Could “cloud ships” solve the problem (assuming that there is a problem) with “global warming”?
I do find this both amusing and frustrating, though:
The Copenhagen Consensus Centre, which advises governments on how to spend aid money, examined the various plans and found the cloud ships to be the most cost-effective.
They would cost $9 billion (£5.3 billion) to test and launch within 25 years, compared to the $250 billion that the world’s leading nations are considering spending each year to cut CO2 emissions, and the $395 trillion it would cost to launch mirrors into space.
That’s an absolutely insane (and economically and technologically ignorant) number for the latter. The only way to get it is to assume that a) the mirrors are very massive, b) they are made entirely out of terrestrial materials and c) that launch costs would not be reduced in any way by launching that much mass. I’m not saying that “space mirrors” are the most cost effective solution, but I’d like to see their basis of estimate, because that number is nuts.
Well, I agree the $395 trillion seems so innumerate as to be Obamaesque, but I don’t get the “[assuming] they are made entirely out of terrestrial materials”. I mean, space is pretty empty. Where were you thinking we were going to get the materials? The Moon? The asteroids? Discarded NASA toolbelts?
BBB
bbbeard,
I think Rand was referring to lunar or asteroidal resources. But the big point being that increasing flight rate by 3-4 orders of magnitude, but assuming they’ll cost the same as current systems that are particularly expensive due to low flight rate, is kind of silly.
~Jon
I agree that the cost estimate is way high, although since they don’t have much hard data with which to calculate a better estimate, it’s understandable.
Yes, I was referring to the moon or asteroids. The moon has a lot of aluminum in the silicates.
For $395 trillion, using falcon IX heavies at 2006 prices (with no economies of scale, no refeuling infrastructure, no reuse, one-way trips), one can buy 5 million flights and transport 330 billion pounds of payload. Note that one can transport 1 billion people off planet for this amount of money at these prices. $395 trillion is 7 years of planetwide GDP.
I think the more interesting observation is that humanity is now rich enough to move it’s entire population away from the Earth if it has sufficient lead time and desire.
It’s only a matter of time and money before subpopulations start leaving. Some subgroups already have the desire.
Okay, I actually went to the CCC website to understand better where the number came from. See http://fixtheclimate.com/uploads/tx_templavoila/AP_Climate_Engineering_Bickel_Lane_v.3.0.pdf
Point Number 1: I don’t think the Telegraph reporter read the report carefully. The CCC report makes it clear that the $395 trillion would be what it would cost given current launch costs of around $20,000 per kg, but they quote a much lower number based on a specific proposal by Roger Angel. Angel gives a cost target of $50 per kg using as-yet-undeveloped electromagnetic launcher technology.
The other point is that the CCC has a very specific configuration for the sunshade. It envisions putting a “cloud” of “flyers” between the earth and the sun at the L1 Lagrange point, proposed by Angel in a 2006 PNAS paper.
We’re talking a LOT of flyers here. As in, 3.9 TRILLION little beasties, each about 0.28 square meters in area. Angel proposes 5 million launches, each carrying about 800,000 flyers, i.e. 1 launch every 5 minutes for 50 years. Angel’s total cost estimate, including EM launchers, flyers, fuel and launch costs, and development and operations, is $5 trillion (NOT $395T for launch costs alone). The CCC authors feel this is way too optimistic, but even the Angel price tag makes it a non-starter compared to cloud ships.
So, another object lesson that it is best not to trust reporters to get any details right.
BBB
OK – I like this!
Given:
1) We can now cool the areas we want by creating clouds.
2) “Global Warming” will warm the rest of the planet.
Ergo, the livable space on the planet increases dramatically. If we can accelerate Global Warming (perhaps via some large scale CO2 production), we can raise the temperature of Canada. Canada could become the breadbasket of the world! At the same time, we use the cloud boats to lower the temperature at the lower latitudes.
$10-20B per year and we almost double the arable land on Earth. I’m not seeing a downside!
Angel’s scheme has seem too complicated and heavy to me. Possibly more realistic would be something that would release vaporized material near the earth-sun L1 point, and scatter solar photons at resonant absorption lines (the cross section at these lines can be enormous). As the gas accelerates away from the sun, toward earth, doppler shifts would broaden the lines.
This kind of scheme would have the advantage of being able to use extraterrestrial materials without requiring sophisticated manufacturing in space.
A figure of $395 trillion is even worse if it’s the “long scale” definition of “trillion.”
I’m pretty sure that Roger Angel took the result of his sun shade work as a good reason to find something else to do. He is working on light concentration for solar cells, trying to get solar cheap enough to be viable in competition with oil and coal.