Transterrestrial Musings

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Using portions of the hundreds of billions of petrodollars they are annually draining from our economy, Middle Easterners have established training centers for terrorists, paid bounties to the families of suicide bombers, and funded the purchase of weapons and explosives. Oil revenues underwrite new media outlets that propagandize hatefully against the United States and the West. * * *

And we have not yet reached the culmination of the process. Iran and other states are now using petroleum lucre to underwrite the development of nuclear weapons, and insulate themselves from the economic sanctions that could result. Once produced, these nuclear weapons could be used directly or made available to terrorists to attack U.S., European, or Israeli cities and military forces. This is one of the gravest threats to the next generation—and, again, we are paying for it ourselves with oil revenue.

Our responses to these provocations have been muted and hapless. Why? Because any forceful action on our part against nations like Iran and Saudi Arabia could result in the disruption of oil supplies that the world economy is completely dependent upon. We can’t stand up to our enemies because we rely upon them for the fuel that is our own lifeblood.

As always, Dr. Zubrin has a solution to offer.

Posted by Bill White at February 3, 2006 05:30 PM

Yes, Bob always has a solution to offer. It's not always a good one, but you can't knock him for lacking solutions.

Posted by Rand Simberg at February 3, 2006 05:35 PM

But this time it is a good one. It's a well written article and he makes his case. I don't have a real blog ;) so I can't provide my link but I did knock you for knockin' him. email: kenneth_john@yahoo.com

I still luv ya!

Posted by ken anthony at February 3, 2006 06:49 PM

Rand can testify - - I've been saying for years right here at TTM (TransTerrestrial Musings) that to win the war on terror (a/k/a the WONJI or War on Nut-Job Islam) getting the U.S. off petroleum dependence is Job #1.

Is ethanol/methanol the answer? Perhaps, perhaps not. But at least its making an effort.

Posted by Bill White at February 3, 2006 07:54 PM

It's a well written article and he makes his case.

However, making methanol from gasified biomass isn't a very sensible thing to do, unless you're worried about greenhouse gases. If you're not, then coal is a more economical feedstock.

Also, Fischer-Tropsch diesel is probably much more practical than dimethyl ether (which isn't even a liquid at STP).

Posted by Paul Dietz at February 3, 2006 08:32 PM

Oh wait, he mentioned methanol from coal. Fair enough.

Posted by Paul Dietz at February 3, 2006 08:34 PM

I want to buy what Zubrin's selling, I really do. Mars Direct really opened my eyes to a lot that could be done.

But he has a habit of going off on a tangent and throwing concepts around that aren't grounded in good numbers.

Case in point, there have been debates for years over whether ethanol production for cars is a net energy source or energy sink. Either way, it's not a big positive margin right now. Advances (bacterial chemistry) might change that, but ethanol doesn't look very promising. Methanol, on the other hand, can be produced from other (less amenable to cars) hydrocarbons like coal--but even then there are bottlenecks, like the railroads from the coal mines to wherever the new methanol plants are built (disclaimer: I still like Methanol, myself, and although Zubrin sneered at fuel cells, he apparently forgot about direct methanol fuel cells).

One additional note; I saw an article earlier (I think from WoC) in CSM that a MIT prof is working on developing strains of algae that thrive in noxious high-CO2 enironments like smokestacks and produce decent amounts of useable oil. They had a few numbers, but not a whole lot of context, and I'm sure it's not enough to serve as a "solution", but it's still an interesting idea (and has implications for Mars). Big downside? They said that a 1GW coal plant would require 2000 acres of algae to completely scrub the exhaust.

Posted by Big D at February 3, 2006 09:31 PM

"like the railroads from the coal mines to wherever the new methanol plants are built (disclaimer: I still like Methanol, myself, and although Zubrin sneered at fuel cells, he apparently forgot about direct methanol fuel cells)."

You also have trucks, barges and coal slurrey pipelines than can be used to transport coal.

Posted by Mike Puckett at February 3, 2006 09:50 PM

Big downside? They said that a 1GW coal plant would require 2000 acres of algae to completely scrub the exhaust.

I disagree mildly. 2000 acres for 1 GW isn't that bad. It's only a little over three square miles and seems to be a relatively cheap way to get fossil fuel burning plants to operate in an era of controlled carbon emissions.

