*sigh* you know, I'm beginning to think you like having things both ways a little too much.
"as of '05 70% of China's economy is in the private sector"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China
that would be FINE if their people were in a bangup position like us.

they aint.

now where is your source pookie?

  

huh, found this interesting!

Meh, old news. Europe has had debts from the early 1800s, France fell apart twice because of them, so did Germany, Britain would have if it wasn't for the US.

Japan still has war debts to pay to China, Korea, and the Phlippines. We have no real war debts, our debt is purely generated by our economic system of borrowing. Seeing as this is an effective way of encouraging growth without serious inflaion it is a reletively amazing procedure. However, also seeing as it has not been done before in such large quintities there might be unforseen reprocuations.

those were all dismissed emp...
no, europe's debts are almost all post WWI

yeah, but those are nominal.

always the opto-pesimist...

I'm just saying, that the current economical system is being complicated by a system of borrowing that could be very self destructive.



Yes, but WWII was when the debts got to them. In their rebuilding effor they must have paid billions that they borrowed from us of the oil barons of the Middle East.

WWII everyone was paying britain...

the oil barons maybe

we were much kinder for nearly free.

Um no, everyone was paying the US for supplies.



The debts still pilled up.

you are kidding right...


those debts are pittances compared to the ammounts we deal with today, its pocket change. a few billion dollars.

Holy crap you guys talked alot while I was gone.   

Ok now to clear up some appearent misunderstandings.



My point was that communication satellites cost LESS than what the solar power ones will cost. If China can produce a missile for less than the cost of a communications satellite then they can definitely do so for a solar power satellite. So you're argument that we could pump out more satelites then they could shoot down on an economic basis is seriously flawed.



Do you know where their lower tech is? In the rural areas. Their cities are only slightly behind American, Japanese, and European cities in terms of their technological advance. The rural areas don't matter squat in China's ability to gain technology, only the cities where universities are and researchers are trained (many of whom got an education overseas like in the US). Their military gets the cream of the crop when it comes to Chinese researchers. Why? Because China is still a communist oligarchy which seeks to catch up militarily with the US. Now if you're catching up with another power, are you going to reinvent all the old techs from scratch or are you going to take ideas from more advanced nations (if you can). Just because China isn't as technologically advanced as us militarily (yet), does not mean that China cannot pose a threat. China was less advanced by probably an even larger margin during the Korean War, yet they stalemated us. I'll grant you the US wasn't as commited to the Korean War as WW2 but neither was China so our commitment levels about even out.

Also consider all the times when less technologically advanced but a lot more numerous nations beat more technologically advanced nations. In WW2 for instance, Germany was the most advanced nation in the fighting and yet lost to the overwhelming numbers of British, Russian, and US troops. In the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, Iraq was significantly more advanced than Iran but the war ended in stalemate. Rome was far more advanced than the German tribes during the reign of Caesar Augustus but Varius's invasion of Germany failed miserably.

Now I know you can probably pull out examples of when less numerous but more advanced nations defeated less advanced but more numerous ones (like Macedon vs. Persia), but my point is that our technological advantage is no assurance of victory in a potential war with China. And if our tech advantage can be seriously wounded or defeated by the Chinese destroying our solar power satellites then we're royally screwed.




This quote comes from my reply, #58.



So it was brought up.

For your second point, implementing such a system along with the satellites would be very expensive. Now my whole point in this has been that just relying on ground-based, clean power like wind, nuclear, or ground-based solar. On Modern Marvels on the History Channel it revealed that if a 100 mile by 100 mile square of Nevada was covered in modern solar panels all the US's energy needs would be met. I wouldn't suggest that plan necessarily but a combination of all those techs. Would this be expensive, probably. Would it be more secure and less expensive as the solar-power satellites? Almost certainly.

And one final point on your second point, what if China used nukes to blow up our satellites? That would a) solve the accuracy problem nicely, require our defense system be able to kill the missiles from farther out (or risk being destroyed by the nukes), c) would require less missiles than their current kinetic kill system and wouldn't have the limitations of the kinetic kill system, and d) wouldn't be using any technologies China doesn't already have. China has both nukes and missiles which can enter orbit. As a side bonus, the American and European economies are very dependent on satellites for many things and the commercial satellites probably wouldn't have the emp shielding which military satellites do.

