Huff Post Politics for Newt’s New Frontier.

“Newt’s New Frontier” appeared on The Huffington Post Politics on February 27, 2012. Read on.

The Sun is quasi exhaustible, and the Renewable Energy issues!

Sometime ago, His Excellency, the Governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) published a thought provoking piece captured, “is the sun inexhaustible?” His Excellency asked a critical question, considering the global campaign for alternative energy to fossil fuel use and the increasing adoption of solar energy by nations across the world, including the developing nations. I, however, have being a proponent of directly depending on the Sun for our energy needs; hence, His Excellency’s question got me thinking. So, is the Sun really, inexhaustible?

By general opinion, nothing lasts forever, which is a major reason why some schools of thoughts are asking for less dependence on the exhaustible fossil fuel. On a lighter note, going by the title of Sydney Sheldon’s 1994 bestselling novel, “Nothing lasts forever”.  Simply, in that light, the Sun is exhaustible! And according to astrophysicists and cosmologists, too, the Sun is exhaustible!

In the Universe, the Sun takes a pivotal position in the configuration of the Solar System, and a member of our galaxy called the Milky Way. Coupled with the increasing dependence on the Sun for our energy needs worldwide, the Sun is bound to enjoy increasing popularity amongst the different objects in the outer space in years to come. What about the other stars? Stars are born, and as we all know, for anything that is born, death is inevitable. This implies it has life and the life passes away with time. The earliest stars were formed out of particles like hydrogen and helium just a hundred million years after the Big Bang! The earliest stars seem to have been 10 and more than 100 times more massive than the Sun. The crushing pressure in their cores made them burn through their nuclear fuel in only a few million years. However, the death of these mega stars gave way to the formation of the normal stars, and it heralded the Dark Age.

Photo credit: NASA

This present generation of stars is more sedated than the earliest ones. The Sun is just another star in our Milky Way galaxy and the Earth happens to be one of the planets revolving around it as part of the solar system. The Sun therefore affects our environment more than the other stars in our galaxy; hence more than the other stars in the Universe. The yet to be unraveled concept, though, is how much our environment affects the Sun. At any rate, even the fossil fuel is formed in the Earth’s crust as a result of the Sun energy input onto our environment.

Photo credit: NASA

Aside from lighting up our fragile Earth, according to a colleague from the Innovations to Society, “nearly all energy forms used on Earth are, either directly or indirectly, based on solar energy, the most prominent being fossil fuels, biomass, wind, hydro energy, and tidal.” Solar energy can be directly converted into electricity in several ways. This gives the biggest hope as an alternative energy source, and it is unarguably the cleanest source of energy. The Sun consists entirely of gaseous materials, primarily hydrogen and helium, mixed with trace amounts of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. The surface of the Sun is about 5550 degrees Celsius. Above the surface, the temperature rapidly increases up to several million degrees. This causes most elements to lose all their electrons, forming an electrically conducting gas called plasma. As mentioned, the earliest stars spent just about a million years to get burned out. The Sun will also burn out like other stars; hence, the Sun is exhaustible.

Photo credit: Stanford Solar Center

However, the Sun should still have about 5 billion years; having survived 5 billion years so far! Not all stars have this length of years to spend though. This fact should allay any concern about using up the energy from the Sun any time soon. Hence, the Sun is rather, quasi exhaustible! Its supply is awesomely abundant. In fact, using up the energy from the Sun means the end of the Earth, just because even the foods we eat all source their energy directly or indirectly from the Sun. So tapping directly into the energy from the Sun for alternative energy purposes to any degree of usage does not affect the intensity of the Sun or even the reserves of the particles that make up the Sun. And whether we turn away from using the Sun for our renewable energy purposes, the intensity of the Sun or its reserves of particles are not affected. Therefore, recourse to solar energy as an alternative to fossil fuel is in line, and it is the best thing that will happen in the energy industry worldwide. The direct conversion of the solar energy from the Sun into usable energy is the only true renewable source on Earth.

