Okay, Chelsea? Yeah? I have relatively good news,
or at least an interesting, slightly uplifting
news for the future for my episode. Sorry, for
my fringy mini. This is like what episode? Yeah,
my fringy mini episode. Okay, hit us with it.
Okay, so. This comes from Live Science, Live
Science. Yep. We're not going to look it up.
We're just going to say I'm familiar with it.
To do that. This was published on January 14th,
2025 by Ben Turner, article title, China plans
to build enormous solar array in space and it
could collect more energy in a year than all
the oil on Earth. Haini scientists have announced
a plan to build an enormous 0 .6 mile or one
kilometer wide solar power station in space that
will beam continuous energy back to Earth via
microwaves. The project, which will see its components
lofted to a geostationary orbit above Earth using
super -heavy rockets, has been dubbed, quote,
another Three Gorgeous Dam project above the
Earth, end quote. Do you know what the Three
Gorgeous Dam is? Yeah, it was there. Oh, yeah,
that's right. So that's the next paragraph anyway.
So we have to go through it. The Three Gorges
Dam, located in the middle of the Yangtze River,
is in central China, is the world's largest hydropower
project and generates 100 billion kilowatt hours
of electricity each year. According to one of
NASA scientists, the dam is so large that if
completely filled, the mass of the water contained
within would lengthen Earth's day by 0 .06 microseconds.
The new project, according to lead scientist
Longlei Hao, the chief designer of China's Long
March Rockets, would be, quote, as significant
as moving the Three Gorges Dam to a geostationary
orbit 36 ,000 miles above the Earth, end quote,
quote. This is an incredible project to look
forward to, end quote, long added during a lecture
in October hosted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences,
as reported by the South China Morning Post,
quote, the energy collected in one year would
be equivalent to the total amount of oil that
can be extracted from earth." And I just want
to make sure that we understand this. They're
not saying oil extracted from Earth in a year.
They're talking about all oil that could be extracted
from the Earth. Like, that's how much energy
we're talking about. That is insane. That is
insane. Despite recent advances in the cheapness
and efficiency of solar power, the technology
still faces some fundamental limitations, such
as the intermittent cloud cover and most of the
atmosphere absorbing solar radiation before it
hits the ground. Hmm. Scientists propose a number
of space -based solar power technologies. which
would continuously collect and transmit energy
from sunlight and space, board is 10 times more
intense than at Earth's surface. But building
an appropriately giant array would take many
launches, meaning that most proposals failed
to get off the ground. To overcome this challenge,
Long and his team are working on the development
of the Long March 9 reusable heavy lift rocket,
which will have a lift capacity of at least 150
tons. Besides being used for satellites, the
rockets will also be key to China's plan to reach
the moon, where it wants to rebuild in an international
lunar research base by 2035. China isn't the
only nation eyeing plans for a solar satellite
array. The US companies Lockheed Martin and Northrop
Grunman, the European Space Agency, and Japan's
JAXA space agency have also been investigating
the technology with the latter scheduling the
launch of a small proof of concept satellite
this year to assess its feasibility. That's the
end of the article. You know what? Out of all
the countries you just listed, China's probably
the most likely to do it, to be honest. Yeah.
with you and I just when you're looking at like
the future and like who's going to be dominant
you hear a story like this from China and yes
you will hear so many people critiquing China
which yes China deserves some critiques let's
actually talk about some of the good stuff they're
doing and compare it to the US is deregulating
oil and coal at this exact same time Who's going
to rule the next century? The people who are
trying to build the solar array or the people
deregulating coal? Yeah, like if they're taking
a step back. But you look at something like that
and it kind of is reminiscent to me at least
of the space race, but it seems like they're
the only ones kind of to go up. The United States
is kind of taking steps back as far as stuff
like that goes. Yeah, it's not two countries
trying to vie for space and one of them refusing
to acknowledge that space exists. I mean, who's
gonna win if China gets something like that up
in space? Like it's not even a race, like they're
gonna be the clear leader of everything. In a
year, this thing can produce as much energy as
That's insane. That's absolutely insane. And
it's not going to wreak as much havoc on the
environment. I mean, without knowing any of the
details, which is, you know, just speculating
on this. It doesn't seem as if it would, which
is crazy. The implications of that. Like, yeah,
some actual good news. China is actually working
with a lot of countries on not on developing
this, but making sure that everybody has access
to this technology. They're not trying to hide
it behind trademarks or corporate secrets. They
are trying to share it with people so that we
can all live in a safer world, a more environmentally
friendly world. They're also trying to pull ahead
as the leader of the universe. Yeah, that'll
do it. Almost as if there's some vacuous void
that has just shown up that they can inherit
very easily. Interesting. And let's face it,
this is one of the things China is very good
at is being able to plan for something so fundamentally
different and future thinking with their society
as opposed to what we have with our current society.
That's pretty crazy. That's pretty... Yeah. I
mean, we're just... You know, make as much money
as you can off of all the poor people. Yeah,
exactly. And most importantly - Who can't think.
ahead we gotta mark up everything and just you
know rape and pillage what you can out of the
pockets of well and importantly too if energy
is that abundant you can't make that much profit
off of it which is why one of the reasons we
don't look into something like this is because
that was a definite thought i had too because
what's running the economy of a lot of the united
states that makes the world leader yeah and this
is always something that you really need to take
into account under a capitalist system whatever
you're pushing forward needs to be profitable.
it has to be profitable or it will not get built
or move forward because somebody is able to money
off it and if they can't why would they do anything
because capitalists need to make money off it
and probably one of the big reasons why they're
trying to build this in space and move it forward
and the U .S. is deregulating oil and gas so
anyhow probably enough of a rant about our terrible
terrible system and how we're falling and that
was a great mini yeah and you guys 48 hours I
don't know maybe look into space see if you can
see this thing maybe you come up with your own
idea I don't know maybe you've got your beautiful
brain and you can have a good idea like this
I know I can but I don't have it right now so
maybe you do anyhow bye