"GERARD_O'NEILL_The_High_Frontier" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'neill Gerard)

Once Island One is completed, it can become a manufacturing facility with a unique advantage, for those products whose end- use is in high orbit above the Earth. The economic payoff from Island One can be estimated by noting that a typical industry on Earth yields about 20 tons of finished products per man-year of labor, with a dollar value averaging a dollar per pound.

The lift cost from Earth to L5 or to geosynchronous orbit now averages a thousand dollars per pound. The space shuttle and simplified derivatives of it can bring that cost down to 300-400 $/pound. Very advanced large rockets, taking many years and tens of billions of dollars to develop, might reduce that cost to 50-100 $/pound. Taking for conservatism the lowest of those rates, the productivity of Island One would be worth 20 billion dollars per year, in addition to the intrinsic value of goods it produces.

That might be academic were it not that there exists a product, badly needed, whose end-use is in high orbit: the product is satellite solar power. For several years design groups at Boeing Aircraft and at the Arthur D Little Co. have studied the concept of locating large solar power stations in geosynchronous orbit, where sunlight is available 99% of the time, to beam down microwave power to the earth for conversion to ordinary AC or DC power. Oddly enough, the microwave link problem appears solved in principle: 56% efficiency has been demonstrated, and the goal is only 63% to 70%: the stumbling block to realization has just been the lift costs.

By using Island One as a manufacturing facility, it appears that the barrier can be broken and economical solar power achieved. The key point is that the use of lunar materials eliminates the need for incurring the high-lift costs from the Earth, and so appears capable of giving solar electric power on Earth at rates initially competitive, and eventually much lower than coal-fired or nuclear power plants. This is of prime importance for world peace, because the energy source is inexhaustible, and these power stations can be built for any nation that needs them.

If exploited, this approach would also eliminate the need for developing breeder reactors, whose plutonium production would always be subject to theft and use by terrorists.

It should also be emphasized that the provision of unlimited low-cost energy to the developing nations will probably be the most effective contribution we could make to solving the world's food problem, because the cost of chemicals for high-yield agriculture is almost entirely the cost of energy for their production.

Throughout this discussion you may have noticed that I have been careful to avoid prophecy. I am pointing out a realistic possibility: the drivers to make it happen are there: immediate jobs, of the high-technology kind which economic studies have shown generate wealth throughout an economy; the direct payback of a much-needed, marketable product Evidently deeper human needs are also driving this development, because of all the correspondence I receive on this subject only 1% is in opposition to it, and only another 1% is in any way irrational or unintelligent. Yet I do not say it will happen, or when. I hope it will, and soon.

While carefully avoiding prophecy, in closing I would like to show the potential power of the space-colonization approach by showing what could happen if the high frontier were to be explored and exploited by all of humankind: if the construction of new lands in space were to take place on the fastest possible time-scale.

If that were to happen, by about 2018 emigration to better land, better living conditions, better job opportunities and greater freedom of choice and opportunity in small scale, eventually independent communities could even become a viable option for more people than the population increase rate. That time is less than forty-five years away.

If the new option is taken, it would be naive to assume that its benefits will be initially shared equably among all of humankind. The world has never worked that way, and since people do not change there is no reason to suppose that it will work that way in this case. But the resources of space are so great that even nations which achieve only after a long delay the ability to use them will still find an abundance remaining. There are in my opinion at least five or six nations or groups of nations which possess the technical and economic ability to carry out the construction of Island One, the first real beachhead in space, on their own. Some one of these nations or groups may get there first, or - in my opinion preferably - they may do so together. It seems to me that we have in this case the opportunity for a cooperative international program which could have a real stabilizing effect on world tensions; and, knowing that the resources of space are so great, we who may be among those first to exploit them can well afford to provide for our less advantaged fellow humans the initial boost that will permit their exploiting these new resources for themselves. Suddenly given a new world market of several hundred billion dollars per year, the first group of nations to build space manufacturing facilities could well afford to divert some fraction of the new profits to providing low-cost energy to nations poor in mineral resources, and to assisting underdeveloped nations by providing them with initial space colonies of their own.

If we use our intelligence and our concern for our fellow human beings in this way, we can, without any sacrifice on our own part, make the next decades a time not of despair but of fulfilled hope, of excitement, and of new opportunity.





SPACE COLONIZATION AND ENERGY SUPPLY TO EARTH

TESTIMONY


OF
DR. GERARD O'NEILL BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE SCIENCE AND APPLICATIONS OF THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES JULY 23, 1975

INTRODUCTION

Within the past year a new possibility for the direction and motivation of our thrust into space has reached the stage of public discussion. It is called space colonization, or the development of space manufacturing facilities. Our present American leadership in space technology gives us a unique opportunity to play a central role in that new development, if we act with decision and speed.

The central ideas of space colonization are:

To establish a highly-industrialized, self-maintaining human community in free space, at a location along the orbit of the moon called L5 (Figure 1) where free solar energy is available full time.
To construct that community on a short time scale, without depending on rocket engines any more advanced than those of the space shuttle.
To reduce the costs greatly by obtaining nearly all of the construction materials from the surface of the moon.
At the space community, to process lunar surface raw materials into metals, ceramics, glass and oxygen for the construction of both additional communities and of products such as satellite solar power stations. The power stations would be relocated in synchronous orbit about the earth, to supply the earth with electrical energy by low-density microwave beams.
Throughout the program, to rely only on those technologies which are available at the time, while recognizing and supporting the development of more advanced technologies if their benefits are clear.

THE SPACE COLONY CONCEPT

Although it has precursors in the works of many authors, the modern idea of space colonies originated from several questions, posed six years ago as an academic exercise: