Trillion dollar debt and human smarts working on the wrong things

This is one of those blog posts that is most likely going to get hidden from being found. Lots of powerful folks won't want it to be known. But here goes anyway:
Ref: "A National Debt Of $14 Trillion? Try $211 Trillion" https://www.npr.org/2011/08/06/139027615/a-national-debt-of-14-trillion-try-211-trillion

America could have been starting to be a major energy exporter to the world as of several years ago.

The energy source: solar energy gathered in Geostationary Earth Orbit. The technology was proposed in the 1960's and has improved since then, Called "Satellite Solar Power Stations" or "Solar Power Satellites" most of the time. Sometimes called "Space-Based Solar Power", more generally.

The obstacle has been the transportation costs to deliver, build and maintain the Solar Power Satellites (SPS) in Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) some 22,300 miles above the earth's equator. Along with the passively-shielded habitats for the construction and maintenance workers in GEO, a radiation plagued place.

Conventional rocket technology is vastly too expensive, and too energy-inefficient to do the job; and that has blocked it the past four decades and more.

The concept of the anchored tether "Space Elevator" was revived in 2002, to lower transportation costs, but the effort has gone in circles, primarily still having the problem of strength-to-density ratio of tether material. Other concerns focus on collapse modes in case of structural failure of the linear tether, which would be supported by the centrifugal force on mass out beyond GEO, analogous to a tetherball being swung by the Earth's rotation. But a solution to this problem was proposed as far back as 1988, but was suppressed and did not get published as a peer reviewed technical paper until 2000. It is probably not coincidental that the old "Space Elevator" concept was brought up suddenly in 2002, presented as ready-to-build-now, and thus erasing any interest in the alternative technological concept. Good business strategy for the rich & powerful whose wealth is based on the coal, petrochemical, nuclear and rocket business-as-usual; but very bad for America.

Yes, I am talking about the "KESTS to GEO" transportation structure concept, an eccentric hoop-shaped electric motor structure linking the earth's equator and GEO above the opposite side of the earth. It would not be supported by the planet's rotation, but by centrifugal force it would generate within itself. thus it would not have the tether's strength-to-density problem at all, and be able to be built of conventional materials. It would also use some of the upward-moving motor armature momentum to drag payload-carrying captive spacecraft up from ground to GEO, thus no need for rockets in the transportation process, nor even beaming megawatt lasers to power climbers, as is being explored re tether "Space Elevators."

This "KESTS to GEO" (Kinetic Energy Supported Transportation Structure to Geostationary Earth Orbit) concept was proposed in 1988 and fleshed out by 1989, although has evolved even better over the past 23 years. (See the KESTS to GEO website, http://www.kestsgeo.com for lots more details.) Yet if it had been accepted as worthy of development in 1989, it most likely would have had development versions of KESTS to GEO built in place a dozen years from then, and have operational versions in place and lifting materials for building SPS in GEO a half dozen years from then. So we would have had the past five years to be building prototypes and then operational SPS in GEO, and already be bringing in income from the sale of SPS-sourced electrical energy delivered to the ground to rectennas places in appropriate places around the world. We could even be taking the energy crisis load off Japan right now, as a just-in-time technology brought on line, instead of shipping them more coal to burn in the air.

SPS, as a solar sourced 24/7 electrical energy supply, gathered up there in GEO where the energy is more than seven times as much as gathered on the average surface of the Earth, would be rapidly taking over the job of supplying the enormous energy needs of a developing advanced world civilization.

The question of nuclear power and coal-power, and the consumption of oxygen from the air we and everything else breathes, and CO2 increasing with its oceanic damage already ongoing from increasing acidity disruption to calcium-gathering creatures like coral and shellfish and foraminifera, would be now slowing.

But the point being focused on here is the financial aspect. The sale of this energy would be providing America with vast taxable income, both domestic and from abroad. And our own energy costs would be dropping rapidly.

There would be no massive national debt as per the referenced article, because with the KESTS to GEO and SPS clearly in the vision for the future long before the publication of the 2000 article, there would have been a different political party in when 2001's 9/11 fracas bait happened, and no trillions spent in the chase of one man, who was safely hidden in neither land we threw our military money onto the desolate desert wastes.

With abundant clean energy coming online for the past couple of years already, and massive energy supplies coming on rapidly to be sold worldwide, the demand for technology applications would be increasing, and the unemployment rate very low, and people not being forced into retirement when they could still be working in satisfying ways, adding to the GDP, even if some only part time.

It would be a totally different situation now, and the prospects for the future getting better every day.

We can't turn back the clock; we can't un-ring the bell. But We can learn from our mistakes.

Or we can not learn from our mistakes; ever our choice. Which seems to still be happening. For the same reasons this post will get deep-sixed by the powers that be. They like things the way they are. And have aimed for them all along, and made them happen. And have the "necessary" things planned for the near future, too. All influence-power games. Human smarts working on the wrong things.