The two most abundant forms of power on earth are solar and wind, and they're getting cheaper and cheaper.
While civilization is more than a high material living standard it is nevertheless based on material abundance. It does not thrive on abject poverty or in an atmosphere of resignation and hopelessness. Therefore, the end objectives of solar system exploration are social objectives, in the sense that they relate to or are dictated by present and future human needs.
It is very remarkable that while the words Eternal, Eternity, Forever, are constantly in our mouths, and applied without hesitation, we yet experience considerable difficulty in contemplating any definite term which bears a very large proportion to the brief cycles of our petty chronicles. There are many minds that would not for an instant doubt the God of Nature to have existed from all Eternity, and would yet reject as preposterous the idea of going back a million of years in the History of His Works. Yet what is a million, or a million million, of solar revolutions to an Eternity?
A useful analogy is to see traditional societies as relying on instantaneous (or minimally delayed) and constantly replenished solar income, while modern civilization is withdrawing accumulated solar capital at rates that will exhaust it in a tiny fraction of the time that was needed to create it.
The solar system should be viewed as our backyard, not as some sequence of destinations that we do one at a time.
Even though I love solar and love wind, like most people do, I like the renewable sources, they alone are not going to get America energy independent.
We know there are billions of stars and planets literally out there, and the universe is getting bigger. We know from our fancy telescopes that just in the last two years more than 20 planets have been identified outside our solar system that seem to be far enough away from their suns - - and dense enough - - that they might be able to support some form of life. So it makes it increasing less likely that we're alone. But if we were visited someday, I wouldn't be surprised.
Solar and wind are now cheaper in many places than some fossil fuels and within the next two years, three, four, five years at the most. What the exponential curve does isn't going to go away. It is totally over for fossil fuels and nuclear. Nuclear's actually gone out.
Photographs are the results of a diminution of solar energy, and the camera is an entropic machine for recording gradual loss of light.
If it feels right to recycle our waste or purchase solar panels for our house or rescue an animal or adopt a child or stop someone from hurting another or donate our time, money, or goods to charity, then do it.
Suburbia is not going to run on biodiesel. The easy-motoring tourist industry is not going to run on biodiesel, wind power and solar fuel.
Luckily, there are some rocks left over from our earliest days, asteroids formed during our solar system's birth. Occasionally, some of them drop in on Earth, and when they do, they're called meteorites.
If anyone has a vested interest in space solar power, it would have to be me.
The key thing to understand is that solar activity causes shifts in the jet stream with consequent changes in weather patterns and triggers processes that lead to storm formation.
Then, I realized that there is an indigenous presence in the Solar System. It's us. So, then, I got to wondering what would happen if a more technologically advanced society moved next door to us, the way we moved next door to the American Indians.
The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun.
Ladies and gentlemen, today we're here to honor electricity, the charge that charges everything from those electrons snapping in our brain to our father the sun. What's the sun It's kind of like a brain. Electromagnetic field, solar flares sparking back and forth from those nerve cells. We're all one, folks, giant blobs of electricity, all of us. Positive & negative, electromagnetic fields just circling each other. Positive, negative, north, south, male and female. Looking for that electric moment. Magnet to magnet, opposites attract.
We all live in our own world. But if you look up at the starry sky - you'll see that all the different worlds up there combine to form constellations, solar systems, galaxies.
The solar system is so humongous big.
The universe, the solar system, and planet earth in themselves and in their evolutionary emergence constitute for the human community the primary revelation of that ultimate mystery whence all things emerge into being.