- Published in:
- Clarkesworld
- Publication date:
- Sept. 2010
Chilli and chocolate. Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Sometimes the most unlikely partners come together in a brilliant fusion. So it was with origami and space exploration. Who would’ve thought the ancient art of paper folding would have applications in the cold, technical world of satellite launches? Not me.
How wrong I was! When I discovered that through such folding techniques as the Miura Map Fold, space engineers could deploy solar panels in ways that offered maximum efficiency in terms of space, energy, and installation simplicity, I knew I had a hard, indestructible seed for a story.
The second major impetus for the story came from a slowly growing awareness of homo sapiens insatiable demand for energy and resources, which was brought into chilling dramatic relief with the pictures from the Deepwater Horizon disaster. For large parts of the non-Western world this isn’t news. Igbos in the Niger Delta have been coping with massive environmental degradation on the back of oil drilling for years, but the BP disaster may be one of our last opportunities to harness real political solutions and avert a crisis. It may not be as soon as depicted in my story, but with the world’s relentless population growth and ever-increasing energy demands per head, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to predict that energy security will be one of the major flashpoints for conflict in the future.