A Tale of Two Cities--Epilogue
The anecdote "A Tale of Two Cities" is obviously highly metaphorical; in hindsight, perhaps a bit too metaphorical and esoteric. The water in the story is, of course, meant to represent energy, including energy stored as fossil fuels and direct from the sun, hence the line (eight times more water to the city then what fell on the city as rain.) Eight is the number of times more energy in sunlight just above earth's atmosphere, then what reaches the surface.
Item 2: It has come to my attention that a particular line in "A Tale of Two Cities", specifically (The opportunists, attempting to keep the status quo, began letting the people of Ex-p migrate to Ex-c at an increasing pace.), might be construed as an obscure racist comment. Why? I guess because whenever someone raises the issue, there always seems to be someone ready to pounce with accusations of racism. Assuming that it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out just what the entity is being represented by the city of Excessinon, there is absolutely no racism intended. It is purely about a government's failure to do its job in controling the flow of immigration in such a way that does not adversely affect the employment opportunities of its citizens, and or result in an adverse drain on tax payer money.
Item 3: The city of Exploitinon is not meant to represent a specific entity.
Long a staple of science fiction, it is logical to imagine that advanced races eventually derive most of their energy requirements directly from their own star, and would look at us, digging up vast quantities of fossil fuels and belching it into our environment, with some amount of smug amusement. I am not a space systems engineer by any stretch, but it looks to me that we could begin drawing a significant amount of our energy requirements from space in the near future if we only put our minds to it. No, it would certainly be no silver bullet--in the short run--that would free us completely from oil, coal, gas, and nuclear power, but it would certainly augment other ground-based clean technologies. There are two ways of getting power from space down to the surface of the earth: One is with low orbit satellites. The other is with geostationary satellites. I personally like the idea of a string of low orbiting satellites encircling the earth, and beaming their power to earth upon every pass over a receiving antenna. The system, in my view, would have a lot more redundancy than a few large, geostationary satellites that could be shot out of the sky fairly easily. And, of course, the benefit would not only be a very clean source of energy, but also a steady source, unaffected by nighttime, clouds, lack of wind, etc.
We have been sending up satellites for over fifty years now; ones that collect energy from the sun, tilt as they pass over targets, and beam that energy to earth as radio transmissions. We can sit around and hope, I suppose, that someone pulls a reliable fusion reactor out of their hat tomorrow, but this technology already exists. A large-scale effort would lower the cost, and make it a profitable venture for everyone. That is more energy, not only to run our houses, buildings and factories, but also to separate hydrogen and oxygen (water), which we have plenty of on this planet. That is hydrogen that could power our transportation, and if it takes something as low tech as chicken feathers to do it, so be it. And, of course, the end product of burning hydrogen, or using hydrogen to power a fuel cell, is energy and water.
A few links for further reading, including a company that is
pursuing the idea of
space power, which, by the way, I have no affiliation with whatsoever.
Space Energy | A Spaced Based Solar Power Company SBSP
Space based solar power - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Solar Power From Space: A Better Strategy for America and the World?