Military Virtue; The Cost of our government energy policy.

View 777 Wednesday, June 12, 2013

I have been caught up in other matters. In searching for something else, I found this. It was originally written in 1983 and it is still relevant.

Mercenaries and Military Virtue

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/virtue.html

Subj: Elon Musk interview – Dragon thruster glitch and recovery details

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sumVEEAZ_w

Why did three of the four thruster pods fail? The three that failed had check valves of an improved design. 8-\

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

The greens could not be happier about the closure of the San Onofre nuclear power plant, which has never exposed anyone off site to any danger.

From Access to Energy

“Government energy suppression has cost the American people the greatest windfall of prosperity ever offered to any civilization in human history.

“Had the government not suppressed the development of nuclear power, our national gross domestic product would be more than double its current value and the standard of living of our people – especially the poor and the middle classes – would would be twice as high as it is today.

“Instead, we find our country with very serious economic problems, with a large part of our productive industries lost abroad, and with our landscape increasingly littered with windmills, which are little more than false advertising propaganda for an economically useless technology”

Alas it is all true. The worst of it is that we didn’t need to put tax money into nuclear power. We needed only to end useless regulation and endless hearing and rehearing and reregulation. Note that China has more than 50 nuclear plants under construction. The low cost energy from those will drive a thriving economy. The United States will have windmills, and some rooftop solar panels.

Home rooftop solar power for home consumption in daytime can even make economic sense for the user, so long as they are willing to adjust to being without much power on cloudy days, and don’t run the air conditioner at night.  Batteries are of course out of the question: at night you use the power grid.  But none of this will get the United States out of economic doldrums.  Solar panels are now cheap enough that in some places individual home owners may find them a good investment. Look at Access to Energy, or so some on line homework; and understand that you will never have power at night from solar panels without very expensive batteries.

Industrial power comes from large central plants, and that will continue for decades absent a really astounding breakthrough in low temperature fusion technology. although low cost natural gas can help decentralize a bit.

As I have said for many years, low cost energy is the solution to nearly all US economic and pollution problems.  Do not think that those who run the Department of Energy do not know this. They have a different agenda. If you have not read A Step Farther Out, I think you will like it.  It has held up well.

Low cost energy freely available and freedom are the sure keys to a wealthy society.  Wealthy societies can afford to be generous with all including the least productive.