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.

Comments

Funding...

[E-Rock]

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. ;)

Average income?

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

Yeah, right. The "oil billionaires" who buy up the microwave technology and become "microwave billionaires" will be rolling in it, while the rest of us still putz along at $30K/year. Yet thanks to statistics, the "average" income will indeed go up.

Remember, averages are highly skewed by outliers.

Re:Average income?

[jefeweiss]

The cost of energy is gradually built into pretty much everything in the current economy. It would take some time, but the cost of any consumer good or service you can imagine would come down considerably if the cost of energy drops to near zero. Consider housing manufactured and erected in a zero energy cost environment. Most of the costs of concrete, and anything made of concrete are energy costs. The cost of energy is built in at every level of the construction process. Brick? Basically cooked (with energy) silica. Steel? Melted (again with energy) ore. All the transportation costs? Oil can be made from coal, or shale the reason it isn't done now is that the expense of the energy to do it is higher then the cost of oil. And anyway electrolysis can make perfectly clean hydrogen and oxygen should we choose to go that route.

The point is that when you are thinking of energy costs you are thinking mostly about your electric or gas bill, which is small compared to your total expenses. But the cost of energy overall to the economy is almost omnipresent. The cost of paper is pretty much the cost of trees + cost of energy to make paper + cost of labor. The cost of trees is cost of labor + cost of energy used by vehicles, machines etc + cost of logging rights. The cost of the vehicles is cost of energy used to make them + labor + capital costs, etc, etc.

The reason that people don't realize the true expense of energy to the economy is that it is implicit in the cost of everything.

Re:Average income?

[Grishnakh]

The cost of energy is gradually built into pretty much everything in the current economy. It would take some time, but the cost of any consumer good or service you can imagine would come down considerably if the cost of energy drops to near zero.

Yes, consumer goods would become much cheaper with cheaper energy, but the majority of people's paychecks go to pay for housing (and taxes). That's not going to get any cheaper no matter how cheap energy gets, because most of the cost of a house is in the land value (which has nothing to do with energy), and in the labor of building the house. Building materials aren't that expensive, but paying laborers US-scale wages to put them together is. And since land value is dictated by location, location, location, that's not going to change with energy costs either.

Sure, sure

[Erwos]

"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

Re:Sure, sure

[Artifex]

Right, he also doesn't mention how raising the average income to 150K just makes the rich, richer, and the poor, poorer.

No kidding, especially when almost all the people involved in energy production get thrown out of work. You know, like the people making enormous amounts of money to do dangerous offshore drilling, etc., and the little industries that cater to them. Not to mention all the Native American reservations and senior citizens that rely on oil rights for big and small checks every month. Alaska's economy, largely supported by fossil fuel taxes, might literally "go south" with any major shift away from those fuels.

And yes, if the average income is about $150K a year, the CPI will rise to meet it, though it may lag a quarter or two as people spend their income on luxury goods first. Housing generally costs 1/3 of Americans' income (can't quote you a source, but that was the figure we used in my economics classes) so suddenly the average apartment will rent for over $4K a month. Those who are recently out of work will find that their $300 weekly unemployment checks are almost worthless, but state governments won't have the funds right away to approve increases. Most peoples' savings will be wiped out. Not to mention that the government won't be able to maintain relativistic price supports for milk and other foodstuffs, and many farms (mostly corporate these days) will go under, causing potential shortages, though the crisis pricing may keep too many from going under if they rise quickly enough...

If you want an example of what happens when monetary supply is suddenly shifted outward and the basis of income for large quantities of people suddenly disappears at the same time, just look at good old post-cold war Russia right now. Those who managed to gain control over useful capital before the change are now extremely wealthy, while the unemployment rate soars, food is scarce, and so many kids are orphaned and hungry that it's now become a major center of child abuse and exploitation. Not to mention all the diseases that people can't afford to treat, running through the population.

Microwave energy would be a great resource, but until we change our society, it won't be "free." However wrongly, our economy and society is based on energy as a tradeable commodity, and we can't ignore that.

Nonsense

[locarecords.com]

..

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..

Re:What about the 'whoops'?

[KDan]

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...

Before you answer that microwaves don't get refracted that much by air, please recall the scale of volume we're talking about, as well as the fact that the beam also has to go through the upper atomsphere which, full of ions, probably does scatter microwaves.

Daniel

Re:What about the 'whoops'?

[LMCBoy]

They could, you know....turn it off.

It's not hard to think of very robust failsafes. The microwave satellite could have a modest optical laser pointing exactly parallel to the microwave beam. This would bounce off a mirror at the receiving station on the ground and back to a detector on the satellite. If that signal was interrupted, then the assumption is that the laser is no longer hitting the mirror, so you have a pointing error. So then you immediately shut down the microwave beam, or divert it harmlessly into space. Okay, it wouldn't work on a cloudy day, but this could be one of several failsafes; I'm sure people can think of more (GPS, temperature sensors placed around the receiving dish, IR camera on the satellite monitoring the surface temperature around the receiver, etc.).

Lunar microwave power article from Space.com

[joelparker]

Space.com article about Criswell,
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?"

Re:Inflation

[vidarh]

Even if he is talking about $150,000/y-person in todays dollar value he doesn't seem to take into account that 1) there's no chance in hell that the world will be willing to rely on being on the good side of the US (or any other country for that matter - this doesn't have to do with which country is being the single source supplier, but the risk of relying on a single energy source controlled by a single country), so regardless of price there is just no way the US would corner the market, 2) any potential competitors have a long time to improve technology and bring down the price differential, 3) if it's so bloody cheap and can provide so much income you'll quickly face competition from Russia, India, China, Europe and prices will plummet even further (which is good for consumers, but which means profit margins will be unlikely to be anywhere near what he suggests).

It boils down to: While having "unlimited" "almost free" energy would be great, any suggestion along the line of "this investment is guaranteed to bring ridiculous profit" about almost anything legit will be bullshit - if profit margins are significantly above average returns on investment investors will be queuing up to invest in it AND to fund competitors.

And in this case there is a long list of countries with launch capabilities that will have a significant political and economical interest in competing, and in the case of China even actual ambition to develop.

But of course if one party starts a project like this it could be the factor to finally kickstart another space race.

Fried birds for dinner anyone?

[TheVampire]

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

Re:Issues of Weaponizing this System

[Pendersempai]

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.

This is so preventable that it makes me laugh.

Make the communication two-way. If the reception dish loses its lock on the power beam or if the transmitter loses its lock on the communication beam, the whole apparatus shuts off until it can be inspected.

The paranoia around such a non-issue just goes to show how stinkin' awful humans are at gut-feel cost-benefit analysis. You've seen it happen (as a Disaster) in SimCity 2000; therefore, it must be a real risk.

Ditto for those who are afraid of flying, living near a modern fission plant, or sharing files on KaZaA.

FYI, old-tech warning

[Spamalamadingdong]

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.

You don't use lasers for the alignment, you use microwaves. Actually, you use microwaves of roughly the same frequency as the transmission to you, and you modulate them with a pseudo-random encrypted stream of phase changes a la Code Division Multiple Access.

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:

1. The system is cryptographically secured against redirecting the beam.
2. The use of the phase-reference beam automatically compensates for variations in the refractive index of the atmosphere.
3. 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.

Re:Gimme a break

[IthnkImParanoid]

If we can torch a terrorist in a car in the middle of traffic without killing innocent civilians nearby

You meant after a trial, of course. Right?

Re:Gimme a break

[BrianH]

Depends on what the terrorist is doing. If the terrorist is running out to buy a bagel and coffee, then yes, he should be arrested and tried. 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.

Anyone who advocates giving EVEY terrorist a trial is a misguided idealist. Anyone who advocates killing every terrorist without a trial is a coldhearted fascist. Reality, as always, demands a solution somewhere in the middle.

Ultimate weapon

[XNormal]

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?

Dr Criswell

[XNormal]

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.

Re:Gimme a break

[ViolentGreen]

The problem with this is that intelligence can be wrong. We saw the US bomb several places thinking that Saddam or is cronies were there. They weren't. If we just start zapping people out of the sky, innocent people are going to get zapped from false intelligence.

150k/yr & inflation

[xxTYBALTxx]

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).

Re:Can you say "Global Warming" anyone?

[confused one]

Re-read the article then do the math. He's proposing that the intensity be less than 20% day-light max. That would mean a max of 0.20*1.5kW/m^2 or 300 watts/m^2. That's not going to flash-cook anything.

Then consider the following: They claim an efficiency approaching 50%; so, 50% is becoming waste heat. In a typical power plant, there's a bunch of efficiencies that have to be added up: 85% for boiler, 95% for turbine and 95% for generation. That yields 75% system efficiency. Not quite as good for beamed solar; but, not terrible.

The real nightmare occurs when you realize the transmission system is only 70% efficient. So, if we fix that, we can account for quite a bit

Now, here's where you should be concerned about warming: The Earth's heat budget assumes a certain amount of sunlight striking it's surface -- based simply on the amount of surface area facing the Sun. We'd be increasing the heat energy the Earth would be receiving because we'd be increasing the exposed surface area by the area of the collectors. If they remain small (few sq miles) it will be insignificant. If we start building really big ones (100's sq miles) then it might become a real problem.

Having More Stuff: 1200 vs 2000

[Tackhead]

> Aren't you dependant on your employer for your basic needs? If so, how is your standard of living any different than that of a medieval serf? Oh, wait: you have more "stuff" so that makes it better...

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.

Re:Issues of Weaponizing this System

[Pendersempai]

right, because space systems don't fail, airplanes don't crash, reactors don't explode or melt down, and no one gets busted using Kazaa...

Right, this is exactly what I'm talking about. You, AC absolutely suck at making intelligent risk management decisions. Seriously: pay someone else to make them for you.

EVERYTHING is a risk. You can't get around it. Breathing our atmosphere puts you at some risk for respiratory ailments. Letting the sunlight touch your skin increases your risk for skin cancer. Stepping into an automobile is a TREMENDOUS risk, absolutely DWARFING the combined risks faced by a man who travels twice every day by plane, lives IN a nuclear power plant, and shares his music on KaZaA.

Yes, it DOES happen that any and all of these will lead to at least one consequence worldwide. We aren't interested in a categorical "has it killed people?" but rather in a question of degree: "What proportion of people exposed to this risk suffers the consequences?" We're interested in expected values. And the probability of suffering the much-feared consequences of flying, living near a power plant, or sharing music is VIRTUALLY NIL.

Review insurance policies. Living near a plant does not increase your life insurance premiums. Neither does flying. Are you better equipped to assess these risks than paid actuaries?

No...

Re:Gimme a break

[Lord Kano]

Anyone who advocates giving EVEY terrorist a trial is a misguided idealist.

Our constitution requires it. There is a difference between sniping someone before he can activate the switch on a bomb and in killing a known terrorist just because we can get away with it.

Everyone who can be brought to justice, should be brought to justice. In a court of law. Pure and simple.

I hate child molestors even more than terrorists, and those perverts should have their day in court with a fair trial.

LK