Hi, what are you looking for?
California to Give Grants to Cities & Counties that Adopt SolarAPP+ Solar Permitting App
Rhode Island Legislature Commits to 100% of State’s Electricity from Renewable Sources by 2033
Lightyear Reveals Final Design For Lightyear 0, Gives First Test Drive
Report: Energy Jobs Grew Faster Than Overall U.S. Employment in 2021
Nextracker & BCI Steel Renovate Abandoned Pittsburgh Steel Factory to Serve Growing U.S. Utility-Scale Solar Market
Rhode Island Legislature Commits to 100% of State’s Electricity from Renewable Sources by 2033
Wind Developers Plan to Add 6 Gigawatts of U.S. Offshore Wind Capacity through 2029
Report: Energy Jobs Grew Faster Than Overall U.S. Employment in 2021
Steel, Steel, & More Steel: Big Plans For Floating Wind In Celtic Sea
Hard, Round, Tiltable Sails Add Wind Power To Energy Efficient Shipping
U.S. Mining & Geothermal Industries Could Strike G.O.L.D. Through Partnership
DOE Launches $84 Million Enhanced Geothermal Energy Systems (Video)
Renewable Generation Surpassed Nuclear in the U.S. Electric Power Sector in 2021
Betting A Billion Dollars On Low-Carbon Grid Transformation Tech
EU Electric Cars Policy Leads Automakers To Question Whether There Will Be Enough Batteries
Homebuilt Electric Airplane, Rolls-Royce Electric Aviation, Polestar on Nasdaq, & More EV News
EcoFlow’s Modular Power Kits Make Off-Grid Installs Much Easier
How Herbert Diess & Zeng Yuqun Sparked The Rise Of CATL
NREL Analysis Highlights Strategies Beyond Recycling To Bolster Circular Economy For Solar & Battery Technologies
Can Virtual Power Plants Provide Revenue for Householders?
ERCOT & Tesla: How Virtual Power Plants Can Help Texas Electricity Grid & Save Lives
Energy Security at the Edge of the Grid
Texan Tesla Powerwall Owners Can Help Change ERCOT’s Mind On VPPs
Gridspertise — Advanced Digital Solutions For A Smart, Resilient Grid
AutoGrid Recruits Army Of Heat Pumps For Virtual Power Plants
Hard, Round, Tiltable Sails Add Wind Power To Energy Efficient Shipping
University of Michigan Reveals “Aevum” Solar Racecar
Century Old Material Key to Next-gen Computer Chips
A Guide To Fuel Efficient Driving — Part One (2022 update)
Tesla Noted As Part Of $700 Million US EV Charging Manufacturing Capacity Boost
EU Electric Cars Policy Leads Automakers To Question Whether There Will Be Enough Batteries
Amazon Distribution Center In Wisconsin Plans To Add 760 EV Chargers
EV Charging 101: How To Charge Your EV (Webinar!)
Sweden’s Plugin EV Share Grows In June — Tesla Model Y Overall Bestseller
We Did It, We Lost Access To Tesla Full Self Driving Beta!
Climate-Fiction Book Review: Ministry For The Future
Riding The Brand New Energica Experia Electric Touring Motorcycle — CleanTechnica Review
Tesla Full Self Driving Beta V10.12.2 — A Big Improvement, More Aggressive … But!
How 3 Years With A Tesla Model 3 Almost Made Me Forget About The Mobility Revolution
Sweden’s Plugin EV Share Grows In June — Tesla Model Y Overall Bestseller
Electric Car Sales: Global Top 20
11% of New Car Sales in Europe Electric (19% Plugins)
EV Market Share Growth in 16 Lagging European Countries
Ford Tops EV Sales In Germany In May — Yes, Ford!
We Did It, We Lost Access To Tesla Full Self Driving Beta!
Climate-Fiction Book Review: Ministry For The Future
Riding The Brand New Energica Experia Electric Touring Motorcycle — CleanTechnica Review
Tesla Full Self Driving Beta V10.12.2 — A Big Improvement, More Aggressive … But!
How 3 Years With A Tesla Model 3 Almost Made Me Forget About The Mobility Revolution
Tesla Q4 Shareholder Conference Call — Watch & Listen Here
Volkswagen Group — In-Depth Conference Call Highlights Company’s Focus On Transition
Bill McKibben On Unions, Tesla, & Elon Musk — CleanTechnica Interview
How To Watch & Listen To Tesla Q3 Earnings Call — Most Useful Livestream
Tesla Sales & Future of Tesla Discussion with Ride the Lightning, Starman, & EVANNEX
Researchers at MIT are investigating a way to cool our planet by inserting a curtain of Space Bubbles between the Earth and the sun.
It’s pretty clear by now that humans cannot or will not stop burning fossil fuels. Whether because of greed, flaws in capitalist theory, defects in our genetic makeup, or outright stupidity, we refuse to see the calamity speeding toward us or do anything about it. Could space bubbles save us?
One possible solution is for a small group of us to decamp to Mars to live in splendid isolation as part of a brave new world controlled by Ayatollah Musk. Another is to geoengineer the atmosphere above the Earth to reflect some of the sun’s energy away from the Earth. The beauty of that plan is, it would allow the oil, coal, and methane merchants to wrest every molecule of fossil fuel from beneath the Earth’s crust so we lucky can humans can sit in our air conditioned homes and mine digital currencies all day thanks to the blessings of thermally-generated electricity.
Architect Carlo Ratti and a group of MIT researchers are exploring the feasibility of cooling the Earth with a conglomeration of “space bubbles” that would reflect the sun’s rays away from the planet below and send them into deep space. What they call the Space Bubbles project proposes floating a “raft” made of frozen bubbles at the L1 Lagrangian Point, about 1.5 million kilometers above the Earth. That’s the place between the Earth and the sun where their gravitational pulls cancel each other out and objects could float for eternity in splendid equipoise. The bubbles would be made of a thin film material and manufactured in space where, when interconnected, they would cover an area roughly the size of Brazil, according to Dezeen.
While current geoengineering proposals envision releasing clouds of sulfur dioxide high into the atmosphere like mini Krakatoas — a plan that could have unknown and unknowable consequences on various parts of the world — the Space Bubbles plan would be so far out in space that it would not risk interfering with the biosphere that surrounds our tiny little life boat at the far edge of a minor galaxy. Traditional geoengineering proposal carry a high risk of doing just that. Making Iowa better able to produce corn could turn Europe into a dust bowl, for instance. Of course, we know Pooty Poot and Xi would never do anything to harm others sharing the same planet, so there is nothing to fear from them.
The MIT researchers stress that the Space Bubbles proposal was designed to supplement, not replace, current climate change mitigation efforts, but that the day may come when such an intervention becomes essential. “Geoengineering might be our final and only option,” said Ratti, who is the head of MIT’s Senseable City Lab. “Yet, most geoengineering proposals are earth-bound, which poses tremendous risks to our living ecosystem. Space based solutions would be safer — for instance, if we deflect 1.8 per cent of incident solar radiation before it hits our planet, we could fully reverse today’s global warming.”
The alternative, of course, is to stop burning fossil fuels, but humans so far have shown no serious interest in doing that, so it’s a good thing those smart people at MIT are working on alternatives.
An advantage of the Space Bubbles solar shield is that it is reversible. The bubbles could be deflated and removed from their position. Once sulfur dioxide is injected into the atmosphere, there is really no way to recapture it or guide it to where it might do the most good.
The Space Bubbles would be made from a material like silicon that would be transported into space in molten form or graphene reinforced ionic liquids. The bubbles would be conjoined into rafts once produced in space. The MIT team has carried out a successful preliminary experiment by inflating a spherical shell in outer space conditions. The researchers believe it could be one of the most efficient thin film structures for deflecting solar radiation.
The Space Bubbles research project builds on ideas by scientist James Early, who first suggested deploying a deflective object at the Lagrangian Point, and astronomer Roger Angel, who proposed the bubble-raft. For now the project is a working hypothesis, but the interdisciplinary team is hoping to secure support for a feasibility study that would involve further lab experimentation and analyses.
Part of the research is focusing on how to get the materials into space. One method under consideration is using a magnetic accelerator known as a railgun. It will also examine methods of positioning and stabilizing of the bubble raft, calculating its shading capacity, and estimating the costs of creating, maintaining, and disposing of the raft.
There are also public policy implications, such as whether geoengineering presents a “moral hazard” to humanity by undermining support for climate mitigation policies and encouraging people to see the shift away from fossil fuels as less important. Geoengineering has proven controversial, but the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has acknowledged it may be a necessary Plan B if global temperatures increase to the point where they threaten the continuation of the human species.
The first reaction any sane person might have to the Space Bubbles plan is to ask whether it will be more costly than transitioning away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible. Why invest all this money and all this time and all this effort to do something like Space Bubbles when we already have a solution at hand, one we know will work? It’s simple. Stop burning fossil fuels! Really, people. What is it we don’t understand? The world is on fire. Punishing heat waves are sweeping across every continent. The polar ice caps are melting at a ferocious rate.
Space Bubbles seems like a fabulous idea, but it won’t stop sea level rise, the destruction of most of the world’s major cities, or restore our ability to grow the food we need to survive. We want someone or something to swoop into save us — like the last-second field goal that saves the game — but we aren’t willing to lift a finger to help ourselves. Instead we persist in blaming others for the consequences of our own action. Cartoonist Walt Kelly said it best in the comic strip Pogo: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Steve writes about the interface between technology and sustainability from his homes in Florida and Connecticut or anywhere else the Singularity may lead him. You can follow him on Twitter but not on any social media platforms run by evil overlords like Facebook.
#1 most loved electric vehicle, solar energy, and battery news & analysis site in the world. Support our work today!
Advertise with CleanTechnica to get your company in front of millions of monthly readers.
Can a Yale lecturer make a strong enough argument for carbon capture and other geoengineering methods to convince skeptics?
A new report urges research into geoengineering the oceans, not because it's a good idea but because it may save us from our own...
A recent study by NASA identifies for the first time the degree to which human activity is responsible for global heating. The study was...
By now, every human with an intelligence quotient equal to your average armadillo knows that burning oil, coal, and natural gas to power our...
Copyright © 2021 CleanTechnica. The content produced by this site is for entertainment purposes only. Opinions and comments published on this site may not be sanctioned by and do not necessarily represent the views of CleanTechnica, its owners, sponsors, affiliates, or subsidiaries.