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Obama Transition Team Examining Space Solar Power
DynaSoar writes "President-elect Obama's transition team has published for public comment a white paper entitled Space Solar Power (SSP) — A Solution for Energy Independence & Climate Change. The paper was prepared and submitted by the Space Frontier Foundation and other citizen space advocates, and calls for the new Administration to make development of Space Solar Power a national priority. The SSP white paper was among the first ten released by the Obama transition team. It is the first and only space-related white paper released by the team to date. With 145 comments thus far, it is already among the top five most-discussed of the 20-some white papers on Change.gov."
And how exactly do they plan on getting the panels/mirrors/whatever up there?
I can hear Handel's Messiah playing as I dance around the room, and it has nothing to do with Christmas. Let's get orbital!
As usual, just throw money at NASA and ignore it when it doesn't work since it's really pork.
Doesn't this remind you of the microwave power plants in SimCity? To me, it does. :)
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
Monsanto domination of the Department of Agriculture.
I'm sorry to say, this SSP white paper is simply that--a piece of paper with a pie-in-the-sky proposal that is unlikely to get funded to the same extent as fusion energy by the DOE.
Since it's a space-based project, it should really be funded and organized by NASA, which after all knows something about orbital solar arrays, while the DOE is merely an umbrella bureaucracy without a clear mission. Jimmy Carter set it up, as I recall, and during the laissez-faire Republican administrations as well as the Clinton years, it has been primarily a custodian for regulating fission reactors and funding some research projects.
There is so much potential for reaping energy savings on land, without having to resort to dangerous space flights and risky, massive construction projects in orbit, that it's amazing that this proposal is even being looked at by the transition team. I suspect this is fake news.
Don't get me wrong--I'm a total space nut, and I want to see us spending a trillion a year on space, and spread our civilization out to the planets before we blow this one away.
But when we can reap significant energy savings merely by painting the rooftops white of most government buildings, when we drive cars that have half or one third the fuel efficiency they could have, when we live in uninsulated buildings--it's ridiculous to proclaim that an SSP would solve our energy problems.
We should definitely build orbital facilities that would include solar arrays, perhaps to house dangerous manufacturing operations and to do zero-grav research, but this is not the most persuasive white paper that they are going to look at, I suspect.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Isn't BHO opposed to that?
-=Maggie Leber=-
How about we hear the truth from politicians, then we can talk about change.
there was an obvious direction in place subsequent to the space race (remember the Apollo program?) that would have been followed through to space industrialization had the launch service industry enjoyed the same protection from government competition that the satellite industry enjoyed:
http://www.presageinc.com/contents/experience/satellitereform/contents/briefingbook/technology/1962act.pdf
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.
http://www.geocities.com/jim_bowery/testimny.htm
The fact that Malthusian paradigm didn't follow the Club of Rome 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 would 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 terrestrial origin.
Third, the facility you do put on the lunar surface is there primarily to transport raw mater
Seastead this.
Recent space solar power article from The Economist
http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12673299
The link is just a one page overview and doesn't really tell you much. The idea in a nutshell: "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 lowâintensity broadcast power beamed directly to consumers." That's from National Security Space Officeâ(TM)s Advanced Concepts Office's report you can read it here: http://www.acq.osd.mil/nsso/solar/SBSPInterimAssesment0.1.pdf
Perversely, my articulate question submitted to change.gov, asking when and whether we could expect to see sustainable off-planet colonization receive some significant priority, was virtually ignored. It was even "modded down" by some people.
If we're gonna talk about exploiting solar energy in space, we should be talking about colonizing space in the same breath. If nothing else, the technical challenges of transferring that energy from space down through a thick atmosphere to the surface of the Earth should warrant a discussion of just moving us all closer to the source in the first place.
Yeah, and a trip to the west coast after the Lewis and Clark expedition would only have been for historical reasons and maybe bring back a few more notes.
Change.gov was not allowed because it does not meet the requirements for a .gov domain. The rules were set aside.
http://michellemalkin.com/2008/12/20/document-drop-the-story-behind-changegov/
We have two clear choices which will determine the direction humanity takes.
