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Public Discussion Opened on Space Solar Power
eldavojohn writes "The National Security Space Office (NSSO), an office of the DoD, has taken a novel approach to a study they are doing on space based solar power. They've opened a public forum for it and are interested in anyone and everyone's expertise, experience and ideas on the best means to harvest energy in space. I suppose this is similar to the DoD's $1 million for an energy pack just without the award. Still, if you want to have an influence on the US's plans in space, this would be an easy armchair place to start. Space.com also has more on the details."
The proximate cause was that despite there being an obvious direction in place subsequent to the space race (remember the Apollo program?) that could have been followed through to space industrialization -- the launch service industry did not enjoy the same protection from government competition that the satellite industry enjoyed:
It wasn't until 1990, when a coalition of grassroots groups across the country lobbied hard for 3 years, that similar legislation got passed for launch services.
The fact that Malthusian paradigm didn't precisely follow the Club of Rome's "Limits to Growth" model doesn't change the reality of the Malthusian paradigm given a fundamentally limited biosphere undergoing its largest extinction event in 60 million years. The Club of Rome merely added academic fashion to the urgency of the Malthusian situation still facing the biosphere. The 1970s was the right time to start the drive for space industrialization based on a private launch service industry. It didn't happen, the pioneering culture that founded the US is being replaced by government policy with less pioneering cultures and now we're all facing some increasingly obvious difficulties -- not just pioneer American stock -- and not just humans.
The cost of getting silicon into space from the lunar surface would be orders of magnitude less than launching from earth due not only to the much shallower gravity well but also due to the absence of atmosphere.
No beanstalk needed.
At worst a Dyneema Rotovator might be needed but probably not even that.
First, the bulk of the materials are manufactured in space from lunar raw material transported to orbital facilities so you don't need to land those facilities on the lunar surface, and you don't have to worry about g-loading the raw materials you are sending to the orbital facilities.
Second, you don't manufacture everything in space -- only bulky materials like solar cells, reflectors, structural members and perhaps klystrons. Only residual materials (raw and manufactured) are of terrestria
Seastead this.
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
>>But, quite frankly, I'd rather see humanity burn in flames than see the Americans in possession of the technology.
U-S-A #1! U-S-A #1! U-S-A #1!
Actually, the US would probably be pretty isolationist now if energy wasn't a concern.
agreed... I have to say the only reason the US is over seas is because of energy...
if the rest of the world wants to shut us up and keep them out of their hair they should just give us plans for an easy never ending supply of renewable energy.
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Trying to fix or change something only guarantees and perpetuates it's existence
Dear Slashdot,
please do our homework for us.
Sincerely,
The National Security Space Office (NSSO), an office of the DoD
P.S. we won't use your ideas to kill or oppress people*
*actually, we will.
I've been on-and-off interested in this subject for years now - the prospect of being able to gather solar energy more directly, even with horribly inneficient technique, would be a complete transformation in terms of our ability to gather energy for human use.
Three basic problematic areas:
1. Return Delivery for energy. A beam would be the most obvious approach, as no conventional matter would be easilly sustained without something like a space elevator bringing enriched material up and down constantly. An exception would be antimatter, though that would be horribly dangerous on a scale that would make any concentrated beam mishap look like nothing.
2. Energy effects on the earth. Increased energy use, in any form, is going to have various effects on our ecosystem. We'll have to devote a percentage of our global energy use to offset this in some way, hopefully without a tragedy of the commons effect leftover.
3. Upkeep: Materials break down when they transfer the kinds of energy under consideration here. This won't just be a simple solar-panel install job in space. The materials involved will have to be self-repairing in some way if they're going to get closer and closer to the sun. Perhaps they'll function by 'flowing' with the solar winds, then reforming at the front. This promises to be a fascinating task for engineers and scientists looking to harvest such enormous resources safely and (relatively) efficiently.
Every aspect of this subject bristles with the various concerns of humanity - it'll be interesting to say the least what this group can go over.
Ryan Fenton
Really? You must never have gone to a (public) university library. Plenty of science there for one to scrutinize. One just has to get off one's duff and look for it, rather than expect that it will be delivered to them for no effort.
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
Build a giant parabolic mirror on the moon, from moon material and use (solar powered) motors to make it point to a specific location on earth. Alternatively, point it on the Whitehouse unless they pay $1,000,000,000,000,000,000
\u262D = \u5350
I'm reading the public forum, and someone ran the math and said that it would take 10,000 years to build a solar array large enough to replace our current energy use. The limiting factor is how hard it is to move something that large and heaving into orbit.
If these figures are accurate, then this is a pointless endeavor.
Yeah, sure, except for that little thing called 'prior art'.
This is actually the exact opposite of what you say. By designing something in an open, public forum, where all can see the process, we ensure that it CAN'T be patent hi-jacked...or at least, if a patent is granted, it can very easily be contested.
The whole intent of patents was to reduce the amount of secrecy out there to allow ideas to grow into new and better ideas instead of being locked away in some back room.
No Comment.
You know what, you're right. Fuck the rest of the world. We (America) will pull every troop out of every nation we are operating in, we will stop providing billions to the world in food, medicine, and clothing, and we will no longer respond when a natural disaster occurs.
We will put every one of our troops on our border and shoot anyone trying to get in. Anyone that want's out is free to leave. Once you leave, you cannot come back in.
We will give ZERO food and money to ANY nation. We will simply take care of ourselves, and fuck the rest of you.
America may do some horrible things, but people seem to forget the GOOD things that we do. You don't like it or appreciate it? Fine. Fuck if we care.
If we do help out, we are being nosey and putting ourselves where "we don't belong". If we DON'T help, we are being "stupid selfish Americans". Well FUCK you. No one makes us give away billions upon billions of dollars a year. NO ONE.
We have done and do fucked up things; I will never deny that. However, NEVER forget that we also do some amazing things. We help literally millions of people a day soley because we WANT to. We will gladly bow out and let the world deal with it's own problems. Just don't come crying and bitching to us when a giant wave floods your entire country or when lava buries your villages.
Living With a Nerd
This represents an extraordinarilly expensive solution to a non-existent problem. We already have access to cheap, clean, and reliable power production facilities right here on Earth. It's called nuclear power.
The traditional way to think about it is 'beaming' energy back to earth in some fashion (microwaves? laser? etc). But another way to harvest energy is to use it to refine resources in space ... use the energy to harvest or refine near earth objects (NEO) or lunar regolith. The refined material can be very valuable (there are high concentrations of rare and precious metals in NEO's), and then shipped back to earth more conventionally. Or used to construct in orbit.
Microwave Rectennas would enable the transport of power back to the Earth's surface just fine. The radiation is relatively diffuse, non-ionizing, and would do no more to birds flying overhead than heat them up.
e
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_satellit
Unlimited Solar Power, a burgeoning Space Program, and free cooked poultry falling from the sky! What more could you ask for?
As an avid SimCity 2000 player, I know that constructing large microwave dishes that receive concentrated ion beams from satellites is the best way to harvest solar energy from space. For more on ion beam satellites -- and their military uses against shadowy quasi-nationstates led by enigmatic bald men - I refer you to Command&Conquer.
ps: I suggest building these microwave power stations far away from cities, as they occasionally explode. They're also frequent targets of large, mechanical alien spider robots.
However, once there is a space elevator, there is no need for using dangerous microwaves, when you already have a direct wire going from earth to space. Just send the electricity down the wire like any terrestrial power line.
You know what? I could be wrong in this, but last time I checked we give away hundreds of thousands of tons of food every year to 3rd world countries. Last time I checked, we spend BILLIONS in assisting countries that take the brunt of a natural disaster.
Last time I checked, we spend billions on other countries in ways that DO NOT BENEFIT US. Billions that we could instead spend on our OWN country.
Is our government corrupt? Yes. But whose government isn't? Once again, we may do fucked up things, but NO ONE, and I repeat NO ONE, makes us help a SINGLE country. We could just as easily lock ourselves up and give a big fuck you to the rest of the world. Instead, we spend our time, rescources, and risk the lives of our own men and women to assist those in need around the world.
Wherever you live, I hope you remember that when you see our national guard risking their own lives to save the lives of YOUR countrymen when their homes flood from a massive hurricane. I hope you remember that when you see OUR OWN TROOPS risk THEIR OWN LIVES to save someone like you.
The world may hate America, the world may have a shit view of us, but that hasn't stopped us has it? You may spit in our faces, but you will be spitting in our faces as we put food on the tables of millions of people around the world.
Living With a Nerd
As we've witnessed, digging carbon from the earth (as crude oil and coal) and putting it into the atmosphere along with the heat energy from using it can have serious side-effects from injecting outside energy to a system in equilibrium.
Power needs to go somewhere as some form of energy. It might do some work, but usually ends up mostly lost as heat. All lights, stoves, heaters, etc would essentially mean nearly all of the solar energy collected was as if the sun were simply shining brighter on the earth. Imagine if they were researching how to make more sunlight hit the planet just to harness it with solar cells -- this is almost exactly the same thing.
Space energy is energy being brought into the system that wouldn't have normally entered. I don't see this as a viable form of energy. It will potentially lower greenhouse gasses, but will still screw up the ecosystem.
The average American voter, when asked, guesses that about 15% of our budget goes to non-military foreign aid, and thinks it should be closer to 5%. In reality, it's 0.01% percent. Just, y'know, to put things in perspective.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
We got us a copy and paste-er
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http://www.futurepundit.com/mt/mt-altcomments.cgi
"However, NEVER forget that we also do some amazing things. We help literally millions of people a day soley because we WANT to."
Yes. The US has historically done and presently does great and positive things for the rest of the world. That's what is so disappointing about the choices made in the last few years.
It's nice to think that the US would help because it "wants to", out of its generosity, but the reality is that much of the food supplied to the rest of the world is dumped there to keep prices up domestically and to justify massive farm subsidies. It feeds the poor, but dumping that much food at low prices can undercut a country's attempts to build agriculture and an export trade in food (subsidies depress global prices, though many other countries are just as bad), and that can keep people poor. Anyway, to change this the US agricultural business and government policy would have to change drastically. They currently *need* to send grain and other foods elsewhere. So, is this generosity or merely necessity?
It would also be quite difficult for the US to survive without energy and mineral resources drawn from the rest of the world, especially oil, what with >50% of oil imported. Historically, the US had a strong isolationist attitude, but that's long over, because the US simply could not survive for 6 months without the rest of the world's resources. At least, not with its current industrial structure. It's obvious that many military and economic choices have been made not out of some enlightened vision of helping the rest of the world, but primarily out of economic self-interest to keep the oil or (insert commodity here) flowing.
A fairly clear example is Iraq. It's hard to explain the choice to go in there as anything other than getting access to oil. Iraq has about 25% of the known conventional oil reserves, second only to Saudi Arabia. All the original reasons for going in there have evaporated (and they were flimsy beforehand). WMDs? Ha. And everybody now knows the only terrorists in Iraq are the ones that moved in or people who decided to change professions AFTER Saddam was gone. Afganistan made sense at the initiation of the "war on terror", but it's only major resource is opium. It was an expensive operation on solid and globally-supported principles, but taking over that country doesn't pay the bills or feed the resource demands like taking over a country like Iraq. It's obvious the "war on terror" was an excuse in Iraq, and it was hoped it would be easy (decapitation strike indeed!). But if Iraq didn't have oil or threaten other country's oil, I doubt the US would care much.
Yes, the US has and continues to do great and positive things, but you are fooling yourself if you think it is mainly out of generosity or even democratic principles. If it was, then the US would not have such a long and colorful history of propping up dictators and monarchs (e.g., in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Chile, etc.). It has shown that it is quite willing to make shady deals with countries that just happen to have major natural resources needing development. And, look, here's a number of US-headquartered multinational corporations only too willing to lend a generous, helping hand!
I'm sorry to be skeptical. I have great respect for the United States and its principles. Unfortunately I don't see much correlation between where and how the "help" is distributed in the rest of the world and those principles.
The one exception is indeed during natural disasters, where the US has a good and fairly consistent record of offering and effecting aid regardless of who needs it. For that, the generosity of the US is immense and truly genuine. Thanks. The rest of the "help" you can keep. Unfortunately, I doubt the US could survive for long if it did what you suggest.
You make it sound like the space programs from the 60's was for pioneering cultures are all different from today. They're not. The space program was a political maneuver in direct response to the Soviet "threat." Its goal wasn't for the sake of science, it was for the sake of pride and a sense of protection from enemy threats. The closest things we have now are North Korea secretly building nukes, Iran doing the same, China destroying all of our satellites, and right-wing religious fundamentalists going from blowing up abortion clinics to blowing up the rest of the United States if/when the GOP loses the next presidential election.
increased CO2 emissions from coal burning that would mandate radical restructuring of global energy technology
As we are all aware, the whole global warming problem presented by rising levels of CO2 is that more energy is trapped here on Earth. So how is trapping more energy from the sun and sending more energy to Earth going to help the problem? Maybe the solar collector will be directly between the Sun and Earth, thus removing as much incoming solar energy as it is beaming down to our power station. But which countries are going to volunteer to give up much of their sunlight? Perhaps thousands of little collectors evenly distributed in the Earth bound Sunshine would solve the politics by giving an even reduction of sunlight globally, but if we can do that, why are we so worried about CO2 levels, just reflect the nessecary amount of incoming solar energy to counteract our increased atmospheric insulation. Don't even bother with the energy collection, we have an excess of Earth bound energy as it is.
We are all just people.
it's nice that thought and work are being put in to solar, and all, but putting solar collectors in space is missing out on the other major feature of solar that nuclear can't produce: decentralized generation.
//resilient//. If you put a solar platform in orbit, then either it or the receiving stations become expensive, centralized facilities that are vulnerable single points of failure to either intentional attack or accidental failure.
//you//. But, as usual, "consumers" have different priorities.
If anyone can generate their own electricity, it makes for a system which is much more robust from infrastructure failure. People can be independent and recover better from disasters, becoming more
Furthermore, they foster dependency among energy consumers, making them vulnerable to abuse by monopolies in the energy industry. Enron, Dick Cheney, California... you get the idea. Of course, if you happen to BE one of these industrial monopolists, the idea of centralized production is exactly what you want - a "good thing" - for
Let's get solar (and perhaps wind, which shares these properties) working on Earth first.
The Earth has a radius of ~6,400km. The energy from the sun at the top of the atmosphere is about 1.3 Kw/m^2. Thats ~1.7x10^17 Watts. Its about the same as a 40 Megaton of TNT every second of every day. The amount of energy we use, either from space or from oil or from anywhere is a drop in the bucket and will be for a long time.
The idea of blocking the sun to maintain the status quo on a climatic system we really don't understand yet, is stupid.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?