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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."
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.
Now maybe a private company can develop it for 2% of the cost and we'll have cheap, environmentally benign power.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
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.
Craig Steffen
http://www.craigsteffen.net
Some even claim that microwave power is essential for farther explanation. Accordong to the folks at Maxis
For a spelling and typo checker.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
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.
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.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
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
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?
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
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
A tip for NASA:
Shift-F-U-N-D
"..big aerial called a rectenna"
am i the only one who thought of cartman standing in a field?