All of this got me thinking about the history of the westward expansion, and got me to wondering how the exploration of the Solar System would be changed if there were an indigenous presence out there.
The total amount of energy we use every year – from coal, oil, natural gas, hydro, nuclear, and everything else – is dwarfed by the amount of solar energy hitting the planet each year.
I felt like I might as well have been living in another part of the solar system.
Homeowners want solar power. It’s cost-effective. We invented a business model that makes it really easy for consumers to switch to solar – and that’s solar-as-a-service.
I hope that vigorous space exploration continues and that humankind will have a space station that resides between Earth and the moon. Outside the gravitational field of Earth, we could launch robotic spacecraft to other destinations in our solar system.
In the end, the market will decide which is the better performer: dirty coal-fired power or clean wind and solar. Market-based competition. That doesn’t sound like communism to me.
We may have a tacit understanding of how our solar system works, but watching the sun disappear behind the moon reminds us of the vastness of space and the enduring mysteries of the universe we inhabit.
My house is solar powered. I tell Republicans, ‘You can hate the subsidies – I hate the subsidies, too – but you can’t hate solar panels.’
Even if we didn’t have greenhouse gases, were going to have to move away from fossil fuels, as we’re going to run out. They’re finite, whereas solar and wind are infinite.
I hope that by 2050 the entire solar system will have been explored and mapped by flotillas of tiny robotic craft.
What I want to look at with Webb is what we call ice giants in our solar system – the planets Neptune and Uranus.
With sufficient water on the Moon, solar energy can be used to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen is, of course, critical for humans to breathe and the water important for us to drink.
We’re leading a fundamental shift from centralized energy to distributed energy. Energy will go in that direction, just like mainframe computers went to client servers, then to the Internet. I believe in solar, and the macro trends are just too undeniable.
The only thing that really scales up apart from nuclear is solar power from other people’s deserts.
Do your analysis of energy costs. Either it comes from windmills and solar or things like nuclear and shale gas. You have to think about how you provide competitive energy for U.K. Ltd.
We’re going to find Marses and maybe Earths out in the solar system’s attic of the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt.
There’s no question that Nevada has overwhelmingly benefited from the rise of solar energy technology.
If I were to do a foundation, it would be to promote solar energy. And I’m worried about drilling for oil. I think it is harming the earth, ‘cos it drains the layer of oil under the surface, and that could be causing earthquakes. It’s like we’re giving the earth arthritis. I don’t know if that sounds crazy.
Among the plausible niches for extraterrestrial life in our solar system, the clouds of Venus are among the most accessible and the least well explained.
The rain-cum-solar energy centre functioning in Chennai is a source of credible public information on rainwater harvesting and solar energy use. Such centres need to be replicated in all our cities, towns and block headquarters.
The idea that we’re going to replace oil and natural gas with solar and wind, and nothing else, is a hallucinatory delusion.
Now, of course, the great thing about the solar system as a frontier is that there are no Indians, so you can have all the glory of the myth of the American westward expansion without any of the guilt.
We live in a world bathed in 5,000 times more energy than we consume as a species in the year, in the form of solar energy. It’s just not in usable form yet.
My house is solar powered. I tell Republicans, you can hate the subsidies – I hate the subsidies, too – but you can’t hate solar panels. These are rocks that make electricity, so they are incapable of receiving your hate.
The solar system can support a trillion humans. And then we’d have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins.
Shortly afterwards, I did a third one to repair the robotic arm of the station. This arm plays a very important role in the ongoing expansion of the station as well as in the deployment of solar panels.
Titan is Saturn’s largest moon, and, until Cassini had arrived, there was the largest single expanse of unexplored terrain that we had remaining in our solar system.
I love the idea of solar panels, but they are very expensive. I hope, as living sustainably becomes the norm, they will become more accessible.
The Moon is a ball of left-over debris from a cosmic collision that took place more than four billion years ago. A Mars-sized asteroid – one of the countless planetesimals that were frantically churning our solar system into existence – hit the infant Earth, bequeathing it a very large natural satellite.
The planet Earth, though not threatened with destruction by man-made global warming, is by no means indestructible. There are many unpredictable events within our solar system, and still more outside it, that could make Earth uninhabitable by humans.
Maine needs a comprehensive solar policy that brings us into the 21st century.
The need to create a new taxonomy that isn’t just applying to our own solar system will become so evident and apparent that something will come out of it. I’m sure of it, even if it’s not tomorrow.
The Fuse is a solar energy station in orbit 22,000 miles above the earth. But it’s more than just a big solar panel array. The Fuse is also home to Midway City, a technically illegal settlement that grew out of a bunch of engineers who decided they’d rather make a new life in space than return home to earth.
The geysering on Enceladus is the most astonishing phenomenon we have in our solar system.
Solar power is clean, renewable and cost effective, but it also needs time to develop.
The Venus transit is not a spectacle the way a total solar eclipse is a spectacle.
For most of us, the thought of traveling to another galaxy probably seems like science fiction. But the truth is, the foundation for humankind’s journey beyond Earth’s solar system is being laid right now aboard our very own International Space Station.
As Earth’s climate changes, we can expect more destructive hurricanes. As sea level and surface temperatures rise, more solar energy is trapped in the atmosphere, revving up the hydrological cycle of evaporation and precipitation and sometimes manifesting in terrifying storms.
Once solved, the severe handicaps imposed on space exploration by the weight and chemical limitations of rockets would no longer apply. The whole timetable of our conquest of the planets in our solar system would be tremendously speeded up, from hot Mercury all the way out to frigid Pluto.
For every family in liberal San Francisco that went solar with SunRun in 2010, nearly eight families in more conservative Fresno made the switch to our solar power service.
From solar to electric cars, from geothermal to reconfiguring the grid, the scale of investment needed in green technologies in order to meet whatever agreements on emissions reductions are finally agreed will be immense.
Before solar, before Sunrun, if consumers wanted electricity, there was a monopoly of someone who told you how much it costs.
The lunar cycle within the solar season: that kind of syncopated rhythm is what life relates to.
If solar and wind farms are needed to protect the natural environment, why do they so often destroy it?
Our nation’s power plant fleet must include a mix of solar, wind, hydro, natural gas and nuclear plants.
Solar power is going to be absolutely essential to meeting growing energy demands while staving off climate change.
The Saft America plant, a giant 235,000-square-foot mass of concrete, is a modern marvel: its roof covered in row upon row of solar panels, embodying the renewable future that the batteries manufactured within are meant to sustain.
In the years after the expedition to Chad, I started the Honnold Foundation, a small nonprofit that was my attempt to do something positive in the world. I sought out projects that both helped the environment and improved peoples’ standards of living. The more I researched, the more I gravitated toward solar.
Today, President Obama is making smart investments in clean energy – wind, solar, biofuels – as part of an all-of-the-above energy strategy that supports thousands of jobs, not in the Middle East, but in the Midwest.
It’s quite likely that planets and solar systems like ours could be forming in other galaxies in great numbers.
We have the resources to build room for a trillion humans in this solar system, and when we have a trillion humans, we’ll have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts. It will be a way more interesting place to live.
We may regard the solar systems as separate sponges, swimming in a World of Divine Spirit, and thus it will be apparent that in order to travel from one solar system to another, it would be necessary to be able to function consciously in the highest vehicle of man, the Divine Spirit.
