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Pentagon Urges Space-Based Solar Power
eldavojohn writes "The Pentagon issued a report indicating that space-based solar power 'has the potential to help the United States stave off climate change and avoid future conflicts over oil by harnessing the Sun's power to provide an essentially inexhaustible supply of clean energy.' The report, from the Pentagon's National Security Space Office, calls for funding the development of space-based solar power culminating in 'a platform in geosynchronous orbit bigger than the international space station and capable of beaming 5-10 megawatts of power to a receiving station on the ground.' The Pentagon's interest in such an effort stems from the need to acquire energy on the battlefield, which today often comes at a painful premium."
Sooo..... would this mean that the Pentagon could *bogart* all of the power when needed, or reduce power generation at critical times? This is one of the principal complaints about the GPS system as currently structured. There is no doubt that the GPS system has revolutionized much of the developed world and I am not criticizing that. On the contrary, I am just pointing out a possible criticism. After all, if the Pentagon (US government) plays its cards right, this could be a way to ensure that Gap Nations can be provided power to help them integrate into the Economic Core. (brilliant background on theory of Gap Nations and Economic core here ).
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Because I can't imagine any other military application behind beaming 5-10 megawatts of power to a focused location...
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
You've got to be kidding, that's going to end the energy crisis? Scale it up about 10,000x, maybe.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
The Pentagon's interest in such an effort stems from the need to acquire energy on the battlefield, which today often comes at a painful premium."
Of course the pentagon supports it.
Notice they don't say what they want the energy for?
A 5-10 megawatts laser is as powerful as the original SDI plan (nuclear powered multi megawatt lasers) only it comes from clean energy.
An airstrike anywhere on earth with a high powered laser would be the ultimate clean weapon.
liqbase
The USA will have power after the 2012 poll switch I hope we also have free health care by then as well.
I want 5 megawatts by mid-May.
Doesn't sound like much to me. Might be enough to run the 'critical national interests', but the rest of us will be sitting in the dark without heat.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Do you remember SimCity 2000 when you could build an orbital solar power station that could potentially misalign and burn down half the city? Fun times.
In practice, it'd be a piece of cake to implement a safeguard against that.
5-10Mw is the power output of _one_ _small_ power plant. Typical nuclear power plants output hundreds megawatts of power.
However, a nice focused microwave ray can literally bake people without (much) damage to property.
That's an excellent point.
... a basket owned by and controlled by the DoD.
Worse yet is something that didn't make it past the editing in my submission of this summary. I read around and it seems like a lot of people think that this budget for such an expensive extensive project would almost certainly be cut from any other alternative energy sources.
In my opinion, our defense spending is already through the roof, this could be a political move to put something powerful in space and get the money from alternative energy spending (or at least under the guises of it). Maybe my tin foil hat is on too tight but a lot of news sources were saying that this could drain and/or draw attention away from other just as valid efforts at escaping the grip of fossil fuels.
Like everyone's been saying, our solution to these problems of dependence on the middle east & emissions is going to be a host of different solutions specific to different areas. I fear that the funding and attention will go into this and we'll have all our eggs in one basket
My work here is dung.
I hear Ben Bova has this solar-power-from-orbit thing all figured out!
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
Warning: this is a 3.5MB PDF.
SBSB Interim Assessment
Previous story here, which also notably mentioned the process by which the report was developed (hint: it might be a familiar one to Linux users).
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I'm going to laugh myself unconscious when the United States Military solves the problem of clean, renewable energy for the world. Take that, hippies! Muahahahahaaaaa!
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
We have the morons at Homeland Security telling us to be afraid of anything at ALL, no matter how impossible or silly, and at the opposite end, the morons at the Pentagon who want to put an incredibly expensive target into space which their soldiers will depend on and which can be cheaply taken out by anyone with access to what the commercialization of space folks have learned in the past decade (and will in the next).
...Ah, not so stupid.
So what this will need, in order to work, is Star Wars missile defense, which is in trouble now. We'd have to start funding that again.
It takes the military to come up with a REALLY stupid idea. We can develop better solar cells, or improve battery technology, or maybe put up more wind energy farms, but why not put the solar cells in space and beam the power down in focused beams with some sort of Buck Rogers scheme that has never been developed or tested and would probably, if it could work at all and not just be a cover for spending for a space weapons platform, be much more vulnerable to attack by potential adversary countries with access to space, e.g. the Russians or the Chinese. God save us from these morons.
A Win Win situation
Yes, this initial version doesn't generate a lot of power, but if the military were to actually go through with this plan, it would absorb the initial R&D costs to take orbital solar platforms from scribbles on the back of a cocktail napkin to a real, working prototype. Once the process is proven, then it would be a much smaller economic risk for the private sector to transition the technology to the civilian sector and expand capacity. Very few entities in the United States, let alone the globe, have deep enough pockets to absorb the immense financial risk and ready access to the limited pools of specialized aerospace engineering talent required as the United States military. Personally, I would rather have the military spending money on technology that has civilian benefits instead of buying yet another set of nuclear weapons.
He then went back to stroking his pussy, safe in the knowledge that his giant space laser would deal with Mr Bond.
Nick Waterman, Sr Tech Director, #include <stddisclaimer>
Obligatory Asimov reference: http://scifipedia.scifi.com/index.php/I,_Robot_(Book)
"Reason" (1941)--Powell and Donovan are assigned to an energy station--it gathers solar energy, and then sends that energy, via a focused beam, to Earth. (...) QT-1 banishes the humans from the beam control room. This worries Powell and Donovan, because a storm is approaching, and it could deflect the energy beam, destroying a good portion of the Earth."
is such a perfect euphemism. Those insurgents better get some suntan factor 2000 if our space ray starts delivering :)
All jokes aside, this concept isnt really useful for general energy production until we can decrease the cost of delivering stuff into orbit by at least 2 orders of magnitude.
And cost doesnt mean $, but also energy. People still believe the myth that solar cells dont yield their production energy cost in their lifetime. Thats not true for 2 decades now, but getting the stuff into orbit adds a huge factor in the total energy balance.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
if they had gone ahead with this 6 years ago instead of plowing billions (trillions even?) into something else, *ahem*, we could already be well on our way there. Someone put the US wallet into the right hands already.
Solar power satellites aren't a new idea. I first encountered the concept in high school when I read Robert Zubrin's "The Case for Mars". We already have the tech (and we may have in fact constructed, although I dunno) for microwave power receivers, and the studies that have been done have shown that it's a pretty safe way to move power around. While it's in its microwave form, there's almost zero effect on anything that crosses in between the transmitter and receiver, including wildlife. It's cheap, it's infinite, and it's about a gazillion times more efficient than terrestrial solar power, so it would cut down on the amount of pollution produced when we make solar cells (lots of silver and such).