Posted by Karl Hallowell at February 3, 2006 10:03 PM

Something we could do tomorrow is lift the sizeable tariff on imported Brazilian ethanol.

Why is it Brazilian ethanol has a tariff and Iranian oil does not?

Posted by Kevin Parkin at February 3, 2006 10:59 PM

Lift the Tariff and require all new cars to me Gasoline/Ethanol/Methanol compatible(except Diesels of course).

That simple and relatively cheap move would do far more than mandating expensive CAFE standards.

Posted by Mike Puckett at February 3, 2006 11:08 PM

What exactly is wrong with old fashioned electrochemical storage? Too efficient? Too cheap? Too high a power density? What?

Posted by Chris Mann at February 4, 2006 12:41 AM

"One additional note; I saw an article earlier (I think from WoC) in CSM that a MIT prof is working on developing strains of algae that thrive in noxious high-CO2 enironments like smokestacks and produce decent amounts of useable oil. They had a few numbers, but not a whole lot of context, and I'm sure it's not enough to serve as a "solution", but it's still an interesting idea..."

I think this is the article you're talking about:

Algae - like a breath mint for smokestacks
By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0111/p01s03-sten.html
http://tinyurl.com/dn393

I do wonder, though, how well this idea stacks up against this one:

http://alamaro.home.comcast.net/GreenhouseConcept.pdf
http://tinyurl.com/7mhom

Posted by Jay at February 4, 2006 01:07 AM

"Why is it Brazilian ethanol has a tariff and Iranian oil does not?"

If so, I'd suspect A.D.M.(Archer Daniels Midland?) and political clout, but that's just a WAG.

Even if it isn't THE solution, it could be part of the solution. This is quite pessemistic, but the numbers really don't look that bad to me (and ADM might just climb on board too.)

Posted by ken anthony at February 4, 2006 01:32 AM

I might have messed up this link...

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0203ethanol0203.html

Posted by ken anthony at February 4, 2006 01:33 AM

Jay: That's the one.

I like the greenhouse idea, but I suspect that the fuel generated by the algae would fetch more than the food.

Not that I'm against trying both.

Chris: Electrochemical storage? In what form, exactly?

Posted by Big D at February 4, 2006 08:57 AM

I still like Methanol, myself, and although Zubrin sneered at fuel cells, he apparently forgot about direct methanol fuel cells

Platinum catalysts are a bottleneck for fuel cells.

Platinum is expensive and massive new supplies to roll out millions and millions of fuel cells do not appear to exist, on Earth.

Enter Dennis Wingo and his hypothesis that PGMs can be found in the remains of asteroids that have smacked the moon. If this hypothesis is true (unproven but eminently testable) DMFCs provide a present day market for lunar mining and just this past week I submitted an article to Space Review about lunar platinum and alcohol fuel cells.

Posted by Bill White at February 4, 2006 08:59 AM

Do we have any useful alternatives to platinum? That would seem to be a problem--but there's still the diesel fallback.

How efficient/economical is the diesel option in comparison?

Posted by Big D at February 4, 2006 11:59 AM

Platinum catalysts are a bottleneck for fuel cells.

High temperature fuel cells do not require any electrocatalyst. And before you complain that high temperature chemical conversion devices would not work in a car: you car already has one -- it's called a catalytic convertor, the operating temperature of which is in the range of doped-ceria (and possibly doped zirconia) solid oxide fuel cells.

Posted by Paul Dietz at February 4, 2006 06:26 PM

Paul, you are correct. High temperature fuel cells (no expensive catalysts) seem ideal for locomotives as well, for example.

But high temperature fuel cells are not feasible for things like lap-top batteries, MP3 players and cell phones. Direct methanol fuel cells are terrific for those applications.

Does humanity need lunar platinum? No, which is good because there might not be any to discover. It also might not be practicable to mine. Would lunar platinum be useful in the Terran economy? I believe yes.

I also believe PGM has the greatest potential to be an economically viable tangible resource we can hope to return to Earth in the short to medium term.

Posted by Bill White at February 4, 2006 07:56 PM

What exactly is wrong with old fashioned electrochemical storage? Too efficient? Too cheap? Too high a power density? What?

You mean, batteries for electric cars? Their energy/mass just sucks, and they're either too expensive or don't last long enough. Also, they take too long to recharge (and don't start in with that silly idea about replaceable battery packs for cars -- it's completely impractical.)