The first alternative, which currently is very popular in a stealthy kind of way, is to reduce. Cut back on the emission of pollutants, reduce energy usage, have a "smaller footprint" on Planet Earth. This requires a smaller population and however we get there, it isn't going to be nice. My favority scenario (although rather unrealistic) is people marching into gas chambers while watched over by the Eco-Troops. I'd say a nuclear war is far more likely. Possibly intentionally triggered by the environmentalist movement as a way to "reduce" all at once.
The other alternative is to being exploiting resources from off-planet. Mine the moon. Mine the asteroids. Collect hydrocarbons from the atmosphere of Jupiter. And, absoutely, collect energy from the Sun directly in space. The problem is that right now, we may have actually dug ourselves into a "reduce, reuse, recycle" trap that we can't get out of. How does the US Government explain that in order to ensure an abundant lifestyle for everyone it is necessary to cut back on entitlement programs? How do we tell the welfare class that it is time to get to work to earn their bread instead of subsisting on the dole? The answer is pretty clear - Americans do not wish to be told that. The election of Mr. Obama should have made that pretty clear to everyone.
Talk about a "two chickens in every pot" kind of candidate!
OK, so which do you think is more likely to happen? A "sustainable" lifestyle is perfectly possible - sustainable in the sense where natual processes recycle wastes as fast or faster than they are created. The planet was in that condition in around 1850 and not since then. Unfortunately, even with some advanced technology, we going to be limited to around 200 million people. Total. Not in the US, but everywhere. That is larger than the population was in 1850 by a good measure, but we should be able to manage it with better technology. That means we have around 6 billion "excess lives" right now and the longer we wait to make the "sustainable" decision the worse it is going to get.
To put this in perspective, if somehow starting 1 Jan 2009 we started killing a million people a day it would take 20 years to get to a sustainable population. That is a 97% reduction. It means that out of every 100 people you know 3 would be left and you might not be one of them. I doubt any Western civilian is prepared to accept this sort of "sustainable" environment but every time you use the phrase "sustainable" that is what it means. We can't have a "sustainable economy" with 6 billion people. At least not without obtaining off-planet resources.
Today the technology is within our grasp. It is entirely possible to send humans to the moon, set up a camp there and mine it for raw materials and resources needed on Earth and in Earth orbit. It is entirely possible to send a mission to Jupiter to collect hydrocarbons from the atmosphere. It would take a long time to do this, but it could be done today. In 10 years, if all of the Western government persue a course of entitlements, handouts, bailouts and compassionate care we will not have the money, time or resources to mount a mission to the Moon, much less Jupiter. Our decendents can look up in the sky and see the limitless resources that could have been ours for the taking while they, with there constrained "reduced" lifestyle, continue to eek out an existance in the future.
We aren't getting rescued by God or other civilizations. We have to decide for ourselves, and we had better do it soon, or the decision will be made for us.
At least with NASA, you can watch your money disappear into thin air.
Thirty four characters live here.
this wacky idea of harnessing solar energy seem rather rube goldberg-ish. if you read the original concept paper you would know there are flywheels and giant vacuum tubes on this thing. aside from that, the ultraprecision for positioning this monstrosity is beyond anything humans have ever done. no worries though, when a giant beam of radiation accidentally hits the wrong place, im sure the people wont mind being irradiated.
in short, this idea is insane.
So...to combat global climate change, we're going to setup some new approach that draws even *more* energy that would otherwise pass the earth by, and beam it down into the atmosphere.
Am I missing something? No matter what, that energy goes somewhere, and most uses of electricity generate heat...there would have to be some kind of sustainable way of storing the energy in some safe manner. Otherwise, we're basically like the kid with a magnifying glass...except instead of frying an ant, he's burning a hole in his own head.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, I can't find any really great numbers, but heres what I have:
According to the article from the Economist linked below 1.3 GW of solar energy pass through every square kilometer of space (presumably this is near Earth).
According to Wikipedia, nuclear power plants on earth had a total capacity of 366 GW in late 2005.
So by some rough calculations, assuming 100% efficient panels we would need ~280 square kilometers of solar panels in space just to gather as much energy as we can currently produce with nuclear power.
Today, even highly experimental solar cells don't reach 50% efficiency. So 2 * 280 = 560.
Now I can't find any good numbers on the efficiency of this "beaming" energy back to earth, but I'm going to throw out that 10% would be generous, its probably way less. But assuming 10%, 10 * 560 = 5600 square kilometers of solar cells in space just to get as much useful power as we get from our dismal nuclear setup today.
And thats not to mention the size of antennas you would need on either end to beam that power, or the safety issues involved (you think windmills or low frequency submarine radios kill a lot of birds, how about a 3.6 TW microwave beam?)
If you could (and I suspect you can) collect large amounts of energy in space, the energy must be concentrated and beamed back to a small area on the planet.
Now what happens when a pebble hits the transmitter? Especially if it hits a thruster or control system? The beam can do much damage until it is shut off or re-aimed, and you can't exactly call the repairman and have him drive over to fix it. It takes a spaceship, which we currenly launch what? - once a month? Less? So this beam could become then a wonderful wandering death beam oscillating all over the landscape, unless we are lucky and it powers itself down for some reason.
Designers of this need to read some science fiction where lovely lurid stories about such things abound. When going into space becomes commonplace, this is less of an issue. For now it means building multiply redundant failsafes and praying that some space junk doesn't knock out just the wrong ones and that we have thought of every possible failure mode.
If we could concentrate the energy into bricks somehow and drop them, this might change too; perhaps make antimatter in space and drop it in suitable containers and hope they don't turn into superatomic bombs (as EE Smith used to call them).
There is so much potential for reaping energy savings on land, without having to resort to dangerous space flights and risky, massive construction projects in orbit, that it's amazing that this proposal is even being looked at by the transition team.
I'm also a space nut, and I agree with you completely. A simple look at cost/benefit, even back-of-the envelope, makes it entirely clear how silly orbital solar is.
1) Benefits - how much energy can an orbital solar array produce, relative to the same size solar array on Earth? About twice as much - it's lit for 24 instead of 12 hours. (plus benefit of always-perpendicular incident radiation, but minus losses in conversion & transmission.) Ultimately, ~2x power from the same array.
2) Costs - how much does it cost to put that solar array in orbit, and build the microwave transmission system, relative to the same size solar array on Earth? Answer: an awful lot more than 2x. More like 100x.
Paying 100x cost for 2x the power generation is not anyone's idea of good economics. End of story.
It's just so much cheaper to simply build twice the arrays on the ground, even if you have to build huge power storage facilities or around-the-world ultra-high-voltage power lines to funnel energy to the night side of the planet.
Maybe in 100 years we'll have a developed space industry that can build them, up there, on the cheap. But certainly not any time soon.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
The need for WPA style programs isn't sufficient to discipline government bureaucracies the way they were with the Manhattan and the Apollo program. There has to be a genuine threat of the political leaders holding office being humiliated in a way that they can't make excuses for. That doesn't mean they inherited a horrible economic situation and can't make it work -- that is "excusable".
Seastead this.
It says "this planet"
how refreshing!
Hivemind harvest in progress..
now that Obama and his team are on the job all kinds of things are going to be solved - next week maybe they will get cold fusion working and finally find the cure for male pattern baldness... Maybe he will put Al Gore on the team and start working on the next Internet...
We haven't even come close to getting terra-based solar power up and going as a mainstream energy alternative. Let's work on the ground before we put things in the air, gentlemen.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I don't know much about these things, but wouldn't it be possible to combine the Space Solar Power idea with the Large Mirror in Space idea to reduce global warming (or even initiate global cooling)? Or is this already been considered?
"In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
I understand that Adobe's Acrobat Reader leaves something to be desired, but why do the rest of us have to put up with the crap that is iPaper??
He's also talking about extending human life to 200 years. The guy's a genious. The plan involves releasing $700 billion to a new life extension department headed by Hank Paulson.
As seen on Gundam 00, clearly the future is lead by a ring of solar panels around the earth!
I am a retired physicist/space scientist who researched this subject in the 1970s and again in the 1990s. While it is true that a huge amount of energy passes by and intercepts this planet, it was and remains too dangerous to try to get it down here for us to use.
The idea was shelved back then for the simple reason that the number of launches needed to build the orbital facilities would completely destroy the ozone layer. (EVERY launch does damage to the upper atmosphere.) Funny, but the textbook of reference material about that is "missing from shelves" as of the 1st Bush administration.
Yet another analysis showed that the reflectance of that much material up there would make the darkest night roughly equal to the full moon at mid-twilight.
Better to solve our problems right here.
A few lifetimes ago, I worked with Rick Tumlinson. Let me the first to say that anything he's put his hands into has a 100% chance of never happening. He's a nice enough fellow, but too all over the place to ever actually make anything turn into reality.
I've never figured out *how* that foundation gets any money. I used to think that Rick was knocking over parking meters to meet the bills.
But to be fair, he's still around, so maybe I'm totally wrong about him, but, I've heard him sing that easy access to space is right around the corner, and how we're all about to be rich, and that was more than 15 years ago.
Very little about space travel has changed during that time, other than the ISS and SpaceShipOne, two projects he had zero to do with.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
If it's so simple and cheap to reduce consumption, then tell me why nobody is doing it? Do you really believe people are so stupid and lazy that they wouldn't paint rooftops white if it would result in significant savings?
When you say our cars are "less efficient" you really mean they consume more fuel than smaller cars would. And that's the really big point everybody forgets when talking about energy efficiency: people want to live in comfort. An SUV is more comfortable than a small car. Air conditioning is more comfortable than natural air circulation. Our whole industrial civilization is about comfort, letting people have better lives with less effort.
Sort of a dictatorship, I don't see how anybody could get significant savings in energy consumption today. People will always choose to live in the best condition their income allows, if they have the money to buy an SUV, very few people will opt for a small car instead.
Project Orion.
No, not the pansy thing using chemicals - the original where you blow yourself into space using nuclear bombs and pusher plates. No other way you'll ever get enough materials up there, not even enough to start a mining operation if you kicked a passing asteroid into high orbit. For that matter, there's no other way we can possibly establish a meaningful presence in space absent major breakthroughs in materials science and/or theoretical physics.
By "meaningful," I mean space stations with at least hundreds of people on them. Bases on other planets. In short, something that will survive the planet-depopulating fuckup that's going to happen sooner or later and have enough genetic diversity to continue.
Whenever you read "spaced based solar power", just replace that with "municipal scale death ray". Now decide who should be in control of it.
0.) You fill out the environmental impact statement (because this is not Soviet Russia!).
1.) Do we want to get a lot of power from something so vulnerable to easily-deniable sabotage?
2.) Any such device could also pass muster as a death-ray; this might raise objections from a Major Creditor Nation.
The fevered negative reaction this piece by Charles Stross produced makes me think he has a point.
More energy equates to cheaper food, water, and transportation. I always thought we should cover the Earth in Solar before making our way into space and eventually creating a Dyson sphere. I'd be impressed if someone started this technology in my lifetime, let alone in this administration. I'm all about technology as a means to solving the world's poverty and disease problems. The easy solution to much of it is simply more energy.
God spoke to me.
... a big ring orbiting an artificial sun. BaRingworld bringing change to you.
Wait. Stop scrolling for a sec. O.K. Thanks. - P
How 'bout a large spherical object covered with solar cells and a dish antenna in the front to beam down the gigawatts of power. Say about the size of a "small moon".
[Insert pithy quote here]
There's this little problem of lunar dust. I think there won't be much in the way of human colonies, or even robotic manufacturing, even just the self replicating mining mentioned until that gem is solved. You have to fix that before you can have space based manufacturing that is in turn based on lunar access. Rockets are the easy part, and that's tough enough and expensive enough right now.
A space based solar array should warrant more research, but not as an alternative for earth based power (they should shell out the cash to replace those 1950's nuclear power plants with something more modern) but for space based power needs in the future. I mean, you could land a probe or multiple probes, or a base, on a planet and recharge all of them with one space based solar array.
I mean, think of the potential for all the death star jokes!
None of this rinky-dink shuttle-derived crap, I mean serious tonnage into orbit booster technology.
http://www.optipoint.com/far/farbdb.htm
When you look at the way we do space travel right now, we can compare it to airplanes -- the way we're currently doing it is like a B2 bomber, the way we need to do it is like a 747. Now both programs were lengthy and expensive an dealt with serious engineering challenges. The B2 comes out of it being so much more expensive because it's a delicate and tempermental piece of gold-plated tech, we only built a limited number of them, and all of that dev cost is spread out over those limited number of units. The 747 is built by the hundreds, the support infrastructure is just as expensive when you work in all the airports around the world, but the cost is amortized over millions of trips per year which is why moving 20 tons of passengers and cargo on a 747 is cheaper than on a B2.
Ok, there's some places where the analogy breaks down, maybe I should have stuck with cars or compared 747's and Concordes, but the limited production run and limited number of flights is what's really killing the shuttle, not to mention the design compromises inherent in trying to satisfy too many customers with one vehicle. But I think most of that analogy still stands.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I am a strong supporter of Nuclear Power because it is the only proven technology that could replace Coal right now (without any technological leaps. Lots of money, for sure, but not technology)
However, I think this is the first TRULY renewable energy technology that could replace Coal, Natural Gas, AND Nuclear Energy in one swoop.
If we could figure this out, it would be a pretty nice advantage over any potential rivals. (Not that I'm saying we shouldn't share, of course :)).
"Don't be a martyr -- BE THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY!"
"The Technical and Economic Feasibility of Mining the Near-Earth Asteroids
Abstract
Future large scale commercial activities in space will require raw materials obtained from in-space sources rather than from Earth, to overcome the high cost of Earth launch. This paper reviews the prospectiveness of non-terrestrial resources and notes the competitiveness of Near-Earth-Asteroids c.f. the Moon and Phobos or Deimos in terms of accessibility and likely resources. Astronomical work over the last fifteen years has increased the number of known Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) from about 30 to about 400. Discovery rate of NEAs is now about 50 per year.
Asteroid "geography": NEAs are classified by orbital parameters into Apollos, Amors, and Atens; in addition, the "Arjunas" are the group of small objects in very Earth-like, and therefore very accessible, orbits. Accessibility is defined in terms of velocity requirements (delta-v) for outbound and for return trajectories. Approximately 10% of NEAs are more accessible than the Moon, and maybe 50% of these are likely to be potential orebodies.
Asteroid "geology" has advanced dramatically in the last decade, via spectroscopic and dynamical studies of asteroids and comets, and meteorite studies; reasonable inferences can now be made from asteroid types defined by spectral properties to probable surface mineralogy. Many asteroids may be "volatiles bearing", containing clays, hydrated salts, and hydrocarbons. It also now seems that there are dormant cometary bodies within the population of NEAs. These are likely to contain remnant primordial ices within their cores, making them possible sources of volatiles for future space industry. Resources which would appear to be readily recoverable are thus water and other volatiles, for manufacture of propellant in orbit; and nickel-iron metal, for construction in orbit.
There have been various concepts proposed for mining and retrieval to low-earth-orbit of materials from NEAs, but methods of comparison of the economic feasibility of competing mission concepts are not well-developed. In-situ production at the asteroid of the propellant needed for materials return is an important "enabling" concept. This paper develops methods for comparison of different asteroid mining concepts, and for choosing between various product, process, mission, and engineering alternatives, so as to maximize likely project economic feasibility.
Application of celestial mechanics shows that (i) simple estimates of "global minimum" delta-v can be made; (ii) low-energy opportunities occur at approx 2-yearly intervals, for many NEAs; (iii) long synodic periods militate against multiple-return mining missions; (iv) Earth-return hyperbolic velocity should be kept low; (v) high-eccentricity targets require Hohmann transfers, and a short mining season at aphelion; (vi) low-eccentricity targets may use continuous-thrusting propulsion, and extended mining season. There is a growing subset of targets that are intermittently accessible for an outbound delta-v of under 6 km/s, and offering return departure delta-v under 2 km/sec.
Mining and processing system choices depend on the assumed regolith mineralogy and bulk handling properties, and on the assumed subsurface composition and properties. Process options are (i) in-situ fluidization; (ii) mechanical collection and thermal or magnetic separation; (iii) carbonyl process. Equipment mass estimations for volatiles extraction suggest total processing system mass of less than 5 tonnes for a teleoperated / autonomous miner mission to return 1000 tonnes to LEO.
Sensible and politically achievable propulsion and power system choices are restricted to (i) solar thermal steam rocket; (ii) solar photovoltaic arcjet; (iii) solar photovoltaic massdriver.
As for terrestrial mining projects, the Expectation (probabilistic) value of the Net Present Value is a crucial unifying concept for evaluating competing mission options. By testing system choices for their effect on NPV, one can arrive at
If they are in low earth orbit odds of a shuttle hitting space junk http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,418741,00.html are about 1-300 (I assume over a week period). This means with such a large area odds of a collision to be over 99% at low earth orbit. Now to beam power down that would be geo- which is still pretty crowded ...
For low earth orbit below 600km gravity eventually cleans up the mess but not geostationary:
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2003/07/16/2003059688
Rob
NASA's total budget request for FY 2009 was $17.6 billion...
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/210020main_NASA_FY09_Budget_Estimates_Summary.pdf
Wanna bitch about wasting money, go yell at a banker or a broker.
So how much energy does it take to get something up into orbit? (I don't know how much, but it's a lot!) How many years will it take for something like this to return enough energy to pay back the original cost of launch (as measured in energy or in money)? Never mind operating expenses, things wearing down, etc. I don't see how launching a bunch of stuff into space to collect energy is a reasonable strategy to entertain when the cost of getting it up there in the first place is so high.
So we gather more solar energy, beam it to earth. THAT ought to heat the old girl up a bit!
...Lorenzo / I'm into kinky crustaceans. I just discovered internet praWn.
Would a space solar satellite cause unacceptable interference with GEO communication satellites? They are only 100 watts or so, a GW beam nearby might really cause some problems on dish sidelobes.
BUT it will have limited use; Space power i.e. lunar and mars. Disaster recovery and Military. I suspect that first use will be military. America will likely build 5 - 10 of these, no more than GPS.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It costs enormous amounts of money to get the solar collectors or mirrors up there, and the gain in efficiency relative to terrestrial collectors is small. In addition, space solar power is extremely vulnerable to attack from China and Russia.
I think space solar power is just a smokescreen for putting beam weapons into space.
Yeah, and a trip to the west coast after the Lewis and Clark expedition would only have been for historical reasons and maybe bring back a few more notes.
Those expeditions were useful because people had the technology to actually take advantage of the results.
The proper comparison for manned missions to the moon and Mars are the half dozen or so trips to the Americas from Europe over the previous millennium, none of which had any impact on history, as well as many other human expeditions throughout history that had no effect on anything.
We should send manned missions to the moon and Mars once we have the technology to settle them; until then, robotic exploration is a far faster and more cost-effective way of advancing space technologies, both manned and unmanned.
Instead of increasing the lowest fractional amount of solar absorbing greenhouse gases (CO2), we're going to increase the effective solar absorbing area of the planet and directly heat the largest fractional amount (water vapor) with microwaves. Are we trying to increase or decrease the temperature?
Uranium hexafluoride gas in a bulb of fused silica. Gets not red hot, or white hot, but ultraviolet hot... and silica's very transparent to UV. Circulate liquid hydrogen on the outside to cool it, and throw the gaseous hydrogen out the back as your exhaust. You can't make hydrogen radioactive in such circumstances, so the exhaust is completely non-polluting.
I've seen back-of-the-envelope calculations that give an ISP in the thousands, letting you get a thousand tons or more into orbit in one shot.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
"Assign a Lead Federal Agency:
Assign lead responsibility for developing SSP to a federal agency."
On top of my previous suggestion for ALL THAT SPACE MOON-based SOLAR ANTENNAE METAL SPRAY LASER-TO-EARTH next run a long solar collector atop an elevated collector wall stretching from Upper New York across past Chicago Illinois over into Arnold Schwarzenegger's downtown Sacramento California Governor's office... so the Moon laser has a long target easier to nail with a wide-angle lower intensity X-Men Moonbeam. Power can be branched off the new Power Grid Backbone to Massachusetts across the Midwest Plains to supply the Brand New Power Grid President Barack Hussein Obama plans to build. And I'd like to see some new pyramids too, did I mention that? I'm getting sick and tired of Egypt having all the Pyramid Bragging Rights. And underneath that solar collector wall I'd like to see a 2700 mile long Mag-Lev Disney Zephyr train hanging underneath that does a MINIMUM OF 555 MILES PER HOUR.
Summary of what I want =>
#1: solar collector 2700 miles long
#2: on top of elevated Solar Collector Wall
#3: Branched Power Grid off the Collector System
#4: Mag-Lev Coast-to-Coast Bullet Train
#5: that travels 555 Miles Per Hour
#6: all of it completely above present interstate/local traffic.
#7 an don't forget the new pyramids #8 powered by directed beams also.
Ahh yes, President elect Obama.. the same guy I saw on a commercial last night touting "clean" coal.
He hasn't even taken office yet and has already taken a dump on the environment.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
The atmosphere absorbs around 25% of sunlight on a sunny day, and you have nighttime and clouds. So a solar collector in space produces around 5 times as much raw power as one on the ground. Space solar power makes sense if *ALL THE OTHER COSTS OF GETTING THE POWER DOWN TO THE UTILITY GRID* are less than 5 times as high. Otherwise ground based solar power is cheaper.
Right now, the cost equation says it does not make sense. Some combination of cheaper launch methods, robotic construction, and supply of 99% of the power satellite parts from space-based sources *MIGHT* change that answer.
(I am a rocket scientist, in fact I got paid to help figure out that 99% number in considerable detail. Most of a solar power satellite can be sourced from space. A small part it makes more sense to get from earth, computer parts for example)
If it really costs 100x more to build the system, then it probably isn't worth it in any case, but I would like to point out an additional benefit:
There is some value to leaving the land free for other uses (whether just to grow wild and sequester carbon in the form of plant matter, for farming, recreational use, building upon, etc.
If we could get space based solar to be somewhat *close* in terms of economics, then it might be worthwhile to do space based solar, just to not have to clutter up 100 of thousands of acres of land with solar electric systems.
It sounds cool to do all these space missions and build giant solar arrays to beam power to Earth, but I think it's more practical and cheaper just to throw some solar panels on rooftops and windmills by houses and across the midwest.
Home based power is reliable and available now, with no transmission losses. With the right loans, marketing, and government investment, people could just swap their electric bill for the loan on their personal power plant and voila, clean power to the people at virtually no cost. It would also create jobs as solar and wind plants spring up to fill the demand.
Stop building dirty coal and oil plants and start investing in solar and wind.
Depends on your definition of "basic" in "basic engineering". The Apollo moon walkers said it was a huge problem, it sticks to everything. They have some plans to use magnets maybe to solve this problem.
All I can say is good luck with that. They need to send a few cheap rovers up there first to see if their magnet dust sucker can keep all the movable bits protected. I live and work on a farm, so I deal with equipment outside in just "normal" dirt all the time, it's a major hassle as it is, so I can't imagine electrostatic cling microscopic and highly abrasive dirt, and trying to deal with that remotely on huge scales.
I know they *want* to, and are planning expeditions and so on regardless, I just am not convinced yet that anything very complex that has to do complex moving actions can last very long in that electric dusty environment. Very simple things that don't require moving parts, sure, but long term mechanical factories? Not sure.
The military has a very hard time keeping their gear running in Iraq, the sandy dust gets into everything and just wears it out really fast, and that is with constant hands-on maintenance. You can only seal stuff so much before you can't use it, if you are talking mining and refining and forging and smelting and extruding and fabbing and..all of that..that's a lot of stuff to protect from contamination.
Basically,anything you put on the lunar surface becomes charged, and the dirt sticks to it. Even solar panels would eventually become so covered in dust they wouldn't work, and there's no moving parts there.
We'll have to see what they come up with. I think it's a spiffy idea, but want to see the "basic engineering" solve that problem, because if they can come up with more robust seals, etc, to make things more dustpoof, that's hundred billion buck industry right here on earth. We have to replace..no idea, a lot, maybe small hundreds of "sealed bearings" per year around here, especially on the fans in the broiler houses, they just don't last, and that dust they get exposed to isn't even electrostatic, just normal litter dust, and those have to run in not as a severe temperature swings as on the moon.
Well solar power in space is usauly for small spaceships.
One of the biggest spaceships now is the ISS (and its allready trouble to keep it up running)
It prodcuces electric energy using its many solar arrys
It can produce about 32.8 kW of DC power (see wikipedia)
Altough thats a lot for solarenergy, its next to nothing
Compared to the energy required to get it up there.
What if you would use all that energy and craftmanship to build windmills..
Todays big windmills (huge ones) can generate up to 6MW of power. (= 6000 kW)
Mow we're talking watts.. but still a normal powerplant generates about 500 to 1.300MW
So you could remove a small one with about 100 windmills, that sounds perhaps as to much, but actualy there are more airplaines and cars builded each year. So perhaps create windmills for a while instead of cars.. (hmm not such a bad idea)
But with some clever engineering you could produce somehthing that doesnt use wind but seacurrent flow. since water is heavier, it is much more powerfull for propelling a generator.
I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change.
What it comes down to is, Obama will never have time to personally research and solve any of our energy issues. All he can do is play face to a special interest organization that sees a lot more potential for earnings through the government than the private sector (all recent bailouts aside).
The real people who fix this issue won't have the chance to make it public until it gains enough attention or they gain enough support to attract a larger audience (Ex. see the unitednuclear.com hydrogen fuel cell conversion kit).
I think they could make this process all a lot easier by holding a public contest on instructables.com like many that have already gone on. For the cost of a few laser cutters, the answer to saving billions in energy expenses could be solved.
Gak. I didn't think even Obama would be this stupid. Howya gonna get that energy back to terra firma? Wireless -- O's buddy Al Gore has gotta love what this will do to, say, the ozone layer and the endangered rainbow owl. Wired -- ain't nuthin nearly strong enough to withstand the winds. Some kind of chemical regeneration where the material is physically shipped -- well it can't involve carbon or we might as well just drill for more oil and dig for more coal, and other things if they ever got loose, can you say environmental disaster?
I used to feel this was a worth while goal of cheap energy. I no longer feel that way. Any energy produced off world, must stay off world. Solar energy must be produced here on earth in order to prevent global warming. If you think of the large energy equation that is the Earth, you will realize that all of our external energy comes from the sun. It usually just hits objects on the Earth's surface and either heats them up, or gets reflected back off into outerspace. By our digging up oil and coal and burning these bio fuels that where created in the last ice age we are adding energy to that equation. A large solar array beaming down energy to the Earth would futher increase that extra energy leading to global warming. Ground based solar energy and geothermal and wind energy are great because they are capturing energy in the middle of the equation and therefore don't lead to excess heat the way other energy sources would.
Any rational person would throw such suggestions into the dust bin until we have "real" molecular nanotechnology and space development becomes significantly less expensive.
I have run the numbers, and to supply the complete energy needs of everyone living in the U.S. requires a small fraction of the solar energy falling on the SW U.S. One does not need to go into space, one simply needs to harvest the energy available efficiently. Then there are transportation issues, but we have superconducting transmission lines *now*.
One needs to realize that the energy efficiency of existing systems sucks. Plants operate at 4%. Cheap solar cells (which we do not have the manufacturing capacity to make them *really* cheap) are at 15-18%. Multilayer (expensive) solar cells can get up to 30%+, cells in the lab are operating at 50%+. I have yet to see a single study which explores where the U,S. could be if it applied the same "we can do it" perspetcive to the production of clean energy technologies (largely, wind, solar, tidal (and biotechnology -- proper engineering of bacteria or algae can probably push that 4% to 8-12%.)
We do not need to go into space (now). We need to invest and develop those technologies which can be used here and now without the expense of lifting those technologies out of the gravity well in which we live. Any rational examination of the numbers will show a far better payoff for investing in either biotechnology based energy development or ground based energy development.
How do you feel about building the solar arrays out of lunar material, and keeping them on the lunar surface, as advocated by Dr. David R. Criswell ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Criswell ) ?
Lift costs would not be as great a barrier under this plan.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/07/japans-space-agency-planning-space-based-solar-power-arrays/
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.