SOLVENCY: ALIENS WILL HARM US

Interstellar space may hold only the wise, grandfather types predicted by Cornell-based SETI

Such scenes are speculative, but Hawking uses them to lead on to a serious point: that a few life forms could be intelligent and pose a threat. Hawking believes that contact with such a species could be devastating for humanity.

FOR decades it has been a staple of science fiction – somewhere out in the galaxy, a highly developed alien race picks up a radio signal from Earth, and decides to eat us for lunch.

Hawking is a firm believer that alien life does exist.  The universe contains hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with hundreds of millions of stars, many which have been shown to have planets in orbit.  Numbers virtually guarantee that life has evolved elsewhere, Hawking believes.  He states, "To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational.  The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like."

Of course invaders might not come for plunder but to colonize. Even here though, most

But other, more plausible hazards might arise from physical contact. Suppose a single alien

Suppose our extraterrestrial guests pass successfully through quarantine. There are still reasons to be nervous. For example, how are we to guarantee their safety? Would you risk letting alien tourists walk unguarded down our city streets? Ninety nine percent of the population may welcome them gladly. But most people also liked John Lennon. Human diversity is one of our treasures. Alas, it also means our mad fringe will be a persistent danger to visitors from space. This may be hard for guests to understand if they come from a homogeneous, uniform society. In the past, several human societies found themselves plunged into calamitous wars against European powers, precipitated by the actions of a few local hot-heads, acting against the wishes of wise and cautious local chiefs. This will be a source of danger in any future contact situation, as well. Of that you can be sure.

SETI activists assume that extraterrestrials have the best of human traits, especially altruism, and have outgrown the negatives. The reality may not be so sanguine. Creatures that have evolved in different physical contexts may have different body chemistries and modes of thinking. Contact with these creatures may not be pleasant. How will humanity react if extraterrestrials inform us that their religion mandates the eating of first-born children? Even a gentle extraterrestrial culture may cause problems. Earth's history shows that technologically superior people can inflict enormous culture shock on backward societies. Contact between the West and non-Western peoples have resulted in loss of confidence, enervation, and cultural despair. Will the knowledge that human science and medical knowledge are clearly inferior to ET's make us feel that our culture is also inferior? Will humans split between those who wish to adopt “alien” ways and those who believe in traditional culture? The different forms of stress that contact can precipitate are endless. SETI writers are quite aware of these potential problems, yet they remain optimistic. They believe that contact with ET is part and parcel of our cultural evolution and in the long run will benefit humanity. If they did not believe this, they would not be so anxious to make contact with extraterrestrials.

[Luke; "The METI Controversy": Should Detection by an Exo Civilization Be Viewed as a Threat?; Outskirts Press; 14 July 2009; http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/07/the-meti-controversy-revisited-is-detection-by-an-exo-civilization-a-threat-a-galaxy-insight.html; retrieved 14 August 2011]

Space Based Solar Power Negative

INHERENCY: PRIVATE COMPANIES ALREADY DEVELOPING SBSP
SBSP IS BECOMING A COMMERCIALLY VIABLE PROGRAM TODAY-Billings ‘09

[Lee; Getting Solar Off the Ground; SEED Magazine; 28 Jul 2009; http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/getting_solar_off_the_ground/; retrieved 17 Jun 2011]

WM: The costs of deploying powersats are falling, and the costs of fossil fuels are rising. When powersats were first envisioned, solar cells were these huge monolithic crystalline beasts that weren’t very efficient in weight per watt. Now, we’re printing thin solar cells on sub-micron aluminum and titanium. Solar cells have gotten much more efficient per unit at converting sunlight to electricity, and the weight’s gone way down. Weight—or, really, mass—is everything in space.

Meanwhile, the base cost and the burdened cost of fossil fuel is rising fast. The base cost is just how much it costs to extract and distribute fossil fuels, pretending that carbon emissions don’t mean anything and that there’s no penalty whatsoever for warming the entire world. Burden cost is when the political system says, “Wait a minute. You can’t do that!” and spanks you in terms of taxations and carbon-curbing measures.
PG&E IS ALREADY DEVELOPING SBSP CONTRACTS IN CALIFORNIA-Marshall ‘09

[John; Space Solar Power: The Next Frontier; 13 April 2011; http://www.next100.com/2009/04/space-solar-power-the-next-fro.php; retrieved 17 Jun 2011]

Now PG&E is extending that approach to tap renewable energy at an entirely new level: solar power in space.

PG&E is seeking approval from state regulators for a power purchase agreement with Solaren Corp., a Southern California company that has contracted to deliver 200 megawatts of clean, renewable power over a 15 year period.

Solaren says it plans to generate the power using solar panels in earth orbit, then convert it to radio frequency energy for transmission to a receiving station in Fresno County. From there, the energy will be converted to electricity and fed into PG&E's power grid.

[Clean Energy, Cheap Hydrogen, and Weather Control From Space; Space Island Group; 2011; http://www.spaceislandgroup.com/solarsat.html; retrieved 13 August 2011]

This is a dramatic claim. Below we’ll explain how we’ll accomplish it, including the costs, timelines, and our funding sources for this multi-billion dollar effort.

The Space Island Group, Inc. (SIG) will design and finance two categories of space hardware to make these results possible. Both categories will incorporate components now used on NASA’s space shuttles and other launch vehicles, and on today’s communications satellites. This is not an R&D project. Because we will not develop new rocket engines, guidance systems or other components and because we’ll manage the program with private industry procedures, our development costs will be far below those of comparable government efforts.

The first hardware category will be very large structures up to several kilometers wide called solar power satellites and solar reflectors, which will be assembled in space.

[Joe; Fellow at American Progress and is the editor of Climate Progress; Harvard Business Review and Yale e360 hype space solar. Why?; Climate Progress; 03 Sep 2009; http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2009/04/14/203950/pge-space-based-solar-power-solaren/; retrieved 29 Jun 2011]

It seems all but inconceivable that you could get the cost to drop that sharply without economies of scale and a learning curve driven by a massive number of regular launches. But who is going to pay for all those incredibly expensive space-based solar systems before the cost drops?

This is a classic chicken and egg problem, compounded by the fact that there is no guarantee you will actually get the cost drops even with large-scale deployment, so all of your money is at grave risk.

The risk is even greater because land-based solar baseload (or load following or dispatchable solar) — aka Concentrated solar thermal power — is practical and scalable now, and certain to be much cheaper. And land-based PV is poised to drop in cost sharply, and will ultimately have access to tremendous land-based storage through plug-in hybrid and electric cars.

[Michael; senior writer at Climate Central; Solar Power from Space:Moving Beyond Science Fiction; Environment 360; 31 Aug 2009; http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2184; retrieved 23 Jun 2011]

Moreover, the best locations for solar arrays — the deserts of the American Southwest — are far from the centers of population, so even under the best of circumstances you’d have to send electricity many hundreds of miles through transmission lines that don’t yet exist.

But there is a way to tap into the sun’s energy 24 hours a day, every day of the year, and send it anywhere on the globe: Launch solar panels into space and beam the power back to Earth.
WE ARE NOT MUCH CLOSER TO SOLAR POWERED SATELLITES THAN WE WERE IN THE 70s-Day ‘08

[Dwayne; Knights in shining armor; The Space Review; 09 Jun 2008; http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1147/1; retrieved 14 Jul 2011]

[Space Based Solar Power; Ad Astra; Spring 2008; www.nss.org/adastra/AdAstra-SBSP-2008.pdf; retrieved 11 Jul 2011]

[Dwayne; Knights in shining armor; The Space Review; 09 Jun 2008; http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1147/1; retrieved 14 Jul 2011]

[David; Whatever happened to solar power satellites?; The Space Review; 30 Aug 2004; http://www.thespacereview.com/article/214/1; retrieved 06 Aug 2011]

The largest solar panels ever deployed in space are currently being used on the International Space Station. They cover more than 830 square meters and are 73 meters long and 11 meters wide. These large panels make the ISS one of the brightest objects in the night sky. Scaling up from there to something much larger would be challenging, but the good news is that we can take one thing at a time.

[William; Space Based Solar Power: Industry and Technology Assessment; 02 Jun 2011; http://www.pickar.caltech.edu/e103/Final%20Exams/Space%20Based%20Solar%20Power.pdf; retrieved 01 Aug 2011]

In order for SBSP to be feasible before then, we would require some sort of disruptive technology in orbital launch, such as a space elevator. Another case might be where the Earth’s atmosphere suddenly prevented more of the sunlight from reaching the Earth, increasing the efficiency gains from using SBSP.

[Jeremy; Controversy Flares Over Space-Based Solar Power Plans; Space.com; 02 Dec 2009; http://www.space.com/7617-controversy-flares-space-based-solar-power-plans.html; retrieved 04 Aug 2011]

Last week, California regulators proposed a plan to approve a 15-year contract with the American company Solaren Corp. to supply space-based solar power to utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) by 2016. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has also teamed up with a private Japanese coalition to design a solar space station for launch by the 2030s.

Such projects encourage scientists who dream of harnessing the sun's power directly, without the interruption of cloudy skies and Earth's day-night cycle. Marty Hoffert, a physicist at New York University and one of the staunchest supporters of space solar power, suggests that today's technologies allow space solar power to provide energy as cheaply as the usual solar panel arrays on Earth.

“The problem is that we're treating space solar power as something that has to compete with coal right now," said Hoffert, who gave a recent talk on beamed power at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. "Nothing can compete with coal."

Despite his enthusiasm, Hoffert remains skeptical of Solaren's plan. And he warns that failure to deliver could deal a life-threatening blow to the dream of space solar power.