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NASA Abandons SimCIty Microwave Power Concept
TexasDex writes "Wired reports: The NASA Space Solar Power project--a method of collecting solar energy efficiently from space and beaming it down to earth--was canceled in early 2001 after enjoying intermittent attention from scientists. NASA officials cited a policy shift toward the International Space Station and the space shuttle program. But there is still hope for it yet. A conference this month in spain hopes to advance the cause, dispite the fact that there is no public funding available in the US for this project. Some even claim that microwave power is essential for farther explanation. Accordong to the folks at Maxis, Microwave power should be available around 2020, depending on which version of SimCity you play."
If I'm reading this right, the concept of power beamed down to Earth from satellites is credited to the SimCity crew.
However, at least one version of this idea has occurred before; namely in the comic Flash Gordon. The episode was called "The Observer" (translated to Finnish and now back again to English).
All rites reversed 2010
Most designs for such a system use a phased-array antenna for transmit - the beam angle can be switched in milliseconds.
They also use a very large beam with a very low power density, so that even if you were to stand in the middle of the beam you would not be cooked - you'd just feel warmth like standing in the sun.
Lastly, most designs use a retroreflector on the ground to send a small reference signal back to the bird, which uses the reference signal to steer the beam. If the beam drifts, the reference signal is lost and the system shuts down automatically.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Now maybe a private company can develop it for 2% of the cost and we'll have cheap, environmentally benign power.
Or, now maybe we can continue to be dependent on (mostly foreign) oil, established oil companies with little incentive to develop newer and ultimately cheaper energy sources, and politicians who make sure NASA doesn't undermine those vested interests.
"NASA officials cited a policy shift toward the International Space Station and the space shuttle program."
Now, I know the Shuttle has been so tremendously successful, and the International Space Station isn't just the leftovers of the lasts gasps of the old Soviet Manned Space Flight Program, both have been so well funded since the "policy shift" three years ago in 2001 -- so, if you're going to be intellectually honest, you have to ask yourself, "what occasioned this policy shift?"
I'm not just trying to be annoyingly partisan here; I'm trying to make the point that even when it comes to science, politics takes over, and when politics takes over, you have to follow the money.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Hi there,
So many geeks and nobody read "Reason" (Supossedly 2015 AD. I, Robot; The Complete Robot; Robot Visions) ??? In that story eveything happens in a satellite around the sun that collects the energy to beam it down to Earth.
Shame on you guys... but the point is that its an OLD idea.
Read Asimov, its great!
Economic energy intensity numbers mean you're using about 10 MJ for every dollar. Typical ground-side power plants cost on the order of $1000 - $3000/kW (nuclear on the high end of that, coal on the low end) which translates to 10-30 GJ/kW, or 10 - 30 million seconds - i.e. the energy payback is a few months to a year.
For a space power plant to be economically competitive, it's numbers had better be pretty close. Unfortunately right now space launch is about a factor of 10 too expensive, which puts the energy payback into the few to 10-year timeframe.
By the way, I'm the one quoted in the Wired article as saying $10 billion RD&D over 10 years would do the trick - but I don't remember saying it had to go through NASA! And yes, I will be in Spain at the meeting next week.
Energy: time to change the picture.
The earliest I've seen this power source suggested was in Asimov's I, Robot. Unfortunately, I don't have a copy on me to check the dates ;)
Do you see what I did there?
Actually the "buffer area" and antenna area required should be considerably less than the area required for ground-solar, wind, coal mines etc. for the same annual energy production. And environmental impact should be minimal - the idea is to capture over 90% of incoming energy in the receiving array. Power levels in the center will likely be on the order of 10% of peak solar (but 24x7 rather than just in mid-day) so stray power would be 1% of peak sunlight, not enough to cause much damage to anything.
I think there's some of this. The logical institutional sponsors would be NASA and DOE, but they don't work well together, and this doesn't fit logically really within either one's domain.
Energy: time to change the picture.
NASDA, NAtional Space Development Agency of Japan too had plans for harnessing energy through satellites.
Just hope that the NASA effect doesn't reflect upon NASDA
The idea of giant solar satellites beaming power down to earth as microwaves goes back to Gerard K. O'Neill's book _The High Frontier_ about building colonies in space... and he got the the idea from a report written in the 60's.
The creators of SimCity had nothing to do with inventing or developing the idea.
Well, here's a critique of the idea from someone who can't in any way be fitted into those categories: USS Clueless
I remember reading about this EXACT technology in the early nineties. And that was in an archive of science magazines (the french Science & Vie). So the idea isn't new, and it certainly didn't originate from the game makers. What the game makers do, though, is help popularize such under-the-radar ideas that people would've otherwise ignored.
;)
On a side note, I can't wait to see pre-cooked birds falling from the sky