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."

Comments

Not where I get my info...

[Epistax]

Sorry I don't get my info about the future from video games. I get them from flash-forwards in the Simpsons and occasionally Futurama.

Excellent...

[Paulrothrock]

Now maybe a private company can develop it for 2% of the cost and we'll have cheap, environmentally benign power.

Re:Excellent...

[tomhudson]

Now maybe a private company can develop it for 2% of the cost and we'll have cheap, environmentally benign power.

No ... they've figured out it makes a great space-based weapon (ever watch your sims melt down when the beamer mis-aligns?)

Actually, this (steering) IS one of the problems with any space-based microwave power project.

Re:Excellent...

[orthogonal]

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.

Re:Excellent...

[GileadGreene]

but when it comes to utilities, if it ain't regulated, the profit margins with be astronomical

Only in a non-competitive market - which is usually caused by government regulations preventing other companies from offering solutions.

Break-even point?

[gevmage]

It would be interesting to find out what the break-even point is. If you did deploy such a system, how long would it take until the energy savings recouped the cost of putting the thing into orbit.

That measurement as compared to the expected mean time between failure of the orbital system would be a very important number to the reliability of such a system. If the MTBF was 5X, then it's golden; 1.5X not so good.

Other tech predicted in games?

[xirtam_work]

Apart from SF movies, books and tv shows, can anyone suggest other technology predicted by video/computer games that we might actually see in the near future?

I'm still waiting for my robot maid, holiday on the moon and flying car. how about you?

Re:Other tech predicted in games?

[Jonathan]

Apart from SF movies, books and tv shows, can anyone suggest other technology predicted by video/computer games that we might actually see in the near future?

Arkanoid. In fact, I bet that metallic balls falling on modern spacecraft would bounce even using today's technology

Another new power source required

[Timesprout]

Some even claim that microwave power is essential for farther explanation. Accordong to the folks at Maxis

For a spelling and typo checker.

Weapon Capability

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, just point out that a 9GW focussed beam can take care of any banana republic in the world without sending troops abroad. You have 3 settings on your "mertilizer":
- low power - sterilize males, give it a few years and the problem in more or less "gone". Add to this that the strike will not be much noticed until 9 months...
- medium power - blind people. The retina is very sensitive to heating induced by microwaves, almost as sensitive as your testicles (modulus gender of course)
- deep fry - do I need to expand on this?

So, just tell Pentagon and you will have a grillion dollar funding yesterday already.

Maxis

[mfh]

...folks at Maxis, Microwave power should be available around 2020, depending on which version of SimCity you play.

And they really *should* know, right? If you're a scientist and you're reading this, you'd better get started on Arco technology now, so it can be ready in time to send us all to Alpha Centauri when Earth is too polluted and crime-infested to control. In other news, I saw a copy of Sim City 3000 bundled with a bunch of other great games like Alpha Centauri for $20 CAD, and I was tempted to pick it up. I might just do that, when I'm finished with TOEE, in all its bug-ridden glory. I've since lost most of the games in the package, so it would be great to play them this summer while I wait for Doom 3, and of course winning the lottery to fund a system that can handle it.

Outstanding idea. . . and will never happen. . .

[Salgak1]

. . .because our "Zero-risk" society, and the Safety/Environmental "Nazi"s will go absolutely ape over the idea . . . add to that the general scientific illteracy of the general public and. . . .

"Death beams from space, that can microwave a city if terrorists got control of it". . .

should have happened already

[fermion]

This type of solar power is like the space elevator. It has been around forever, the technological needs are well known, but no one can seem to get it done.

The difference is that the microwave solar power project has probably been technologically possible since before a single line of Sim City was ever written, and economically possible for at least 10 years. I remember my dad talking about how designs were making their way around the science magazines in the 70's. He said the everyone really expected a test project up by the 80's. It obviously never happened. It is really silly not to have an experimental platform in orbit, especially since there have been so many advance in solar power generation.

The big obstacles I see are safety, environmental, economics, and military. Obviously, the satellite is transmitting a lot of power, and so a large buffer area will be needed to prevent casualty. Such an area will be a site of environmental damage, so we will have to study that. I doubt that the power generation will yet be profitable, but that does not preclude launching a test vehicle and building a test site. Finally, the satellite will be hard to defend and would be a target for those who with to disable a country, but unlikely more so than the GPS vehicles.

Most of these are equally true of fission power, which has received tons of money for little results. I wonder if the Big Problem is that many researchers are not comfortable with the cost and complexity of space research, and may therefore shy away from it. The ones who are confortable with space are tend to be more focused on military needs.

Microwave beam misalignment

[zhenlin]

What would happen, if the microwave beam moved slightly out of alignment? From such a high altitude, even a fraction of a degree could move the endpoint of the beam a few tens of metres...

Even if the reciever could detect this, it would be a few seconds before the satellite could recieve the command and turn off the beam...

And what if, something flies into the path of the beam, whether or not it is misaligned? Birds, planes, lower orbit satellites...

The question is not just what would happen, but also how to prevent it.

-- someone who hopes for safe, clean, efficient power, be it microwave or fission or fusion

Re:Microwave beam misalignment

[wowbagger]

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.

Re:Microwave beam misalignment

[timeOday]

...What if they cross the streams?

Insightful?

[xtermin8]

How can tech savy nerds be so stubbornly simplistic when it comes to economics? The internet certainly wasn't a private venture for many years (not profitable). The technology behind all computers was developed and heavily subsidized by the government. There is next to know chance that any private company is going to develop this technology. Even if it were possible I think the powers that control expensive, polluting power would ever let it happen.

Older Idea, Asimov used it in 1950

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Capital cost is a good proxy

[apsmith]

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.

No weapon Re:Weapon Capability

[WolfWithoutAClause]

The beam power might be 9 GW, but the energy density would be about the same as a cell phone gives out. The idea is that you create a big aerial called a rectenna that covers whole square kilometers and collect the dilute energy.

The problem is that in order to beam the microwaves down from geosynchronous orbit a huge antenna is needed to focus it down to even cell phone power density.

There's only two ways to up the power intensity in the beam:

a) build a bigger antenna in space (people would notice)

b) increase the power in the antenna (needs much bigger solar panels- people would notice)

Basically either way involves incredibly large amounts of money, and the weapon can't move so is easy to shoot at, easy to defend against (silver foil) and obvious.

It's really a non starter as far as weapons go.

Re:No weapon Re:Weapon Capability

[cms108]

"..big aerial called a rectenna"

am i the only one who thought of cartman standing in a field?

Asimov

[BumpyCarrot]

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 ;)

X-Prize

[vijaya_chandra]

Considering the response being received for the X-Prize, it wouldn't be a bad idea for some wealthy guy to sponsor some Y-Prize for an extremely efficient, eco-friendly setup for generating power.
Am damn sure the current hydel, thermal, fission, solar, wind sources can be made use of in other better ways than the current ones

SimCity?

[NTiOzymandias]

A tip for NASA:

Shift-F-U-N-D

Re:Outstanding idea. . . and will never happen. .

[DudeG]

Well, here's a critique of the idea from someone who can't in any way be fitted into those categories: USS Clueless

[...] When it comes to power generation, the job's not done until the energy reaches the end user. The challenge of energy delivery is particularly severe for solar satellite technology.

Generally speaking, every time energy is converted from one form to another a lot of it will be lost (because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics). All technologies which generate power and deliver it to end users involve such conversions. A coal-fired electrical generation plant burns coal to produce heat, converts heat to pressure by applying a lot of that heat to a boiler to produce steam, converts pressure into mechanical motion (with a turbine), converts mechanical motion into electricity (with a dynamo), and then delivers the electricity with long distance power lines, which usually requires multiple voltage/current conversions using transformers or motor-generators. Many of those conversions are very efficient but some of them involve pretty significant losses.

The efficiencies of every step have to be multiplied together to calculate the overall system efficiency. If you have five steps and each one wastes 20%, then each step has an efficiency of 0.8, and the overall system efficiency will be 0.8*0.8*0.8*0.8*0.8 == 0.328, meaning about 33% of the original energy would be delivered to end users, with the remaining 67% being lost. But if each of those five steps wasted 30% instead of 20%, the overall system would only deliver 17% of the original energy. The more conversions required, and the worse the efficiency on those conversions, then the lower the efficiency of the overall system.

Solar satellite power generation is particularly poor in this regard. Sunlight is concentrated using mirrors (with some losses) onto a boiler (with some of the light reflecting instead of being converted to heat, and some of the heat radiating away via black-box radiation). The next few steps are the same as for a coal plant: steam drives a turbine, which drives a dynamo, which generates electricity. At that point, all you have to do is to deliver it, but that is not easy with solar satellites.

The electric power would have to be converted to microwaves (with a lot of losses). That would be beamed down to earth (with losses from atmospheric reflection, scattering and absorption). Most of the beam would strike the receiver but some would not because of beam spreading. (Also, there beam would tend to wander a bit because of atmospheric refraction, which also makes stars "twinkle".) The receiver would have to capture the microwaves that struck it and somehow convert back into electricity, and every way I know to do this has dreadfully poor yields.

Microwaves are not the only approach to the downlink, but every approach I know of for the downlink either cannot handle the power levels involved, or is terribly inefficient. Compared to terrestrial electrical power generation technologies, solar satellites inherently require more conversions, many of which have poor efficiency, and the overall system efficiency will necessarily be far worse. I would be surprised if the system had a yield as high as 5%. I would tend to think it would be even lower.

On the other hand, the energy which would have to be expended to create a solar power satellite would be huge compared to the energy needed to build a terrestrial power generation facility. Would it break even before it reached the end of its operating life? Would it actually produce more energy than it cost? I'm not so sure it would.

The capital cost to create a solar satellite would also dwarf the cost of terrestrial power plants which delivered comparable amounts of power, but the satellites and terrestrial power generators would sell their power on the same market at the same price. Could a solar satellite produce enough revenue during its o

Re:Outstanding idea. . . and will never happen. .

[moonbender]

It's called controversial discussion. I prefer people who go ape about everything to people who don't go ape about anything. All of the things you mentioned do have their drawbacks, and those drawbacks need to be pointed out, discussed and weighed against each other. They are in fact practising their democratic right and duty to actively support what they think is right - something that many people on Slashdot seem to think is below them. Cheering and bitching is the essence of a democratic society.