Posted by Paul Dietz at February 5, 2006 07:37 AM

"But [Zubrin] has a habit of going off on a tangent and throwing concepts around that aren't grounded in good numbers."

These days it's called thinking outside the box (old farts like me used to just call it brainstorming.)

You can ignore the tangents and do your own math. The important thing is having a concept to reference.

Posted by at February 5, 2006 07:34 PM

What is Zubrin's solution? Not SPS I hope?

The alternative energy industry is in much the same boat as the low cost access to space industry. Unfortunately it lacks the smart development people and is even further from a “Netscape moment”.

Solar, wind and biomass are all capable of order of magnitude cost reductions, the required solution types being quite known, but this will not happen until the current NASA type approach is overcome. I do not see government moving much to develop such a vibrant low cost alternative energy R&D environment. Sadly government currently has little talent for such things, even though it is a primary function of government and the current need is great.

Private interests will have to step up to this plate, but the good people are all off building rockets.

Posted by Pete at February 5, 2006 10:18 PM

That implies there's an ultra-severe shortage of good people in the US - tens; hundreds at most.

No, the technology is here. What we need is political Einsteins to link these solutions to friendly government policies in such a way that the vested interests are unable or unwilling to do anything about it.

Rocket science is easy in comparison to that, otherwise that tariff on Brazilian ethanol would be gone already.

Posted by Kevin Parkin at February 5, 2006 11:29 PM

Oh, and I'd say 20 cents per gallon for US-made cellulose alcohol is a Netscape moment.

Let's double it to take into account distribution costs and profit: 40 cents per gallon.

Now let's divide by 70% to take into account decreased mpg for ethanol to give an 'effective' price of *** 60 cents per gallon ***.

Yesterday I filled up my tank for $2.60 per gallon. It's purely the dark side of politics from here on out...

Posted by Kevin Parkin at February 5, 2006 11:37 PM

I have a little theory. If you want to know where the next Netscape moment will happen, just look at what all the people who were at the last Netscape moment have moved on to. Very few are working on alternative energy, many of the best seem to have gone on to rockets.

Posted by Pete at February 6, 2006 02:31 AM

Very few are working on alternative energy, many of the best seem to have gone on to rockets.

I suspect you'll find there are many more alternative energy companies (with much more money behind them) than there are alt.space rocket companies. The reason is simple: the market for alternative energy is already large compared to the market for rockets, and the potential market for alt energy should it become mainstream is in the trillions of dollars.

Posted by Paul Dietz at February 6, 2006 04:57 AM

Pete--You should read the article. Zubrin debunks SPS in his book Entering Space. The solutions in his article are methanol and ethanol.

Posted by tom at February 6, 2006 05:49 AM

"Oh, and I'd say 20 cents per gallon for US-made cellulose alcohol is a Netscape moment."

Indeed, do you have a reference for this? This seems to assume around $10/ton for dry biomass, $25/ton might be more typical of agricultural waste.

From what I can tell, biomass energy conversion efficiencies for this are still somewhere around the 30-40% range. Thermal depolymerization is around 85% while direct biomass engines can bypass any such conversion inefficiencies entirely. There are many possibilities. Pumping biomass down a deep oil well is interesting, it can result in more efficient TDP and carbon sequestering.

I generally favour the idea of distributed energy and fuel production where possible. For example, farm and forestry machinery might use direct biomass engines, avoiding centralised fuel conversion and transport costs.

Back to the original topic, if the US can go beyond oil self sufficiency and become a major oil equivalent exporter - then that might really win that 'war'.

Posted by Pete at February 6, 2006 06:13 AM

"I suspect you'll find there are many more alternative energy companies (with much more money behind them) than there are alt.space rocket companies."

There are usual suspects a plenty, few Elons. The energy sector likes very large plants with very long lead times. Very slow to evolve with some serious PC pork at the R&D end - with the usual result.

Posted by Pete. at February 6, 2006 06:28 AM

Please note that Zubrin slammed SPS *before* nanotubes really came on the scene.

I don't think anyone's re-figured the numbers based on nanotube solar panels and F9 launch costs, and nobody knows how cheap a nanotube-composite rocket would turn out to be.

Doesn't mean the concept is now viable--just means there are new variables involved.

As far as ethanol goes, I'm still concerned about the studies that indicate that ethanol production uses more $ in energy than it creates.

