Word: solarized
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Development of nuclear power has come to a virtual standstill in the U.S., even though energy analysts are generally convinced that the broader use of atomic energy is inevitable. New technologies to harness solar, wind and geothermal energy are not expected to be commercially significant for at least another 20 years. A National Academy of Sciences study this year concluded that, without some more nuclear power in the next few decades, the U.S. will come to rely too heavily on coal, causing possible irreversible damage to the world's environment. Concludes George W. Cunningham, an Assistant Secretary of Energy...
Even at night or on cloudy days on earth, when ground-based solar collectors shut down, these microwaves would come flooding down from space. In the scheme studied by the Energy Department, these beams would be focused on six-mile by nine-mile oval-shaped receiving antennas called rectennas. The rectennas would turn the microwaves back into electricity and funnel it into utility power grids. By Glaser's calculation, one satellite could supply as much electricity as five nuclear plants. The Energy Department envisioned 60 such arrays, built over 30 years, to supply 300 million kW., which is about...
...press briefing heralding the Energy Department study, Glaser replied to all these objections. He pointed out that solar satellites, unlike power plants that would use nuclear fusion, need no major technological breakthroughs; the space program has already shown that the required scientific know-how exists. What of the staggering costs? Glaser argued that after the turn of the century, when such satellites could be in operation, their electricity probably would be no costlier, and perhaps a lot cheaper, than power from oil, coal and nuclear plants. As for the danger from microwaves, Glaser conceded that this needs further study...
Weighing up to 50,000 tons apiece, solar satellites would have to be built in space itself, with materials carried aloft by a new generation of craft considerably larger and more powerful than the NASA space shuttle. Looking like great Erector Sets, the structures, about six miles long and three miles wide, would be made of long thin beams actually manufactured in space out of rolls of aluminum or carbon-fiber strips about as thick as the wall of a beer can. In the weightlessness of orbit, nothing stronger would be needed...
...spacecraft cast a last backward glance and transmitted this stunning portrait of the ringed giant. The photograph shows a crescent Saturn casting a shadow on its own rings, from the perspective a traveler might get by approaching from the stars, rather than from the interior reaches of the solar system. Re-created bit by electronic bit in computers at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and released last week, the shot is so detailed that patches of the planet can be glimpsed through the rings, which are believed to consist of bits of dust and ice trapped by Saturn...