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Simcity Microwave Power by 2050?
Politburo writes "The Drudge Report supplies this interesting Senate testimony. Dr. David Criswell, director of the University of Houston's Institute for Space Systems Operations, proposes that we develop robots to assist in the construction of a lunar solar array. The power from this array would be beamed to recievers on Earth, either directly or via relay satellites. Dr. Criswell predicts that with this project, "the average American income could increase from today's ~$35,000/y-person to more than $150,000/y-person." He also attempts to put to rest the idea that microwave power is unsafe, saying, "Each power beam can be safely received, for example, in an industrially zoned area." I wonder if he's ever played SimCity 2000" And coming soon, Godzilla from a drop-down menu.
That this wasn't invented in SimCity. It's a real idea the game developers thought might be used one day.
I wonder if he's ever played SimCity 2000
That's exactly what I was wondering!
**ZAP**
"Oops"
the fire department on stand-by...
I mean, what happens if this reflector thing goes off course just a little bit?
That would be one wicked sunburn.
$30 Off All Plans: Use code TRIPLESAWBUCK
He should stop telling everyone how safe it is and start telling the military that it could be adapted into a weapon "in times of crisis". He might actually get some funding that way. ;)
From last week. Same scientist and everything.
...ants and a magnifying glass.
Energy Conversion Devices has developed a 30 Megawatt solar machine the size of a football field. The device produces nine miles of solar cell at a time. The amorphous solar cells are not great in terms of ultimate conversion efficiency, but they are unique in that they will put out much more power over their life time than the energy used to produce them. They are great on a watt per dollar basis.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Not only was this rejected when I first submitted it ... it's now been posted twice since then. Nice to see consistency on slashdot. SNAFU.
Remember, averages are highly skewed by outliers.
If our life is driven by Simcity 2000 then:
Living in Arcologies shall happen sometime in the 2100's as will fusion power (but I want my Llama Dome dammit)
Bridges, tunnels, etc. spontaneously blow up when not given enough maintenance, this could suck if people were on it.
Schools, fire departments, police depts, etc are dirt cheap to maintain ($25/yr and up) would solve our budget crisis in due course
All else failing we use one of the many cheats available to give our economy a $2 trillion+ boost
And for no apparent reason big spidery legged monsters will destroy our cities (or drop trees on him), but never fear for some millitary tank units will drive him away soon...
...in bed
So that would be, what, a few billion apiece for the people who control the power?
Twenties Retirement
Great for barbecuing! No need for a grill, just hold your food outside for a second!
"...proposes that we develop robots to assist in the construction of a lunar solar array..."
Yup. We're screwed.
-
aphex
I Steal Music!
Will it explode after exactly fifty years like my power plants in Sim City do?
By reading this sig, you agree to the terms of my sig license.
I got an idea, Let's hack it and make it pop massive amounts of popcorn in an evil professor's house!
the ecofundamentalists will shut this project down because these invisible rays interfere with the morphic field of their crystal beads and their carrots.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
can't anyone see this as being used as a weapon... weapons in space anyone?
There are 10 kinds of people: those that understand binary code and those that dont
Just another weapon for the machines when they rise.
What, the unstoppable cyborgs sent from the past to kill our future leaders wasn't enough? Controlling our nuclear arsenal not enough?
Why don't we just send up the robots to build the solar array in a big ass cube and call it a day?
"The average American income could increase from today's ~$35,000/y-person to more than $150,000/y-person."
Unfortunately, he doesn't exactly say how besides "increased investment opportunities". Uh huh. Ditto for the comment about raising the average third world income to $20k.
In fact, the entire testimony is rather short on details, and seems to omit such essential items as how much it would take to build the whole system.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Criswell predicts, eh? http://www.theonionavclub.com/avclub3528/avfeature 3528.html
the average American income could increase from today's ~$35,000/y-person to more than $150,000/y-person.
:)
I'm willing to bet that inflation will have more to do with it than microware power
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Wasn't Criswell also the name of the guru, in Tim Burton's Ed Wood?
I guess this is quite unexpected and funny...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
This is a non-idea if ever I heard one. What is the point of going to all that trouble when we have ample power supplies here on earth (contra to our current moral panic about power supplies). Fair enough to try to build a justification to increasing lunar exploration but this is far too easily shot down.
I think we need more political imaginaries - if you try to justify most space projects in terms of economic benefits likes this you are liable to look a fool. Space projects are fundamentally state financed projects (due to their horrific costs and risks) and will remain so for the foreseeable future. But we should be seizing the possibility of exploring space as a project for mankind.. dreaming the impossible..
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
Industrial areas often contain things like fuel tanks, chemical plants and so on. None of which are very compatible with microwaves that narrowly miss the target.
In soviet russia stale jokes recycle you!
Details of that new income figure were a little light. Anybody got a more detailed explanation of what he meant by that, or should I chalk it up as "ooo people'll wanna make 150k, I'll get their vote!"
Can't say I'm terribly worried about mishaps relating to this type of technology. We've been working with Microwaves for a very long time. I'm sure a reasonably safe system can be developed and launched cheaply. I'm more concerned with construction on the moon. Seems like it'd be a PITA to both construct and maintain. Do we really want to put our energy dependency in a very difficult to reach place? What if an angry country figures out a way to fire a missile up there?
"Derp de derp."
the average American income could increase from today's ~$35,000/y-person to more than $150,000/y-person
It better be a lot more than that. By 2050 inflation alone should push a $35,000/year income to $225,000/year (assuming the inflation rates of the last 47 years stay about the same over the next 47).
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea.
They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall
mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by
small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is
clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you.
For all those that are "too cool" for SimCity... Microwave power was a great way to provide good-level, affordable-cost power to the citizens of your city. An array in space would power your land-bound power-station nicely, but the downside to this was that every so often it would miss the power station (oops) and fry something in your city.
Maybe if they play Simcity for awhile, they'll realize that this invention might work much better if they do, in fact, build such a power plant with a few fire-stations nearby... but I'd imagine a real-world application would have some form of laser-alignment system that has the array blocked until it's properly aligned with the receiving station.
"That's Gojira, you moron."
I hope he's talking real dollars and not inflated dollars when he says the average income will go to $150,000 from $35,000...but then again, who knows?
Slight chance of tan. No chance of humongous fires and scrolling death rays.
-T
But you slashdot weenies probably were not even born then. If you think this is any sort of a good idea, defeat the safety devices on your microwave oven, insert head and push detonate! I for one recieve enough radioation from NATURAL sources.
I was going to put a sig here, but I had already submitted the message.
Seems to me that the Moon is awfully far away for this to work.
First of all, you'd have to get all the equipment up there. Not only is that amount of equipment extremely expensive, but putting that much equipment on the moon is mind-bogglingly expensive.
Second, you have to get the power here. Now, it's all well and good to say "Let's just beam it with microwave" but the moon is a few hundred thousand miles away. Even a concentrated laser beam will diverge to a diameter of a mile or so over that distance; microwave will be even worse. You just diluted your power density a whole lot: is it still a higher power per unit area than simply placing your solar cells directly on Earth's surface?
...
Why don't they just build huge money printing machines on the moon and send us packs of $100's? Then we could all be making $150,000,000 a year and living in luxury!
</sarcasm>
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
Good guys were out to steal the microwave weapon from the bad guys (in this case Chinese) before it could be used as an assassination weapon...?? it could cause heart attacks, tissue damage, etc...
how would you stop birds and insects etc flying through the beam and becoming incinerated ?
They've already developed a simulator!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Interesting... The proposals I've seen for solar power satellites require a "rectenna farm" of several square miles. This would be nice for several reasons, including a low beam intensity; if the beam strayed, it wouldn't flash-cook anything it touched. To try and erect such a large contiguous antenna array over an industrial area would be an enormous challenge. I suspect they're basing it on using a greater beam density, which could cause all sorts of problems; even assuming the beam could never go off target, there might be quite a bit of radiation around the fringes of the receiver.
Compared to this, I think a plain ordinary nuclear reactor would be lots safer.
If we all make an average of $150,000 (which we probably will in 2050), will we really be any richer, or is it just going to be inflation?
I just fail to see where that huge amount of money comes from. I know that I'm not spending enough money on electricity to jump my spendable cash from $30,000 to $150,000 should electricity become mind-bogglingly cheap or even free - my annual income is in the $20s, and I can afford to pay for electricity. What is the USA filled with rich bastards I haven't met who somehow succeed in finding wasy to jack their annual electricity bills up to $120,000 a year?
I'm kind of disappointed that the article didn't mention the idea of collection mirrors. building a solar array on the moon is cool and all but consider the gains of putting a Mylar sail in orbit to magnify the amount of light that the cells would collect. Last time I checked, a square foot of Mylar was a lot cheaper than a square foot of photogalvanic cells and you could double, triple, ... n-tuple the amount of light hitting the cells.
That would also lead to the development of solar sails for propulsion and they would come in pretty handy if we ever terraform Mars or Venus.
Blaze a trail to the New World
"the average American income could increase from today's ~$35,000/y-person to more than $150,000/y-person."
Average wage says nothing about wealth gaps.
How will this be any different from business as usual - that is, 100 people get insanely rich, maybe 10 000 do well, and more minimum-wage jobs for the rest.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
...is how this is superior to putting a network of power generation satellites in earth orbit. What's the benefit of taking them all the way to the moon?
--
CPAN rules. - Guido van Rossum
including some commentary here
Excerpts:
Not everyone is ready to hook up to Criswell's lunar power supply, however.
"My own feeling is that he may well be right, but the idea is downstream," said Bryan Erb, president of the Sunsat Energy Council, based in Houston, Texas. The group backs a first-things-first approach, namely the building of satellite power stations in Earth orbit.
"It takes a big investment to get back to the moon," Erb said. "I just don't see a graceful migration path to get to a lunar power system without a massive up-front investment," he said.
Taking a wait-and-see attitude is Paul Werbos, program director for control networks and computational intelligence at the National Science Foundation. He recently co-sponsored with NASA a workshop that looked over the Criswell plan, among other space-research issues.
Werbos said that a critical aspect of Criswell's idea is use of tele-autonomy, that is, how to coordinate human beings on Earth with on-the-job robots stationed on the moon.
"That's the key concept in my mind in order to build any kind of large-scale space power system -- on the Earth or on the moon," he said. "How do you get robots smart enough to do their job under a kind of loose supervision arrangement?"
Ever play Ant City? yea...just like that... (btw this is not a plug, just a relevant referance)
Wouldn't the first step, before implementing a lunar-based power plant, be to solve the problem of defense and repair of this power plant from space debris?
The moon is riddled with impact craters due to its lack of an atmosphere, and what would stop one of these impacts from destroying part/all of the power station. Some sort of lunar-based maintenance team, robots, some star-trek esq shields?
Without some sort of defense or repair system, I don't believe we could ever become dependent on a lunar-based power station.
Roll the grainy black and white PR film:
"Atomic energy will be too cheap to meter"
Why do I get the same feeling about microwave energy basically tripling your income...??
That will end this silly Microwave Power plan...
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
You and I will still get the same salary, but the owners of the solar array will now make $100,000,000,000 more a year from their nice power monopoly.
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
I remember the early ideas for solar power sats way back when, and they almost always involved geosynchronous satellites so you don't have to aim at a moving target. Not as optimal as an LEO, but I believe for a focused beam most of your losses are in the atmosphere anyway, so another 20,000 miles or so of space is a good trade for the issues of aiming or relaying.
Now in the past few years we keep seeing these wacky plans to put the arrays on the moon (very far away and down in another gravity well making servicing a really big issue, robots or not), and beam the energy around via realy satellites. It just seems so wastetful. The only advantage I can think of is that the lunar array could *maybe* be built so large that the transmission losses don't matter.
It just seems like geosync is such a better solution, though. You could incorporate the next generation of communication satellites into the power arrays.
--- Ban humanity.
"Each power beam can be safely received, for example, in an industrially zoned area." I wonder if he's ever played SimCity 2000"
No, I wonder if he's considered aircraft. I don't want my delayed flights to be further delayed because the pilot has to dodge invisible microwave beams. Or even worse yet, to accidentally run through one.
I can already use microwave power plants in SimCity. How is this news? Now, if they would write an upgrade to allow me to build Potato Power Plants...
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
Might as well outsource energy production while were busy outsourcing everything else. Im wondering what he thinks Americans will be doing when their making their 150K a year.
just have a system of stationary lasers pointing directly from the power station to the sattilite...when the sattilite detects the laser, it transmits...otherwise it dosent. bingo...safe microwave power!
Major Carnagle: Where's the laser?
Professor Hathaway: It's coming.
Major Carnagle: It's coming? It's not even breathing hard.
-Cyc
/.'s 10 Millionth
Just wait a few years.
If robots could cheaply and easily make commodities, we'd be doing it here now.
WE are working on it, but it isn't there yet.
I remember discussing this in Astronomy class years ago. We all immediately did the 'it'll cook people' reaction and we were told that unless the microwave is pulsed at a specific frequency there will be no cooking of the masses a la gremlins anytime soon.
Since the microwave beams that would transmit this energy wouldn't be pulsed like your regular microwave we should have a death ray from the moon cooking everything.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Is it not?
Politicus
There's more about so-called "power beaming" here at Defense Tech...
why does every technology that's supposed to increase my salary and increase my free time just end up as an excuse to force more people into unemployment and increase my hours.
Wow that will be cool, when I can hit a menu and launch Mozilla! I just wish it weren't 50 years in the future.
but if it misfires, does it turn stuff into trees? (SimCity 2000 fans should know what I'm talking about).
--- Bwah?
... mmm, I can smell the cooking flesh already!
While writing a presentation on Low Earth Orbit communications (late Iridium, and 2 other would-be satellite constelations), I came accross a project to generate Microwave power in Iridum like satellites and bean it down. I digged up some data on the possible hazards at the time, and it looked like safe enough.
It seens there are some people still thinking about it outhere. Eather way, googling for space microwave power will bring up a truckfull of ideas, options and even projects.
PS[offtopic]: As you will note in the above URL, I have this habit of configuring google for a different and weird-looking language on each box I have an account at.
-><- no
There have been a number of recent articles about solar flare activity, which is more than capable of knocking out satellite electronics. Last time that happened, two of Canada's Anik satellites where affected. as well as a satellite providing pager messaging across the US. So what happens if a gyroscope fails and this the beam drifts over a populated area? If the control circuitry is fried, it might not be able to accept an emergency shutoff command.
Sounds more like a james bond type WMD than a practical power source to me.
My rights don't need management.
This reminds me of the nuclear debates of the late 1940s. Do we use one of the most efficient energy transmitters conceiveable to power our planet or empower our government? Though it sounds like science fiction, the US army toyed with the idea of using focus solar energy as a weapons system early in the cold war (I've seen the films where they built a prototype complex and incinerated large I-beams of steel as if they were Dreamsicles next to a lighter). The US Army proved that microwave solar technology could be used to relay electricity from extraordinary altitudes in the mid 1960s. In Japan the University of Kyoto is already toying with development of a space-based satellite using an area of 1km^2 to generate solar power then beam it back to earth. The potential for near-limitless energy is especially appealing, though fossil fules would sitll be used in most of our transportation systems for some time to come (no one I know has a mass-market purely-electrical car with over a 150 mile range or better speed than 60 MPH, please send in any info on e-cars that are better).
My concern is that any nation putting this sort of system into place risks misalignment of the beams and having a solar laser of incredible power strafing across the landscape. It would be extremely tempting for terrorists or rogue governments to either put these is orbit themselves, or more likely sabotage/take over those already in place. We would then be forced to either destroy the satellite or launch military strikes on the offending parties, mandating the development and refinement of rapid-deployment and anti-space missile technology. Granted, this is a dual use system whose benefits far outweigh the detractions, but the military application of such a solar energy system seems so obvious that it must be considered.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
But use real water. Those fresh water tiles are expensive. $100/pop!
They do look pretty with Marinas and Sail Boats and Nessies on them though.
They explode every 50 years anyway. This is why I prefer to cover my map with thousands of tiny windmills.
Now I can heat my food by just holding it out the window
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
An increase to the Average american income != increase of your income
Just like...
A substantial reduction in the taxes of the average american income != a reduction of taxes for most americans
Read about Republican Government policy for further clarification.
Why should we care about income increases? All this will mean is everything will cost more, rent will go up, and there will be less jobs. I'm not interested in any more productivity gains, I'm not interested in robots, you know why? Robots and productivity gains cause me to get fired, make my rent go up, cause my taxes to go higher and make me spend more on education/degrees.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Oh, and FWIW: I first saw an SF story about "broadcast power" as a junior high school kid in the 60s. So SimCity was hardly the creator of this idea.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
And the power will be so inexpensive, well, it'll be too cheap to meter.
...
Wait, I heard that somewhere
This site also has some interesting information on beamed-power research.
There are even competitions!
"Studies have shown that people who eat peanuts live longer than those who do not eat."
There's a very easy way to get out of a bad situation that may occur from this...
............
Build a piece of road that stretches to the end of the map and let all of our citizens move to the city on the other side...
WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY ALL FELL OFF THE MAP!!
