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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Antimatter as Rocket Fuel, SETI, US Electricity Production
Message-ID: <6368@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 6-Feb-86 14:40:00 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.6368
Posted: Thu Feb  6 14:40:00 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Feb-86 14:40:00 EST
References: <8602031417.AA08852@s1-b.arpa>, <6366@utzoo.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 29

> I think the US energy consumption in 1940 was somewhat larger than you
> say...

Sigh, it is blush-and-packpedal time...  I badly misremembered a discussion
that wasn't very quantitative to begin with.  But as I mentioned earlier,
this only changes the time scales a bit.

US power generation in 1940 was, if I've got the conversion factors right
(a pox on people who cite power generation in Btus!), about 19 GW.  That
is, about half the power output of a Saturn V, or about the same output
as a Shuttle just after booster separation.

The discussion I was originally thinking of was referring to 1920, not
1940.  1920 power generation was under 2 GW, although I don't have precise
numbers back that far.  Fifty years of that would be, by modern standards
(a big modern power plant is circa 2 GW), a handful of power plants running
for a handful of years.  Not a lot for a serious purpose like starflight.

Volume production of solar power satellites could quite easily give a major
starflight project several hundred gigawatts to work with.  Not cheap, but
not utterly impractical either.  Our neophyte civilization, which has had
electrical technology for only about a century and serious science and
technology of ANY kind for only a few centuries, is fairly close to having
terawatt quantities of power available for big important projects.  Arguing
the impossibility of starflight on the basis of energy demands simply is
not realistic, especially if we are discussing more advanced civilizations.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry