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

I do not believe that statement is accurate, so the rest of the argument
is questionable.

SPS will always be more expensive than terrestrial energy, at least in
terms of short term retail cost.
Where SPS scores is the lowest long term clean up cost of any system.

If we believe that global warming is a problem, and that nuclear cleanup
cost is prohibitive, then we are left with renewables.

Terrestrial renewables do not have the capacity to supply more than 10%
of Earth's needs.

That leaves SPS.

> 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

No, not a major player, only a few per cent of the world's energy needs
can be supplied by wind power. It is limited to some isolated
geographical areas. Terrestrial renewables have capacity limitations.
Except for solar terrestrial, which has a lot of hidden costs (
especially storage and transmission),
and whose total cost is abnout the same as large scale SPS.

> 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.

How does the available wind power compare to the power consumed by each
respective state ?
A few per cent.

> 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 is the end of life cleanup and disposal cost ? What is the fuel ?
Uranium is a limited resource. Fast-bred Plutonium has proliferation
problems.

> 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.

For the next couple of centuries the energy production of the world will
continue to be based primarily on fossil fuiels for about 90% of its
requirements.

If global warming is not a problem, then that is the way it will
continue,
SPS will never compete with cheap fossil fuels.

However, if global warming is recognized as a serious problem, then
alternatives to fossils fuels all have serious problems, to the extent
that SPS becomes competitive.

> 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.
>

I am not convinced, I have seen nothing new in your post.

Without a credible commercial justification there is little point in
designing hypothetical habitats, except for pure entertainment purposes.