Posted by Big D at February 6, 2006 06:51 AM

I'm still concerned about the studies that indicate that ethanol production uses more $ in energy than it creates.

No study showed that. There were some studies that showed that more energy (not more energy $) was used than created for ethanol from corn (Cornell's Pimentel in paricular), but most did not show that, and a recent critical survey of the studies found significant errors in the negative results; there's actually a small energy surplus. Other bio-ethanol processes (sugarcane, cellulosic ethanol) are very energy positive.

Another thing to realize about the energy argument is that much of the energy used, even in corn ethanol, is not from petroleum. Coal is a major input, for example. There's no reason to consume petroleum to distill the alcohol or make nitrogen fertilizer. So you can view corn ethanol as a kind of solar-assisted synfuel.

Posted by Paul Dietz at February 6, 2006 08:50 AM

From Paul's link:

Californians may be voting this November on a state proposition requiring that all new cars sold in California be flex-fuel ready.

Robert Zubrin may be on to something, here.

Posted by Bill White at February 6, 2006 12:20 PM

> Enter Dennis Wingo and his hypothesis that PGMs can be found in the
> remains of asteroids that have smacked the moon.

Once again, Bill, that idea is *not* original to Dennis Wingo. Neil Ruzic wrote about it 30 years ago. He also did some basic economic calculations, which you and Dennis choose to ignore.

> If this hypothesis is true (unproven but eminently testable) DMFCs
> provide a present day market for lunar mining

Not unless the cost of mining them is competitive with terrestrial sources. Ruzic understood that and even did some rough calculations on what reductions in launch costs were needed to make lunar mining practical.

That is in stark contrast to the Wingo/White hypothesis that just says "launch costs are not an issue," as if saying it makes it true.

On the other hand, when we have space transportation that's cheap enough to make extraterrestrial mining practical -- which will happen much sooner than you and Dennis think -- it won't matter whether there are PGMs on the Moon. If they aren't there we can go to the source -- the asteroids themselves. Some of which are easier to reach than the Moon.

The asteroids are noteably absent from Moon, Mars, and Beyond. NASA is spending more money on one robot to Pluto than on all its asteroid programs put together. That, in itself, belies the claim that MMB is about finding and mining new resources.

There's also the matter of planetary defense against asteroid impacts -- an event that is far more likely than the Earth running out of platinum group metals. Yet, NASA takes even less interest in that.

Posted by Edward Wright at February 6, 2006 12:41 PM

Bah corn to ethanol. If your gonna grow your fuel then hemp -> methanol would be much better. Methanol has better energy conversion, the hemp plant itself grows faster then corn, can grow in tigher rows, yields more useable product, and grows in varied climates.

Henry Ford was so convinced that Methanol was the fuel of choice for automobiles that he patented a device that could strip the hemp oil producing stem with high speed.

Posted by Josh Reiter at February 6, 2006 12:54 PM

> Another thing to realize about the energy argument is that much of the
> energy used, even in corn ethanol, is not from petroleum. Coal is a major
> input, for example. There's no reason to consume petroleum to distill
> the alcohol or make nitrogen fertilizer. So you can view corn ethanol as
> a kind of solar-assisted synfuel.

Burning alcohol will still produce CO2. It also produces H20, which is a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2 (a fact that seems lost on most environmentalists). Burning coal produces CO2, H2O, plus a lot of nasty stuff. It isn't obvious that will be preferable to burning oil from tar sands or oil shale.

Posted by Edward Wright at February 6, 2006 01:01 PM

If you're going to make methanol, which is made from gasified organic matter, you might as well skip the biomass entirely and just gas-ify coal. Even better, convert the syngas instead to premium diesel fuel (cetane rating of 79, ultra-low sulfur) via Fischer-Tropsch and have something that's drop-in compatible with existing diesel engines. Some projects of this kind are going ahead in the US. For example, there's a project in Pennsylvania to build a FT plant using an enormous pile of coal waste near Mahanoy City.

The big FT plant going in at Qatar (using natural gas as the feestock) is much more expensive than all the Elon Musk-style space startups combined.

Posted by Paul Dietz at February 6, 2006 01:06 PM

It also produces H20, which is a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2 (a fact that seems lost on most environmentalists).

