undefended, against tyrants or misuse. Consensus for peaceful co-existence through the space weapons ban and ensuing agreements will include effective mechanisms for intervention. These are particularly relevant in cases of government led mass communications abuses leading to extreme repression or genocide of populations.
America is not and should not be compelled to carry the burden of evolving human civilization single handed. Reliance on the international space development platforms can shift national responsibilities into global perspectives. Generally speaking the UN is already viewed as a compatible global matrix. Upgrading the UN to meet the demands of the information age is logical, many key issues such as AI usage, autonomous weapons and so on have already been undertaken. Other facets such as cyberspace vulnerability and national infrastructure will also fall under the UN security mandate. The issues are not dependent on historical precedents as there are none. Humanity has never before faced the prospect of a wired up world view, the dramatic and inter-connected nature of an information based society. Some people have called this moment a "singularity" which is a romantic and popular notion, but the fact is that most people, in most countries have cell phones which can contain entire libraries.
The threat from tyranny is now mostly posited in communications networks, via government surveillance and censorship activities against civil society. Elon Musk has been prosecuted in Brazil for allowing certain types of discussion on X platform, despite that several months ago he donated 1,000 starlink modems to Brazil for use in the flood emergency. Global space governance might have many unique attributes, accessible and highly effective, but these systems need designing. America could take the lead in this process through UN engagement and the PAROS mandate.
Amalie
Paul Werbos
Amalie Sinclair
Thank you for the detailed historical background, which is much appreciated.
A few other things might be remembered. Over many years the US partnership with Russia for the ISS was a success.The war in Ukraine has now jeopardized similar mutual arrangements. Ukraine had been a powerhouse for space engineering, mostly working together with Russia. Now all this is lost owing to the confrontation. Ukraine space industry in future is more likely to align with Europe and the NATO influences.
Miltary/political stratagems and machinations for funding continuum are part of the story, but they become less valid if national and political divisiveness become less dominant in the human psyche. This type of re-orientation currently provides genuine potential owing to growing public familiarity with cultures and lifestyles via mass communications..
You mentioned ...
"Space has been a means of waging war since 1944. Space was foreseen as a means of waging war since the 1930s. It is still being used for this purpose in attacking Israel and Ukraine. "
The pathway to advanced militarization will include all of these techniques and many more such as hypersonic delivery. There is really no limit to the context and role for space engendered AI, autonomy, communications, surveillance, deployment, delivery and so on within a military paradigm. There is also no necessity to draw wholesale global economics and resources into such a perspective, apart from the demands of a burgeoning military industrial complex. Most of the issues can be well tackled at the level of UN inquiry, mutual agreement on high tech orientations, checks and balances and verification as the originating safety net.
We might consider what is expedient and effective, global development is priority, countries devastated by war will take immense resources to rebuild. The pain and suffering of war is not incidental, human trauma perpetuates for many generations. My feeling is that humanity is only just now beginning to recover from the world war two scenarios, but we need to find a progressive pathway, up and out of the dark shadows of history. Lunar settlement and cis-lunar expansion offers such a medium. It is a venue for capable diplomacy or all types, and full investigation of the immense horizons which information technology has opened to mankind.
In this dimension acknowledgement of the role played by DARPA in creating ARPANET is formative. Other immense platforms may presently emerge, such as CERN recent proposition for open source distributions on the 17SDG perspectives.
"Opening space to the permanent human settlement needed to undertake space solar power will require an operationally safe and effective astrologistics capability. "
Amalie
james...@aol.com
Amalie,
With the cost of the war in Vietnam climbing in the early 1960s, I do not see that the substantial funding for the Apollo program would have continued had Kennedy not been killed. I also believe John supported it to support his election in 1964 as showing that he was not abandoning this Kennedy legacy. By 1968, most of the money had been spent.
What substantial technological or useful operational accomplishments have arisen from the ISS effort other than its care and feeding that were not first demonstrated in Skylab?
The US means to surveil the Soviet Union from space were very deep black programs, I am led to believe. The Apollo program likely provided cover to explain away what was being done in secret by elements of the government and by their contractors and vendors. Little was publicly known of these programs in the 1960s. Even the satellites used were not put on public display until just in the last decade.
In a preceding post I provided examples of how paper agreements are meaningless. Peace is obtained and liberty assured through American military strength. It has been this way since World War II.
I have included a 1981 Congressional Office of Net Assessment review of the work done by NASA and DOE on space solar power. It identifies several of the significant threats to the US and its allies and friends should an enemy country first develop SSP. Many of the capabilities necessary to undertake SSP have substantial military space power projection capabilities. The U.S. will not share these technologies with potential adversaries as this would threaten the United States. We made a mistake in partnering with Russia on the ISS, IMO. It was done to save the Shuttle after the loss of Challenger. It was NASA looking after NASA.
What was the primary obstacle to undertaking SSP in the 1980s? Ineffective astrologistics. At that time, America did not have the technological mastery to do this. Now we do but it is being ignored and spurned.
