Being completely occupied with politics over the last several months I have posted very little about space. The election is 51 days away and nothing I write here is going to have any effect now so I am going to attempt to return to the main mission of this blog. However, if something completely insane happens, which is likely, I will of course have to go to that. It just gets crazier and crazier.
The fires on the west coast have reminded me of what I have posted about many times over the last few years- space solar power as the only cure for climate change. AOC came out with the Green New Deal and I posted about my version of that- The Green New Space Deal. Our president has stated his opinion of climate change:
“It’s freezing and snowing in New York- we need global warming!”
I had linked a story on a website I thought was legit but then found out it is a new site that charges 75 dollars to post stories. It is a scam as I deduced after reviewing the terrible article. But, I made a comment on the website before even reading the story:
“The one thing you can’t get on Earth you can get on the Moon is enough energy to power civilization with no carbon footprint. Turning the Moon into a factory site building space solar power satellites is likely the only solution to climate change. A “Green New Space Deal” would see the U.S. launching Super Heavy Lift Vehicles weekly on missions to develop cislunar space. In my view the key to space solar power is a public works project on the scale of the Panama Canal and Hoover Dam and not private companies pursuing the profit motive. While SpaceX is always cited as the example it is not helping by essentially strip mining Earth orbit with smallsat constellations. The shiny starship is many years away and far better vehicles, such as iterations of the SLS, can be in operation sooner.”
1:57 “First of all, it’s very difficult to separate the science from the politics. And second, even if the claims, the more radical claims are true, we have no idea what to do about it.”
It is actually not difficult at all to separate the science from the politics- all you have to do is look who paid for the supposedly objective studies denying climate change- the majority trace back to the Koch brothers and the rest to Neoliberal organizations funded or influenced in some way by fossil fuel interests. And we know what to do about it: stop burning fossil fuels.
2:55 “They produce more carbon dioxide than when they started because they had to turn on their coal fired plants again.”
If you look closely at the video you will see the person who posed the question advocating climate change as a rallying point make a face when Jordan said this- likely because Peterson is leaving out the reason Germany turned the reactors off and those plants back on: Chernobyl.
5:25 “-the kind of low resolution thinking that gets us absolutely nowhere.”
Jordan Peterson has helped millions with his online classes and self-help book but this talk, posted not long before his health problems became life-threatening I believe, are so out of touch I find it extremely disappointing. His excuses for not addressing a certain and inevitable threat to civilization are hollow and riddled with fallacies. I hope he recants, which is not impossible…if the Director of NASA Jim Bridenstine can then Jordan Peterson can.
And so we come to the Donald Trump of space exploration, the great one himself. Having inherited all his original technology from 1960’s NASA patents given away by Ronald Reagan, he now promotes Mars as a second home for humankind. The worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration. His followers, like forever trumpers, are Ayn-Rand-in-space crazies that worship him as the embodiment of John Galt and Howard Roark.
Gerard K. O’Neill was the prophet of space colonization and one of his groups first conclusions was no other body in the solar system besides Earth is suitable for human colonization. Only artificial worlds will work. And the economic engine for that colonization will be space solar power due to Earth heating up. O’Neill stated this back in the 1970’s. Central to any plan to colonize space with artificial spinning hollow moons are lunar resources. As much as I detest the current regime I am hopeful Bridenstine alone will be carried over into a Biden administration but I have read nothing on this yet.
He built an engine that is too small- the same mistake Musk made. So…I am not optimistic.
Ice on the Moon 