This is a bogus talking point of the environmental disinformation crowd, Edward. It is irrelevant if combustion produces H2O, since atmospheric water levels are not controlled by build-up of combustion products, but rather by the balance of evaporation and condensation. This is different from CO2, where the natural pools that are in short-term equilibrium with the atmosphere are much more limited.

Burning coal produces CO2, H2O, plus a lot of nasty stuff.

Bush wasn't talking about alcohol because he was worried about CO2 emissions, Edward.

Posted by Paul Dietz at February 6, 2006 01:11 PM

Ruzic, N.P., "The case for going to the Moon". G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1965. Lib. Cong. 65-22124

Apparently out of print - I'll check my library.

= = =

Edward, the whole idea behind finding a worthwhile resource on the moon is to create private sector demand to give incentive for private investors to invest the money needed to develop and build those fancy new low cost space-planes.

Posted by Bill White at February 6, 2006 01:15 PM

> It is irrelevant if combustion produces H2O, since atmospheric water levels
> are not controlled by build-up of combustion products, but rather by the
> balance of evaporation and condensation.

Where do you think water vapor from combustion goes, if not into atmospheric water levels?

>> Burning coal produces CO2, H2O, plus a lot of nasty stuff.

> Bush wasn't talking about alcohol because he was worried about CO2 emissions, Edward.

Do you think that one speech contained every thought Bush has ever had?

On another occassion, Bush said, "Our country, the United States is the world's largest emitter of manmade greenhouse gases. We account for almost 20 percent of the world's man-made greenhouse emissions. We also account for about one-quarter of the world's economic output. We recognize the responsibility to reduce our emissions."

My point again, since you missed it:

There's no reason to assume that alcohol made from biomass and burning coal is automatically preferable to oil from abundant tars sands and oil shale -- *whether you are worried about CO2 emissions or not*.

Posted by Edward Wright at February 6, 2006 02:26 PM

Where do you think water vapor from combustion goes, if not into atmospheric water levels?

The quantity of water vapor that is produced from evaporation (from oceans, rivers, lakes, plants, etc.) utterly dwarfs, by orders of magnitude, the amount of water vapor that is being produced by combustion. Almost all the evaporated water is quickly rained out and mixes with all the other liquid water in the world. The extra water from combustion could only be a problem if it somehow built up over years and decades. But the amount of water in the environment, in liquid form, is already so large that this just can't be a problem (biomass alcohol combustion can't even cause a net increase, of course, since the water that was incorporated into the plants was already free in the environment.)

Contrast this with CO2. Combustion of fossil fuels causes a significant increase in the total amount of free carbon in the atmosphere, precisely because there is no similarly huge reservoir of already-free carbon that mixes with the emitted CO2 on a short time scale. (On a longer time scale, measured in many centuries, CO2 will mix into the deep ocean or, on a longer time scale, the crust via weathering of rocks.)

Posted by Paul Dietz at February 6, 2006 02:48 PM

> Edward, the whole idea behind finding a worthwhile resource on the moon
> is to create private sector demand to give incentive for private investors
> to invest the money needed to develop and build those fancy new low cost
> space-planes.

There's no such thing as a "worthwhile" resource if you don't have the means to develop it economically.

You and Dennis keep spreading the FUD that developing "fancy" low-cost spacecraft is insanely expensive so we have to spend hundreds of billions on Moon, Mars, and Beyond first.

Credible estimates show that first-generation vehicles could be developed for under a billion dollars.

That's less than the cost of your Stick Booster, Shuttle-Derived HLV, or Constellation capsule. It's probably less than the cost of the Pluto probe NASA just launched.

The idea that we must explore Pluto immediately but wait decades before doing anything about reducing the cost of access to near-Earth space is nuts, Bill. Insisting that the United States must spend hundreds of billions of dollars on Moon, Mars, and Beyond because it can't afford things that would cost a few hundred *million* dollars is oxymoronic.

Again, it doesn't really matter whether there are PGMs on the Moon -- we know there are PGMs in the asteroids, and once we develop vehicles that are cheap enough to *practically* exploit the Moon, we will also have vehicles that can cheaply exploit the near-Earth asteroids as well. What's holding us back is not the lack of NASA astronauts walking on the Moon. It's the lack of affordable access.