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
We cannot allow our children to be injured by microwave radiation! We must stop this by suing anyone with an idea similar to this!
Why are we even wasting time thinking about lunar power generation while there are homeless people right here in the USA!
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Dr. Criswell predicts that with this project, "the average American income could increase from today's ~$35,000/y-person to more than $150,000/y-person."
As an American, I'm happy to imagine my income going from "most affluent nation on the planet" to "even more affluent".
But as a human being I have to ask: what about the rest of humanity? Do they get a share?
-kgj
I don't think that's constitutional...
I'm sure someone has mentioned this already I haven't read all the comments yet... But since there'd be a satelite in orbit, could a solar flare cause thousands to lose power? I was part of the blackout in Augest this year, and that sucked. I'd hate for it to happen again. (I realize that Solar Flares affect our current power grid as it is)
Am I the only one hearing
:)
"Greetings, my friends. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember, my friends, future events such as these can affect you in the future."
The Tlog - a technology blog
I've never heard of solar cells being net positive in terms of energy -- the materials and manufacturing processes always involve far more energy than the cells can produce in their lifetimes.
Has this really changed? Or are they only counting the energy required to assemble the materials, and not counting the cost of creating the materials (ie, the mining/refining/processing of the chemicals that go into the materials)?
Now, IANAG (I am not Alan Greenspan) but wouldn't inflation increase and negate much of the benefit of this? I'm not saying we wouldn't see SOME increase in lifestyle, but I have a hard time believing that people who live a lifestyle that $35k affords are suddenly going to be living a lifestyle that $150k affords. Or would the lifestyle's of the people currently at $150 increase proportionately? Seems kind of like the law of diminishing returns because this is solely related to power consumption.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
I can't wait!
He's married to a woman so he's not gay. And even if he were, there's nothing wrong with that.
Purchase new microwave power grid and you get unique remote moon-based beam weapon base to fry remotely anyone on Earth you dislike.
Thank you very much, I'd prefer not to see that thing in hands of americans. (just think what if the beam gets -purposedly- directed at areas outside the "receiver"?)
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Put a microwave gun in the middle of the receivers, and a cluster of sensors in the middle of the transmitters on the satellite. If the satellite gets out of line, it automatically adjusts itself. If it gets too far out of line, it shuts off. Put the sensors inside a faraday cage tube, so that the angle of the satellite cannot be changed without shutting the whole thing down.
Now there are two problems:
the first is easy - this is a permanent no fly zone around the location.
The second is a bit tougher. I think the workers of this will have roasted bird quite often. They also will have a dead insect problem.
This type of location would have an interesting benefit for the government- They are guaranteed to not have fly-overs by spy planes.
what happens when college kids Hax0r this beam in an attempt to cook a house full of popcorn ala Real Genius?
Does this technology account for the earth rotating and having to continually repoint the microwave beam from whichever planet or moon to account for that? What happens when the planet is facing the wrong way?
<sarcasm> I know! Why dont we just make a ton of receiving dishes all the way around the equator! </sarcasm>
Ladies and Gentlmen I have a proposal that cuts out all of these 'satellites' and 'lunar bases'. That's right, no more do you have to wait 8 minutes for electromagnetic waves to arrive at your puny planet to bounce off your mirrors on the moon and then take another couple of seconds to get back down to Earth.
Nay, I say that you can have all of the energy you want for free. Enough energy to cook a billion turkeys, to weld the bodies of a billion automobiles, to heat a billion homes for a billion years. That's right ladies and gentlement let us build a colony upon the surface of the sun and then our supply of energy will never be in doubt (because you know, when it explodes in a couple of billion years we'll all still be dead).
According to the article, the intensity would be limited to 20% or less that of the noon-time sun. Also, they claim that 20 terawatts of power would be generated. Making a few assumptions (1 kilowatt for noon-time sun in Arizona), I figure that an area about the size of Connecticut would have to be covered with receivers. Seems a tad large to be useful.
How is increasing population by 50% necessarily going to increase power consumption 5 fold?
We are capable of making almost any appliance 10 times more energy efficient than they were 50 years ago, and chances are good we can probably increase our energy efficiency by that much once more.
Unlike that hare-brained idea, this would not only be cheap, it would probably be economically advantageous (unless of course, you're a Bush or a Saudi prince).
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Is that the same as a "No Cat Zone"?
What happens when it's a "new moon"? Do they take the energy and wire it to a laser on the dark side of the moon to beam it to us?
If we become dependent upon this energy, what do we do when there's a lunar eclipse? "Doh! Where'd I put those batteries?"
I'm skeptical of proposals to use tax dollars to "create investment opportunities." Those opportunities usually translate to a savvy few making money off everybody else's taxes. That may be why he chose to say the average income would quadruple, not the median income. If 99% of the profits go to 1% of the people, the average income could rise dramatically without most of us getting a dime.
Projects on this scale covering such a long time span usually require government investment, because private investors want a return in 3-5 years. So here's an idea: do this project as a public corporation, with the government as the sole investor. Every taxpayer is automatically a stockholder, and gets dividend payments when the thing starts to pay off. As developing countries buy power, Joe American receives a monthly check.
That's what I would call an investment opportunity worth paying for.
Give me a break, a rogue government is much more likely to buy a briefcase sized nuke than construct trillion dollar space laser. If we can torch a terrorist in a car in the middle of traffic without killing innocent civilians nearby then I say more power to them.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
He'll start looking for weapons of mass conduction...
We could all sit and watch as small aircraft get toasted from flying through the beam. Its the ultimate bug zapper.
a) Does this mean Global Warming goes into overdrive?
b) If you are wearing anything metal, do sparks arcing all over you?
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
And when the dead birds, bats, and butterflies ( etc. ) start piling up around the reception point, ( not to mention the random idiot in an aircraft that just happens to forget about "restricted airspace" ) what do we do then?
Oh, and lets not forget the satellites and other spacecraft that might fly through the beam while orbiting the earth.
TheVampire
check out commuter cars corp.
I like microwaves! They give me a nice warm feeling during the dead of winter.
Oh, sure, it's a power source, but can it heat up leftover pizza without making it soggy? Hmm?
Anything you might ever need to say about anything has already been said better by Penny Arcade.
"I, for one, welcome our new microwave wielding space robot overlords."
h
We're supposed to have FUSION power by then. Those will be of dire importance for our arcologies! Someone dropped the ball on this one....
Solar panels on the moon?
How about arrays on each dwelling? Solar panels on the moon keeps control of electricity in the hands of the Enrons of the world; solar panels on your roof keeps control of the power in YOUR hands.
Wasn't this a Simpsons episode?
All the Kentucky Fried Geese you can shake a drumstick at!
Somewhere in Heaven the Colonel is smiling.
Dr. Criswell predicts that with this project, "the average American income could increase from today's ~$35,000/y-person to more than $150,000/y-person." So it'll spark off massive inflation?
I'm already seeing several problems with this.
First of all, the moon is not geosynchronous. Since the moon does not stay in a fixed position over the surface of Earth, how are you going to be able to have a centralized power station receive this energy? Oh you could build hundreds of them, but everyone would have to take their turn. And besides that this sounds like an "American" project. I'd love to hear about how they plan on getting power when the moon happens to be on the other side of the planet.
Relay satellites will not work. Yes, I read the bit about the relay satellites, but that's ridiculous. They would work fine for radio, which only needs miniscule amounts of current in order to work, but if you want to generate enough electricity to power even a lightbulb, you are talking about an enormous amount of radio power. There are only two ways a radio beam can be "bent": Either you bounce it off of something, or you have a station repeat the signal. In the case of power generation, the latter will not work...How are you going to regenerate that much power in a tiny satellite? And if you could, what would be the point of having the lunar base to begin with? Using the satellite as a passive relay would cause enormous power loss.
Besides all this, there's just too much complexity here. Every time you convert from one kind of energy to another there is always some loss involved. So what this guy's proposing is that you have a solar array on the moon, which converts sunlight to electricity at about 20% efficiency, which then converts this electricity to microwaves, which is then beamed down to earth, but never to a fixed location because the moon doesn't stay in one place relative to the surface of the earth, so then you could possibly go though relay satellites which would cause insane power loss. When the beam gets to earth, probably about 4% of its original strength, it's then converted to electricty again and might be able to power some blinky LED's, if you're lucky.
Wouldn't it be easier just to build a massive solar array HERE ON EARTH??
-R
.. but who are they going to get that is going to reliably keep hitting the "minute plus" button?
Live web cams
All we need is to lose control of this system and we could have this giant microwave beam cutting trenches of death and destruction through the Earth as it turns.
The National Science Foundation has already begun funding the technology for this. I know because my lab got turned down =(
h tm
. ht ml
Here is the URL with the old program announcement:
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2002/nsf02098/nsf02098.
Here is a link to a workshop they had on the topic:
http://robotics.usc.edu/workshops/ssp2000/index
As with the rest of you I read a lot of Sci-Fi growing up & always though this would be a great way to power the earth. Now that it's becoming a reality it occurred to me that the Earth has received a somewhat fixed amount of power from the sun for the past who knows how many years. If we start adding extra to the system what happens? I have not done the math so do not have any idea how much of a percentage increase this is. Odds are it's low but if it becomes popular....
Any kind of labor saving device ultimately makes life harder which is why we all work crazy hours these days compared to the 9-5 of our forebears. Increased power availability probably just means people can keep the factories and offices open for even longer meaning we'll have even shorter evenings and weekends.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
The main problem would more likely be what if a cold current of air changes the refractivity of some part of the atmosphere just a little bit so that the beam goes just .1 of a degree off and cooks up a residential neighbourhood instead of providing it with electricity...
Lets check the math on this one. Air has an index of refraction of about 1.000292. The .000292 portion is roughly proportional to the density of the air, which is roughly proportional to the absolute temperature of the air. Assuming a 40,000 foot air column and a beam-to-atmosphere incidence angle of 50 degreees (power to a city in the far north or south from an equatorial-orbit power station), the deflection angle due to refraction is about 0.02 degrees or about 14 feet in total.
This 14 foot refraction is also roughly proportional to the absolute temperature of the air. Between summer (35 C) and winter(-35 C), we have a temperature range of about 23%. So the beam will wander about only about 3 feet over the most extreme temperature variations that are likely. (This calculation is only an approximation, but I am sure it is accurate enough to show that refraction is not a big deal.)
Others will have to comment on scattering.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Just kidding. We should do this and do it right. More megawatts is better megawatts. Grow, Grow, Grow!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The concept of beaming Energy from outer space solar arrays to earth via microwave dates back to the early eighties. It was dissmissed back then as much to expensive, fault prone, lossy and insecure.
Yet there are other simular concepts that are cheaper and more efficient. One of them is to set up simple solar reflectors in space and focus them on large industrial areas, such as LA or the german Ruhrgebiet. That would replace streetlighting, wouldn't need any conversion in space and standard rooftop solar collectors which work at day would work at night as well.
The whole microwave thing is completely out, but this reflector idea is just a matter of time, imho. Imagine the savings on not having to set up street lamps alone. Allthough I guess nature would get quite mixed up at the begining. Imagine mean climate zone birds - used to equal length nights and days - like Singing Birds or Roosters chirping and calling until their voice goes all hoarse. LOL.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
How do you spell T-e-s-l-a?
Is an American, I'm all for the shift away from oil and our dependancy on the middle east and other countries in general. This has much more of a political impact then an environmental.
Without our dependancy on foreign countries for our lifelines (oil, coal, natural gas etc.) we will see less $$$ flowing out of the country and about the same flowing in. What would also be interesting is if the US could undersell other countries with electricity. Considering that after the initial $80,000,000,000+ or so needed to get the project off of the ground, it would pay for itself in a matter of 10 years.
Considering the US imports 54% of it's oil... an alternative would be nice.
During 2001, about 48 percent of U.S. crude oil imports came from the Western Hemisphere (19 percent from South America, 15 percent from Mexico, and 14 percent from Canada), while 30 percent came from the Persian Gulf region (18 percent from Saudi Arabia, 9 percent from Iraq, and 3 percent from Kuwait).
Power is a touchy subject. Throwing "free" electricity into the equation could debase our (and many other) economies.
Once again someone is going about feeding a huge number of consumers ( the human population ) with centralized sources. Although this is convient it does not scale.
Why not put solar panels on everyones house. Or on the top of building and have them feed battery array.
Or create lots of small fuel cells instead of one big coal power generator.
Or have our new cars charge themselves and then the power grid with solar/fuel cell combos.
Microwaves power is such a cool, but stupid idea. Kind of line nuclear power. Lets create a really expensive solution that leave nuclear waste for our kids to deal with, great....think outside the box people.
Documented convnetional solar photovoltaic prices (ca. 15% efficiency, residential / commercial rooftop type cell, price per Watt capacity):
1976: $100.00
1981: $9.83
1985: $8.74
1992: $4.74
2000: $2.70
2003: $2.50 (ish. This last one approximate.)
If it gets down to about $1.10, your total system cost with racks, inverters, etc. will be ca. $3.00 /Watt for a grid-tie system. Your payback (money, on a home-equity loan) would be well inside 10 years, your energy payback within 3. Most analysts and manufacturers are calling this point about 2010 - 2012 at current industry growth rates.
The cost decline there is mostly associated with major increases in manufacturing scale (25%+ annual growth rates over the last 10 years.)
At the end of the day, you don't need to do anything that exotic to make solar power economically feasible. Bring the US R&D budget up above $100M, (currently ca. $85M,) keep the market increase rate where it is, and we'll get there.
Meanwhile, the increase in panel efficiency associated with leaving the atmosphere does not make up for the enormous cost of heaving something into space. And while I'll defend the energy payback period of photovoltaics, I will no longer do so once you have either launched them atop a gigantic chemical rocket or manufactured them in a factory on the (freaking) moon.
A few Enron execs will make trillions from it. That's how.
Ask him what happens to the median income.
>No terrestrial options can provide the needed >minimum of 2 kWe/person or at least 20 terawatts >globally. >[..] >The intensity of each power beam is restricted to >20%, or less, of the intensity of noontime >sunlight. OK. 20e12W / 20% of (1000W /m^2) = 20e12/200 = 1e11m^2
Which is 1e5 km^2 or 316km*316km, about the size of a medium country, just for the receivers active area. If the total array has 20% efficiency, this area would be needed on the moon too.
Suppose we can make these solar cells, why not puth them on EARTH? The planet is round and it is noon somewhere anytime. The Sahara would be good location and bringing stuff to the Sahara beats bringing stuff to the moon, right?
Nevada would be nice too.
Reminds me of the politician who declared that he will strive to improve the economy so that everybody's income is above average...
At the power transmitter, the beam from the ground is captured at many points along the array. The pseudo-random phase changes are subtracted, and the result determines the shape of the wavefront as it's arriving from the ground. This wave-front is then reversed, sending a stream of energy directly back to the transmitter which sent the alignment (actually, phase-reference) beam up to the satellite. Safety features:
- The system is cryptographically secured against redirecting the beam.
- The use of the phase-reference beam automatically compensates for variations in the refractive index of the atmosphere.
- If the reference beam is lost, the myriad small emitters which form the power-transmitter phased array go out of coherence and effectively transmit all over space in a half-dipole pattern.
This addresses all of the major concerns. The real crime is that this was being written about in the late 1970's, and 20 years later people still have no clue about the groundwork. For this, I blame over-simplified games like... Sim City.Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
> Name one place within the United States you could hit with a missile that'd break our backs like knocking out our main power supply.
Well, I can't, but then I can't imagine this technology running the main grid in any country for a long, long time. Also, building Moon shot rockets is Expensive in the extreme. While I can't name one place, for the money and effort it would take to develop a delivery vehicle of this magnitude, I could pick twenty places in the U.S. instead.
Virg
See this response for a rebuttal of that point.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
GREAT WORK! quick, get the man a cigar!
The universe is just a tree ripe for the plucking in the minds of monocle wearing billionaires.
Sigh, I can already imagine the wars that will be waged on once the Moon becomes a colony of the US.
Destroyed panels don't create orbital debris that cascades destroying the array. It's also pretty trivial to send your little manufacturing robots out to repair the damage, rather than trying to launch something through the cloud of orbital debris left from your disintegrating solar arrays.
So...use a low-power microwave laser (or as Doctor Evil would say with air quotes, a "MASER") at the recieving station to send a beam to the satellite. It would have the same frequency as the power beam, so it would refract identically. If the satellite loses contact with the safetly MASER, it stops sending power down.
because modern aircraft don't currently have to dodge numerous no-fly zones and controlled airspaces, scattered all over the map already.
I for one welcome our power hungry Robot Overlords.
There have been a number of attempts to use ground based lasers to send smal objects into space without the additional burden of the fuel payload. But with a system like this in place it's not too hard to imagine designs of vessles that could harness the energy for flight.
Skynet is inevitable... restock your local fallout shelter!
I am really surprised that no one has mentioned anything about the transmission losses, which will be HUGE. The amount of energy getting to the target will be inversely proportional to the square of the distance. That is a factor of like 10**-10. Hard to overcome that.
What is so bad about solar cells on Earth? We have lots of empty deserts.
And they talk about helicopters pulling energy from the air -- Sheesh ! Any EM field strong enough to power a helicopter is one I don't want to live in.
I would imagine that you could transmit a very narrowband signal from the reciving station, and when the statlite/array whatever lot that signal, it would end transmission. Have that signal transmitter powered by the microwaves that it receives and if the beam is ever repositioned, then it stops. I'm sure there are flaws in this, but it seems pretty doable.
I'm not an economist, but I bet that if everybody's buying power suddenly quadrupled, the U.S. would undergo a period of inflation even worse than the 70's. This period would continue until the value of the dollar was reduced to...and I'm just guessing here...about 25 cents.
"[...] proposes that we develop robots to assist in the construction of a lunar solar array[...]
Well, in my opinion, a lunar solar array beats a solar lunar array any day! Bring it on!
Been tried before. Probably still not a good idea.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
I'm not going to worry about a Matrix scenario until Kneanu becomes governor of California, ... on the other hand...
...this reminds me of an old Squaresoft game.
Those who complain about affect & effect on
We already have a stable fusion reactor producing power. It just happens to be 93,000,000 miles away.
Sure, mod me down. Funny how off-topic atempts at humor are ok, but observations on how well slashdot works or doesn't are not. Particularly when my observations are directly relavant to the post to which I was replying.
I'm not really an enviormentalist, but since the power transfer isn't 100% efficient, the rest of the energy beamed down to Earth has to go somewhere - I'm sure it will simply heat the atmosphere and flash-cook the occasional stray bird.
The heat generated could be offset by less heat being generated by other means of power production, but that would require us to cut down on coal and oil power plants, etc. while building the microwave power network. Is this really going to happen? It seems it's more than likely that this whole thing will just result in mankind cooking the planet a little bit faster.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
So far, the engineering and economics have been gone over reasonably well, but there remains a major issue to address. Bringing energy to the planet's surface for people to use will create additional heat inside Earth's atmosphere. The electrical machines we use are not 100% efficient at turning electricity into motion or products and the difference is usually waste heat. For that matter, driving a car with electricity isn't too bad in this respect until you put on the brakes. Then all the energy of the car's motion becomes heat that has to go somewhere. I believe we need to consider how to make processes and machines more efficient; i.e., waste less energy as heat, as much as we need to find additional cheap energy. We can do both.
I don't think terrorists or rogue states siezing control and using the system as a death ray is the biggest risk. The greatest risk by far is that the coutry which builds the system will use it as a weapon. How could they not?
I figured it's about 5% from this page by dividing the cost of oil used by the percentage of oil in the energy usage. This is the true cost of energy in everything. 5% is much but not THAT much.
Save the bandwidth. Don't use sigs!
The problem with puting a huge laser on the moon is that if you want the spot on earth to be smaller then say, texas, the laser on the moon have to have a very very large aperture.
Some aspects of lasers and the distance to the moon can be found here--
This is my sig, show me yours
Without a doubt, a geosync orbiting station would be THE ideal solution. It would be much more useful for any space program in the long run - perhaps even necessary for cost-efficiency if anyone did carry out large-scale development on the moon. And (duh) if you built the solar panels on the geosync station and transmitted the power down the umbillical chord to earth, it would remove all fears of beam transmission "mishaps" from the minds of SC2k players.
Besides, do we really want the surface of the moon to look like, say, New Jersey?
having a solar laser of incredible power strafing across the landscape.
For those who watch Enterprise, this is inevitable, as the Xindi want to wipe us out.
The question is, wouldn't an advanced culture, 100's of years in the future, be able to deliver a massive-yield nuclear weapon, rather than strafing the Earth with some laser weapon?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Hmmm...massive inflation and giant lasers on the moon? We can hold the world hostage for one MILLION dollars!
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
Shouldn't we be looking for ways to cool down the planet at the same time ?
The Raven
Quote from the linked site:
"At the Moon's surface the beam is roughly four miles wide"
Yes, the reflector is smaller but it needn't be larger. The beem is quite wide, though. Much more than 46 cm^2.
Save the bandwidth. Don't use sigs!
Granted you might (probably) won't be able to get a demonstration, but it certainly
is very cool to measure the distance of the moon to the nearest cm...
-
But a missile wouldn't require a "command module and lunar module," it would require a suitcase-sized nuclear warhead or a couch-sized modified conventional warhead. Getting a missile properly aimed, etc would be difficult, but any country which has the capacity to get satellite payloads into high-earth orbit should be able to get a missile close enough to the edge of the atmosphere to escape earth's orbit and fall towards the moon. This shouldn't be so hard by 2050, any more than intercontinental ballistic missiles are a rarity today.
That having been said, any system like this on the moon will have to have sufficient fault tollerances to deal with random, regular destruction at the hands of meteors. The designers will need to aviod single fault locations, instead creating a diverse grid that isn't stressed to its maximum. It will have to be self-healing, adaptive, and stay up under all sorts of emergencies.
Understanding a fault-tolerant, redundant, and stable distributed power grid is probably why it will take until 2050.
The ______ Agenda
This is cool, maybe when I am wearing my tinfoil hat then it might actually become useful!
If what you are reading sounds funny, or sarcastic, lame, or stupid
it is because it is supposed to be. just laugh
Do you really need any weapon more powerful than offering the whole world power at less than a tenth of current prices and then be the one that can pull the plug?
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
This is going to be kind of hard on
birdlife, isn't it?
One of my many questions about nanomachines:
Where the @#$% are they going to put a battery or other power supply that can power the nanomachines (which will have to be capable of moving autonomously) in order to power them indefinitely without making them stop being nano?
So we've got some ideas of stuff we can do with nanomachines. That doesn't mean we're anywhere near getting them to do a lot of the stuff futurists say are just a few years (decades, whatever) in the future. Don't forget that in the 1950's, we were all going to be driving flying cars, or at least personal helicopters, by now, and in the 1970's artificial neural networks were going to have given us true artificial intelligence by now. Oh yeah, and we're supposed to have people living on Mars, or at least the Moon, by now.
Hell, to build autonomous nanorobots capable of building and maintaining an orbital power station with minimal supervision, we'd have to give them some sort of modicum of useful computational power. At this point, that means transistors. Lots of them. Take the smallest functional transistor we've got. Cram it into a microscopic device. Now cram some mechanism in there, and make it be controllable by the transistors. Now cram that dern power supply in there, and make it capable of supplying enough wattage to keep those transistors working.
And if some profoundly amazing team of engineers succeeds in designing something like this within the next four decades, I challenge them to come up with a process for fabricating them. Not futuristic ideas and vague hand-waving about how it can be done with self-assembling molecules and the like. An actual working fabrication plant.
And I'm still not sure how we're going to make solar cells out of moon rocks. I was pretty sure the moon didn't have too much in the way of the kinds of elements and compounds we need to fabricate solar cells nowadays.
Is the NASA curator of the moon rocks brought back by Apollo. He'd better know what resources are in moon rocks. He also spent the last 20 years figuring out what they can be used to produce using other moon resources such as hard vacuum and plentiful solar energy. Low gravity and having no clouds, dust or wind also helps build lightweight structures and with minimal maintenance.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Before we explore all of possibilites and attempt 'proof of concept designs'...Lest not forgett that the current Power Grids in both the US and in Europe are barelt limping along themselves designed of antiquated technologies. Assuming power beams could be aligned to power farms on Earth for free and in mass quantities - We Humans are a spiecies that well are not very economical. In short our energy output would increase resulting in crashing both power grids to say the least. -Helium03-
What luck for the rulers that men do not think. Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)
We don't need stupid microwaves on the moon. We need to chrome the moon. Just imagine how shiny it would be. It is obviously much better than making the moon into some goofball giant telephone tower that nobody could ever like.
While we are speculating on the wonderful future, never forget that someday mankind will reach its acme and pave the earth.
"The intensity of each power beam is restricted to 20%, or less, of the intensity of noontime sunlight"
The ComEd plant in Byron, IL. Last I heard, it was still rated as the most dangerous nuclear power plant in the world. Security so lax that testing teams get assault rifles into the plant about 40% of the time.
Nuclear power plants are safe if they are managed properly. Too bad so many of the nuclear power plants in the USA are not managed properly.
Even if a bird HOVERED over the area for hours it wouldn't be harmed.
Hell, they can probably put out chase lounge chairs and sell seats to rich bitches that want a quick tan.
Build a Club Med under one of the transmission reception areas. Rain or shine, you'd get the UV exposure for 20% noon-time all the time.
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
You could build an array closer to the sun and reap the benefit of a higher density of light. Assuming that current cells would scale linear to that intensity and they would survive the heat you could completely power the US from mercurys' orbit with ~3000KM of solar cells. Then you could use this energy to do hydrolysis or whatever you want to transport the energy. Another benefit would be a good energy base from which to make anti-hydrogen for fast interplanetary exploration. It would probably take a decent amount of time to get a return on the energy though. Since you would have to wait for a tanker of water to travel to the array and back. Maybe there is a way to focus a microwave beam enough from that distance without worrying about obstructions.
Toasted pidgeon? anyone?
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
All that I ask is that the receiver not be put in Texas.
Good question; lots of people have answered that it's easy to turn it off in the event of a failure, but what happens when you suddenly lose your cheap, plentiful source of power?
One of the effects of this plan is that we'll become more dependent on power, and therefore will be less able to cope without it. Presumedly, there would be some redundancy in the system, but it would still require shipping massive amounts of power around terrestrially. If those systems weren't tested often, you'd have to wonder how reliable they'd be.
Insightful indeed! That should have been obvious to me to begin with, but it didn't occur to me. I mean, a trade embargo is one thing, but a *power* embargo? People get very testy without electricity.
-1, "1337" speak
My research lab is working on a project to do just this. We're developing a system to assemble structures in space using an array of distributed self-reconfigurable robots. You can view the project at this website: SOLAR
------
wildmage
Memoirs of a Mad Scientist
... who cares.
Lets look at worse case / catostrophic failure. Say the beam is mis-aligned to aim at a school playground, and can't be shutdown for 8 hours. Lets also assume it was Field Day, and all these kids were outside. Lets assume it was a nice day, and they were in shorts and shirts.
Damages? Well if these kids are pasty little white boys from South Bend, Indiana we could have some mild sunburn. But guess what, chances are they would be sunburn ANYHOW for being outside 8 hours.
My point is this is no more dangerous than a Miami beach, and that's including the dangers the Brazilian She-Males bring to South Beach.
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Feed the nanobots on sugar and Oxygen, let them pump electrons like we do. Nanomachines are just as likely to be based on proteins as electrical circuits.
look, the actual -numbers- don't matter in this debate. what the dipshit scientist probably meant was that people would make 'the equivilant' of 150k/year. what does that mean? it means that a person working in a typical wage paying job would be able to buy nicer washing machines, a nicer computer, a new car more often (or a nicer car just as often as before, or a really nice car less often than before). you could get nicer silverware. maybe nicer warm clothes. maybe McDonald's would become a more luxurious restaurant - the equivilant of your local 'nice' burger place, while your local burger place becomes just that much better. the country clubs could use kobe beef in their burgers. just look at the past and your questions will be answered. throughout the past century, we had some of the largest innovations in the history of man. at the beginning of the century, people lived in slummy apartments or on rotting farms (we're talking in the US here, btw). by mid-century, people all had their own car and lived in their own little houses or bigger/nicer apartments (i am talking about changes in the middle class, of course). it was as if every class got "bumped up" a notch. poor people (at or below $20k) now buy cars. you must realize that 100 years ago, even 70 years ago, that was inconcievable - for the poorest class of full-time workers to afford their own car. what the doctor in this article is referring to are changes in people's consumption abilities; being able to buy nicer things. he does not mean that everyone will suddenly be freed of their wage-slave lives, only that they will be able to buy more cool stuff with that money. for the cost of a 1950's record player, telephone, and big TV set (or what passed for a big TV set in those days), we get a cheap computer, color tv, CD player, and cell phone. people used to put fans and wood-burning stoves in their houses, now we have air conditioning and electric heating (and, of course, the wood-burning stoves are still pretty nice).
September 13th, 1999
A nuclear accident at a lunar-based waste disposal site propels our moon out of Earth orbit and into deep space. The 311 residents of Moonbase Alpha find themselves adrift in space with no way to control their course through the interstellar void.
At least it's not a lame "CHA.." scratched into the surface.
Carthago delenda est!
It amazes me that the Department of Homeland Security is now the third largest cabinet department with 170,000 employees but can't handle even the most basic security issues. We have spent fuel rods sitting behind chain link fences, keeping them away from any terrorists that can't afford bolt cutters.
Tom Ridge's only qualification for the job of Homeland Security Director is that he's a good friend of the Bush family. It seems that the only thing he's worried about is the appearance of security, like meaningless color coded alerts. When it comes to actual, vital issues of security, nobody seems to be at the wheel.
-B
Relay satellites will not work. Yes, I read the bit about the relay satellites, but that's ridiculous.
The relay satellites are microwave mirrors. They just need to be steered to the correct angle to reflect the beam to the receiver. The surface of such a mirror can be 99% vacuum - a mesh with holes smaller than the wavelength.
Wouldn't it be easier just to build a massive solar array HERE ON EARTH??
To meet global power requirements you'll need to cover a significant portion of the Earth's surface and keep it all in good maintenance in the presence of rain, dust, hail, winds, corrosion, condensation, birds, lightning, ground erosion, vegetation, earthquakes and, of course, people.
On the moon even the lightest self-supporting structure will just stand there for hundreds or thousands of years. Other than micrometeorites causing some erosion at a predictable rate nothing happens there.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
the average American income could increase from today's ~$35,000/y-person to more than $150,000/y-person.
What he neglects to tell you is that you will have to pay over $200,000/yr in financing charges for this boondoggle. He also forgets to tell you that such a project might dramatically lower the price of energy reducing your earnings even more.
an ill wind that blows no good
I thought Criswell was the friend of Ed Wood that made predictions?
"I, the Amazing Criswell, predict that by the year 2050, Earth will receive power beamed by robots from THE MOON!!!"
This space available.
If I lived in the middle ages, I would be one of the oldest living people in my village. I'd likely be regarded with suspicion of witchcraft because I still have all my teeth, and despite my advanced age, both my mother and my grandmother, are still alive. The Devil Himself must be protecting them, for how else would they live past the unearthly ages fifty - sixty - seventy - eighty - years?
My humble apartment affords me better protection from the elements than that of any Lord, and I pay for it with about a week's work. The food I cook every night with the help of my $12.99 spice rack would be something the King himself could only fantasize about. That's less than a day's wages, after tax, even at minimum wage.
In the palm of my hand, in the form of a $49.99 flash ROM, I can hold a library rivaling that of Alexandria, for it contains not only every book that had been printed until 1200, but every book that would ever be printed for the next five centuries.
So in answer to your question, having more "stuff" really does make it better.
A lunar array would not be in a gyrosynch orbit thus cutting a path across the earth. It seems to me that there would have to be a lot of satellites from here to the moon to relay the energy to earth. IMO that would be the real problm.
Wouldn't this microwave beam heat the air it passes through? It could dissipate clouds and change wind patterns.
Birds and airplanes would have great new obstacles too!
If you think we have allies because we have more nukes, you're insane. We have allies because we can buy the cars they produce at ridiculous markups.
I hate to break it to the conspiracy buffs out there, but money changes international political will a lot faster than the death of their teenagers does.
The group backs a first-things-first approach, namely the building of satellite power stations in Earth orbit.
Yeah, first build a huge satellite that needs to be hauled to orbit at absurd launch cost per lb, forcing you to optimize it for weight rather than cost and reliability. Yeah, that makes sense.
Power satellites were abandoned because the economics don't make sense, even with the most optimistic reductions in launch costs.
A manufacturing plant sent from Earth should produce thousands of times its own weight of solar panels on the moon. And as long as it uses local resources, who cares about weight or overall efficiency? Just keep it simple and cheap.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Why not just capture 100% of the noontime sun now on the ground? That's 5 times more power, and probably trillions of dollars cheaper.
= 9J =
In reading the original article, the Space.com article and some of the other posts I have seen some people say that we should use Orbital Power satellites instead of Moon based ones.
I would agree, but as we see in the ISS, it is very expensive to build such massive projects. The Space.com article mentions that the Moon based project could be built in stages and in pieces.
This gave me an idea. What if small orbital power satellites were built. I mean small, less than a square foot in area. The solar array on them would be hexagonal and they would be designed to plug into other copies on either side.
Then, everytime anyone launches anything you stick a couple of these in any free space in the launch module. NASA launches would require you to add one to each launch as a cost of doing business or in return for a tax break or other incentive.
Each unit would have a small booster on them and they would fly slowly up to a predefined location and hook up with their brothers into a larger array, maybe built around a prelaunched rectenna unit. Maybe the booster would be an ion rocket powered by the solar array. If you are patient you would only need to get them to LEO.
If the Xbox prize guys come through they could go into a side business of launching these units also, maybe get a % of any money generated by selling the resulting electricity.
The big advantage is that if any unit fails or gets blown up during launch you're not out a lot of money. If they are mass produced and optimized they should be cheaper than one large station and maybe more than one company could make them.
Slowly, eventually a huge array would be built.
If the solar power stations were on the moon, a lunar eclipse would be problematic I think. A similar problem would occur with satellites in geosynchronous orbit. How would the world react to a global blackout?
It would be possible to build large power storage stations on Earth to act as a buffer, but I think this would be rather expensive.
I doubt this power system would be the only source of electricity on Earth, but a cheap supply of electricity would likely reduce the profitability of fossil fuel systems. Hydroelectric and wind based systems could still be used, but these are not available in some areas. I am not sure how these systems compare in expense.
"When God kisses Satan and the Incarnations applaud." "Death is dead. Long live Death!"
Criswell predicts that with this project, "the average American income could increase from today's ~$35,000/y-person to more than $150,000/y-person."
I just hope this is more accurate than his other predictions.
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
Anyone think they can comment on the possibility of this contraption to be pointed at large incoming space rocks? Slag them in space, baby. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Is this the same Criswell who predicted that all people would be wearing nude bodysuits by the 1980s, and the world would end on Aug. 18, 1999?
I'm getting sick of this guy and his predictions. But I'm not getting rid of my bodysuit.
To quote a great scientist.
EB - "1.21 Gigawatts, Great Scott."
Marty - "What the hell's a gigawatt?"
"Times may change, but standards must remain the same." - George Carlin.
Once every 8 hours...
Total Lunar eclipse tonight....the world goes literally dark!
On the other hand, if he's got a trunkload of sarin gas and is on his way to give everyone in Manhattan a very bad day, then we should simply kill him before he has a chance to activate his weapons.
And that giant space laser will just take out the driver's seat right, not the trunk full of sarin gas? Gas under pressure + heat = baaaad idea.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Is placing solar cells here on earth to provide energy too complicated a concept? A) this would be much, much cheaper (we all know who would end up paying for an orbital anything) B) less dangerous C) easier to maintain and upgrade; although, D) if Akira shows up, we would not be able to shoot at him like in the wicked cool comic books; finally, E) because it would interfere with the coal/oil company hegemony on energy, any alternative energy source will not be implemented.
There are microwave relays transmitting everything from televison singnals to NOAA radar data between base stations and the final transmission antennas.
They are all over the place. How many ppl are you frying with these?
Even at 100%, you are doubling the radiant energy being placed on a single spot on the earth (assuming this particular spot is the 'control' for your percentage basis, and it's noon). Sure they could up the power and fry ppl, but it sounds like they will be having enough trouble just getting the project moving with the modest energy output levels that are being considered.
Remember that they are pushing energy from the moon. 20% of noon-sun (what part of the earth are they taking this measurement from, and what time of year?) isn't really that much. The benefit is that the energy is being transmitted to earth in a form that can be easily converted into other forms of energy. (OK, more-easily is a very subjective term, but I digress).
How much more power would be needed to fry somebody on the surface of the earth with this type of contraption? Better yet, can somebody with better math skills than I calculate how much microwave energy would be needed to down an airliner? Assuming here, that this is the easiest target for terrorists as I'm sure Mr. Ashcroft will submit in a Senate hearing next week on this subject. This is assuming that you can aim and focus these things in a fashion that you *could* actully hit something.
Maybe I'm too trusting, but there are alot of other things on this earth that can kill you (sunlight already being one of them). If this is managed correctly it could be useful in reducing other energy consumption. Why not give it a try?
-Darkelf
While i admit i didn't read the article, i don't believe, at all, that giving someone else cheaper power will increase my income.
It might increase companies profit, but the days of trickle down to the little people in the business world is gone. Its all about greed. Nothing more nothing less.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Anyone stop to think about the moon itself? I mean
the moon has it's own GRAVITY. Why would we want
to put anything massive, expensive, and very
fragile on an object that flys through space at
an extremly fast speed (2300mph or 38.33 miles per second) and attracts random objects to it's
surface?
The idea is great and all, but I don't think the
creators of said idea have actually stopped to
look at the moon recently and notice thoese rather
large holes...
And if some profoundly amazing team of engineers succeeds in designing something like this within the next four decades, I challenge them to come up with a process for fabricating them.
The design is the hard part (probably impossible). But if a design was available, the rest is easy. Use a scanning tunnelling microscope to piece it together atom-by-atom. This might take years or decades; who cares? Once it's done, that one machine can build a 2nd one, etc etc.
That presupposes that construction-quality nanomachines are even possible, and they probably aren't.
Oh, and there's just SOOOO much sugar and oxygen laying around on the moon.
Well... I wouldn't be quite so quick to write off fusion power. See, there's a point at which a fusion reaction generates power and becomes self-sustaining. Since the first tokamaks were built in the 1970s, there has been pretty much logarithmic progress toward that point.
See?
(I saw a more detailed picture with points drawn for major reactor projects like JET in my quantum book, but have been unable to find another since. Foo. Anyone out there seen it?)
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
In my stupid macroeconomics class we learned that prices will "adjust" themselves to people's income levels. (if they don't, you get depression)
So if everyone, including the person who's serving your food, starting making $150k, then big mac's price would go up to $25 and possibly more.
Also, just because McDonalds and Burger King got their actual cost to make one glass of soda down to 1 cent, it doesn't mean they should or would pass down the savings to you.
Soaring profits would cause their stock price to go up and in turn, that would boost people's "worth", assuming they invested in the stock market. Inflation would hit soon thereafter and everyone would be bitching (again) how expensive [fill-in-the-blank] is and how expensive their mega-mansion was.
(BIG cars and big homes is the American way, so if the energy prices dropped, we would build BIGGER to make up the difference...)
Actually, the idea comes from one of Isaac Asimov's book (dont remember the title though) and *not* from a computer game.
I'm sure you get fusion by then. IIRC Microwave comes in 2028
My question is (if this really caught on) how quick would anyone be to turn it off?
I mean, would you black out the eastern seaboard just because some idiot with a Cesna was about to get fried? If it was a flock of geese?
Maybe with multiple transmitters aimed at different reception sites you could just switch transmission paths. That would even allow downtime for maintainance, and a workaround for really bad weather.
plus-good, double-plus-good
Sure sending power from satelites or the moon sounds like a good idea that might work if enough engineering issues are overcome. Seriously though, what would this thing do to our atmosphere? The first thing that comes to my mind would be the consequences on the weather. Anyone know what a high-powered microwave beam would do to clouds, ozone or the ionosphere? Heck this thing could potentially cause global warming.
30MVh?
I think that all these proposal to increase the amount of energy avoid a potential problem: the corresponding increase of heat generated..
Eventually all this energy will turn into heat, so it is quite possible that this will eventually raise earth's temperature..
I think that it may be wiser to increase the efficiency usage of energy than to increase the amount of energy used, well unless of course we need to warm up the earth..
Oh, and there's just SOOOO much sugar and oxygen laying around on the moon.
No, but we can extract it from the cheese.
I've zoned most of my microwave power plants near my schools. 1) I noticed they don't mind the warm glow. 2) They seem to prefer using my newly rezoned "Resort Island" compared to the old 'coal power / trash heap island' for living on rather than for just power generation. ;)
100 percent approval can't be wrong
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
Welcome our new satellite weilding, microwave energy overlords. Let the forced breeding commence.
--
Can anyone spare 120 chars? I'm saving mine to buy a link at Fark.
... in space, nobody can hear you cha-cha-cha.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
It makes little economic sense to build a solar generation plant on the moon, when we can do the same here on Earth. If we assume a power requirement of 2000 watts/person (quoted from the article), it should be possible to meet this requirement with only 630 square feet of PV panels per person (see calculations and references below). This is not an unreasonably large land area when compared with the 2.8 hectares per person required for food production. The real obstacle to widespread PV deployment is not a shortage of land, but the cost of PV equipment (panels and energy storage). Why would we build it on the moon? This would only make it more expensive.
The idea of using microwave satellite relays to distribute the power may have some merit. This would solve the issue of energy storage if we could transmit power to the other side of the world.
Today's commercially available PV panels are about 15% efficient. Their output rating is based on an irradiance of 1000w/m^2. This means one square meter of PV panels has a rated output of about 150 watts. The average insolation in the united states is about 5.5 sun hours. The average daily energy produced by a PV array is the product of it's rated power and the insolation. This means a square meter of PV panels will produce on average 825 watt hours/day (150 * 5.5). Given the value of 2000 watts/person and multiply by the number of hours in a day, you get an energy requirement of 48 kilowatt hours/day (2000*24). Take the this energy requirement and divide by the energy produced by a square meter of PV panels to get the number of square meters required: 48000 / 825 = 58 m^2 or 626 square feet.
Please don't reply with the argument that it takes more energy to produce a solar module than it will produce in its lifetime without reading the this.
I guess we'll still need a fair bit of power on earth or we'll get worldwide blackouts every time we have a lunar eclipse.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
You are kidding yourself if you think building in a deadman pedal is all it takes to prevent this.
This thing will be controlled by computers. Those computers have to be able to accept new control programs. That feature is susceptible to misprogramming just like any other computer.
How about the idiot who misprogrammed the CD-R drives so that Mandrake made them doorstops?
How about Navy warships dead in the water because divde by zero wasn't allowed for?
How about satellites and space probes which have been reprogrammed in the most extraordinary manner to solve all sorts of mishaps on the way to Saturn and Jupiter?
To think for even one second that it is laughable how easy it is to keep terrorists from catching control of this process is beyond my comprehension.
And having said all that, I also say go for the system, the advantages far outweigh the slim chance of hijacking. We can't stop progress.
Infuriate left and right
Yes, BP, Exxon, and Shell are the most likely candidates to fund this kind of operation because theyre the ones in the power business and theyre the ones with billions of dollars on hand for science projects. But if you have a 401k or a pension fund or a band account, you're probably an owner of one of these companies. Banks (and fund managers) like the safety of investing in massive corporations, and thats where your interest and/or retirement are gonna come from.
And everyone benefits from nearly free electricity. Energy and transportation costs are major factors in everything you buy, and would be significantly reduced. And if you account for the fact that 27 years after its patented, everyone's doing it, then by 2050 it should be evenly distributed.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Cheap power is crucial to most industries. What's 20% of the cost of steel? Electricity. So if electricity is suddenly 10 times as plentiful, the cost of steel comes down 18%. Sounds downright deflationary to me.
3.5 trillion kW/yr means a savings of $3.15 trillion per year if electricity costs went down 90%, or stated another way, the GDP of the US would grow 30% instantly. Costs of products across the board would fall because their energy cost compentents shrink.
Of course, cheap electricity makes lots of things much more feasible, like giant particle accelerators or energy intensive electronics. So then there'll be those benefits.
This isn't an accounting trick, this is real money being created and distributed.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
If you want global warming, the easiest way to do it is by increasing the amount of energy the earth receives. If we just add a lot of heat, aren't we asking for climatic change?
A major problem is they'd have to transmit at a frequency where atmosphere is very transparent to microwaves to avoid power loss but those frequencies are already taken by communications.
This is silly. Everyone knows that the microwave beams can't penetrate the electro-magnetic field created by the earth's spinning core!
By 2050, approximately 10 billion people will live on Earth demanding ~5 times the power now available. By then, solar power from the Moon could provide everyone clean, affordable, and sustainable electric power. No terrestrial options can provide the needed minimum of 2 kWe/person or at least 20 terawatts globally.
So the sun is already pouring 20TW on the Texas/Louisiana coastline, which will inevitably be mined for oil/gas, as the Gulf floor is today, just offshore between Texas and Florida. Now I'm all for collecting the solar radiation in space, where the new shadow will be spit in the solar wind. But these projects are not nearly as daunting as they appear. We can start incrementally on the surface of the Earth, and move to a microwave downlink from the Moon to a floating platform offshore. The terrestrial option can provide the power to get us to the Moon.
--
make install -not war
Solar Power in Space
Too much Star Wars - this isn't going to work like some giant magnifying glass and an ant colony. You need a huge area to convert the beamed energy into power significant enough to fry your neighbor. Long term environmental effects (over centuries) are likely to be the biggest (and overblown) concern. This is waaaaay the hell less harmful than virtually any energy we're producing now (arguably better than capturing wind power) aside from geothermal.
are you saying that... there might not be any Weapons of Mass Destruction?
And when we run out of fossil fuel here on earth, we can cut the cheese to get at the moon's valuable methane resources.
There's (again) something I don't understand.
If the intensity of the beam is only 20 % of the sun light, why don't just catch the sun energy with that vast 10 km receiver ?
Calm down, man. It was a literary reference. In "Moonwar", the only colony on the moon was attacked because all the countries on Earth had banned nanotechnology (From unjustified paranoia), and the leaders of the planet were pissed that the moon colony was still using it.
It's a good book. Now, if I could only find a link to "Moonbase", the first book of the duo, I'd have posted that.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Maybe if all the homeless were put in vats of pink goo and had their brains wired in to a computer simulation as mind numbing and as addictive as the meths some of them drink (suggests: tetris) we could solve the world power needs and clean up the streets ...
No, I apply the term 'econazi' to people like you, who have no other arguments than to scream obscenities and insults, and slather over their hatred of Rush Limbaugh, nuclear energy, and oil. People who would like to see entire industries 'rolled back' into oblivion, without giving any useful alternates. People who think it's ok to change the points of their arguments midstream and claim entirely different claims the second time around. People who can't stand the thought of there being someone else in the world with a differing opinion, and who will go to any lengths to vilify those opinions. Therefore, eco+nazi. Simple, you see?
:) People like you are so predictable...
Take some more Valium and settle down. When you can answer any post without having a coronary or refusing to even consider any other argument but your own, then come back. Maybe we'll chat. But I doubt you'll be able to do that. Oh well.
And I really love how AC postings upset you so. This is great
I'm surprised at the continous display of a lack of science education that I see in reading the comments to this article. Microwave power, while expensive, will not generate ANY nuclear waste for our kids to deal with. The number of people confusing microwaves and UV is irritating enough. The people who think that this energy comes down in a concentrated, destructive form is irritating enough, but you take the cake with that inane comparison between microwave power and nuclear power.
I agree with the previous post generally
The really awful thing here is the complete misunderstanding of energy that underlies this proposal. The assumption is that somehow the earth is short of energy. Frankly earth based solar energy has much more potential than any such system and would cost much less with far less problems
Regards the problems of solar they accrue primarily from the fact that solar energy does not fall on any one point of the earth at every moment and as such suffers from a timing problem. This is actually solved by a most unusual solution and one which has numerous reasons for it to be done.
If the USA, Canada and Russia were to develop a trans-global highway with electrical and energy pipelines, using a tunnel at the Beiring Straits to connect North America, Asia, Europe and Africa the value would be beyond imagination. Solar Advocates would find that this ends the objectionable issues regards Solar. The sun falls somewhere in the area affected by such a road at all times. The energy falling is much more than adequate for world needs.
This also upsets the Geopolitical balance in favor of the US, Canada and Russia. This yanks the US out of the Middle East. In of itself a worthwhile and laudable goal.
It causes China and the south east asians to have to come to terms as well. This is the world road to prosperity
But we need to dispense with the fools who run around thinking we are short on energy. It is like the rain in Alabama, it is plentiful but the distribution and timing have some difficulties.
The proposal to go off world for energy would cause problems with the world environment even more collossal than those by Nuclear Energy. We need to think a bit differently. There are more than adequate resources on the Earth. The issue is how do we manage them
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
though this kind of system wouldn't add any greenhouse gases to the environment, you have to imagine that you're collecting energy that would not otherwise have reached the earth. ultimately, this energy will dissipate as heat, which could, conceivably, cause the very global warming we're trying to avoid.
of course, the amount of energy necessary to raise global temperatures might exceed that incident upon the moon in the first place.
Whether it is done in orbit or done on the moon, it scales quite easily. You want more power? Tell the 'bots to fabricate more solar cells. The transmitter automatically joins the rest of the array when placed.
Why not put solar panels on everyones house. Or on the top of building and have them feed battery array.
You want solar on your rooftop? Go buy it. It'll be about $10K including panels, battery banks, and inverter-AC line interface. In a few years, the batteries wear out, in a few more years, the solar cells wear out.
With a space-based service, many of the wear mechanisms terrestrial solar cell power systems simply don't exist, and if cells wear out, the robotic factory can automatically replace them in any case. Perhaps the capital investment is as much as $1K / household and that buys us the start of an industrial scale space infrastructure. Lots of things that can be done with that. Would the price of compute power be impacted if price of the raw material, semiconductor-grade silicon were to drop by 10x or so? What about zero-G crystal fabrication?
Microwaves power is such a cool, but stupid idea. Kind of line nuclear power. Lets create a really expensive solution that leave nuclear waste for our kids to deal with, great....think outside the box people.
Nuclear waste from a solar cell array on the moon or in orbit? You a troll or an idiot?
Tech Public Policy stuff
Sorry...timed out my preview.
Actual link here (PDF.)
As a Slashdotter, you have posted.
;-)
As a curious person, why dont you go read the friendly article
Quite right. Thanks for the friendly reminder. In fact, the article is pleasantly internationalist.
-kgj
-kgj