Crosspost: SPS and $87 billion

Okey.

This is a comment on the original post:
> > For that kind of money, we can certainly build a system of solar
> > power satellites, with all the inherent advantages that has over
> > importing oil.

You've been warned.

There is no point in building a single SPS at this point. The
transportation infrastructure in North America and the rest of the
world requires oil. Adding electrical cappacity will not change this
fact. Adding electrical capacity via SPS will lower electrical costs,
and if cheap enough and reliable enough (in the sense that it can be
used as part of peak power capcity) may displace fossil fuel based
generating stations.

Transporttaion accounts for well over 80% of the oil consumption.
Until our transportation needs can be met using electricity in some
way, spending money on SPS will not decrease the dependency on
importing oil.

If industry and government were seriously trying to decrease the
dependency on foriegn oil it would be mandating in law production of
hybrid cars. If the requirement was to completely become self
sufficient in oil. I believe it could be done within a decade by
mandating wide spread adoption of more efficient technologies that
don't include SPS.

When trying to justify space colonies try to avoid the knee jerk
reaction of "instead of spending it on the military". Such a
justification ignores the realities of people on Earth.

Bill

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "victoriatangoman"
wrote: