Project Phoenix: Confronting Global Warming with Solar Power CHARLES L. OWEN1 SUMMARY Project Phoenix is a design proposal for a combination of projects to combat global warming. In this paper, one of these is explained - a plan for solar power satellites to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. In the plan, the Moon is the prime source of functional and structural materials. Large, 10-gigawatt, double-cone satellites 9.25 kilometers in diameter are constructed in lunar orbit and towed to geosynchronous orbit. The Design Team Ruby Dosen, Jerome Llerandi (Team Leader), Howard Kavinsky, Mahmoud M. Nagib, Marzena Sleczek, David J. Zabloudil and Charles L. Owen (Adviser). The Problem The Greenhouse Effect is caused by the spectral absorptivity of the greenhouse gases. While they are transparent to radiant energy in the visible spectrum (and, therefore, pass sunlight through to the Earth), they absorb radiant energy in the infrared range of the spectrum. Heat generated on Earth that would otherwise radiate away to outer space is trapped and re-radiated back to Earth by the greenhouse gases. In normal proportions, the balance among the gases of the Earth's atmosphere and the physico-chemical processes of the Earth itself maintains temperatures and climate in the familiar life-supporting patterns we know. Recently, studies of many factors suggest that the greenhouse effect is being augmented by human activities and is beginning to increase the average temperatures on Earth. Of the greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide is the gas of most concern. While methane is 20 times more effective than carbon dioxide in trapping heat, its concentration in the atmosphere is less than one one-hundredth that of carbon dioxide. Other greenhouse gases, nitrous oxide and - particularly - the chlorofluorocarbons are very potent, but less influential because of their lower concentrations in the atmosphere. In a normal year, many billions of metric tons of carbon dioxide are removed from the atmosphere by the natural processes of photosynthesis and the physicochemical diffusion of carbon dioxide into the seas. The Earth, completing the cycle, returns back to the atmosphere approximately the same number of billions of metric tons of carbon in the form of carbon dioxide through processes of soil and plant f Instutute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, 10 W. 35th St., Chicago, IL 60616
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