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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
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
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.
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.