Industrial and scientific development in the void of space that surrounds our delicate planet is a key to ensuring our ability to carry on living on Earth at all over the next century. Satellites circling the planet already deliver information (through agricultural weather satellites and the GPS system) that provides the extra margin of food that keeps nearly a billion people a year from starving.
Many crucial developments in the earth sciences (from climate to geology) are children of advanced technology satellites we can now put in space as well. We now have the technological ability to do much more industrial work up there, providing communications, advanced science, and even the potential for solar power and server farms in space — thus taking CO² intensive industry out of the atmosphere.
The problem we now face is not the technology but getting it up there in a safe, reliable and cheap way with minimal environmental impact. Large non-reusable rockets launched from the ground based on designs dating back to the 1940s are not the answer to the urgent industrialization of space that we need to achieve.
I believe the answer will come from the private sector working with and also independent of agencies like NASA to bring new materials and engine technologies of aviation into space.
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShip 2 and its launch mothership, WhiteKnight 2, are sometimes called space tourism vehicles, but they will be capable of so much more. Indeed, we are already working to bid for a NASA science contract. SpaceShip 2 is environmentally benign, and the system it is launched from could also launch a 100 kilo satellite for a fraction of today’s cost.
It will take a private sector led industrial revolution in space to finally get mankind off planet Earth and out to the stars. The technology revolution has been spurred on by private sector investments in what were initially government technologies such as the computer and the Internet. That same entrepreneurial spirit may at last get us beyond the final frontier!
By Floyd Hayes at 5:44 PM ON 07/31/08
Not to mention Herbert's 'Golden Path' should it go really wrong on Earth.
By Jared at 5:08 AM ON 08/01/08
I.S.T innovation of Industrial Scientific Technology is at the leading helm of individuals who can formulate kilometer per second ratio based upon 1100 miles per hour that light follows shadows and/or visa versa.
In stategizing thought such as this, going from the ecosphere to the stratosphere to outter space in aeronautic vehicles such as Spaceship2 is already in the works with ionized recollection transfer, energy field residualization, and
"magnetohydrodynamics" that will make fuel and buoyancy just the norm while the new direction will just be what structural materials to use.
I'm just glad that there are processes such as deradicalization as a work in progress so that more individuals won't adhere the Herbert's golden path notion, and instead utilize the IFO, or Intelligence Fully Operating.
Ousty...
By befuddled at 12:36 PM ON 08/06/08
Is it just me, or does every post of Jared's, and the fact that he posts so frequently, make him seem more and more like a crazy person?
@Jared: You don't get to make up words until you've learned the language. Going from your lack of punctuation (periods go at the end of sentences, not just the ends of paragraphs), consistently inconsistent subject-verb agreement, and ocassional sentence fragments, I'm gonna have to say you don't know how to use English as a tool to communicate.
I applaud your enthusiasm, but loathe your execution. The aformentioned issues are only technical, semantic grievances. Your insistence on using unnecessarily cumbersome language (too many big words in a row) and throwing out ideas and theories that are nothing even approaching common knowledge as though they were commonplace not only discredits your own contributions to the site, but the site itself. Because I fully support the mission of this collective operation, I beg of you: stop posting here until you've learned to express yourself coherently.
As for the actual article, I must say that the idea of simply moving the pollution out of the atmosphere is quite the intriguing one. My only problem with it is that from a standpoint that we only have one earth, with one amount of carbon to start with, wouldn't pouring it out in space become problematic after a time, since the lifeforms on the planet are carbon-based (and so the CO2 gets recycled into lifeforms)? How about instead of shifting carbon releases to space, how about we shift our nuclear waste there? Maybe fire a big ol' rocket of it into the sun instead of burying it here?
By Jared at 12:51 PM ON 08/16/08
befuddled,
"To confuse, as with glib statements or arguments" is your handle and actually speaks for your unreliable intellect.
As for the fact that I posted at least something in every category is to say that I am a practicing writer that suffered insomnia one night, stumbled across this site, and of course probably relayed a little incoherence in my postings.
Ooops, my bad, and I'd like to take this time to thank you for noticing that I am still practicing to even give a care by just jumping in with all 8 fingers even if sometimes my 2 thumbs get in the way.
As for the initial comment? That was a statement and not a question so as not to associate by mistake your existence in superficial oral disagreement.
As for your theory of CO2 getting recycled into lifeforms, I guarantee that you don't even know where we as humans got our sonata forms from because you were a piss ant to begin with, and plain and simple, you're just a jag off!
As for shifting nuclear waste into space, how about you do your homework and learn that spent fuel is more useful if it is completely recycled, as is the trajectory of real safety & responsibility of people who work on the issues instead of personal attacks of contradiction like in your own statement of "and throwing out ideas and theories that are nothing even approaching common knowledge as though they were commonplace".
Ousty...
By Jared at 4:54 PM ON 08/16/08
befuddled,
Ps:
I didn't mean to blow smoke up your dress in the art of being the bigger belittler, but as the crazy person in the proud of it department, everything I said in the initial comment is on-line somewhere around common knowledge as though they were commonplace.
Kind a funny how that works (Ha-ha)...
Jared
By Jared at 5:23 PM ON 08/16/08
befuddled,
Ooops, crazy person here again. I forgot to ask. Is this the place we sign up for "The Daredevil Apprentice" as an extra in the re-runs?"
ha-ha, just kidding!
Jared