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LETTERS
13 April 2001
The Honorable Richard Cheney
Vice President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20501
Dear Vice President Cheney,
Congratulations on your selection as the head of the effort to help this nation
construct a more rational and effective energy policy. Your selection on 29
January may have been directed at the near-term problems precipitated by the
energy crisis in California, but I know you recognize this topic as one that
is central to the long-term economic health of the country.
Past administrations have taken a wide variety of attitudes about our nation’s
need for sustainable electrical power, from benign neglect to focused advocacy.
The national effort in the 1950s and 1960s to promote nuclear power was largely
successful, but more recent events have cooled the public’s enthusiasm.
Even if all of the issues associated with economics, plant safety and waste
disposal were successfully addressed, nuclear plants still would contribute
to heat pollution. Fusion power, even if proved feasible and economical, would
face these same hurdles.
Conventional renewable sources of power also face limitations. Wind, geothermal
and ground-based solar power plants have location and economic issues that will
probably prevent them from being a large part of the complete answer. Our hydroelectric
resources have been largely tapped and there are even some groups encouraging
the government to tear down some dams because of their environmental impact.
I believe we can take the challenge forced on us by the looming energy crisis
and turn it into a very positive experience for our society, while promoting
growth, technology, innovation, and private enterprise. However, it will require
boldness and inspired leadership — qualities that we have shown many times
in the past.
Gerald O’Neill, a Princeton professor of physics who died in 1992, first
surfaced the idea of orbital solar power stations over 30 years ago. His book,
The High Frontier, presented the science, the economics, and the business aspects
of putting large power stations in medium or high Earth orbit using resources
largely collected from the Moon. While the idea may sound like science fiction,
the concept is sound and the technology largely exists. It is the economics
and willingness to proceed that are the larger issues.
The benefits of such a project, if feasible, are many. It would be non-polluting,
it would use an almost-infinitely renewable resource (the Sun), it would create
whole new American industries and businesses, it would be a source of revenue
through sales of energy to other countries, it would reinvigorate our space
program and, more importantly, reinvigorate our image of ourselves as the world’s
innovators and entrepreneurs. Other countries view us in a much poorer light
than we view ourselves; we need something to recapture the imagination of the
world.
Most importantly, it could be done largely through the resources of private
companies and investors forming an energy consortium to tackle the project.
I believe a government-led program headed up by NASA would not be successful.
However, the focusing effort would have to come through our government, offering
the vision, the commitment of government resources (such as the shuttle and
the International Space Station), the commitment of being a paying customer
if power could be delivered for a certain price, and the regulatory and tax
changes necessary to make the venture affordable in the near term and profitable
in the long term.
Jim Olhausen
8570 South Taos Circle
Sandy, Utah 84093