NASA has no useful operational logistics expertise or experience and poor systems engineering and program management expertise as demonstrated by the frailty of its attempts to establish an operational “return to the Moon” program. The first step in building any practicable astrologistics capability is to provide acceptable safe passenger transport to and from LEO and to establish robust LEO capabilities. I have attached a paper explaining how I would do this. This is based on concepts I developed 20 years ago. Note that this was published in a DOD Journal.
Through personal engagement with NASA going back to the 1980s, they have blocked efforts by the Air Force (not the Space Force) to develop passenger spaceplane travel to and from LEO. This has happened at least four times.
Amalie Sinclair
Yes well you have admitted what was generally assumed " Many of the capabilities necessary to undertake SSP have substantial military space power projection capabilities." In fact it is not just SSP that has these types of potentials, any technology connected to laser inference in outer space poses similar r&d criteria, including debris mitigation, space situation awareness and fast point to point communications,including those beamed to earth from reconnaissance satellites.
Basically this why we are facing another cold war, also taking into account the additional complexity posed by AI methods and the rising interest in hypersonic trans-orbital flight.
There are perhaps two lines of approach, do nothing and rely on the fact that your nation will achieve better capabilities than the other nation. Or alternatively look for a different pathway based on international agreement for space usage and expansive and original verification techniques. It seems as if the second route would be less dangerous and more cost effective.
I do not think agreements would slow down the pace of the r&d fronts, in fact they might speed up, because a lighter military weight would not drag so hard on the economic side. It is no doubt possible to use technological methods to safeguard against r&d appropriation by questionable partners. The last criteria is of course cyberspace, if international cyberspace is threatened by newer invasive methods, via quantum computing and so on, the entire framework of national grids and global banking systems will become immensely vulnerable.
We are heading into far more dangerous waters, it might be time for the UN security council to bring the many issues to the fore and engage for an adequate international dialog on upcoming risks and how to avert them. America could lead out such an analysis, pretty much everything is already known about any serious "adversaries" strength and weakness. Maybe it is time that the world powers stopped playing pinball with humanity.
I am sure NASA is not really up for this sort of enquiry, but American policy interests might be, if "intelligence" in the military sense really means something more than trying to find advantage, if in fact it means trying to solve problems then the current moment before a new cold war gets underway is entirely opportune.
Amalie
Keith Henson
Economics <power-satell...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
snip
> I am sure NASA is not really up for this sort of enquiry, but American policy interests might be, if "intelligence" in the military sense really means something more than trying to find advantage, if in fact it means trying to solve problems then the current moment before a new cold war gets underway is entirely opportune.
>
amusing story from long ago.
In the summer of 1957, my family moved from Arlington, VA to Ft
Huachuca in Arizona. It was my dad's last duty assignment with the US
Army. In Arlington, he had been Chief of the Scientific section of G2,
Army intelligence, somewhere deep in the Pentagon. (Known to insiders
in those days as the five-sided squirrel cage.)
Sputnik was the news of that day in high school (in Tombstone), but
the word had not gotten around yet at Ft. Huachuca. I remember telling
him the Russians had launched a satellite when he got home from work.
He responded that he was sure glad he was not in DC anymore because
the flap about this would be something awful, but there were a few
people he would like to shake a finger at and say "I told you so." At
the time his response was just weird.
Years later, when the security considerations had expired, he told me
that his group had been following the Russian space projects mostly in
the open literature and knew they were going to launch. He described a
briefing about the upcoming satellite launch to a general who threw
him out, ordering him to remove any possibility the Russians would put
up a satellite and come back with a revised briefing. That was
impossible.
The Scientific section of G2 in those days was a strange bunch.
Besides some high-level GS PhDs, two full colonels worked for my dad
(who was a Lt. Col.). Anyway, the whole section backed up my dad on
the briefing about the upcoming Soviet launch. What else could they
do?
^^^^^^
The people in G2 knew the USSR was going to launch but that was as far
up the chain as the knowledge got.
At the top level it was a surprise.
Keith
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james...@aol.com
Amalie,
The primary role of the U.S. military is to defend the United States for observed, predictable, and likely threats. This includes physical threats, biological threats, and cyber threats. The preferred method is a robust defense to that stops attacks or deters attacks once the method of attack is proven worthless. However, such robust defenses do not spring forth overnight. Achieving this requires a robust and carefully focused military research and development “complex”.
The second method of defense is to be able to undertake an indefensible counterattack capable of devastating the enemy. This was the method used during the Cold War to deter the feared Soviet nuclear Pearl Harbor. History shows that this worked both in preventing such an attack and in preventing the use of Soviet nuclear blackmail to achieve other aims. (Note that the U.S. has substantially invested in active defenses against nuclear missile attack to move this threat into the firs category of defensive operations.)
Attached is a composite image of the commercial airline flights above the U.S. on any morning or afternoon. Typically, more than 5000 aircraft, carrying upwards of a million people, are flying at any one time above just the U.S. The public flies with extraordinary safety and operational efficiency (on most days). They do this through a wide range of weather conditions. With little worry, we send our older children to fly to see relatives and such because of the demonstrated acceptable safety of this form of passenger transportation.
