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Obama Transition Team Seeks Public Comment on Space Solar Power

by on December 10, 2008 · 22 comments

The Space Frontier Foundation , the 20-year old free-market space advocacy organization I chair, released the following press release yesterday:

President-elect Obama’s transition team has published for public comment a white paper entitled Space Solar Power (SSP) – A Solution for Energy Independence & Climate Change. The paper was prepared and submitted by the Space Frontier Foundation and other citizen space advocates, and calls for the new Administration to make development of Space Solar Power a national priority.

The SSP white paper was among the first ten released by the Obama transition team. It is the first and only space-related white paper released by the transition team to date. With 145 comments thus far [now 209], it is already among the top five most-discussed of the 20-some white papers on Change.gov.

Foundation Chairman Berin Szoka called upon all Americans to join the discussion about Space Solar Power at Change.gov: “For over twenty years, the Space Frontier Foundation has championed Space Solar Power as a world-changing technology that could do more to improve life here on Earth than any space program or commercial space venture ever. We applaud the Obama transition team’s interest in developing Space Solar Power as a clean energy source that could significantly reduce U.S. dependence on strategically vulnerable energy sources.”

The Foundation was created in 1988 to advocate for the space industrialization and space settlement ideas of Princeton Physicist Dr. Gerard O’Neill’s Space Studies Institute, including Space Solar Power. The Foundation has testified three times (in 1995, 1997 and 1998) to the U.S. Congress in support of Space Solar Power. In 2000, the Foundation completed a $100,000 project for NASA on Assessment, Outreach, and Future Research of Environmental and Safety Factors related to Space Solar Power. Most recently, the Foundation has sponsored a public discussion to generate input for the National Security Space Office’s SSP study, published in October 2007, which concluded that SSP had “enormous potential.” The Foundation also published comments on that study.

“Harnessing Space Solar Power is a huge challenge,” Szoka concluded. “While we support a national initiative for Space Solar Power, we do not support, nor can the taxpayers afford, another massively expensive ‘White Elephant’ government space program. Only real ‘Change’ in how we pursue national space objectives can make SSP competitive with other energy sources. We believe the private sector will eventually develop SSP-the only questions are how long it takes and which country will lead. The government cannot economically develop SSP on its own, but it can assist the U.S. private sector by funding basic R&D, creating the right investment incentives, and buying SSP for its own needs. Such an unprecedented collaboration between the private and public sectors could build not just another program, but a new, green industry that would create large numbers of high-paying jobs for American citizens. Someday, well into this century, the SSP industry could even turn America into a net energy exporter.” Continue reading →

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Transparently Ironic

by on December 7, 2008 · 11 comments

The memo from John Podesta articulating the transition’s “‘Seat at the Table’ Transparency Policy” is redacted. Redactions are kind of a red flag to transparency fiends, but they’re probably appropriate (a name, an email address).

The overall “Seat at the Table” program is a decent step forward. You can get a look at the documents submitted to the transition, search them (somewhat clumsily – and not more often than once every 15 seconds), and comment on them.

So carry on transparently, Change.gov!

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Cuban on Bandwidth Tradeoffs

by on November 29, 2008 · 7 comments

Last week I discussed Barbara Esbin’s new PFF paper about the FCC’s absurd investigation into how the cable industry is transitioning analog customers over to digital. This is an essential transition is the cable industry is going to free up bandwidth to compete against telco-provided fiber offerings in the future. The faster the cable industry can migrate its old analog TV customers over to the digital platform, the more bandwidth they can re-deploy for high-speed Net access and services. Mark Cuban helps put things in perspective:

1. the only thing that cable companies, and satellite for that matter have to sell is bandwidth and the applications they can run on that bandwith. More bandwidth means more digital everything. 2. For Basic Cable subscribers that get say, 40 analog channels, they are consuming 40 x 38.6mbs or 1.54 Gbs. Let that sink in. 1.54 Gbs of bandwidth. Compare that to how fast your internet access is. That more bandwidth than your entire neighborhood consumes online, by a lot. Thats also the equivalent of 500 standard def digital channels. If you convert that to revenue per bit for cable companies, or cost per bit for basic cable consumers, the basic cable customers are getting the best deal in town. By a long shot. Digital cable customers, not so much. Digital customers are paying multiples of analog customers for bandwidth. In reality, analog customers are getting an amazing deal, and the cable companies have been hesitant to convert them only because of the potential FCC backlash. I’m as cynical as the next guy when it comes to cable rates and motivations, but the reality is that the longer analog remains, the fewer opportunities to leverage the freed up bandwidth to create next generation bandwidth hog applications. Will the cable companies charge us an a lot for that bandwidth, probably. But when we start to see applications built on top of 250mbs per second and more, it will have far more value to society than watching USA Network on your old analog TV. And Net Neutrality?  Well if everyone had that 1.54gbs available to them, net neutrality would be a non issue. We wouldn’t be arguing about access or pre-emption, we would be arguing about quality of service.

Once again we are reminded that all regulations have opportunity costs and in this case the FCC’s actions could cost consumers the loss (or at least delay) of higher-speed broadband offerings in the near-term.

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