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."

Comments

How?

[Tubal-Cain]

And how exactly do they plan on getting the panels/mirrors/whatever up there?

Re:How?

[Samschnooks]

Outsource to the EU, Russians, or the Chinese?

Re:How?

[east coast]

I thought Obama's plan was to keep the jobs and technology home based. After all, outsourcing doesn't do much to create jobs.

he's either going to have to do this with NASA and keep their funding up or it's just more banter from a politician.

Re:How?

[meza]

Well stuff has been put up in space before. No biggie. What I'm wondering is how they plan to get the energy back down here.

Any one have links to actual engineering proposals of how Space Solar Power would work and its benefits? Seems to me like "space" is not one of them, there is plenty of desert and whatnot to put solar cells in here on earth with much less maintenance cost and of course the possibility of running wires to get the energy to wherever it is actually needed.

Re:How?

[Socguy]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_solar_power

Beam the energy in the form of microwaves to rectennas on the ground.

Re:How?

[Tubal-Cain]

Sure, we have put stuff in space... But we usually had a rocket or a shuttle handy to do that. This thing won't launch powered by hopes and dreams. One of your siblings mentioned outsourcing the launch, but that seems like a stop-gap measure without long-term sustainability.

Re:How?

[Terminal Saint]

The concept has been kicking around for years. It generally calls for getting the power back down via microwaves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_satellite/

Re:How?

[peragrin]

Obama doesn't want to kill NASA, Obama wanted to streamline a few of NASA's pipe dreams Like returning to the moon or manned mars missions. Things that have little practical value in the next 5 years. a return trip to the moon would only be for historical reasons and maybe to bring back a few more moon rocks.

Re:How?

[Anonymous Coward]

Landing on the Moon is not a pipe dream, we've done it. Going to Mars is not a pipe dream, it's a plausable extension of the capabilities we have today. Both of these can be done for reasonable cost, and in the process spur innovation and boost our national prestige. Given the fact that we appear to be in a national malaise, the latter should not be considered trivial.

The pipe dream here is solar space power. It's an absurd concept that will never be profitable compared to Earth-based utilities. Even the supposed "military applications" like beaming power into remote battlefields is bogus.

Re:How?

[meza]

That's what I thought. The question is what the efficiency of that would be. I guess even micro waves at some optimal frequency has some absorbency in the atmosphere. Even on earth power transfer is not without loss. And I haven't heard anyone proposing to start using micro waves instead of electrical wires.

The only reason I can come to think of for putting solar cells in space would be higher power concentration per area. Thus requiring less amount of solar cells (assuming now that the price of the solar cells or land area is the dominant cost factor). According to the wikipedia article the power per area is only ten to eight times higher then on earth surface. But there would be so many other factors making this system more expensive than solar cells on earth. Even if the sunlight power was 100 times more in space than here you would have to make very optimistic calculations for this to "fly".

Re:How?

[east coast]

When it comes down to it just about everything NASA has ever done outside of contributions to satellite technology has "little practical value" to us today. But those of us who can see the forest in spite of the trees knows where the value of all these other "pipe dreams" lies.

And I always thought that the new moon missions were to focus on a permanent colony. I think that's a little bit better than "bring back a few more moon rocks."

Re:How?

[J05H]

No cite needed. Fact: the 2000-era OSP/Orbital Space Plane project was going to provide a capsule or small spaceplane atop EELV.

the VSE said nothing about "Build a heavy lift rocket" - it did say to open the Solar System to human economic sphere. Mike Griffin took Bush's VSE and created ESAS plan from it - this became the Ares/Constellation projects. While Orion (the capsule) is an OK idea, the fact that NASA is trying to field yet another medium-lift rocket is a terrible idea. The obvious part of the problem - no payload should be designed to fly exclusively on one rocket. Even more short-sighted is fielding a giant new HLV that will also have exactly one customer - and it will still be mostly flying propellant - the actual hardware is light enough for ELVs. Instead of building the payloads and helping to build the existing market for medium-class launch while focusing on the mission (go to Moon, go to Mars, make conditions for homesteading/mining, etc) they have focused and stumbled on the first mile of the problem.

This goes back to Griffin's recent "Your not qualified" statements - he only sees the engineering aspect and is apparently blind to economic, historical and political forces. Apollo on Steroids is hide-bound not muscle-bound.