*sigh* again with this

and my point is that we can create a few hundred dollar satellites capable of completely shielding a satellite from anything but an explosion, and the yield of any explosion that has an effect would have to be massive.

the point of them shooting down important investments is moot, we never fly important things over china anyway.

say what you will, but they only look like nice cities, thats only a facade of their richness

if they were so far ahead technologically they would be helping their rural areas, not funneling it into a few cities.

China is still figuring out how to make their own planes, meanwhile we can shoot a GPS device out of an artillery cannon at some rediculous number of gs. (ok, to the non-physcisist that may not sound like similar problems)
BUT! they are, and we're WAY far ahead of China and keeping pace. their only real advancements of their own have been really, really insignificant (hello ol' Russy!)

I never said they couldnt, but they damn well cannot shoot our things down efficiently, which is what this is about

as for an invasionary force: china could never do it.

1) not really, there really was no such thing as military tech in the 50's, all we had were ships, which the chinese matched with Chinese artillery
2) the chinese were VERY commited to protecting the N.Koreans, they were of great importance as a tool, and even then we pushed them back. they called in reinforcements b/cause o' us.

a war with china would be a defensive one, which means that we'd have a massive advantage, as for listing I have no interest


China is a country we have NO interest in occupying, although we could do a damn lot by taking those bastards out of power. China represents a big supplyer for us (not one we couldnt replace, but it would take a lot of effort to) and we represent a huge part of their exports, so frankly they REALLY dont wanna touch us. but still, in the event of a military showdown we would be able to pick the chinese off with artillery and other such long range doodads well before they could get their massive asses anywhere.

its still a rediculous question
"If we slaughter the chickens, how will we get the eggs?" pff please.

any one satellite they shoot down would provide energy to only a portion of the country, and probably a less-than-big-one.

I really think in this day and age you guys should know how the power grid works...

if energy is lost to any one place other power suppliers are put to stress to compensate, the result being no net loss in energy supply.

oh no it isnt, not by a longshot

the things are really nothing but carboard boxes with boosters.

asside from the rediculous ammount of money that would cost, you have a HUGE issue of maintenance

not to mention you plan on building on a desert. just a few of these solar powered thingymabobs are enough to compensate for what would be trillions of dollars in upkeep.

as for it being more safe, yeah, as if the chinese cannot lob a giant rock into nevada, thats something that they can do. even if an anti-missile hits over the 100 sq. mile target you would have REDICULOUS damage from debris

its frankly neither safer, cheaper, nor reliable.

a) wrong wrong c) wrong d) oh, surprise! wrong.
why? because without an atmosphere nukes are hardly anything but bright shiny lights, the shockwave wouldnt carry more than a few hundred meters, that makes the accuracy problem easier but it doesnt erase it. also means interception would be easy, that it wouldnt take out other satellites, and that the chinese would have to get nicer ballistic missiles if they want to hit farther

and if they bring a nuke into space we automatically get military support from the 200 UN nations.

Umm, I'm pretty sure sending up equipment using even Soviet-era delivery platforms is well into the billion-dollar range, when giant expanses of otherwise useless and cheap land is sitting out there not being used and easily accessible by air or sometimes land.

Oh, and the Chinese are not going to plink at satellites for three reasons: 1. they signed the Outer Space treaty 2. both the U.S. and China would suffer a massive economic recession if either of them suddenly cut off trade with each other 3. it's much easier to attack Internet facilities like Russia, or even invade with a land army (but that's not going to happen).

(apologize for the thread necro!)

the issue instead is maintenance, especially considering a few square meters up there would equate to acres down here.

boo hiss...

No it wouldn't. Solar efficiency is not yet at the point where the mitigating factor is the atmosphere, and desert areas often have little water vapor to scatter and reflect incoming solar energy anyway. For all intents and purposes, the desert is space, except you can actually drive out to the desert and fix stuff.

efficiency has NOTHING to do with whether or not the atmosphere affects efficiency, its simply a matter of how much can get through

even if I had panels from twenty years ago they would be more efficient by factors of five or ten up 200 miles.

aha! no.

its not just water vapor, water is just a small piece of the puzzle. there are a ton of molecules that contribute to the attenuation of solar energy.

That's not true - but what I meant is that the problem is not the ATMOSPHERE it's the PANELS THEMSELVES being horribly inefficient. That's why I said "efficiency", which as you correctly pointed out can't be applied to the atmosphere.



