The starting point for Criswell’s argument is world
energy needs, here on Earth – unless most of the world is to stay
“dirt poor”, we’re going to need something like 20 TW electric
by the middle of this century; 2000 TW-yrs of electric energy per century
for the foreseeable future. Where can this possibly come from?

Criswell discussed the various currently viable
alternative energy options, none
of which comes close even with massive environmental damage. And
then there’s the lunar solar power plan. Through utilization of
space resources, the power plots would grow almost exponentially –
a first demo would deposit production machinery to produce
solar power plots from lunar materials; second phase would deposit
manufacturing equipment on the moon to produce 90% of the production
machinery needed from lunar materials.

All this seems to be feasible now, based on research dollars already spent:
$1 billion on the lunar material returned by Apollo, $50 million spent on
space solar power studies, $2 million spent on utilization of lunar
material for space solar power purposes; the main assumptions
are a reasonable reduction in launch costs ($500 – $1000/kg) and that
we can actually achieve 90% bootstrapping and tele-operation for
most of the work.

With these assumptions Criswell showed some cost estimates that
came to a total of $7 trillion for the 20 TW system; this included
delivery of about 63,000 tons of material to the lunar surface, and
a gradual buildup of the lunar infrastructure. About 400 people would
be needed on the Moon, another 60 in lunar and Earth orbit, to
support the system. For power sold at 1 cent per kWh, by my calculations
that’s about $1.75 trillion/year revenue; Criswell quoted $80 trillion,
but I believe that was the total for the first century of operation,
including ramp-up.

There are additional uses for the lunar solar power system: power beams
can be used to deflect asteroids and comets, and they can power
space missions well beyond the Moon-Earth distance. Cis-lunar resources
will provide around $3 Trillion/year revenue in lunar and space industries,
he estimated.

Current spending on Earth for oil and gas exploration is about
$130 Billion/year — shouldn’t large private energy companies be interested?
But the scale of this project seems to be too large an investment for
business – if it’s to happen, the US government has to step up and fund it.
If the support was there, work on the lunar solar power system could be
started with about 8 years to the first facilities on moon,
and electrical power returned to Earth about 12 years from the start.

Following Criswell’s talk we had a panel discussion on development
of space solar power. Seth
Potter of Boeing focused on large-scale
space construction techniques, which will be needed soon for construction
of large space
telescopes and facilities planned for the
Earth-Moon L1 and Earth-Sun L2 locations. I then spoke on options for
powering the first lunar base – minimizing mass while providing
continuous power through the lunar night-span suggests a
constellation of solar power satellites for a near-side base up to
about GW power levels, and then an L1 power satellite for higher power.
John Strickland then talked about the transition points in
developing solar power satellites, based on launch cost from
Earth – at $2 million/tonne ($1000/lb – transition pt 1) Earth-launched
SPS’s are competitive with terrestrial solar; at $200,000/tonne ($100/lb -
transition pt 2) they become competitive with fossil fuels. Use of
lunar resources can move transition point 2 to 1 or earlier.
Strickland then talked a bit about the difficulties of getting
the various players who should be involved, on board. Why can’t
environmentalists, for example, be a major source of support?

The panel then convened and took questions from one another,
and from the audience. David Criswell playfully suggested
that the only way to get NASA and industry serious about real
innovations in space transport and resource utilization
was to start by moving NASA HQ and oil company CEO’s to the Moon!
There are many players who could have an interest – the manufacturing
automation that space industry will require should be of general
interest; power consumers should care; investors and mutual funds,
environmentally friendly places with energy problems like the state
of California, or the European Union, etc. But US government
involvement seems really needed as primary risk taker.

From the audience there was a comment that the lunar solar
power scheme was “too grandiose”, which led to its lack of support.
What is really needed are smaller steps; smaller infrastructure
development, near-Earth capability; small steps are more palatable.
There followed a general discussion of the balance between
incrementalism and large focused development (Criswell contrasted
the “large focused development” of Apollo with the incrementalism
of post-Apollo NASA). That was one issue we ended up having two
sides agreeing to disagree about!

After hearing the talks and discussing further with some of
the attendees, I came away even more impressed with the huge
solar power resource we have just sitting out there in the space between
Earth and Moon; vastly more energy than we could ever hope to get
from fossil or fission fuels. And with about as low an environmental
impact as you could possibly hope for. But I also came away somewhat depressed
at the way this whole area has been ignored since the 1970’s.

A 1979 DOE/NASA “reference” study of solar power satellites concluded
that, while feasible, a minimum $250 billion investment was needed
before the first power could be returned to Earth. Funding dried
up almost completely after that. A
“Fresh Look” study
in the 1990’s showed that alternate designs could bring the cost to
first power down under $10 billion; neither study assumed any use
of lunar resources, but given an existing lunar industrial base (building
the base might well go over that $10 billion), use of lunar materials
can bring down the costs per GW delivered
even further.
The “Fresh look” prompted a bit more funding, but a
National Academy
review noted that the funding levels were far from sufficient to
meet the R&D needs identified; since then, far from getting more money
to do what’s needed, the program within NASA
seems to have been cut
for FY 2002 and 2003.
Unfortunately, as John Strickland indicated, a lot of these
projects are viewed as impractical until we can get launch costs much
lower than they now are, but there’s a bit of a catch-22 there, since
the primary reason launch costs are still so high is the very limited
market for launch… At least the space
elevator would suddenly make all this very practical.