As such, falling on the Sun as our direct source of energy has no negative impact on our environment, this is the only reason why we advise that we tap directly into the Sun. The issue of global warming (climate change) is anchored principally on using energy sources that produce greenhouse gasses, which are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, perfluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons, sulphur hexafluoride and ozone depleting substances; sulphur hexafluoride and ozone depleting lsubstances; chloroflurorocarbons, hydrochloroflurocarbons, and halons. The human-induced radiative forcing of the Earth’s climate is largely due to the increases in these concentrations. The ozone layer absorbs the ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. The greenhouse gases absorb infrared heat radiation from the ground. These greenhouse gases are a stabilizing factor in maintaining the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere. Some of the greenhouse gases are also capable of depleting the ozone layer, making the Earth prone to the direct penetration of the ultraviolet radiation.

Cars and turbines in Sun

The excessive increase in greenhouse gases can contribute to warming up the Earth’s atmosphere, melting away the ice in the Arctic, raising the water levels in the Atlantic Ocean, partially leading to the extinction of many species, and more dangerously, the shortage of food worldwide could be linked to it. Bush burning and poor solid waste disposal can also lead to excessive production of greenhouse gases. So, the efforts being made toward control of forestry/bush burning and proper solid waste disposal are in line. However, the predominant sources of the increase are from the combustion of fossil fuels, which principally release carbon dioxide. The atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased by over 10% from 1980s according to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This is alarming. Therefore, Africa can only get warmer by the continuous burning of fossil fuel worldwide, whether in Acapulco, or San Francisco, Shenzhen or Tokyo, Port Harcourt or Accra, or in Toulouse or London. In essence, the car that is built to run on fossil fuels in Bavaria but driven in faraway Ontario affects our climate here in Lagos. The warming is global as much as it is local. However, during the past 5 billion years, the Earth has gone through climate changes over and over again. The formless Earth at the beginning has alternatively experienced ice and warm periods. But as the challenge of an ice or warm period is being faced, we’d need to proactively find an immediate solution to balance up the temperature while looking ahead. In a nutshell, the developing nations must start to work just as the developed nations are continuously working. Fossil fuel, biofuels and most other sources of energy are indirectly created by the Sun. The Sun is the single most abundant source of renewable energy. The current growth rate of using solar energy is low because the initial cost is prohibitive, and some more advances need be made in the area of solar capture efficiency in order to be able to capture a larger fraction of the solar spectrum. A breakthrough is however, in view.

Ayodele Faiyetole

It is possible though that some of the so called renewable energy sources are much more damaging to the environment than the orchestrated damages caused by fossil fuel. In this light, I will agree with His Excellency, the Governor of Lagos State that proper weighing of the pros and cons, both short and long term of whichever alternative source(s) we are adopting needs to be exhaustive before we decide.
Ad astra.
Ayodele Faiyetole
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A part of this article first appeared in The Punch in January 2009. This full text was requested for, and published by Lagos Indicator-a publication dedicated to the State Government, for its Governors' Global Climate Summit edition, held in Los Angeles from Sept. 30th-Oct. 2nd, 2009. 

Newt’s New Frontier.

He is my friend and our class representative in the space studies program of International Space University, France in 2003. Recently, in 2011, we both had an opportunity to meet up again at the International Astronautical Congress in South Africa. It was a cool reunion, and as you may depict from the image below, we hold each other in very high esteem.

Mikko

Mikko Suominen is a highly respected Finnish space analyst. Little wonder, he responded to my re-post of Rick Tumlinson’s huffingtonpost on my fb wall, titled “Big ideas in small times”, written on Newt Gingrich’s new comments on space colony.

Mikko was right to emphasize the wave of critiques that followed Newt’s comment in a campaign train at the wake of winning supports in the State that somewhat could be referred to as the “mecca” of spaceflight in America. The retired US Space Shuttle program took off, and landed in Cape Canaveral, Florida, with the situated Kennedy Space Center of the NASA program well positioned nearby.

For GOP hopefuls, the State of Florida was a best place to hit on an ‘out of the box idea’ on space, ideas that have the potential of bringing back the lost jobs and more - a ray of hope that could be ignited. The space professionals and astronauts alike have their schedules shrunk as a result of the last launch of Atlantis STS-135 in July, 2011.