In addition, there are near-term markets that are easier to exploit than extraterrestrial materials. One is commercial human spaceflight -- "space tourism" if you prefer. Another is military spaceflight -- both orbital and suborbital. Both of those will be larger markets in the near- and mid-term than anything dug out of the Moon or asteroids. Insisting that we should disregard those markets and wait for NASA to explore the Moon, Mars, and Beyond will not only delay the development of affordable spaceflight past the lives of anyone now reading this board, it may endanger our national security as well.

Posted by Edward Wright at February 6, 2006 02:58 PM

Insisting that we should disregard those markets and wait for NASA to explore the Moon, Mars, and Beyond will not only delay the development of affordable spaceflight past the lives of anyone now reading this board, it may endanger our national security as well.

It's not "either / or" and I do not advocate "disregarding" ANY potential market.

I support space tourism 1000% - - I just don't want all eggs in that one basket.

Posted by Bill White at February 6, 2006 03:01 PM

> The quantity of water vapor that is produced from evaporation (from oceans,
> rivers, lakes, plants, etc.) utterly dwarfs, by orders of magnitude, the
> amount of water vapor that is being produced by combustion.

That's a different argument. However, the water vapor produced by combustion may still dwarf the CO2 produced by combustion. That's the case if you're burning alcohol. But as you say, both are dwarfed by water vapor from natural sources.

> Combustion of fossil fuels causes a significant increase in the total
> amount of free carbon in the atmosphere, precisely because there is no
> similarly huge reservoir of already-free carbon that mixes with the
> emitted CO2 on a short time scale.

Sure there is. You probably have some growing on your front lawn.

Posted by Edward Wright at February 6, 2006 03:13 PM

> It's not "either / or" and I do not advocate "disregarding" ANY potential market.

It isn't? NASA is spending hundreds of billions of dollars on Moon, Mars, and Beyond. Where is the comparable program to reduce launch costs? Where are the tax credits? The large prizes? The market incentives for frequent, low-cost launch (not just

It's not there, because NASA can't afford to do Moon, Mars, and Beyond with expendable vehicles. That means there's no money in the civil space budget for anything else.

These things would not be mutually exclusive if NASA stopped insisting that MMB must be done with some insane heavy-lift architecture -- but that's considered politically incorrect. Dennis Wingo is even opposed to the possibility of DoD supporting the development of reusable vehicles, which wouldn't take one penny away from MMB!

> I support space tourism 1000% - - I just don't want all eggs in that one basket.

That's a strawman, Bill. No one advocated putting all the eggs in one basket (except maybe you and Dennis with your Moonrush basket).

I just named two separate markets, and you call that putting all the eggs in one basket? The last time I checked, "two" is not the same as "one."

If you "support space tourism 1000%," why do you keep bringing up the red herring that we need to do Moon, Mars, and Beyond first? (Or, in your latest variation, that we need to colonize space first?)

Posted by Edward Wright at February 6, 2006 04:10 PM

No, it's the same argument I made before, stated in more detail for those slow on the uptake. Do try to read for comprehension, Edward.

The water vapor from combustion can be ignored. The CO2 (from combustion of fossil fuels) cannot be ignored. And I explained why that is, even though water vapor is a greenhouse gas.

Posted by Paul Dietz at February 6, 2006 06:02 PM

> No, it's the same argument I made before, stated in more detail for
> those slow on the uptake. Do try to read for comprehension, Edward.

No, your previous statement was that atmospheric water balance was controlled solely by evaporation and condensation. You've since admitted that combustion is also part of it. Either you didn't bother to read your own statement for comprehension, or you're being disingenuous. In either case, there's little point in continuing this conversation with you.

> The water vapor from combustion can be ignored.

Anything can be ignored, if you're doing political science.

Posted by Edward Wright at February 6, 2006 06:40 PM

Edward, I agree with Paul here about water vapour from combustion. My suspicion is that if you actually do the calculation, you'll see that the contribution from combustion is probably on the order of 6 to 9 orders of magnitude less than natural processes. In comparison, the contribution from combustion to atmospheric CO2 is probably on the order of 2 orders of magnitude less than natural processes.

Second, I saddle the fence on aggressive exploration. My take is that reduce the cost to orbit is the single most important thing. NASA is doing little about this (though it's better than the days when they were an active obstruction). However, we need to spur demand for cheaper launch infrastructure as well. This exploration program could be reworked (say after nixing NASA's proposed launch vehicles) to spur private supply of launch infrastructure.

Posted by Karl Hallowell at February 7, 2006 09:52 PM

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