ARPA-E & Gerard O'Neill visit to EPRI

But we dont benefit as much as if we solve it ourselves, because billions of dollars of profitsand millions of jobswill go along with the worlds largest energy-producing industry.
Mark I. Wallach
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>As EPRI responded to Gerard O'Neill, (and this applies equally well
>to ARPA-E), "Professor O'Neill, we believe all of your technical
>arguments. But you must understand that in the utility business, the
>only risk we are willing to take is the risk that tomorrow, water
>will not flow downhill."
>
>What O'Neill should have responded with is that EPRI, in particular,
>and DOE in general, is still failing to do the job they were
>chartered and hired to do, which is to pursue leading edge research
>which normal electric power companies are prohibited from doing by
>the public trust they operate under. EPRI is not and never has been
>in the electric utility business, they were supposed to be a
>government research lab for electric power research that power
>companies cannot do!
>
>As it is, EPRI and DOE continue to be essentially the establishment
>fossil fuel industry and their stockholders - which means they have
>focused their research on such "leading edge topics" as how to burn
>coal one tenth of one percent more cleanly and efficiently. In the
>short run (their research horizon is 6 months) this is
>inconsequential, but after thirty years of wearing fossil fuel
>blinders we are about to pay a terrible penalty for cowardice in
>Congress and the Presidency and the general failure to communicate
>these festering issues from within the electric power industry.
>Hopefully, we can minimize the disaster. But like the Titanic's
>lookouts, we are examining the iceberg ahead and wondering how much
>damage it is likely to cause. We continue doing nothing on the
>scale required.
>
>... ...
>
>Related to yesterday's interesting debate referenced at the
>Economist (below) is the fact that as the moderator noted from
>Gordon Woodcock's (a legendary space flight expert) comments,
>"The cost reduction factor ultimately needed relative to the current
>NASA Constellation system in development is on the order of a factor
>of 50 (no one has an accurate estimate but it is bigger than 10 and
>less than a few hundred)." Sending NASA back to the moon will not
>achieve these reductions..
>
>The only way to afford men on the Moon, IMHO, is to involve them in
>trade with Earth. Gordon says that is impossible - certainly -
>unless the cost to orbit is drastically cut. The only way to do that
>is to vastly increase the orbital space market. The only market that
>can demand such massive volume is Space Solar Power. Under such low
>cost to orbit circumstances, men in space could arguably engage in
>trade by supplying parts and services for a growing Space Solar
>Power system, which
>http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid 601101&sid=aJ529lsdk9HI>Japan
>is now engaged in a well-financed program to begin building.

There is another factor which might be at work here. 30 years ago
NASA and what had just became DOE (Energy Research and Development
Administration--ERDA) agreed that DOE would not do anything related
to space and NASA would not do any energy projects. Since power
satellites are both, the agreement made it impossible for either to
fund, and indeed there has been very little done since those days.

>Stephen Ashworth recommends a follow-on debate, along the lines of:
>"Resolved: the Constellation programme should be abandoned, and NASA
>should base its return to the Moon on a growing commercial
>infrastructure in low Earth orbit." That is the real question
>facing US policymakers today. -
>http://www.economist.com/member/Astronist/comments>Stephen
>Ashworth, Oxford, UK

Low earth orbit is not where we need to go but otherwise, I agree
with him. I think we should quit banging on a locked door in the US
and go elsewhere. I am extremely pleased that the Japanese
understand the problem.

"Transporting panels to the solar station 36,000 kilometers above the
earth's surface will be prohibitively costly, so Japan has to figure
out a way to slash expenses to make the solar station commercially
viable, said Hiroshi Yoshida, Chief Executive Officer of Excalibur
KK, a Tokyo-based space and defense-policy consulting company. "These
expenses need to be lowered to a hundredth of current estimates,"
Yoshida said by phone from Tokyo.

I get a reduction of 200, but at this stage of the development, a
factor of two is excellent agreement.

If Japan or China or even North Korea solves the energy problem, then
we all benefit.

Keith