Date: Fri, 2 Apr 93 04:00:37 From: ISU Space Power Digest Reply-To: Space-Power-request@isu.isunet.edu Subject: Space Power Digest V1 #004 To: Space.Power.Talkers Precedence: bulk Space Power Digest Fri, 2 Apr 93 Volume 1 : Issue 004 Today's Topics: preparing for 21st century Welcome to the ISU Space Power Digest!! This digest will seek to provide a forum for discussion of wireless power transmission, solar power systems. It is hosted by alumni and faculty of the International Space University, but is open to everyone with an interest in this area. Send e-mail contributions to: space-power@isu.isunet.edu To subscribe or unsubscribe, send your e-mail request to: space-power-request@isu.isunet.edu If you experience technical problems, send an e-mail message detailing the problem to: digests@isu.isunet.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1993 20:11 EDT From: USRNAME Subject: preparing for 21st century Greetings space-power subscribers. Anyone have some input to this topic? If you have read something relevant, please post reviews or excerpts. (When posting excerpts, be sure to reference them.) One way for us to all keep abreast of the wide variety of developments which are relevant to solar power and wireless power transmission, is for each of us to post short notes summarizing some piece of information new to you. In addition to keeping the solar power and WPT community informed, I want to build up a bibliography to have available to persons who are new to the field or just interested in becoming informed. So please attach as complete reference information as you can when posting summaries or excerpts. Information that would be appropriate for this topic includes (but not limited to): PV array info, research solar thermal technologies storage technology for solar power systems phased arrays FET developments and use rectennas power beaming info, hardware satellite power systems i.e on comm sats etc deployable solar arrays Russian solar sail/reflector power system for Mir, Freedom environmental impacts (electric interference, health effects of microwaves, power beam effects on atmosphere, etc.) real cost of energy energy needs of Earth and space users demo projects, proposed and in progress (such as METS, Alaska 21, Reunion Island...) early commercial uses for wireless power transmission how to use solar and or beamed power for South Pole Station beam optics frequency allocation possibilities for beamed power commercial prospects for solar power (both terrestrial and celestial) **************************************************** The SUNSAT Energy Council meeting was held in Washington DC on March 26, minutes will be posted very soon! At the meeting Peter Glaser strongly recommended we read the book "Preparing for the 21st Century" by Paul Kennedy (Random- House). I went to check this book out of the library and, not only was it checked out, there was a waiting list for it! Figuring this (combined with Peter's recommendation) must mean it's really good, I headed over to my local book store an bought a copy. Here are some excerpts from the first couple chapters. In chapter one, he reviews the history of Britain in the context of population pressures. He goes into how the dire problems predicted by Malthus were avoided, at least for Britain (if not for some of its colonies). In chapter 2 he lays out the distribution and growth in the world's population. Every time I see these numbers, I cringe. p 6 "Nevertheless, three developments permitted the British people to escape the fate Malthus predicted for them. The first was emigration: people left the British Isles in vast numbers, in search of better conditions elsewhere. While only slightly more than 200 000 emigrated in the 1820's, that figure trebled in the following decade and reached almost 2.5 million in the 1850's. Between 1815 and 1914, around 20 million Britons left the country, a massive exodus relative to the overall population (By 1900, the British population was about 41 million; without emigration it would have been over 70 million)" Notice that more than 1/3 of the population emigrated. The other 2 developments were improvements in farming and the industrial revolution. p 12 "In the eighteenth century, the global population was adding another quarter of a billion every seventy-five years; today, such an increase occurs every three years." Go back and read that again!!! Every 3 (!!) years, one quarter of a billion people are added to the world. p 22 "In 1825, as Malthus was making the final amendments to his original Essay on Population, about 1 billion human beings occupied the planet, the race having taken thousands of years to reach that total. By then, however, industrialization and modern medicine were permitting population to rise at an increasingly faster rate. In the following 100 years, the world's population doubled to 2 billion and in the following half century (1925 to 1976) it doubled again, to 4 billion. By 1990, the figure had advanced to 5.3 billion." On page 23 is a graph showing population growth trends for developed and developing countries. Whereas developed countries have about 1 billion people today and will grow to 1.5 billion by 2000, developing countries have the other 3.5 billion which will grow to 6 billion by 2000. p 23 "In the 1985-1990 period, the earth's enlarged population was adding about 88 million people annually-equal to the population of Mexico City today." Just as a comparison, next year, there will(at least) 88 million more people, and this amounts to the yearly traffic at the O'Hare airport, which moves about one plane load per MINUTE! Well, that's enough for today. As I told a friend of mine, if we are going to use the emigration strategy (into space) to alleviate the population pressure on Earth, we will be launching a rocket every minute! Think on that... --- Gay e-mail(Internet): CANOUGH@BINGVAXA.CC.BINGHAMTON.EDU (GEnie) : G.CANOUGH phone/fax= 607 785 6499 voice mail = 800 673 8265 radio call sign: KB2OXA 'Snail Mail: ETM, Inc. PO Box 67 Endicott, NY 13761 ------------------------------ End of Space Power Digest Volume 1 : Issue 004 ------------------------------