[Server-sky] SSPS, Hydro, and other distractions

[Michael Turner]

Points taken, offense not taken. I was about to say, "Can we take this
off the Server Sky list for being too far off-topic."

And I love this line:

> Think galacticly, act microscopicly


Regards,
Michael Turner

Project Persephone
K-1 bldg 3F
7-2-6 Nishishinjuku
Shinjuku-ku Tokyo 160-0023
Tel: +81 (3) 6890-1140
Fax: +81 (3) 6890-1158
Mobile: +81 (90) 5203-8682
turner at projectpersephone.org
http://www.projectpersephone.org/

"Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward
together in the same direction." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry


On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 2:29 PM, Keith Lofstrom <keithl at kl-ic.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 08:14:36AM +0900, Michael Turner wrote:
>> First, something that keeps getting lost in this discussion is that I
>> propose beaming power up from Earth through a microwave relay back
>> down to Earth.
>
> I wrote three different replies to this, and they kept coming out
> cranky, and I don't want to be cranky with my friends.
>
> There are advocates and skeptics for many ideas, and the reason
> they disagree is that both sides haven't dived down into the deep
> research and analysis that usually leads to a third path,  avoiding
> the pitfalls obvious to the skeptics, while reaching goals both
> sooner and more profitably than the grand designs of the advocates.
>
> SSPS?  Small hydro?  Do the research and calculations yourself, with
> a skeptical bent, not to kill the ideas but to find the real flaws
> to bypass and the excellent opportunities on the bypass routes.  I
> could do it for you, and did so in my cranky responses, but where's
> the fun in that?
>
> Linus Pauling taught that the way to have good ideas is to have
> LOTs of ideas, and get rid of the bad and mediocre ideas as quickly
> as possible.  If you need me to find the flaws in the ideas you
> cling to, you will never be a Linus Pauling (or Torvalds).
>
> If the advocates haven't made real progress in decades, it isn't
> repression by the wicked, it is their own dogmatic commitment to
> flawed approaches.  That's the way most people are.  That is why
> there are great opportunities to remix and succeed while the timid
> beat their heads against the same old walls and their weapons
> against the same old enemies.  It takes real courage to listen
> to the people who disagree with you, and even more to abandon
> certainty for the power of extended collaboration.
>
> Ask yourself what can be done with water on top of a hill, perhaps
> at the top of the troposphere.  Ask yourself what can be done with
> vacuum and microgravity drenched in 1360 W/m² sunlight.  Making
> those superb resources into bulk, low value electric power, and
> digging up the planet for copper and aluminum so we can blacken
> the blue sky with more wires, seems like a 19th century regression
> from 21st century opportunities.
>
> 380 trillion terawatts is VERY attractive.  Using 1960s ideas to
> prop up a rickety 1930s electrical grid is not.  Computation and
> cleverness can replace resource consumption with /enhancement/,
> putting stuff back better than we found it, sharing abundance with
> all life on earth so it has even more bounty to share with us.
>
> We need computational results from space, not the heat wasted to
> produce them.  With a 5777K solar source and a 2.7K black body
> heat sink, we can do a LOT of computation out there, and make
> clever and useful optimizations down here on the mudball
> without cooking it into pottery.
>
> Humans will inhabit space soon, if we establish rapidly growing
> ecologies of biology and computation for life to inhabit.  Tiny
> metal prisons in orbit makes little sense.  Branches of enhanced
> humanity will live in the raw energy and vacuum of space, not
> space suits, adapting as our distant ancestors adapted to land
> from water.  We will do this with computation and biological
> modification rather than glacially slow Darwinian evolution, not
> because we are smarter than nature, but because we are impatient.
>
> The Earth can return to its best role as the slow but extremely
> powerful computation engine of natural selection, protected from
> the occasional asteroid impactor or nearby supernova, shielded
> from a relentlessly hotter sun.  Wipe your feet at the door and
> don't track gene-mods into the house.
>
> Those are distant dreams, of course, far beyond server sky, which
> itself is many steps beyond the first profits and successes we
> will find on our lifelong journey.  Stepping backwards into the
> nostalgia of Apollo or Counterculture America, dreaming of what
> might have been, will only take us away from where we must go.
>
> Think galacticly, act microscopicly.
>
> Keith
>
> --
> Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
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