Um, like what? Nothing (read: not even smog in most cities) is going to be as significant as clouds and atmospheric moisture in reducing total energy gain when talking about the atmosphere's effect. And since we're not talking about a city, a town, or a suburb, we're talking about the desert, please name common atmospheric compounds that are encountered in arid lands (no cheating! remember, there is no industry and therefore very little air pollution in deserts!) that affect photovoltaic energy gain. The only one I can think of is dust.

and of course the scientists who say otherwise are idiots, and the companies are doing this for laughs?

CO2, CH4, O3s a biggy, some nitrogen compounds (not N2, thats relatively innert)
the question is more like "what doesnt interfere"

not to poke a hole in your desert theory, but how do you plan on protecting the panels? those things would be expensive sandpaper in a matter of weeks.

CH4? Are you actually putting forward the claim that there's vast clouds of methane floating over deserts, even ones closer to cities like in North America?

The atmosphere accounts for 16-20% of lost power TOTAL.

Solar panel efficiency is usually around 25%-30%. That's not a figure of reduction in power (as with the atmosphere), it's a figure of how much is being produced.

Add in the hundred-million/billion dollar costs of shooting a giant panel array up into space and you have a recipe for two dollar/kW-h power.

Even a solar panel deployed somewhere on Earth takes decades to become cost efficient. When you add hundreds of millions of dollars onto that in order to gain 15% more power, it's just a stupid move. Use that money to finance nuclear reactors and superconductor research.



There's significantly more micrometeors and space junk zooming around low Earth orbit at 700km/h than in the desert. Nonetheless, the argument is space is more efficient than land, not my selection of "land", so we could be talking a few hundred acres out somewhere in Kansas too. I only picked the desert because it's relatively cheap and useless land.

Dust/sand storms. Not a problem you'd face in space.

And I sincerely doubt that there is that much junk up in orbit -- low orbit, maybe, but isn't the idea for these things a fairly high orbit anyway?

methane doesnt need to be in vast clouds for it to have a big effect.

oh show me this source PLEASE

no, its a figure of energy/photon packet, and when there are far fewer usable photons getting through the effect is COMPOUNDED, not negated.

how bout you read a little bit about this topic before you toss around faked figures and circus logic.

Of course it doesn't. But there's no methane production out in most of the deserts (a mirage of Acme Industries appears!), and the amount carried over by winds is negligible.



NASA



That's not what I meant. My point was that when shown against the earlier figure of 15%, one might be easily mislead into thinking the 25%-30% is how much is wasted, not preserved. Oh, and a photon is a packet by its very definition, I'm not Thomas Dolby, science doesn't blind me.



I have. Solar power is economically useless unless you leave it running for a decade, and then you break even. That's the only reason every six months you hear about some new development in attempts to make solar paneling efficient, which all turn out to be marvelous but unreasonably expensive.



A dust storm is reasonably easy to protect against (especially with relatively easy and regular maintenance). Launching a solar array into geosynchronous orbit would be even more prohibitively expensive, and there's still quite a bit of debris floating around there (and "natural" debris such as micrometeorites). One lucky hit and your entire panel is toast - modern space-based solar arrays are moderately protected against this but strikes do happen quite often.

Even low earth orbit is expensive. Shuttles take stuff up there at about $4000 a pound. An array would (from the sources i've read) be about 176 million pounds (80,000 metric tons), and therefore just the launch would cost a mind-boggling 705 billion dollars. For that price, you could easily build 300 gigawatt-scale nuclear reactors. A satellite in orbit would produce only about 5gW (a very lenient figure considering a large chunk of that would be dissipated in the atmosphere). And we haven't even considered getting it into geosynchronous. Or building the damn thing.

tl;dr: solar power in space sucks.

As far as I'm concerned the biggest advantage that a satellite has over ground based solar facility is that the one in orbit can be in direct sunlight for a lot longer. One on the ground has to put up with night, clouds, clouds of smoke if you live in California right now, and the fact that the sun is only directly overhead (which is the ideal situation) for a few hours a day. A satellite in orbit can always stay pointed directly at the sun and be in the earth's shadow for a relatively minuscule amount of time - the higher the orbit the less "night" it would experience.

Next up, more pointless facts.

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I'm not dealing with this, its quite damn obvious you have ALL your facts in a knot, and not a single truthful or logical analysis has come out of your preceding posts!

No, all my facts come out of analysis of sources that know what they're talking about. And that is while shooting things into space and shooting giant laser beams back at the Earth might be cool to 12 year olds and work in SimCity it's not economically viable.

thread over.

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