From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Tue Dec 03 2002 - 10:23:00 MST
Eugen Leitl wrote:
>On Mon, 2 Dec 2002, spike66 wrote:
>
>>Beaming power from the moon would cause
>>more global warming than elevated CO2, bud.
>>No, because you track the rectenna array with the beam from the phased
>>array antenna. Look at http://leitl.org/energy.pdf
>>
This is one choice that needs to be more aggressively investigated. At
least to the pilot project level. But NASA is not only quite
conservative about such things, it appears to be being dismantled. This
may eventually turn out to be good, perhaps. If the funding that was
directed at NASA goes to other similar activities. But I feel a bit
dubious about things actually working out that way. Still, I have no
internal knowledge, so there's room for hope.
One of the justifications for the existence of corporations is that they
are able to undertake projects on too large a scale for any smaller
entity to consider. The corresponding problem is that they tend to be
quite conservative about how they invest their efforts. Companies start
small and innovative. As they become larger, their vision narrows. In
a forest with only tall trees, saplings cannot grow. Around the edge of
the forest, however, saplings recur. And within the forest, when one of
the giants crashes to the ground, saplings rise to take it's place.
This seems a good analogy to corporations. But NASA used it's
regulatory powers to limit the access of small companies to the skies.
(rightly? wrongly? Legitimate safety concerns were present.) There is
a poor fit between a small group of engineers and a federal bureaucracy.
-- -- Charles Hixson Gnu software that is free, The best is yet to be.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:58:33 MST