Gadflies bothering the livestock - Referring to the article on SPS by Ben Bova

I rarely comment on others' opinions; but this post includes such a comment. Referring to the article by the long time visionary writer Ben Bova, published recently in The Washington Post on Sunday, October 12, 2008; Page B02, titled "DEAR MR. (FUTURE) PRESIDENT- An Energy Fix Written in the Stars"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/10/AR2008101002450.html?sub=new

Gadflies address the next occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
[my italics; this is apparently the Washington Post's summary opinion of it all. Note that the definition of "gadfly" per Webster's New World Dictionary p.550: "...1. any of several large flies, such as the horsefly, that bite livestock 2. a person who annoys others or rouses them from complacency"]

Anyway, from the referenced article by Ben Bova regarding Solar Power Satellite's appropriateness now:

: ...You do it with the solar power satellite (SPS), a concept invented
: by Peter Glaser in 1968. The idea is simple: You build large
: assemblages of solar cells in space, where they convert sunlight
: into electricity and beam it to receiving stations on the ground.
: The solar power satellite is the ultimate clean energy source. It
: doesn't burn an ounce of fuel. And a single SPS could deliver five
: to 10 gigawatts of energy to the ground continually. Consider that
: the total electrical-generation capacity of the entire state of
: California is 4.4 gigawatts.
: Conservative estimates have shown that an SPS could deliver
: electricity at a cost to the consumer of eight to 10 cents per
: kilowatt hour. That's about the same as costs associated with
: conventional power generation stations. And operating costs would
: drop as more orbital platforms are constructed and the price of
: components, such as solar voltaic cells, is reduced. Solar power
: satellites could lower the average taxpayer's electric bills while
: providing vastly more electricity. ..."

Note also that it may be relevant that similarly, I have been apparently considered a "gadfly" all these years - since 1989 in this case - 19 years past and irretrievably lost that much to civilization's capacity already - when I first started describing on computer networks and then the internet, about the potentials for using kinetically supported transportation structures for use in economically lifting the construction materials and personnel and infrastructure for adequately plentifully building those Solar Power Satellites in GEO, which could already have been done and we would already be receiving plentiful clean 24/7 electrical energy this way (ref http://www.escalatorhi.com and http://www.kestsgeo.com - but note that the latter website is getting frequently hacked and often knocked off the net, so keep trying, it will eventually be back on the internet.)

The hangup has always been the enormous energy and vehicular cost of rocketry used to put things up high into Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) - where our communication and weather satellites already are operating now; but unfortunately even the rocketry industry considers me a gadfly in their business soup.

At this point, however, even using rocketry to put up a few of the Solar Power Satellites could be a wise energy investment for America and other nations, as pointed out by the esteemed Ben Bova in the referenced article. (Also, instead of merely being a business-boondoggle-designed-to-fail-to-prove-a-point activity, it would instead need to be done Apollo-project-style with a sincere effort to get it done.)

In contrast to the very intermittent wind and solar ground-sited sources of carbon-free electrical energy, power more directly gotten from the Sun far up beyond clouds, latitude and night's shadow, the Solar Power Satellite in GEO solution offers continuous 24/7 clean electrical energy to the world's electrical energy grids, and lots of it. Wake up, folks; it is already past time to go far beyond business-as-usual, to make a go of it all. Please apply wisdom and go for the gold.

If it takes being a gadfly to get the bosses to begin some movement going toward solving problems and reaching for fine opportunities, then gadflies we may have to be.