In the past year, I've covered two different proposals on using space technology to create some sort of "shade" for the entire planet that
would save us from global warming. In covering those stories, words like "radical" and even "outlandish" seemed appropriate.
Now, NASA has actually funded a more thorough study of a third "sunshade" proposal. Should I be worried that the government is actually thinking
they need some sort of space-based fallback plan for the global warming problem?
The new (third!) sunshade solution is proposed by University of Arizona Steward Observatory optics expert Roger Angel. He suggests that we launch
trillions of tiny (0.6 meters across) screens. The screens would be thin transparent disks with little 0.1 meter protruding fins with solar
energy-gathering capabilities for position adjustment. The disks would essentially be lenses that would take a small amount of the sun's light
(energy) and focus it away from Earth.
www.space.com...
I'm not sure how much 1.8% of the suns radiation is but it doesn't seem like too much.
Apparently even if we decided to do this it would take us 10 years minimum. They said they would have to launch an 800,000 unit stack of these every 5
seconds for 10 years until it was complete.
I'm not saying that this is a useless idea but waiting 10 years just to reduce the suns radiation by 1.8% just seems like it wouldn't be worth it.
It is a start since every single one of the lenses sent will be able to stay there forever and it wouldn't expend any extra energy. Wouldn't this
ruin any chance of new satellites or anything launched into space? I'm thinking that whatever is being put into space would have to go through all
the trillions of lenses.
Crisis
Edit: Added link
[edit on 12-11-2006 by 1Crisis]