How did this come about? Did an “Elon Musk” do this? No. Did this come from the Soviets? No. Did it come from the strictly commercial U.S. aviation industry? No. This jet-powered wonder arose from military R&D that began in Britain and Germany prior to World War II and, following the war, was taken over and accelerated by the U.S. Air Force as the military “jet race” began at the beginning of the Cold War in the late 1940s.
Virtually every technology that underpins what makes America today modern, arose from government investment in the enabling R&D, with most coming from military-directed R&D. America’s ability now as a nation to undertake the development of space solar power to lead the world in peacefully transitioning to clean energy is almost entirely the result of enabling military R&D after World War II. Had there been a more effective means of speeding the development of advanced technologies, they would have superseded the military-led efforts. Thus, while America has remained free of attack, our “military-industrial complex” has been at the heart of advancing America’s overall technological capabilities, its standard of living, and its increasing economic prosperity. This didn’t come from Facebook or Amazon.
We are already in a space cold war. That is happening from clear efforts by North Korea, Iran, and Russia to normalize the use of ballistic missiles for conventional warfare. It is also underway through the development of new space weapons such as the threatened deployment of orbiting nuclear weapons by Russia and the Chinese testing of a ballistic missile launched hypersonic weapon.
Attached is an actual Soviet space laser system that they developed and launched in 1987. It was intended to defeat an American space-based ballistic missile defense system. A malfunction during launch destroyed the laser system. The Russians still possess this technology.
Just who is playing “pinball with humanity”? To me, it appears to be the same evil countries that you wish to normalize relations with to develop space solar power. I see no benefit to America to pursue such an approach.
My best regards,
Amalie Sinclair
Normalization can mean a lot of things, in international affairs it is not a one catch all category.
Normalization of international agreements and regulations around SBSP and other dual use technologies, would be immensely helpful to US defense interests going forwards. It would allow progressive and peaceful development by various sectors public/private acting in collaboration and ensure that the necessary defensive mechanisms for r&d process are not an afterthought and are subscribed to by all nations.
I see normative dual use and non-weaponization agreements as being entirely compatible with US objectives. As you mention, nations might be considered "evil" and this has been the case throughout history and on into the present day. The UN necessarily includes all nations, good and evil, international agreements do not imply either good or evil designations, they imply correct and responsible usage, adequate verification structures and platforms for enforcement.
Amalie
Christian Claudel
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/power-satellite-economics/552877435.2424544.1725211976366%40mail.yahoo.com.
Amalie Sinclair
Roger Arnold
james...@aol.com
Amalie,
I generally agree with your use of “normalization”. But this is just the “tip” of the issues being discussed.
Take for example commercial shipping through the South Cina Sea. The process of commercial shipping is well “normalized” in terms of how this form of ocean transportation is done. Agreements for commercial shipping under the banner of “freedom of navigation” have been well accepted international law for a very long time. Yet, this has not stopped the aggressive efforts of China to take control of the South China Sea.
China is conducting similar “illegal” operations with respect to fishing.
Is the UN stopping such Chinese transgressions of international law?
Keith Lofstrom
most of the folks following this thread.
If you can't read this, let me know :-)
Incentives for cooperation: share the same power supply
system, and measure gozintas-gozoutas with good telemetry.
This is what we do on regional grids, this is what we can
do with powersats. Don't play nice, don't pay your bill,
and the timeshared power beam feeds someone else's grid
rather than yours. Somebody smarter than us can figure
out how that is negotiated at nation scale, but the good
news is that tanks rumbling across your border can't
return home with your electrical gigawatts.
On the other hand, if your night is somebody else's day,
or your winter is somebody else's summer, your peak usage
won't match theirs. The ability to time-share consumption
around the globe (by price, contract, or treaty) may be
a good way to substitute useful watts for angry words.
----
I wrote about another way to share watts (work in progress):
http://launchloop.com/PowerLoop
An ocean-spanning, magnetically-deflected ultra-velocity loop
can store gigawatt-years of energy. Higher radius loops move
faster for the same deflection acceleration, and can store
mv² energy proportional to the square of the system cost.
Extending a power storage loop to the edges of the northern
Pacific Ocean can share stored power to and from Australia,
Indonesia, China, Japan, Russia, Canada, U.S., and Mexico.
This will load level between day-night hemispheres, Perhaps
between winter-summer hemispheres. Laser SBSP can be
delivered to loop-connected PV where clouds aren't. Ditto
for surface PV, wind turbines, hydro, monkeys on generator
bikes, and other time-varying sources.
Negotiated properly, all the participants would have strong
incentives to protect the shared system. That may lead to
generating and manufacturing and efficiency collaborations.
----
The power storage loop can also provide gigawatts of power
to launch loops; excluding logistics power, the current
design will convert that power to launch kinetic energy
with better than 95% efficiency, 66 MJ/kg = 18 kWh/kg to
Earth escape. I HOPE YOU DON'T BELIEVE THIS; my friends
and relatives get first dibs on founder's stock. :-)
Keith L.
--
Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com