Reply #23: Things wouldn't have been different

[Nederland]

All the money that Jimmy Carter would have spent on solar would have been wasted because the very ideas that have improved solar so much in past years didn't even exist back then. Just go back to all those old 1970's articles on solar and look for the word nanotechnology--you won't find it because the field barely existed, and certainly nobody connected it to solar. More importantly, the cancelling of Carter's solar research budget didn't stop trillions of dollars being poured into how to make better faster computers. The result of that research, and developing an industrial based that knows how to work with silicon, has helped solar more than anything. That's why the Cypress Semiconductors decided to enter the solar arena. They realized that all the knowledege they had accumulated over the years learn to producing better computer chips was very applicable to building better solar panels.