fL = m ω2 r= your an idiot

Considering that even our primitive Space Shuttle is fueled by hydrogen, I don’t see this as being an issue…the boosters are something else, but not petroleum-based. It takes seven Shuttle flights to boostrap the Elevator, after which all further lifting is done by the Elevator cars which are powered by a laser from the ground….which of course, could derive its power from solar, wind, waves, nuclear, whatever. Total energy usage by the Elevator is far less than with the rocket, since it doesn’t have to lift its own fuel.

When evaluating solutions we need to realistically look at all of them. To attack science or technology is counter productive, we all sink or swim with our technology these days. I am alive because Alexancer Fleming discovered penicillin, etc. Some solutions sound like science fiction, but having spent more than 40 years designing electronics circuits and systems, we need to be careful what we throw out as ridiculous. I have designed equipement used on the moon and on Mars, not science fiction, reality, but considered ridiculous when I was in school until the Russians launched Sputnik.

Becaue of our American love affair with the automobile, I don’t think we will easily give them up. The average American is in love with his car (or truck if you’re a redneck). It’s a status symbol and a coming of age symbol. If gasoline becomes unavailable, we will convert to battery power or hydrogen power. See my article on new ways to generate and to use hydrogen http://www.sprol.com/?p=318 and on Alternative Energy for Nebraska, http://www.sprol.com/?p=319. Hopefully, the electricity or hydrogen to drive the cars will be provided from clean power sources, but if we don’t get enough clean sources working in time, we will build more nuclear power plants. Yes, they scare me too, I used to work on ICBM’s and even with lots of safeguardsnuclear power makes me nervous. But given the choice of no cars or electric or hydrogen powered cars with the power coming from more nuclear power plants, it’s a safe bet as to what the majority will choose.

We need to get busy developing alternative energy, before it’s too late. I think the solution as to what to do when the petroleum based power runs out is to gradually power down by providing bicycle only roads where it makes sense, building more windmills, pushing the development of hydrogen power vehicles and generators, looking more at ocean power generators, and keeping on looking for new and developing other alternative power sources, there are several. The DOE has an interesting web page where they describe what is currently going on, http://www.eia.doe.gov/fuelrenewable.html

If we do have to build more nuclear power plants, the Space Elevator could come in handy to dump the nuclear wastes into outer space. I remember one old TV show, Space 1999, where they used the far side of the moon as a dump to store nuclear waste.

Thank you for your comments.

Overlooked by this plan is the massive amount of energy required to initiate colonization of space and lunar and martian mining operations. Are we to waste our precious one-time bonanza of petroleum on such a gamble? Or would we be better off using it to build a more sustainable “public infrastructure” of communities using lower amounts of non-renewable energy? Remember that solar cells are built using machinery and mining operations powered by, you guessed it, dwindling and ever-more costly petroleum fuels. Perhaps if we had started these projects back in the 1970′s we’d be on track for a planet of 6.5 billion happy and healthy people. But we’ve blown that opportunity and “all but destroyed this once salubrious planet as a life-support system in fewer than two hundred years, mainly by making thermodynamic whoopee with fossil fuels (Kurt Vonnegut, “A Man without a Country,” p. 43)”.

At some point we have to start thinking about redesigning our lives, communities, and world (including the delusional neo-classical economic system of perpetual growth in a closed system of finite resources and waste mitigation) by initiating some demand-side solutions. Unfortunately, the longer we wait, the more vocal “Nature” will be in constraining our options in how we adapt to her reality.

Believing that science and technology will wake us from our nightmare to a rosy new day is simply denial of our situation. Understanding the predicament and going great guns after the remaining non-renewable resources of the world (as the neoCons seem to be hell-bent on doing) is a game of the last man standing where a ravaged few survive at the expense of the meek, weak, and impoverished. Only a powering-down effort at relocalization of economies, coupled with lifeboat building to save assets that transcend the post-petroleum interval (eg, seed banks, folk medicine, organic/biodynamic farming) will allow for greater prosperity (of a different sort than defined by consumerism) for subsequent generations.

Even if the shading of the earth by the solar power array is minimal, the big benefit of lots of available solar power would be the reduction of our current need to burn fossil and petroleum fuels to get the energy we need. This would reduce the greenhouse effect and hopefully lower the earth’s temperature.

Another issue of interest is that the space elevator will be located in a fixed overhead area at a point over the earth, so the solar cells will have to have a rotational capability to keep them pointing at the sun. Or alternatively we may want to deploy them at a fixed point between the earth and the sun using the space elevator to get them to the needed altitude and rockets to propel them into the desired orbit. If we do this how do we get the energy back to the space elevator to transmit it to the ground?
And we want to be sure that the resulting orbit doesn’t impact the SE cable at some point.

Lots of details to work out, but what a fun set of things to work on.