The Ultimate Berlin Airdrop...from Space

Commentary by Charles Holden


President-elect Obama hopes to be seen as effecting some of the promises of transparency and open government made during his campaign. An email (containing this memo) from Obama transition team head John Podesta went out today to Obama supporters announcing a "seat at the table" for the American public. However, the transition meetings at which various interest groups present their agendas will not be videotaped and posted on youtube. Instead, the documents presented at these meetings will be posted on the change.gov website set up by the Obama campaign post-election.

With the appointment of Michael Strautmanis to Valerie Jarrett's office Friday, Dec. 5, Obama selected a long-time Chicago associate to head the transparency initiative of the pre-administration. Strautmanis assumes the title of Director of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs, and is apparently charged with administering the Seat at the Table initiative, which according to the promotional video, allows the public to track meetings, view documents, and leave feedback. In current practice, however, the "track meetings" functionality appears not to be in use (I see no attendees lists, meeting notes, minutes, or best of all possible scenarios, video).

Interest groups from La Raza's Institute for Hispanic Health (beneath which proposal one may find a lively discussion thread debating the merits of affirmative action) to the Women Business Owner's Platform for Growth (beneath which proposal one may find a lively discussion thread debating the merits of affirmative action) have submitted briefs supporting their agendas. There are many noteworthy groups and proposals, but the one that caught my eye was entitled Space Solar Power (SSP) — A Solution for Energy Independence & Climate Change, cooked up by the "imagineers" over at the Department of Defense's National Security Space Office’s Advanced Concepts Office [aka "Dreamworks"].

The Dreamworks folks (apologies here to Spielberg) seem to be promoting the place of the big idea, in this case space, where they envision a field of solar panels with capacity to collect gigawatts of unobstructed solar energy to be beamed back to earth. In addition to the energy required to make possible to the entire world American levels of energy (although the implied capacity for altruism is perhaps as far away as this proposal's success), the project could also serve the Department of Defense's own requirements. "Energy beamed from space at over 5MWe's of energy would prove a disruptive game-changer on the battlefield" (as the safe remote reception of energy could theoretically allow for the military to set up power sources anywhere on earth).

The imperative of neutralizing energy scarcity has seemingly forced a "no stones unturned" approach at Defense, as can be demonstrated by this proprosal's genesis, being brought neither by NASA nor the Department of Energy. The back of a napkin cost ($15,000/5kW solar panel system x 110M American households = $1.65 Trillion) of outfitting every American with their own solar panels would likely compare favorably to the cost of implementing the full-scale program as envisioned, so it is not surprising that the proposal is limited in scope to demonstrating a viable space-based model for the purposes of lowering barriers to entry for business ventures.

Still, the fulfillment of the Defense Department's dream of realizing energy-on-demand to all corners of the globe would certainly ensure the US would not be beholden to Middle Eastern oil (except perhaps when it comes to the production of plastics). The message from the Department of Defense's NSSO appears to be an Obaman "We Can Dream."