The first episode of Discovery Project Earth tonight involves putting mirrors into space to deflect the light from the sun to cool the planet a bit. One of the things they did was launch a rocket with a couple of lenses in it to see if the ultra thin lenses could withstand the launch vibrations.
The first thing I noticed is that they picked the same team of people who helped the guys from Top Gear do the Reliant Space Orbiter. That ended in an epic failure with a huge fireball. The lens launcher also ended in failure, but not so a not so epic fashion.
Granted these rockets are highly complex, but so far the rocket builders are 0 for 2 on televised rocket launches. Not that great of a start if they happen to get business from people watching the two respective shows.
The sunshield idea is interesting, but to we need more stuff floating between Earth and the Sun? What happens if you plan a space mission and happen to cross the path of where these little lenses are at? You risk damage to the spacecraft and you wasted whatever number of lenses that happen to get hit and destroyed.
It is an off the wall idea, but things can be helped if people start taking responsibility for what they introduce into the environment.
In other global warming rants, what bugs me are the people against nuclear power. It’s a great power source that will last for years without needing fuel rod changing. Granted there is a disposal problem, but you can either dig a huge hole in the ground and stick it there or launch it to the moon and stick it in a huge hole in the ground there. No one lives on the moon yet and I doubt any will be for quite a while. We’ve proven that we can build roving vehicles to explore Mars, lets build one to organize radioactive waste in one central part of the Moon. Getting to the Moon was fairly routine in the 70’s, and with the vast increase in knowledge since then, we can pretty much hit whatever spot we want to on the Moon.
