> From: Jed Rothwell ...
> One would be inspirational. One or two in each state > would be a local tourist attraction. But if there were > thousands and thousands of them, and they were as > ubiquitous as McDonald's restaurants, they would be a > terrible blight on the landscape. So is McDonald's! So > are highways, traffic lights, power lines, cookie-cutter > shopping malls, bright lights and auto dealerships. It > isn't right to force everyone, everywhere to see this > kind of depressing industrial infrastructure. It stunts > children's imagination. We should respect the landscape, > and not clutter up every hill, every valley, plain and > seascape with man-made stuff. Well, Jed, I sympathize with much of what you say. I'm also not against a more sensible approach to using nuclear power either. But "stunting children's imagination"? I don't think so. I will only reiterate that constructing thousands of mile-high solar towers all over the U.S. should not be compared to that of viewing thousands of McDonald restaurants. Also, it seems likely to me that Solar Towers could end up freeing a considerable amount of real estate that otherwise would have been tied up in concrete and other ugly man-made structures. The more savvy within Vortex-l may suspect that this debate has as much to do about working out our different perspectives on cultural aesthetics as it has to do over whether the underlying technologically is feasible in the first place. I gather you feel an Apollo-like national project where thousands of solar towers would eventually be built would be an absolute blight upon our landscape. Personally, I'm not so sure, especially if thousands of solar towers end up freeing more real estate for the fireflies. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com