On SSP - SSP will require putting thousands of tons of hardware in orbit regardless of specific tech choices. Boeing proposed an "Ultra Heavy Lift" booster in the 1970s called LEO - 250tons to orbit. It can be done in arbitrarily large chunks but has also been proposed on the other end by Dr. Hoyt of Tethers Unlimited as a single payload of 25t flown on EELV. Beamed power can be demonstrated on an in-space scale first (w/ huge market potential) and later on Earth. The DoD has looked into an all-electric future with SSP, Gerard O'Neill proposed basing the entire space economy on beamed power as well. The basic tech has been demonstrated in the lab and recently between two Hawai'i islands.

Beamed power can be one of the most environmentally benign forms of energy production. It produces a microwave equivalent of 2X sunlight strength on the target rectennae and is tuned to be transparent to water, producing little to none atmospheric heating. Developed as GEO power plants they could provide baseline power to cities. Digital phase-array antennae may provide dynamic control and non-photovoltaics may be the better solution for generation (solar-dynamic/sterling). SSP is one technology that offers tremendous potential.

Re:How?

[davolfman]

Personally I vote for putting something really cool in L4 or L5, like a space telescope or some sort of communication relay.

Re:How?

[ghyspran]

The pipe dream here is solar space power. It's an absurd concept that will never be profitable compared to Earth-based utilities.

I wouldn't say that. It may be a concept that will never be profitable in our lifetimes, but I'd hesitate to say it will never be profitable. When we've already colonized the moon, Venus, and Mars, our power needs very well may exceed the ability of the planets to support, and that's when we move to a Class II civilization. Of course, since we are far from even a Class I civilization, you are definitely correct that attempting to use the sun to provide us with our power needs is a pipe dream at this time.

Re:How?

[roguetrick]

If the permanent colony is as useful as the ISS, I'd sooner not have it.

Re:How?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong, a return trip to the moon would be the first step toward the harvest of easily fusible hydrogen and helium-3. Want energy independence? Get fusion working.

Re:How?

[aliquis]

And why? I mean, if you pick up additional energy from space and transfer it to earth, won't that heat it up to? =P

Re:How?

[icebrain]

It may be a concept that will never be profitable in our lifetimes, but I'd hesitate to say it will never be profitable.

That's space exploration in a nutshell. And it's why I think relying solely on the private sector to push for space settlement just won't work. No company is going to pour billions and billions of dollars into something if the return may not be realized for decades.

Re:How?

[kwantar]

1. Build space elevator.
2. Use the freight version.
3. Build solar array.
4. Connect array to elevator wires
5. Power the world.
6. ??
7. Profit!!

It could work!?!

Re:How?

[antispam_ben]

But OF COURSE outsourcing creates jobs! It just creates them "over there."

Re:How?

[WindBourne]

SSP make little to no sense for the majority of our power. We can use solar on the ground and for far, far, less develop energy storage. The simple fact is that putting up a solar power to provide power to our homes makes ZERO sense.
OTH, it makes PERFECT sense in specialty items. For starters, the moon. If we put a solar sat around it and beam power to the surface, it can be stored for short times and used to explore. It is probably one of the FASTEST ways to explore the equator. Of course, the poles can simply build their own site in the full sun and get nearly 100% sun on them.
Another use is for disaster recovery. This would allow us to provide quick power into a disaster site. In fact, with the ability to pick up in multiple places, it would mean that teams can move easily.
That mobilty of above is exactly why the DOD needs it. They need cheap power to be provided without having to carry it. CHEAP and Easy to come up with receivers, then to carry gas and other fuels into Iraq or Afghanistan. In addition, this would allow soldiers, tanks, ships to gain extra power during a fight. The DOD is moving towards laser and rail guns. If a cruiser or a tank could pick up loads of power from a sat, they could then fire much quicker (assume the equipment can handle it).

Re:How?

[gwait]

It's far easier and cheaper to harvest that, and pretty much anything else right here on earth.

Same goes for the original post. Once we've covered all the usable solar cell friendly places on earth with panels, AND have run out of ways to improve their efficiency, AND have exhausted all other forms of energy here on Earth (like Geothermal - we live on a ball of molten rock with a thin skin for Pete's sake!), THEN it might make sense to look at placing solar panels in space.

to quote south park: Dumb Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb..

