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English ITEXT COURSE
for first year students of Applied Computer Science
academic year 2012-2013
Marleen Francq, Birgit Mijlemans and Linda Verbist
, TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Energy and the environment
Energy and the election 3
Green grow the rushes 8
The future of clean energy 12
2. Military technology
Robots go to war 15
3. Space exploration
Hunting asteroids 26
Fly me to the moon 33
VIDEO Seeing stars (BBC) 40
, Energy and the election
The emerging energy consensus
Mar 6th 2012, 20:58 by E.G. | AUSTIN
I SEE that Mitt Romney, campaigning in Ohio, has turned his attention to Barack Obama's energy
policy. "You can't drive a car with a windmill on it," he said, in a poor choice of imagery for a man
who is famous for having driven a car with a dog on it. Joel Kotkin, in any case, argues that
Republicans are blowing a big opportunity by neglecting energy policy as a campaign issue. "No
single sector affects more people and industries than energy, and none is more deeply affected by the
disposition of government," he writes. This seems like an area where partisans on both sides are
undermining themselves. The Republican rhetoric on energy tends to ignore externalities and
Democratic analyses often seem like they don't understand the economy. So neither party owns
energy as an issue, even though Americans, outside of the partisan context, actually have a lot of
points of agreement about what the country's approach to energy should look like. For example, I
imagine you could get a majority in favour of all of these propositions:
1) America should have a diversified energy portfolio. You'll sometimes hear people say that the
natural-gas boom obviates the need for offshore wind or something like that. But it's very
rare to hear anyone say anything other than that the energy portfolio should be well-
diversified—including hydrocarbons, renewables, efficiency, and allowing for the possibility
of a nuclear revival or the development of new technologies.
2) Cheap energy is a public good. This is where environmentalists often go awry. They may
have a sense that if cheap energy is cheap, it's because we haven't adequately priced in the
externalities. It's also true, however, that cheap energy has positive externalities. In America,
it reduces the cost of living and the cost of doing business; in poor countries if energy isn't
cheap, people aren't going to have it—some 2 billion people don't have electricity. So when
environmentalists talk about the need for a carbon tax, they should be aware of the fact that
everything has trade-offs.
3) Environmental costs, including water and emissions, must be weighed. And this is where
business interests often go awry. They may have a sense that because climate change is a
polarising issue, environmental protection is too. But there are reasons to protect the
environment, particularly air and water, that have nothing to do with climate change. The
EPA's new standard for mercury emissions, for example, seems to have grassroots support,
which is why business has taken its case to the courts.
(…)
4) Renewable energy is part of the portfolio, but it's still small. Among the hydrocarbons crowd
there is some frustration with renewables—the lofty promises, the high costs, the hat-in-hand
approach to public funding. Their point, however, is that renewables aren't competitive yet;
they will almost always allow that wind and solar have a role to play, albeit perhaps in the
future. And renewables advocates themselves would also say that the industry is still
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