Jesse Powell

Spaceship Earth Jesse Powell

Earth, our wonderful planet that nourishes humanity and keeps us alive as we hurtle through space, is in danger. Without Spaceship Earth, humans would just be tiny particles of cosmic dust drifting aimlessly through the universe. The danger we face? The Sixth Mass Extinction. Over the last Billion years, Earth has experienced 5 Mass Extinctions caused by enormous asteroid impacts, massive volcanic eruptions, and other events. Each of the 5 extinctions wiped out most of Earth's life forms, leaving only a small fraction that survived. The 5th Extinction 60 million years ago, caused by an asteroid 10 miles in diameter impacting the Earth, wiped out the dinosaurs, leaving our ancestors, a few small mammals, to take over the planet. The Sixth Extinction, if it occurs, will be very different. Instead of some natural event, humans will be the cause. It is inevitable if we keep burning fossil fuels, dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The planet is already warming, sea levels rising, droughts and crop failures, deadly heat waves, etc. By 2100 we will be deep into the Sixth Extinction and Billions of humans will die. Spaceship Earth describes 3 new critical technologies that can prevent the 6th Extinction, provided we implement them. The first technology is beamed clean energy to Earth from Space Solar Power Satellites in orbit. Using StarTram Maglev to launch payloads into orbit at 1/100th the cost of rockets. Beamed solar power is unlimited, 24/7, and much cheaper that power from fossil fuels. The second is desalination of hundreds of billions of gallons of very low cost fresh water using ocean thermal energy to evaporate sea water. The ICE/DESAL process can provide ample fresh water for food crops and people in drought areas. The third is an economically practical system that can remove Billions of tons of carbon dioxide from Earth's atmosphere and bury it underground, preventing global warming and the 6th Mass Extinction.