From an environmental standpoint (which I don't care much about anyway, but whatever), it'd be nice to see China's growing space agency grab onto this idea as well, since they're the largest source of pollution in the world, and their energy demands are only increasing. But, in any case, at least someone is starting to take the concept seriously.
It would have to run for about two years just to collect as much energy as it took to loft it. Not to mention the cost and weight of the downlink equipment.
Then to recover the launch costs, that's never going to happen.
We would need them if China decided to declare war, considering that they have ground-based anti-satellite lasers.
The military has a problem. They need a lot of power for computers, communications, all the conveniences of modern warfare. *But*, they often work far away from any established (or reliable) infrastructure.
Space-based power would be a tremendous gain. Setting up base in a remote corner of Iran to perform Intel? No problem. Spaceman Spiff justs adjusts the microwave transmitter from the orbital solar array, and you get instant power.
I haven't thought through all the implications, but I can see substantial military advantages in something like this.
DO NOT DO THIS! If we build a photo-voltaic sphere around the sun, it will retain too much energy within the solar system and we will all burn up due to heat! Maintain photo-voltaic cells on this rock, others we colonize, (including our moon) and be happy with that! If plants can do it, so can we.
Your tax dollars -> Pentagon -> (Boeing, Lockheed, General Dynamics) -> Budget over-runs, late or no deliveries, CEOs even richer than before -> Your tax dollars down the toilet.
Been there. Done that.
The Pentagon's National Security Space Office is pushing for "space-based solar power". If you are skeptical you should be. Every service, office and agency will push that their respective organization can deliver the latest and greatest most vital technologies, services and personnel so that they can have a large piece of the pie (especially as the fiscal year draws to a close!). This shouldn't surprise anyone.
I know this may sound crazy, but the achilles heel of the US military is its fuel. Forget about the obvious guzzlers - like gas turbine warships and fighter jets, just look at the US Army, where its lightest and most fuel efficient fighting vehicle is a frigging Hummer. And then radios and combat centers and all of the communications, artillery and other infrastructure require generators, and hence even more fuel. I think the US Army blows through more fuel today in a month then the whole Army did during all of World War II. It's really a staggering problem... you have to have a lot of infrastructure to move all that fuel around, and all that infrastructure comes at a heavy, heavy price.
If you could have some sort of space based system beaming massive amounts of energy down to the ground, you could theoretically have a mobile receiving station, you could think about electric powered transport to replace things like Hummers, power all the command and control electronics, and probably also do electromagnetic artillery rather than conventional artillery. I imagine you'd have to have some seriously powerful batteries to move a tank with an electric motor, but, you even still, the weight savings in all the other stuff could at least help keep your MBTs moving. Perhaps you could, domestically, produce tank and jet fuel with coal to liquids, and still ship -that- via normal transport, in the interim. Or, you rethink your army so that you basically have a lighter force but with genuinely awesome artillery to back it up... if all you had to do was transport kinetic slugs, and not heavy shells, you could throw a lot more destructive power at an enemy.
This is my sig.
the morons at the Pentagon who want to put an incredibly expensive target into space which their soldiers will depend on and which can be cheaply taken out by anyone with access to what the commercialization of space folks have learned in the past decade
As far as I know Ahmed hasn't figured out how to get a car-bomb into geosynchronous orbit yet.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I am Tetsuo ... your pathetic Satellite Orbital Laser will be of no use against my telekinetic abilities.
We're talking about 4MW of electricity, which is pathetic for a modern power station.
To put that into perspective, that would barely power a single train.
Deleted
While I see this type of technology being, in the end, the long term answer to energy problems in general. There is a small problem. Even though it is a nice clean energy source, if you scale this out, as energy demands from in increases, is you are beaming heat directly onto the planet. Since it is collected from orbit, it is energy that would have missed the earth, and not contributed to raising the temperature.. You could build a pretty healthy array of light gathering satellites, all beaming energy to the earth. As this energy is consumed, it is transfered into the earth's atmosphere to dissipate. The energy may be clean, but the effect of raising the earth's temperature is the same. The atmosphere could be as clean as before man walked the earth, but we'd still have global warming from this.
What a total waste when a far smaller investment in deep geothermal technological development will yield a far more stable, reliable and efficient energy source. See 384 page MIT study here http://web.mit.edu/ceepr/www/mit%20geothermal%20study.html.
Solving the problem of supplying clean energy to the nation and eliminating our dependence on oil and coal...no.
Creating a new solution for delivering a large amount of power to the middle of nowhere without hauling around as much gear...yes. This offers a new way to setup a forward base of operations quickly and without having to waste precious cargo space on generators and fuel. You can have 5-10 *always on* megawatts waiting for you.
On the "not quite as evil" side of things, you could set up a very good sized mash unit in a post-katrina or post-tsunami like area that no longer has, and won't have for quite a while, infrastructure.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Well at least it'll be fairly easy to destroy. Those big ol geosynchronous birds are sitting ducks. Any major conflict will require it's destruction.
Given our popularity with the rest of the world, this system will come in handy when they all decide to invade.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
In practice, it'd be a piece of cake to implement a safeguard against that.
Tinfoil hat?
Need I say more?
Ask me about repetitive DNA
I think they played too much command and conquer. Long live the ion canon!
I know that the orbital power plant is expensive, but when I was in the Persian Gulf during Gulf War 1 we had to haul around dozens of generators, fuel trucks, parts, and personnel to manage, install, repair, and pack up those machines. Add a new range of electronics for artillery and mlrs systems and you have many times the power needs today than we had in the army of '91. I think that it will indeed possibly solve problems for the military but the potential here is that we can finally find a way to deliver power to areas where eco-terrorists will not let the poor have access to cheap power sources. This could seriously be a boon to some of the worlds poorest regions if we can learn to do it well.
load "$",8,1
Now they only need to get Moon Unit Alpha and Moon Unit Zappa operational.
Is the Pentagon forgetting something?
Like, um, oh, I don't know, the fact that China already has satellite-busting technology?
Yeah, that's it, let's give _any_ U.S. Military operation a massively single point of failure.
Military Intelligence really _is_ an oxymoron.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
Fucking animals.
And just what do they plan to do 4.6 billion years from now?!
I knew my tinfoil hat was good for something!
Man it sure is bright out today...
...for power needs.
1: Mobile
2: Discrete
3: Hard to hit
4: Self contained
Just run a cable and plug in.
Sure it won't go everywhere, but the next step is to make it smaller and land accessable.
Some sort of tracks to make it come ashore, like in a large truck or something.
Of course power shouldn't be a problem in Iraq, just refine and burn all their oil. I've seen refineries/powerplants located in remote US areas all by themselves supporting a whole city. They draw up the oil from underground, refine it, burn it to make electricity that powers the oil pumps and everything else.
Piece of cake.
How about we just fund civilian programs like they should be, and fund this by taking it from the money that the military would use to buy that set of nukes?
Today's lucky number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Why use an inefficient solar panel and a bunch of electronics to convert the sunlight into microwaves? Just set up a mirror. But then, that would be too simple by comparison and not worthy of billions of dollars in funding. Even worse, a mirror may actually work...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
My hunch is that the answer is "no". Even though Brazilian sugar-cane-based ethanol is much cheaper than American corn-based ethanol, Washington levies such a huge tariff on the former that it is more expensive than the latter. The whole point is to placate the angry American farmer.
An effort that favors any alternative fuel source besides corn is sure to run afoul of the farm lobby. Isn't Iowa one of the earliest primary states?
Oh yeah. Coca-Cola, long ago, dumped sugar in favor of corn syrup in the soft drinks. A tariff here and there sure can change the economics of life.
how the hell are you going to take the power from a geothermal plant into a warzone? i think the whole point of putting this thing in space is so that us army can stay juiced up wherever it fights, regardless of the infastructure.
Look up a little history on Nuke Power plants, and you'll find the same thing. The Navy wanted Nuke power to drive Submarines, so they established Naval Reactors, who used the knowledge they got from designing the Subs to build the first commerical reactor as well. (We recently got a presentation by Admiral Donald here at CMU, he says people still ask him to build their plants, because the NR people know there stuff.)
That doesn't mean that this is a great idea, but the process described by my parent has historical precedent.
If civilized society redistributes wealth, then civilized society is comprised of stone-cold thieves. Just because you bless stealing with a vote doesn't make it right. You've replaced one tyrant with the tyranny of the many.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Yeah, my first thought is what if they won't point it at vehicles but on people?
First it's a power plant and once deployed a space weapon?
There's a nice circa 1980 sci fi novel called Empire of Time by Crawford Killian that uses this as a main plot device. Spoiler: It turns out that life on earth is destroyed by a set of orbiting satellites designed to be used as a telescope, but aimed at the sun instead.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Why the hell not power your homes and iPods with this thing instead of oil so you don't need to go to that damned battlefield in the first place?
On the other hand, I'm all for sharks... with SOLAR-POWERED LASERS!
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
Are you suggesting the power station will be in an orbit 290,000 miles high?
Just use a very long extension cord. It should cost much less than the space based solution...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Solar power and zero gee sex.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
They want something like that to act as a test bed for an orbital death ray. pure and simple. They are not to be trusted. Iraq is proof enough.
I guess because super sized tungsten lawn darts aren't good enough.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Military exercises sure break things, but things are never even again.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Looks at the facts: very high power, portable, limited firing time, unlimited range. All you'd need is a big spinning mirror and you could vaporize a human target from space.
a trillion usa taxpayer cash is invested in Operation Iraq Liberation (OIL).. pentagon is HUGE consumer of energy.. what if pentagon invested 10% of that trillion in smarter energy solutions.. big risk, huge reward: less need for oil.. usa bases out of mideast.. less fundamentalist muslim terrorist threat (all they want is yanqui go home).. for pentagon, tremendous strategic advantage.. for usa, lots more security.. hello?
Now they only need to get Moon Unit Alpha and Moon Unit Zappa operational.
Moon Unit Zappa was once "operational" but she's now a married forty year old woman, mother and housewife. Not exactly what I'd consider "operational" anymore, nudge nudge wink wink.
And no more talk of mining the moon's Helium-3 and bringing down the gravity well it to the earth - we will need it on the Moon and beyond!
And, yes, I am sure if the Pentagon needs to fire a few position rifle bursts at an enemy, we might be inconvinced and I'm okay with as they kill the Angel!
Drop in the ocean, etc.
Hope their plans are a bit bigger/more ambitious than that, long term :D
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
And weapons. The energisation of space will be accompanied by the militarisation thereof. No question. If there is a critical asset in orbit, something that the USA can simply not afford to lose, it will be protected. Even if this space-based power isn't a feasible weapon in its own right (and I can't really see, from any descriptions I've read online, how it could be), it will be protected. And critical orbital assets will be protected from space. There's no other good way to do it.
This is one of the reasons the US military is interested in space-based power. One of the many, of course. Providing troops with power is a benefit. The militarisation of space, the extension into earth's orbit of US control, is a benefit. It's an exercise for the reader to decide which is a tangential benefit, and which is primary.
What is is all that is. Isn't that obvious?
They need to build giant space elevators first...
Better hope we're not fighting China or one of their allies. That is, unless these things can also mirror China's weapons to said battle-field stations. But then I'd be concerned about an energy spike at the station, or that the weapon gets deflected toward some other location.
Lifetime of satellite 10's of years.
No way to fix it if something breaks
Losses from energy transmission, probably negate
extra energy by being in space. (you are transmitting the
energy through the atmosphere in both cases)
Maybe you get more sunlight.
I'm guessing similiar energy to the desert at 100x the cost.
Call me skeptical.
http://www.futron.com/pdf/resource_center/white_papers/FutronLaunchCostWP.pdf
Solar power in space??? I mean WTF. If you're interested in solar power, go buy a few hundred thousand sq miles of desert land for $10 per sq mile and set up solar plants there. If solar power was economical people would just do that already. You think putting solar panels (or mirrors) 26 thousand miles up in space is going to somehow make things economical? That would be the most costly energy in history.
There are many places that we have an abundance of sunlight that we're not using (see the entire state of New Mexico for example). Those places are all ripe to be tapped >IF we could make solar power work economically (or if we could provide enough dis-incentives to using coal).
Don't kid yourselves into thinking that somehow the coolness factor of putting this thing in space is really going to change anything. For every benefit you can list I can list a huge negative. You think that the lack of an atmosphere is great? Try dealing with tiny meteorites that fly by every once in a while and turn your GIGANTIC solar panel into swiss cheese. In addition I bet that if you did the calculations you would find that the amount of energy that it took to put a solar panel up in space would take 100 years to recoup from that same solar panel even if you ignore the major and nearly insurmountable hurdle of getting the energy back to earth!
This is flat out insane.
don
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
With portable power plants and rechargable military vehicles, the need for supply lines could be greatly reduced.
with RFID required on the forehead or right hand, and some space-based laser weapons, the beast will be able to call forth fire from heaven to all those who do not abide by the law of the lowest price...! {laugh, its funny for any recurring fundies}
The poster of this article is writing like this is new, when in fact it has already been done.
Back in 1995 when Maxis released Sim City 2k It took me until around 1970 to build the Microwave solar power plant. Because I was an ignorant youth, I figured we had already built one. Of course, I couldn't reconcile that with the nuclear fusion plant, until I read about ITER.
Anyway, the real problem with this means of getting energy is that you only have so much land, and no matter how far away you build this plant, eventually your city will encroach on it. Then one day when you forget to turn off your disasters, WHAM! The laser in the sky will miss and take out a nice high density neighborhood. Or sometimes worse, your small area of high density industrial. Or maybe by then even worse yet, your super high density archology.
You'd think they would have learned all that by now, I had it down 10 years before the Pentagon made that announcement.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have a better idea with inspiration from Bloom County: Simply send up by rocket into orbit a cloud of cash money thus blocking the sunlight and reversing global warming!
-- IV
http://www.LinuxMedNews.com Revolutionizing Medical Education and Practice.
I apologize in advance if English is not your first language, but I have no idea what you are trying to say. Apparently someone understands this sentence, since it picked up at least 1 mod point.
And yes, I have played simcity 2000 enough to reach microwave power and build those wonderful power sources with the fringe benefit of being able to toast your own city.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
US gov'nt has been challenged. other countries are catching up very closely.
How much did we benefit from exploring the space? In terms of money and in terms of technological developments? whether or not it will directly benefit us next decade or so, who knows what this will turn out to be? personally i don't consider this a waste. Bridge that collapses itself is a waste, that extra 100k troop in iraq maybe a waste but not this.
'The Pentagon issued a report indicating that space-based solar power 'has the potential to help the United States stave off climate change and avoid future conflicts over oil by harnessing the Sun's power to provide an essentially inexhaustible supply of clean energy.'
What the HELL are we gonna do with 5-10MW of power that's going to end oil conflict? We can do this on the groud, right now. If you do that in oil or gas, that's not even a turbine the size of a truck. We'd need to see a multi GW solution to do any good and even that would be limited
You know what's light and could use 5-10MW of power in orbit... one hell of a laser...
Moreover, if someone like Ron Paul gets any sort of influence on all this technosocialism, there is still hope that commercial space will make the whole thing moot with lunar materials exponentiating manufacturing and human presence in orbital solar power satellite habitats as Jeff Bezos discussed in his Valedictorian speech during his senior year at Miami High School.
I can't imagine where the got that idea.
Seastead this.
If by some reason, the direct compressed sunlight redirects at some house instead of the solar panels. it could be probably a blame to the Pentagon, and any anti science religious moron could start a war to protect, the family, the country and god. (From direct sunlight) xoxo
?
Obviously we should only be worrying about misguided individuals with few resources and not nations like China
I agree with most of the previous comments about the potential for military use. Huge advancements in science have always been made by the military in their pursuit of perfecting their war machines, especially during wartime. Interestingly enough, however, is that many of these advancements end up trickling down and helping the general public. So is this a terrible idea? I think if used for what I'm sure the Department of Defense wants (military weapon, independent mobile power source) it could be a windfall in the United States' need for military dominance. I also think though that this could be a huge gain for the general public. Sure, 5-10 megawatts is ridiculous, but if someone could combine this technology with the space elevator/space ladder technology, I'm sure we can develop even more powerful and potentially less dangerous power stations. I may be talking out of my ass here, but wouldn't there be less power loss by connecting a cable directly from the solar arrays to landlines on earth? Wouldn't it be safer?
Wouldn't it be far cheaper to put solar panels in the desert? Launching stuff into space is very expensive.
Table-ized A.I.
Yeah, nuclear plants, blah blah blah.
But in the end the Democrats and the Green lobby make sure we are not allowed to build any nuclear plants.
They also make sure we are not allowed to build any oil/gas refineries. The reason gas prices spike and keep going up are because we haven't built an oil refinery in this country in 31 years! Oh, who was in office 31 years ago? Carter?
From a 2001 article:
No new refineries have been built in the US in the past 25 years. And petroleum industry experts say anyone would have to be crazy to launch such an effort -- even though present refineries are running at nearly 100 % of capacity and local gasoline shortages are beginning to crop up.
Why does the industry appear to have built its last refinery?
Three reasons: Refineries are not particularly profitable, environmentalists fight planning and construction every step of the way and government red-tape makes the task all but impossible. The last refinery built in the US was in Garyville, Louisiana, and it started up in 1976.
Energy proposed building a refinery near Portsmouth, Virginia, in the late 1970s, environmental groups and local residents fought the plan -- and it took almost nine years of battles in court and before federal and state regulators before the company cancelled the project in 1984.
Industry officials estimate the cost of building a new refinery at between $ 2 bn and $ 4 bn -- at a time the industry must devote close to $ 20 bn over the next decade to reducing the sulphur content in gasoline and other fuels -- and approval could mean having to collect up to 800 different permits. As if those hurdles weren't enough, the industry's long-term rate of return on capital is just 5 % -- less than could be realized by simply buying US Treasury bonds.
"I'm sure that at some point in the last 20 years someone has considered building a new refinery," says James Halloran, an energy analyst with National City Corp. "But they quickly came to their senses," he adds.
You're TOAST, literally!
And so is the enemy!
RR
Commander: "Alright, men. We've developed a way to generate a transmit power requiring nothing but sunlight! What should we do with it?"
//on Earth//, so that maybe we won't NEED so much damn military intervention, both because we don't need to fight for their oil, and they don't need to fight to protect it?
Officer: "Send it as far out of people's as possible, so that we can turn it off on them whenever we want! Say, to orbit?"
Brilliant! You've just taken the most democratizing and resilient aspect of solar (and wind/thermal) - distributed generation - and centralized it.
Seriously, what's wrong with just producing better panels, and sending them to people
Less blood for oil, more solar panels for oil.
And think - you wouldn't even need to pay an arm and a leg to launch them into orbit. I realize surface sunlight isn't as plentiful as in an unobstructed orbit, but wouldn't the expense saved in launching mass into orbit make for a lot more panels, spread out to a lot more people, which could recoup the investment a lot faster?
but then you have to watch the cord so the opposing guys don't pull out the plug
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
First of all, isn't it like 100x cheaper to just set up solar arrays down here, even though total flux is 5x weaker? We could surface all builds with solar panels, for example. They should be cheaper to maintain. They wouldn't contribute to debris in orbit, etc.
Secondly, this nutty plan will actually advance global warming as well. If we replace all fossil fuels with this, we are injecting a massive amount of energy into the Earth's biosphere that otherwise would not have been there. Moreover, launching massive numbers of spacecraft to replace a significant fraction of the nation's power supply with "clean solar" will generate greenhouse gases from the initial launches and from subsequent maintenance / replacement missions.
In the distant future we will need to do this... As long as our civilization advances, our energy needs will continue to grow. The sun is the only essentially inexhaustible supply of power available to us. But in the near term, this sounds like a witless idea to me.
If someone can refute these concerns here, I'd love to hear about it...
Privacy Statement: We value your privacy! It is very valuable. That's why we try to sell it whenever we can.
.. considering it... then I got to the last line =/
from space?
The satellite will largely be collecting light that would have hit the earth already, so no, it won't be increasing the total energy input to the earth. Also, the total solar energy absorbed by the earth is on the order of 89 petawatts. Even if we harnessed a few hundred gigawatts in space, we wouldn't make an appreciable difference in the amount of energy earth absorbs. This isn't like terrestrial pollution, where we actually affect how much energy from the sun we absorb vs. radiate away.
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
"'and avoid future conflicts over oil by....'"
... does this mean the pentagon is admitting that the Iraq war is a war for oil? No more calling it "operation Iraqi freedom?"
So,
I'm also a little curious about the atmospheric affects of beaming large amounts of energy from space. I've heard of this solar energy idea before, in regard to setting up solar arrays on the moon to beam energy down to us... and no one seems to mention this issue. Is it an issue? Do they care? The 10mw is just a prototype, they're talking about running giga-watts of energy in from space later. If we take into account the effect of the energy passing through the atmosphere, plus all the energy required to launch the system, could the grand total amount to nearly as much atmospheric damage than continuing to burn oil on the ground? Does anyone know what the effects are of beaming gigawatts of energy through the atmosphere? I'm curious...
and, as other people have pointed out about the amount of energy that would be required to launch such a system, I get the impression that the department of "defense" is far more concerned with delivering energy to the battlefield (or later using the technology to develop a giant death-ray?) than they are with benefiting society, harnessing a new energy source, or reducing the effects of global warming.
Either way, I'm not complaining. I'd love to see them build us a space elevator or something. I'm a big fan of the comment on new settlements for the human race. Even if we do solve the oil crisis somehow, it's not like we can spend an eternity on earth and not go extinct. I feel like space development, and more focus on the idea of protecting our planet, could help unite waring countries towards a common goal. I feel like war is partly just boredom. At least it would give people a better cause than trying to kill each other.
-brian
At least with these high tech boondoggles there is the chance that some useful spin off will occur.
Secondly, this nutty plan will actually advance global warming as well
No worse than Nuclear or Fossil Fuels, which both release locked up energy. My rough calulations show:
10 Megawatts / Total mass of atmosphere (5.148x10^18 kg) / Specific Heat of Air (1012 J/kg/K) = 1.92x10^-15 degrees per second.
Or in other words, in an ideal case with no other inputs or outputs, it would 16.5 Million years to raise Earth's atmospheric temperature by 1 degree.
Beaming one of those 50Mega-watt microwave energy to kill your enemy - silence and well done in matter of min, and best of all - no radiation
They say it's for power, but we all know they plan to use it as a space based beam weapon. :)
Woops, you made an error of three orders of magnitude, that's five to ten gigawatts not megawatts.
From the report.
http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/final-sbsp-interim-assessment-release-01.pdf
Typical reference designs involved a satellite in geostationary orbit, several kilometers on a side, that used photovoltaic arrays to capture the sunlight, then convert it into radio frequencies of 2.45 or 5.8 GHz where atmospheric transmission is very high, that were then beamed toward a reference signal on the Earth at intensities approximately 1/6th of noon sunlight. The beam was then received by a rectifying antenna and converted into electricity for the grid, delivering 5 - 10 gigawatts of electric power.
The Sun is a giant fusion reactor, conveniently located some 150 million km from the Earth, radiating 2.3 billion times more energy than what strikes the disk of the Earth, which itself is more energy in a hour than all human civilization directly uses in a year, and it will continue to produce free energy for billions of years.
You gotta like that. The SUN is conveniently located!
The basic idea is very straightforward: place very large solar arrays into continuously and intensely sunlit Earth orbit (1,366 watts/m2) , collect gigawatts of electrical energy, electromagnetically beam it to Earth, and receive it on the surface for use either as baseload power via direct connection to the existing electrical grid, conversion into manufactured synthetic hydrocarbon fuels, or as low - intensity broadcast power beamed directly to consumers. A single kilometer - wide band of geosynchronous earth orbit experiences enough solar flux in one year to nearly equal the amount of energy contained within all known recoverable conventional oil reserves on Earth today. This amount of energy indicates that there is enormous potential for energy security, economic development, improved environmental stewardship, advancement of general space faring, and overall national security for those nations who construct and possess a SBSP capability.
A single kilometer - wide band of geosynchronous earth orbit experiences enough solar flux in one year (approximately 212 terawatt - years) to nearly equal the amount of energy contained within all known recoverable conventional oil reserves on Earth today (approximately 250 TW-yrs). The enormous potential of this resource demands an examination of mankind's ability to successfully capture and utilize this energy within the context of today's technology, economic, and policy realities, as well as the expected environment within the next 25 years. Study of space-based solar power (SBSP) indicates that there is enormous potential for energy security, economic development, advancement of general space faring, improved environmental stewardship, and overall national security for those nations who construct and possess such a capability.
Let's get it done!!!
> "...if the military were to actually go through with this plan, it would absorb the initial R&D costs to take orbital solar platforms from scribbles on the back of a cocktail napkin..."
I see where you're comin' from here, brother.
The concept, as reported, is definitely a five-martini idea!
T&K.
Political language
has the potential to help the United States stave off climate change and avoid future conflicts over oil by harnessing the Sun's power
Yes, as in "stop bugging us or we'll fry your country without giant microwave beam from space". Politically, this is unworkable.
And as a source of energy, space based power doesn't work out. Even if we believe the optimistic assumptions, you may get a 4x better utilization of solar energy per unit area. But stationing and maintaining even 4N solar cells on the ground is still a lot cheaper than launching N solar cells into space and maintaining them there.
I think switching to ethanol would still be closer to the pentagon's preferred scenario than oil.
No. The military needs to acquire resources as close to the battlefield as possible. They can not rely on ethanol coming from the US. Ethanol will be unusable until there are multiple friendly sources around the world. Sun Tzu's comments on foraging still apply in modern times.
This logistics problem is one of the things that makes space based solar so attractive.
Show that the project has some military application. If you manage to divert away the money from the army like that, kudos to you.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
What's the first thing you do to another country when you attack? You take out their power and supply lines. I hope the U.S. thinks about defenses for such an expensive piece of equipment before it's too late. This could be the start of a modern day space race...or Star Wars.
It takes the military to come up with a REALLY stupid idea.
Like the internet, canned food, etc?
I don't think range is an issue. The military is already working on hybrid armored vehicles. Fuel for long range movement, electricity for that last mile or two. A nice quiet approach. With additional charging options, mobile charging stations not unlike forward area refueling for helicopters, perhaps they could travel more under electricity.
Seriously, have you been there? Why can't we just pave it in silicon? Can we make silicon roads? That would probably help with congestion, too.
I can't understand how expensive rocket rides are going to help us much. How is that going to be so much better than the 30% of sunlight you can just collect on the ground anyway? Is silicon REALLY that expensive? Can't we just use giant lenses to and the sun to cook it? Somebody explain to me why we're not on the solar economy already, as these are the latest news items I've read:
Massive efficiency increase (40%?)
Improved Silicon deposition (spherical light collection means you don't need to move the solar panels back and forth).
More efficient batteries
I mean, can't we just mass produce the shit cheaply with our chinese slaves like usual? Why are we still in Iraq? If it's not the oil, I'm DEFINITELY voting leaving, and if it IS the oil, I'm definitely voting for switching to solar and electric. What's that you say, they don't count our votes anymore? Son of a bitch!!!
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
..back in the Paleolithic, about people wasting time putting seeds into the ground, instead of going out hunting.. I mean, look at how long it takes to get a return on your investment, and you dont get much back, etc etc etc..
Big Brother watching us has got to be better than us having to watch Big Brother
in the "Feasibility Study". Appendix C-3 should be revised. Geothermal would be safe, reliable, relatively clean (compared to fossil fuels) and provide base-load power.
This is one of the missions. More and more, the DOD is realizing that the USA has become VERY unpopular over the last 6 years. They know that going to a country were the locals do not like us is hard on everyone. So, the DOD is doing what it can to improve ppls opinion esp. where it goes along with out objectives. As it is, we now have several of our hospital ships down in South American and Caribbean helping locals. And yes, it is helping. Ppl will remember. I have no doubt that this power will be used to help ppl during times like Katrina, when the military is not using it. Of course, we may turn right around and microwave these very same ppl, if they are building IEDs.
Missing the target isn't a problem. You mount a targeting laser next to the microwave transmitter and shoot it first and bounce it off a mirror next to the microwave receiver. When the satellite receives the bounce, it knows it's on target for the microwave.
In response to other posters mulling over the military application of this tech- China already has a satellite killer.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Just how are they going to run a wire all the way from the sun to earth? Hmm?
The *ONLY* purpose of something like this would be to get around the no space based weapons deal
Or how about a source of energy after the entire surface of the planet is scorched by nuclear weapons?
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Haven't the heard about the melting poles? That means it must be very hot there, so lots of sun (well, roughly half the year each place) and hence lots of solar power. Besides with all that heat, the polar bears and penguins could use a place for a nice shade when it gets too hot. They could call the project Polar Helio-Power. :p
Carbon based humanoid in training.
IMO, it would be better to work on having the space based solar send energy to a tethered satellite (ala the ribbon based space elevator).
Advantages:
1) over conventional space based solar power ideas: you don't have to build a satellite that is designed to send high energy beams into our atmosphere, having all sorts of possible collateral damage even before you look at the possible military capabilities of just moving the beam. No worries about the beams altering global weather patterns as they perform the equivalent of microwaving our atmosphere, or vaporizing entire flocks of rare birds (or entire flocks of common birds that end up becoming rare as a result of this).
2) over existing space elevator ideas: you don't have to support the weight of an elevator or probably even a manned station at the top of the tether. The tether just has to support a collector and a wire big enough to carry the current down. A much easier "first step" to the eventual space elevator concept.
disadvantages:
1) the worlds biggest lightening rod. That could itself have an effect on the local weather (but maybe not on global weather, which is a worry for the conventional SBSP). And it might also cause interruptions in the flow of electricity itself.
2) it's not quite as flexible though, in that you have to put up a tether wherever you want there to be power. With beam based SBSP, you can put a collector right in the rear echelon of the battle field, and recharge vehicles on the spot. With this, you'll have to charge batteries, and then ship the batteries.
Still, I like the idea of the giant power cord more than I like the idea of a giant space based death beam. "Real Genius" come to life.
Am I the only one who sees the weapon potential of satellites build to beam down 5-10MW of power? So yeah, in peacetime you beam the power to receiver stations and sell it. Makes a nice bit of pocket change, might even pay for the maintenance... not to mention it is excellent publicity. In wartime... well, a bunch of 5-10MW continual operation beam weapons might come in handy.
One of the scenes in the book is the trio of guys controlling the space energy station, attempting to avoid some sort of "ion storm" from defocusing their energy beam (very much akin to this) and blasting the countryside :-P
"The Pentagon's interest in such an effort stems from the need to acquire energy on the battlefield.."
Sure, "energy" on the battlefield, 5-10MW could be fairly useful on a battlefield. Consider most 'useful' things deliver energy in the kilojoule ranges, including rifles... cars... tanks...
The Honeywell LV100-5 turbine engine delivers 1500 hp (1119 kW), and that's used to propel a 61.4 Ton M1 Abrams tank at 67.72 km/h! (Wikipedia of course)
So 'missing' with this power sat is like having 5-10 M1A2 Abrams driven into you at full speed. Nifty.
i am endorsed for the carrying of dangerous goods, please be giving me your depleted uranium
It's just another name for a satellite-based space laser. There's an episode of The Man From UNCLE where the bad guys try to get one of these for use in assasinations and to destroy cities around the world. I'd be very concerned that any country would have this kind of weaponry. I think it's important that no single country can dominate the world.
... Conan, The Boy in Future from Miyazaki, where Sun energy is harvested from space by a satellite and sent back to Earth.
Doesn't anyone remember Gerard K. O'Neill and "The High Frontier" published back in the mid 70's? The whole idea was that building powersats in space would be far more efficient. We would need a mass launcher on the moon, and space colonies at L5. This could be the path to large-scale settlements in space. In any case, they did a bunch of up-front research into microwave transmission, space-based manufacturing techniques and whatnot. A fun read.
Sigh. This is slashdot. Geeks are supposed to be well-informed. I learned about this little thing called "lambda/D" in high school.
Lets see what the beam angle might be for, oh 10cm microwaves focused by a 1Km aperture transmitting antenna. That would be 1e-4. And at 40000km that spot diameter on the ground would be, 4km. So for a 100Mw beam the energy density would be a blistering 8W/M^2. A full 1.2% increase over direct sunlight. Phe4r Me! BAH.
The ground-based rectenna is a fundamental part of the power transmission system. (handwave) Think of the combination of the powersat and the rectenna as a far-field-coupled transformer, if you like (/handwave). No multi-acre rectenna, no beam. No house full of popcorn, no tango torches. Not A Weapon.
(from http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1980ntc.....3...48S)
The phase control system is the fundamental element in the forming, steering and control of the solar power satellite (SPS) microwave power beam. This system must in essence automatically adjust the phase at each of the transmitter's 101,552 power amplifiers to compensate for differences in transmission path lengths to the earth-based receiving antenna (rectenna). SPS phase control system requirements are discussed, taking into account system concepts, a reference system description, reference system performance, ground based phase control concepts, and ionosphere considerations. It is pointed out that the importance of determining the ionospheric effects cannot be overemphasized. The permissable power density limit through the ionosphere is a critical SPS sizing factor and the phase control system must be able to accommodate errors induced by a heated ionosphere.
--
phunctor
I heard about those futuristic batteries which i could piss and get electric. that's good idea! Imagine this: you're plugged with a catheter into the fuel tank - drinking coke, getting gas.
does anybody smell the live action version of gundam 00 coming out like this??
destiny, chance, fate, fortune; they're all ways of claiming your fortunes, without claiming your failures. -gerrard
It was only meant as a joke, not a serious tin-foil hat theory! Yeah, I know—you like your jokes centered on reality, but there are plenty of good geek movies that continuously get the science wrong. I was already aware of all of the problems involved in a simple application of a space-based beaming weapon (although there are more complex applications that could be useful). Also, your over-simplification in the attempt to "correct" me really harms your case. Basically, what I'm saying is: if I'm not allowed a little license for the sake of a joke, then the terrorists have already won!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
You're absolutely right. The angry, America farmers I know are angry about the subsidies being used to drive them out of business. (This might be partly due to their unwillingness to take the subsidies for themselves. These farmers do not necessarily represent an accurate sample.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Because if you think military contractors are corrupt, you clearly haven't spent any time reading the financial section of your favorite newspaper. The private sector guys would find a way to generate massive pollutants and dump them in the nearest water supply, then take off for the nearest banana republic without an extradition treaty.
Say what you like about the military, when they set out to solve a problem, it bloody well gets solved.
Solar power is what will solve our energy problems. Period. It's way too abundant to be ignored.
Oh and all of you proposing that more nuclear power plants will help? That's a fine idea in principle, but I *dare* you to find a public or private agency that you trust to run the bloody things safely, or to handle the waste in a sanely safe manner.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Is there any concern that gathering solar energy in this way would contribute to global warming? Granted it won't release greenhouse gases, but it will increase the amount of solar radiation that is transmitted to the planet. I guess 5GW of solar radiation is better than burning 5GW of oil, but this has the potential to generate huuuge amounts of power in the future, and I could see politicians in 2050 deciding to "turn up the juice" and grab more solar energy while deciding to install more air conditioners as a solution.
Any comments on this? Or is it just not a concern since the energy amount is minimal and there is no greenhouse emission?
already did it.
Just remember,
If it's your military, military spending money was your spending money.
This is a just cause for military spending money if I've ever seen one.
If you don't like it, I hear someone out MOABed MOAB. They could go
and redesign that one for a similar amount.
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
But isn't all solar power space based?
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
You gotta like that. The SUN is conveniently located! Why, yes it is. Just far enough away so we don't get fried to a crisp (or need to wear suntan with a lpf expressed in powers of ten), yet close enough that Earth doesn't turn into a frozen iceball.
10 Megawatts / Total mass of atmosphere (5.148x10^18 kg) / Specific Heat of Air (1012 J/kg/K) = 1.92x10^-15 degrees per second
Interesting estimate.
Actually, total human energy consumption is way more than 10 megawatts. It's probably closer to several terawatts (anyone have an actual number?). And most people believe that will grow in the future. Right now a significant fraction of that total power use is coming from fossil fuels (I'm wild-guessing 50% for sake of argument, but it could be like 80% or more -- anyone have an actual number?).
So assuming your specific heat and mass are correct, and taking 1 terawatt as the new solar power input, the 1-degree timescale is reduced from 16 million years to 160 years. If we assume an absorption efficiency of at least 50% (the whole point of the technology is to absorb that energy and use it), the estimate still seems significant to me
So if the total power added to the environment is a significant factor (and this estimate seems to indicate it is), people need to realize that space based solar is not necessarily harmless.
No General, I'm not suggesting it, I'm ordering it.
Imagine hooking this up to something like what Nikola Tesla tried to invent in the early 1900s. Free world power on a natural electrical grid. http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=703
But keep in mind that frying a city's electronics is a great first step along the path of "harming people" in said city. Just because it doesn't kill anyone doesn't mean it has no military application.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
When the only tool you have is a giant magnifying glass in the sky, every problem is an ant.
Also, the total solar energy absorbed by the earth is on the order of 89 petawatts. Even if we harnessed a few hundred gigawatts in space, we wouldn't make an appreciable difference in the amount of energy earth absorbs. This isn't like terrestrial pollution, where we actually affect how much energy from the sun we absorb vs. radiate away.Actually, I don't believe that's correct. You want orbits for your system of collectors that enable them to be exposed to sunlight 100% of the time. That means a plane that is tilted out of the earth orbit plane, resulting in no eclipse or occlusion between the earth and the collectors.
You make a great point. But if we are going to essentially replace fossil fuels with space based solar and THEN grow with that system, I think injecting that much energy into the earth system will be significant. We're talking something on the order of several terawatts or more.
Moreover, if we do this in the near future, I think a system on that scale that is launched and maintenanced with chemical rockets will contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. Is it plausible to use pure H2 on a launcher? Space elevators are still not proven and would make nice terrorist targets anyway, so using those will be a while yet. Moon based construction is also a long-term future method.
In the long term future, space solar seems the only viable way to sustain us. But in the near term, I don't think we should be talking about funding anything large scale before we first blanket the surface with collectors.
I was thinking that a practical collector would need to be in geostationary orbit, which means it would be over the equator. Such a collector would lose light for at least part of the day. That said, the radius of GEO is much larger than the radius of the earth, so the daily eclipses would be short, and the amount of shadowing minimal. (In other words, I'm largely agreeing with you, with a minor caveat.)
Based on the numbers on this page, the entire world's energy consumption rate is just shy of 13 TW. If we beamed in 13 TW of electricity and ceased all emissions due to energy production, I think you'd see a rather dramatic drop in the rate of climate change. Rather than releasing terawatts of energy that already arrived here (which is what burning fossil fuels accomplished) AND increasing how much solar energy the Earth absorbs from the Sun, we'd merely be beaming that energy in while letting the atmosphere take a breather from our pollution.
Program Intellivision!
"If the US wasn't flushing money down the toilet in Iraq, you could fund public health care and have money left over for a decent education system without a running a deficit."
Are you kidding? Screw health care. If the US wasn't flushing money down the toilet in Iraq, we'd be able to afford a constitution! Now that'd really be something!
If this becomes a reality it will also become a strategic/national asset and will have to be defended. This will accelerate the militarization of space. I have no problem with that since it'll only be accelerating the inevitable, but the tree huggers will have a field day with this. The worse possible situation is that systems like this would go up and NOT BE DEFENDED.
I volunteer to command the first Battlestar...
Queue the "I oppose the military using peaceful technologies for killing people" posts...
Ummm... wait... Doesn't anyone think there are any serious risks sending 5 megawatts of power concentrated to one location? What if the beam becomes unstable and winds up burning a hole through the Earth much like a magnifying glass burns a hole through paper? With great power comes great responsibility and all that jazz...
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Exactly how does inserting more energy within the envelope of the earth going to help global warming?
Why stop there?
If you can project a beam of energy from space onto the Earth... yeah, it makes a nice power source, but it makes an even better weapon.
Solar power beamed down from space sure seems like a good idea until you factor in the kind of people who would be running it. Then it seems like a really bad, really scary, and really really really bad idea.
Trusting Either one could/can lead to big problems. At least with the later, you can extract your data & move to a new computer.
Government controlled Space Power Beams might easily make Post-Toasties of your private plane or house if a control problem occurred, or worse yet a hacker took over (probably from the RBN).
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."
Maybe 2.21 gigawatts would end the energy crisis! Satellites already go faster than 88mph so that's no problem.
Creating a fail-safe design is simple. The satellite should be powered by a return beam from the earth station. Thus if the main power beam wanders off-target, the satellite powers down and the main beam shuts off. This isn't a new idea. Jerry Pournelle has been talking about this for many years.
If anything kills this it'll be that the generated electricity would be too cheap to meter, and thus nobody would make vast fortunes off of it.
We aren't really buying more nuclear weapons, these days. We're replacing old nukes with newer models, but we are not increasing the size of our arsenal.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Solar panels in space get at least 5X more sunlight energy than panels on earth.
Solar panels in space are offline only when eclipsed by the earth, which is for a few hours for a few weeks during the year.
There are no birds, insects, corrosion, dust, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, or volcanoes in space.
Studies financed by congress (not 2-bit back of the envelope type studies) found that the whole system would make financial sense. What killed it at the time was the widespread optimism regarding nuclear power. Now that that is gone due to the difficulties with waste/accidents, SBSP should get its turn in the limelight.
Don't forget the other way of generating power: Concentrating energy with mirrors to a closed steam cycle engine. It's more efficient, however maintenance becomes a problem in space.
Awesome online book on the subject here:
http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/sunpower/index.html
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
How about just tartgeting objects in orbit? Oh, and the Russians will just *love* this.
I mean, that's only enough power to run 4, maybe 8 DeLoreans.
"Oh boy! Are we going to try something dangerous?"
You would think it would be cheaper to make, but shouldn't it be cheaper to buy, too? (I've replaced most of my milk consumption with soy milk. It has not helped the pocketbook any.)
I know, I know. They charge what the market will bear.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I wonder when our little Iraq problem will get bloody well solved?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
That's not really fair; removing the President from office is a little out of their main line of work.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Costco in San Diego California is also selling glass bottle imported Mexican Coca-Cola at a steep price of course. Certain restaurants also carry some stock.
On-topic, May I say, leave it to the Pentagon to come up with a very expensive, orbital approach to blot out the sun. Has anyone given any thought to some math here? if the current stats are that 11% of the surface of the earth needs to be covered with solar panels to meet current demand (and stave off the evils of global paranoia), what would it mean if even 1% of the solar radiation never hits the surface? I read that about 80 of 180 Peta-watts of energy reaches the surface of the Earth, but more poignantly, what kind of pollution would be generated by the lifting vessels that put untold thousands of square miles of what amounts to delicate circuit boards into space?
Ooh, another math topic: cost. Let's have some fun. Including the beam-down mechanisms, let's say it is 1 pound per 10 square feet.
One square mile is 2,7878,400 square feet, right? 5280x5280. That is equivalent to 13,939.2 tons. Let's pretend that NASA actually delivered their promise of $200 / pound on putting something into orbit, instead of the $5000 per pound you can get today in Russia. The price tag of a single square mile of solar panels into orbit is USD $5,575,680,000. Construction of a 1-square mile quantity of terrestrial solar panels (and the land grading, etc.) in Portugal is proposed at about $600 Million, a negligible cost. Even 100x that much is negligible compared to orbital lift costs.
The Pentagon must be ignoring lift costs to conjure this sort of thing. Some little twittery scientist pretending everything is free and they are just at liberty to invent their own reality, then give American taxpayers the bill for their folly.
Although it's true that providing soy milk to infant boys (and probably girls) is unwise, I've seen no evidence that it's bad for older boys. Also, I've seen no evidence that I've turned into a tranny despite having drunk about 1-2 liters of it a week for several years now!
For the majority of humans, milk is most likely worse for adults, as most of us have some degree of lactose intolerance. Also, calcium blocks the absorption of iron (leading to anemia), so regardless of your age, too much milk is definitely bad for you. I learned this this the hard way as a child who drank about a liter of milk per day! (It took a while for the doctor to ask the right question in analyzing where my anemia came from.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?