The national tragedy of the Challenger disaster
and the national windfall of falling oil prices now test our
national resolve -- will we retreat from the challenge of
putting people into space, and will we repeat our mistake of
taking energy for granted? These two questions are one: Our
energy future lies in space.
As oil crises demonstrated, energy affects
almost every aspect of daily life, transportation, and
manufacturing. This is because "energy" is the capacity
to do work. The security of our nation depends on our access
to energy. However, there is but one source of energy that is
clean, safe, free (once tapped into), and inexhaustible. This,
the power of choice for most of the world's best scientific
minds, is solar energy, sunlight! Although commercial
estimates, from many of the powerful power corporations, show a
weak future for solar energy, there are good reasons to believe
that this is our most promising energy resource.
First, tax-credits have been extended to those
citizens affluent and far-sighted enough to install rooftop,
passive solar collectors, to warm water and room spaces. The
system usually more than pays for itself over the life of the
house, whose value is increased. My friend proudly told of the
halving of his monthly gas bills.
Second, an even more ambitious approach has been
taken by such companies as ARCO, in California's desert. A
giant field of mirrors, computerized to follow the sun as a
sunflower does, focuses tremendous amounts of sunlight, pure
energy, onto a central tower, in which water is converted into
superheated steam that drives electrical turbines. This
technology, like using a magnifying glass to start a fire, is
fairly new here (France has had profitable metallurgical solar
furnaces for years); but the experimental results are promising.
Finally, we cannot afford to ignore the virtually
limitless possibilities of the ultimate in solar energy
research -- "photovoltaic" systems, which convert sunlight
directly into useful electrical energy. Such "solar cells"
are currently uneconomical, producing power about 10-times more
expensively than when conventionally generated. However, given
our need for alternatives to exhaustible, polluting, and
dangerous present energy sources -- fossil fuels and nuclear
power -- and given the enormous potential of energy from the
sun -- which will shine billions of years -- let us consider
how we can help ourselves.
First, all Americans should learn a lesson from
Detroit's mistake: Delaying research and development of new
technologies, while our international competitors take the
initiative, produces economic disaster. Now, consider that a new
technology for making more efficient and less expensive solar
cells has been promoted by an American inventor, who was shunned
by many, evidently short-sighted American companies. So, this
entrepreneur went to Japan, where reasonable research and
development is recognized for what it is worth -- the chance
for continuing prosperity. Now, some American companies are
following Japan's headstart, in this technology of spraying
photovoltaic materials onto stainless steel sheets. We must
remember that virtually all new technologies were experimentally
promising but economically inefficient at first -- the first
handheld calculators cost more than a modern desktop computer!
When Benjamin Franklin was asked whether one of his new
inventions was useful, he replied: "What is the use of a new
born child?"
Finally, let us take stock of the potential of
America, the technologically greatest nation in the history of
the world. On the drawing boards of NASA engineers -- whose
advice on the Challenger was disastrously unheeded -- are
realistic plans for the most fantastic project ever embarked
upon by humankind -- the construction of orbiting solar-energy
satellites, each up to 50 square kilometers (enough photovoltaic
surface to cover both sides of the Great Wall of ancient China)
and each microwaving down to Earth as much power as 10 nuclear
power plants! With our space shuttle fleet, which we have
invested so heavily in and have sacrificed so much for and which
we are committed to improving, we can deliver into orbit the men
and women and prefabricated parts needed. Shuttle crews have
erected the largest structures ever in space -- those gigantic "tinker toys" and a telescoping solar-energy panel many
stories high (In the weightlessness of space, structures do not
have to fight gravity). We stand on the brink of the greatest
advance in the harnessing of nature's energy since prehistoric
people succeeded in their "quest for fire" or since "Drake's Folly" turned into a gusher of petrodollars.
And because the sun ceaselessly delivers to our
Earth over 20,000 times as much power as the entire industrial
world uses today, even just minimal efficiencies could well give
us more energy than we would know what to do with. We might even
sell energy to the Middle East or desalinate seawater cheaply
enough to turn drought-ridden Africa back into the Garden of
Eden!
The energy from the ever-burning sun is free;
but of course, tapping into it, initially, would be expensive.
As the late President John F. Kennedy promised us during the
infancy of our great American space program, this New Frontier
will take tremendous commitment and effort from all Americans,
including some of our best scientists and engineers as well as
some of our best skilled and "unskilled" laborers -- millions of whom are, most regrettably and unprofitably, un- or
under-employed. Although we face tremendous federal deficits, we
must never forget that every dollar invested in the U.S. space
program has been returned to us several-fold -- directly, in
purchases and wages, and indirectly, as in the development of
the miraculously useful computer microchip. J.F.K. promised us
that our economic, scientific, and cultural rewards from space
exploration would be many times our investments -- and he was
right!
Let us remember
Shakespeare's sage advice:
"There
is a tide in the affairs of men [all people],
Which,
when taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted,
all the voyage of their life
Is bound
in shallows and in miseries."
Let us choose the challenge of prosperity.