From: alcore@uurth.com   
      
   On Wed, 16 Mar 2005, Joe Strout wrote:   
      
   >> 1.  The Lunar Power Grid + electric furnace.  Who cares if the electricity   
   >> comes from solar panels on the other side of the moon or from a great big   
   >> nuclear pile a couple of miles away...   
   >   
   >Running power lines all the way around the Moon is itself a daunting   
   >engineering challenge (though admittedly, one probably on the same order   
   >as a mass launcher and large-scale orbital manufactury).  A reasonable   
   >solution, but not such a trivial one as to make lunar night a non-issue.   
   >   
   >A nuclear power plant is also a reasonable solution, but again, it   
   >doesn't offer the same flexibility or convenience as continuous sunlight.   
      
   While admittedly not most efficient for the 1st such plant, if space based   
   industrial civilization takes any sort of toe hold, the moon will develop   
   such infrastucture in the same way that the Earth did...  (i.e. Nuclear   
   and fossil power plants in the Southern USA sell a *lot* of power to the   
   the Northeast over the national power grid.)   
      
      
   >> 2.  Space furnace mirrors can point down at the lunar surface just as   
   >> easy as at an orbital processing facility...   
   >   
   >Can they?  From where?  There are no selenosynchronous orbits.   
      
   I was thinking of Lagrange points here... but the fact is that if you   
   build several (3 at a minimum) sets of mirrors in lunar orbit, they can   
   "trade off" power duties to lunar ground targets as they pass by   
   overhead...   
      
   I'm basically a skeptic of human nature though... I don't think there will   
   ever be solar power satellites or really big solar mirror farms for the   
   same basic reason:   
      
   The ability to focus a power beam at any distance is equivalent to a space   
   weapon of incredible power.  No Government will ever allow it... unless   
   there's been a major war and only one government has access to space.   
      
   Building big Photovolatic arrays *might* be allowed though... as long as   
   the facility it's attached to doesn't have a railgun.   
      
   Gene P.   
      
   --   
   Alcore Nilth - The Mad Alchemist of Gevbeck   
   alcore@uurth.com   
      
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