Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

Re:Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and... by shkkmo on Wednesday July 21, 2021 @07:27PM (#27913448)

There is an argument that advancing orbital launch capacity can help with the scientific research and geo-engineering needed to control global warming. There is even an argument that the technology needed to make living on Mars feasible could be beneficial in combating the adverse effecta of global warming and the resulting ecological collapses.

I don't think that working to towards colonization of mars and working to counteract global warming are antithetical or even orthogonal.

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Re:Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and... by saalweachter on Wednesday July 21, 2021 @11:48PM (#27915126)

I mean, the scale of a sun-shield is insane but not impossible.

You need to block about 0.3% of the sunlight hitting the Earth to counteract global warming.

About 80,000 km of mylar at L1 would do it.

On Amazon, that much mylar would cost you on the order of $100B and weigh 7 million metric tons; SpaceX would charge around $40T at today's prices to lift it to orbit.

Obviously it's more complicated than that, and that solution is potentially unworkable for a variety of reasons, but that's roughly the scale of the problem.

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Re:Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and... by shkkmo on Thursday July 22, 2021 @12:39AM (#27915418)

The scales of most (if not all) geoenineering solutions to global warming are pretty mind boggling.

There are all sorts of ways that the resources and energy available in space can make the scale of these challenges more feasible. I don't expect that is we will see those benefits for several decades at a minimum as we are a long way from industrializing space at the scale necessary for it to matter.

In the short term the only practical benefits we can expect to see is cheaper satellites that will help use understand how the planet is changing as it heats up.

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Re:Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and... by saalweachter on Thursday July 22, 2021 @03:19PM (#27923026)

Mind-boggling, maybe, but at the same time, while a $100T project would be "the largest human endeavor ever attempted" and consume a non-negligible fraction of the world's GDP no matter what time span you attempted it over, but the more surprising thing is that it's still a vaguely "real" amount of money. It's not a quintillion zillion dollars.

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