How many SPSes for $87 billion ?

--- In ssi_list@... "Paul D. Fernhout"
> You have many good points and I enjoyed reading your reply
(especially
> philosophy points).
>
> Let me again summarize the key (non philosophical) issues here:
>
> 1. Vulnerability of SPS
>
> You think an SPS is not vulnerable to terrorism or embargo in our
> current geopolitical system. I disagree.
>
> Here are several obvious attacks on SPS off the top of my head:

As Charles, Frank and Raven have pointed out you're digging deep
into the bag of hypotheticals. While each of your examples is
possible I don't think them to be too likely.

How much credence would you give to a rebuttal of wind power that
was premised on the likelihood of the rotor shearing off from the
stresses of different wind loads and becoming a devastating
instrument of death as it careened into a playground full of
children on a Sunday afternoon? (Note how I've constructed a loaded
scenario)

It's not out of the realm of possibility for this to occur, but I
don't think it too likely, thus I'd hope you'd assign the proper
probability to it and grant it a fairly low expected value.

In principle there is much to be gained from decentralization of
power sourcing (as is probably evident to many in the industrialized
West after recent outages in the US, Canada, Italy, England, Sweden,
multiple SPS could also act in such a decentralized fashion.

The extreme decentralization of millions of individual actors is
taking a good thing too far. It completely erases the good that can
come from centralization. Imagine - "Darn, I've got a 2 Kw solar
system for my house, and I've just installed a new TV that overloads
my capacity. Well, I guess I'll just have to install $8,000 more of
baseload power systems in order to watch my $300 TV set without
having to turn off the filtration system in my kids aquarium while
the TV set is on. Forget about using the popcorn maker at the same
time. Wow, this living by the environmentalist credo stuff sure
sucks. I sure miss the good ole days when I could just plug into the
wall socket and get the power I needed without having all these
hassles and having to look after the infrastructure myself. Those
damn Greens did this to us!"

The trick is to find the optimum balance between centralization and
decentralization. I think many utilities have realized the dynamic
of the Hegalian dialectic and that they've swung too far towards
centralization.

If I'm a policy maker I won't be swayed by the philosophical
underpinnings of the "live in balance with nature" "take no more
than nature can provide" arguments - rather I'll be of the opinion
that in our increasing industrialization we're going to be requiring
ever more power, even taking conservation into account (which we
rightly should), and I'd better find a source that can provide
reliable BASE LOAD power in significant quantities. SPS as a concept
fits that bill and beats terrestrial solar and wind power hands
down. The economics of SPS is a legitimate area of criticism, and
this is where the hidden costs of coal, oil, gas, and nuclear are
skewing the analysis.

I have a much harder time rebutting your economic criticism of SPS
because we're not really using $90/barrel oil, or $90/short ton coal
price which may be the true costs of these fuels (my estimate) and
which I believe that SPS could compete against.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/eppats/table14.html

Further, if you look into your renewable position and the "3 to 1"
energy payback, compared to the "infinite to 1" energy payback of
SPS, you'll note the tautological flavor of using the subsibized
costs of oil and coal in your calculation. Now figure the cost of
manufacturing a PV cell using the power generated strictly from a PV
array without any subsidy applied. Your 3 to 1 energy payback stays
the same but now you're using more expensive energy sources to
create the PV and now it isn't as economic as the alternatives.

I'm not sure if you're an environmentalist, you haven't written
enough, so I'll proceed on the assumption that you are.

Tell me why the SPS concept, which exclusively mines and fabricates
with orbital resources and doesn't pollute the Earth's biosphere one
iota, is an issue that is never responded to by that crowd?
Shouldn't environmentalists be pushing this idea like crazy? SPS is
hands down, better for the environment than any other power source,
be it solar, wind or geothermal, that impacts on the Earth's
biosphere.

The problem with SPS that I readily concede to is the necessity of
SPS having to provide all of the infrastrucure required for its own
deployment. That is a huge burden that its alternatives do not have
to contend with.

TangoMan