Should Space Habitats be tied to SPS?

For a long time we have tied the development of Space Habitats to
Solar Power Satelites (SPS) under the assumption that at some point
in the future that earth surface energy cost will justify the cost
of developing SPS and therefore Space Habitats. I don't belive that
this will be true for the next hundred years. Several recent articles
have pointed out that there are alternative that are much easier
to get financing for than a SPS will ever be. Wind power seems poised
to become a major player. is an
interesting report that I found online after reading a "Science News"
article "Power Harvests". This web site also contains an interesting
set of maps showing current projects
and the amount of wind power available per state.
Pebble Bed nuclear reactors look like a low cost, relatively safe
approach for generating electricity below 2 cents / Kwh. I have
seen several articles on this technology. The one in front of me
is from the August issue of Popular Science.

What this means to me is that there are non SPS approaches to electric
generation that will delay the need for SPS for many many years.
I believe that we need to decouple Space Habitats from SPSs and
market the goal of Space Colonization independent of any possible
financial reason for a habitat's existence.

Mitchell James
mejames@...
http://www.InnerTransit.net (Email distribution for multilevel organizations)
http://www.InnerTransit.org (Homebase for collaborative engineering)