Re:How?

[Gigayear]

The subject of satellite solar power has been extensively studied and discussed at Princeton's Space Studies Institute for decades. They have had at least 16 scientific conferences with another due soon. So many aspects have been examined. Many of the knee jerk negatives as well as the more thoughtful reservations are quite well answered. The Obama team would do well to consult the Space Studies Institute (www.ssi.org).

Re:How?

[Eric Smith]

In this case, step 6 ("??") is entirely superfluous. The profit of step 7 is directly derived from step 5.

If we start devloping space-based solar in the near future, a space elevator approach will not likely be used. Instead we'll use expendable launch vehicles such as the Atlas V. Once a pilot system is working, it can be used to produce fuel for further launches, significantly lowering the ongoing program expenses.

Re:How?

[RightwingNutjob]

Digital phased arrays don't work too well with high power. What it does is it modulates an analog circuit that introduces a phase delay in the signal. And not without some loss. The phase shifting hardware to operate on a very high power signal is big and lossy. Technology has advanced to fast that managers and politicians often expect magic when they throw out buzzwords, without realizing the limitations of existing technology and appreciating the fact that the phrase "it's just an engineering problem at this point" in now way means that it's easy, fast, or cheap.

Re:How?

[peragrin]

well first get fusion working here with the limited stock piles that are on earth and then go to the moon for large scale operations.

I am not against manned intersolar travel. I am against wasting money when all it does is allow a geologist to write a paper. Now if robotic probes find huge quantities of valuable minerals(including water), then yes a trip to the moon would be useful, but remember it has taken dozens and dozens of launches to build the ISS. Building something equally sized on the moon would take hundreds, and you have a three day trip to get there.

Potentially less if the new plasma drives work well enough.

Re:How?

[Teancum]

Why does this have to involve NASA at all? Yes, NASA seems to be the agency with experience in dealing with spaceflight, but NASA certainly isn't the only (nor even the largest agency in the U.S. government) that is involved with spaceflight.

In terms of dollars actually spent on spaceflight, I don't know which is larger: The NSA (National Security Agency... who operate the spy satellites and hack into the internet) and the U.S. Air Force Space Directorate. Both are larger than NASA. The Air Force at one point even built their own private launch complex for the Shuttle... even though it was never actually used.

If NASA were completely eliminated as an agency, American activities in space certainly wouldn't end. It wouldn't even be the end of civilian space efforts that are done by agencies like NOAA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Also, I hardly consider the Ares I rocket to be an efficient use of limited funds to build power-sats, but that is fodder for a completely separate post.

Re:How?

[J05H]

It is unknown whether SSP makes sense for baseline power. O'Neill-class gigawatt stations would definitely be capable of powering cities and homes - if it is possible to build them. There are a lot of unknowns with SSP - I don't discount any possibilities with it but see the infinite capability it could provide.

Disaster relief and DoD could be strong drivers for the first phase of space-ground power transmission, if the ground stations can be made transportable or easily assembled. The original designs for SSP rectennae on the ground saw them as permanent installations of mesh on tall towers. The DoD can afford to design whatever portable system they wanted - which is definitely a lead into eventual commercial power from space. There are other paths which would see ISO operators or other companies doing it first - with the right incentives or need. My favorite concept is placing rectennae off-shore, coupled with tidal generators. If possible steerable LEO powersats would be combined with much larger GEO units to provide a complete spectrum of delivery scales and options. They real questions are is this possible and how to make it happen?

Generally SSP is conceived as providing steady power, not bursts of energy for powering weapon systems - it would require being plugged into a kilometer-scale grid to charge something like a railgun. Much better to charge at a base into a battery/capacitor/flywheel and use while mobile - a solution explored in the DoD's future studies. The idea would be that military bases would deploy a rectennae and charge tanks and electric vehicles from SSP baseline power. So far the assumption is that units charge up and go instead of carrying their own rectennae afield.

For space exploration and satellite power, SSP can be an enabler. Lunar poles don't get permanent sun in quantity - only a few peaks on Shackleton Crater get it and even then they are talking 100m high towers for better light. SSP would be perfect for any lunar base. Beamed power would extensible to any planetary surface - