14 Underdeveloped nations that productive capacities along with the U.S. subscribe to the global powersat system become more developed as plentiful energy spearheads a rise in the world standard of living. And now, on the foundation of powersat space stations in place, capacity can be augmented at the rate of a hundred gigawatts a year in the Twenty-First Century. An eventual "all-electric world" appears attainable as energy growth contributes to higher living standards that contribute to population stabilization. Scenario "B" obviously promotes peace (and plenty) over scenario "A. Admittedly it is an optimistic outcome, and of course there are many other possible futures between these two extremes. The point of the exercise is to illustrate that cost of a new technology cannot be isolated but is interdependent upon many other economic, biological, political, and social phenomena. Cost is not total cost, and cheapest rarely means least expensive. I have not included ground-based solar photovoltaic energy as a viable alternative, although it certainly may plan a role in prototypescale and regional power in many locations. Its projected direct cost is about the same as orbital energy without the economic and social advantages of becoming an international force toward peace. Another cost consideration deserves mention when comparing power satellites with any ground-based system. Orbiting solar plants have a tremendous advantage in being capital-expensive and maintenance-cheap: that is, in the hard vacuum of even low-orbit space where wind and weather are totally absent and the only degredation of materials possible is that caused by solar radiation itself, power sats will last much longer than ground-based plants. If a ground plant may be expected to last thirty years, then an • BUZIC REPOR 15 orbital plant may last three hundred years! The only major portions of the plant that need be replaced will be the solar cells themselves. Under the assumptions described in the thought experiment, a vast replacement market will exist for at least seventy satellites times twenty square miles each, or fourteen hundred square miles of solar arrays in space. Billions of photovoltaic cells (or square feet of thermal films) will be involved. Working under a profit stimulus of that magnitude, periodic technical advances may be forecast with reasonable assurance. Thus the major component that can wear out will be replaced periodically anyway--and replaced at much higher outputs per dollar, which is to say at less cost than not replacing it. If powersats truly possess ultra-long lifetimes in the vacuum of space, the amortized unit cost of solar electricity must be less expensive than any ground-based power plant. Only a short time ago, communications satellites were thought to be too expensive too, compared with undersea cables. Now there are almost or planned for the near future-one hundred comsats in the sky A not because proponents won the original argument but because the bulk of the cost (which then was the building of our entire launch capability) was funded on another premise: landing men on the moon to show up the Russians. Today, as more and more communications channels are required, comsats have become the economical alternative to undersea cables. Indeed the history of technology is one of a new development first entering a market, second dominating it, and third creating an entirely new market and way of life. Semiconductors, computers, and electrostatic photocopying leap to mind. How could we possibly exist today without "xeroxing" our reports or our piano lessens? I have no doubt that powersats will create a new level of cheap global energy usage, so much so that one day our descendants will look back upon · RUZIC REPOR 16 this era of energy indecision and wonder why such an obvious choice was so difficult. The only valid question is "when?" Solar energy from powersats is inexhaustible. It can't spill, explode, contaminate, irra diate, strip the ground cover, or pollute. If we are not careful how we go about it, however, it can bankrupt us. Thus we must implement these--and other--energy concepts with the tool originally described, the International Decade of Energy Alternatives. Achieving energy independence for the participating nations should be geared to a rigorous time frame such as: IDEA 1978 1980: 1981 1985: Feasibility studies on all alternative Selection of main and subsidiary sources. oil exporters based on forthcoming powersats. 1986 1990: Design of all systems, installation Scientific break The strong possibility that breakthroughs will occur in the harnessing of thermonuclear power or other sources need not change the initial focus on the technologies selected during the IDEA. throughs in fusion or other processes will take decades to become meaningful contributors to global energy sources. When they do, the worldwide energy requirement (or the desire to explore space) will be so great that all additions to our present heavy reliance on petroleum and future use of solar, coal, and fission power sources will be welcome. Even now a list of technical goals can be compiled for the IDEA. If power sats are chosen during the early years of the international decade A RUŽIC REPORT 17 as the primary focus, for example, an intensive multinational effort would ensue to increase solar cell performance, cost, and weight; demonstrate high-efficiency microwave power transmission; assemble structures in orbit because prefab powersats are too big to be launched; and begin a new generation of space shuttles, or heavy-lift launch vehicles perhaps driven by ion engines, so that only a hundred or so flights will be required to assemble each five-gigawatt satellite. It will befall the IDEA planners and engineers the task of advancing energy technology while diminishing the human problems associated with former power systems. The new energy must reduce chances for environmental disruption or illness, sabotage or terrorism, diversion of fissionable material to weapons, and catastrophic accidents. Orbiting solar power stations can accomplish these objectives, and if they are built their use will spread to other non-energy pursuits as well. Manufacturing in weightless orbit where better metals can be produced by controlling crystalization during cooling and in extreme vacuum where semiconductors can be pro cessed by the billion for our myriad solar cells, astronomical studies from beyond our dense atmosphere, biological experiments in high radiation and the apparent lack of gravity--even tourism under the majestic blue earth spinning in black space-station sky--can grow out of the concept, and contribute further to the poverty-free economy that the powersats will begin to make possible. The timing of technologies is fortunate. Just as birth-control technology arrived in time to present an alternative to overpopulation, the space shuttle, which will fly in 1980, is emerging as the first tool to build power sats in space. Other technologies also are merging toward the starting date. To reduce the weight of the enormous payloads required to build giant power satellites, thin solar cells only microns thick, • AUZIC REPORT 18 made of crystalline or amorphous silicon, gallium arsenide, or other semiconductor materials, are emerging from laboratories at Solarex Corp., Spectrolab Inc., Varian Associates, and the University of Dundee in England, to mention only a few. The beneficial impact of a global energy system on society is overwhelming. Only a century ago human and animal muscle accounted for ninety per cent of the energy used in U.S. industry. Today they supply less than one per cent. Less-developed nations strive for similar consequential trends. Abundant and ultimately cheap energy through U.S. leadership for all peaceful nations would be the most dramatic example of good intentions that this country has ever exhibited. International powersats supplying mankind's most necessary commodity would be the proselyting triumph that the Apollo moon missions were supposed to have been. Apollo was an engineering and scientific triumph, but it did not become a stimulus for all nations. This time we have the opportunity to provide a financial stimulus, and one of enormous magnitude, instead of a look-what-we can-do boast. Industrial internationalization is in itself a force for peace. Would the Japanese have bombed Hawaii in 1941 had they owned a significant portion of industry there? While the location of the superindustry proposed for power sats is in space, the only feasible launch site today is in the U.S. More important, plentiful power should foster the growth of democratic governments because it is translatable into greater personal freedom and a higher educational level. "Manhattan-style" crash programs may be out of favor just now, but the rewards in this case seem to justify that kind of giant technological effort, especially if done through the international milieu of ten years of energy achievement. The International Decade of Energy Alternatives • RUZIC REPOR· |