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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 ).
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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!
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.
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.
Free as in taxes, right?
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.
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.
That's right: it uses clean energy! Everyone wins!
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?
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.
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.
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.
That's exactly right - that way it's free for poor people. As unpopular as it is in the US, redistribution of wealth is a hallmark of civilization worldwide.
If you could have some sort of space based system beaming massive amounts of energy down to the ground,
If we give the Pentagon a giant space laser, why do we have to send troops at all? At very least we should be able to cancel any further developement on bombers with this thing.
Yes I know it's supposed to deliver a beam to create electricity, not a destructive beam, but be realistic this is the Pentagon we are talking about.
We are all just people.
Except the SDI plan uses a much more focused laser than this is likely to be. 10MW over a 10m diameter dish comes out to ~125kw/m^2 "merely" 100 times more than the sun. Most microwaves generate at least 9kw/m^2, so this is about a 14kw microwave instead of your regular 1kw. The SDI focuses those multimegawats into an areas less than 6 inches in diameter. A power density a few orders of magnitude greater.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Right...
Which is why the government & banks pump 10-14% more money into the economy every year, causing the stock market and property markets to rise exponentially and thereby moving value away from those who only have cash in the bank and CPI limited salary rises to those who own assets and stocks.
Do you have any idea what you're talking about?
Deleted
because we haven't found any giant space sharks yet...
In practice, it'd be a piece of cake to implement a safeguard against that.
Tinfoil hat?
Need I say more?
I think they played too much command and conquer. Long live the ion canon!
Man it sure is bright out today...
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.
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.
Because the US doesn't already have the power for an airstrike anywhere on the Earth? I believe political, rather than technical reasons, keep the US from blowing up things normally. Missiles and long-range bombers generally can get to where they need to bomb relatively quickly.
Was it a dream where you see yourself standing in sort of sun-god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you?
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
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?
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!
The minor "redistribution of wealth" from rich to poor represented by social welfare programs is just a small governor on the runaway "redistribution of wealth" of everyone to the rich created by public policy that favors speculation over labor; the issuance of land and resource deeds, corporate charters, copyrights, and patents; the reserve banking system; the inheritablity of wealth; and everything else the government does to create capitalism.
But "redistribution of wealth" is not the issue with health care. Basic health care should be understood as a public good, just like an army, or roads. If the interstate highway system was justified as a "defense" program, then in this age of bioterrorist threats we should certainly understand health care the same way.
If my neighbor starts to show symptoms of anthrax or bubonic plague (or bird flu or SARS), it's in my whole neighborhood's interest that he gets to a see a doctor pretty damn quick. The idea behind "health savings accounts" and similar schemes, that provide an incentive for people to not seek medical care, can be seen to be highly dangerous not just to the individual but to the community.
And since a generally healthy population is more resistant to a biological attack (and a healthy militia is a lot better than a sick one), preventive care can also be justified.
(And of course, much of the cost of contemporary health care is the cost of drugs, which is kept artificially high by our patent policy.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
global warming is caused by decreasing the rate at which heat dissipates by greenhouse gases trapping the radiating energy and reflecting it back to earth
Is this like an intelligent design thing where the greenhouse gases knows to only reflect the heat going out back and not reflect the heat coming in, out? Are there little demons with mirrors riding around on CO2 molecules bouncing the IR photons in one direction only? Seriously wouldn't logic seem to indicate that the greenhouse gasses are as likely to scatter the IR away as they are toward the Earth
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
This response makes the assumption that the United States gives a shit about international law.
They don't.
Look up anything about the international court for proof.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Illegal? Don't you mean it would be breaking several treaties? I see this constantly on Slashdot. Is there some sort of thing going on in Europe where the meaning of this word is different in various places?
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!!!
These are cold war era treaties, the implied penalty for violation was a nuclear strike.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
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.
Deleted
How can we give a crap about something that doesn't exist?
There is no such thing as international law, only international agreements.
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
Our government can only do what our constitution allows it to do, and I fail to recall any mention of a international court of legeslative body mentioned in it. In America Soverignity flows from God to the People to the govenment, and possible from the government to the UN so basical international law is lower than whale shit, it's the old man yelling get off my grass.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Since when is the right to property a fundamental right? Its an artificially created right and it has to be balanced with some checks and measures. I mean if the poor dont have anything worth stealing or protecting but still have to pay taxes to support a police force and a judiciary they are basically subsidising a private security infrastructure for the rich. If you dont want any balance abolish police and let everyone hire Blackwater for their safety. The poor wont be any worse off as in any case the police hardly ever investigate a poor mans murder but the rich would go bankrupt paying Blackwater fees. Its a public good when you want the poor to subsidize your safety force but a subsidy when the poor want something to safesuard their lives namely preventive healthcare.
**Life is too short to be serious**
And you realize that's a crock right? Lots of countries with public health care run balanced budgets (Canada, New Zealand, etc). It's not about borrowing, it's about priorities. 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.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
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?
You're missing the larger point so badly you're wandering into a more grevious error.
The rights were declared "unalienable".
From the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...
Note "self-evident" and "unalienable"!
Don't get hung up on reference to a Creator or a Diety. The idea here is that we didn't have to fight for these rights. We didn't have to steal them from the British or any other ruling power. We simply have always had them. To a theist, this is "given" or "endowed" by a Creator. But the principle that these rights are completely innate is not dependent on theism.
The NHS system in the UK for 60 million people costs £105 billion a year. Which works out in dollars for around 300 million people something like 1.06 trillion dollars per year.
I'll let you work out where you're going to find something of the magnitude of a trillion dollars per year without borrowing.
Deleted
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