It was sound to say most politicians want to be like JFK. Why not? JFK was one of the greatest American Presidents, despite the fact that he was short-lived. He was an orator in the class of Marcus Tullius Cicero, friendly, finely educated, and most of all a leader with both vision and pragmatism. For a republican seeking party nomination to be knitting up a tie with the ideals of a die-hard democrat, tells about the gargantuan greatness of JFK and the reach of his legacy. It is therefore pertinent to hear a republican frontrunner of Mitt Romney said Newt isn’t “conservative” enough, solely because he trailed on a democrat’s ideal. Let’s be reminded that President Ronald Reagan was equally a space enthusiast. That isn’t a part of my interest here; the context of the idea proclaimed by Newt is what caught my fancy.

Absolutely! I agree with my friend, again, that Newt is appealing to national pride, and his motivation is just to fish for votes. However, what better way to fish for votes in a tensed-up campaign train, trying to consolidate on his recent South Carolina lead, and competing with a very wealthy Mitt. Mitt’s wealth, analysts have said, will rival one of the five richest Presidents of America, if elected, depending on how you rate. “Just how rich is Mitt Romney? Add up the wealth of the last eight presidents, from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama. Then double that number. Now you're in Romney territory.” For Sheldon Adelson, Newt might have been well crowded out – just on the power of money in politics. I like Mitt Romney a lot, I see him a fine gentleman properly educated, whose legacy as a Governor of Massachusetts speaks volume. He might give Obama a tough run for the White House if he secures his party nomination.

City of Cocoa on Florida Space Coast’s January 25 laid out plan of having an American-manned lunar colony in 2020 if elected cannot be said to be boastful of Newt, considering the fact that he is not a newcomer to space interest and policy. He has pretty good pedigree to that effect while serving in the House.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich

Although in JFK’s situation, you cannot distinctly say he nursed the idea for too long time before getting to execute it. However, when he had the idea he did subject it to a very extensive research with the technocrats and politicians alike, and for the impending necessity to beat the Soviet Union. And, in the JFK’s, it took space crisis, the race to push the Frontier.

For Newt to have come up with this idea in a time of opportunities, an idea to go mine the immense resources on the Moon for humanity here on Earth, or live on there, is worth commendation, irrespective of one’s political inclination. Moreover, the idea during the Apollo times was to get to the Moon and proceed further! After all, if this ideal had been pressed on with commitments from all and we are by now, a space colonizing world, nobody, not even Newt would have thought it’s worth a campaign statement.

I have this to say, we like it or not, the Moon, and, the vast space is the future of humanity. Our future lies there, in the Final Frontier. That’s the new challenge and we need the political will to forge ahead to this future. In a nutshell, “What Americans dream, Americans can do,” though this applies to all! But it’s time for America to do it again; the other Worlds too, are now setting their goals toward the “lunar far-side.” Doing it again is the best tribute to pay to Neil, Buzz and Mike, and of course, to the space explorers like the Columbia astronauts and others who lost their lives, and to the other living legends. 

Moon

On aspects of implementations, there is no one way to achieve that. In as much as New Space should push limits and President Obama’s idea has empowered companies like SpaceX; NASA’s guidance will still remain invaluable. X-Prize, a foundation of Peter Diamandis is leading a revolution of modern day incentivized prize competition, and as it regards the Moon, the Google Lunar X-Prize with 26 private teams vying for $30 Million has promising teams like Synergy Moon LLC, White Label Space and Moon Express in the pack. Hence, going back to the moon is underway.  However, I am glad Newt proposed a PPP approach, which means he considered the economies of this new idea, which in a sense, is an age-long idea given a new breath.

The whole seems laughable, is it because it has not been done before? What we need is the political will, leadership, management of the right technologies, and push, the kind that JFK provided. Hence, I do think extensive consultations should be like the times of JFK to fashion out the best approach-there’s no need for a rush, 2020 might just be unrealistic considering the present timeline in the US space program. Newt’s New Frontier: if nothing, romance that could be associated with space was brought back into the consciousness of space professionals.
Ad astra.
Ayodele Faiyetole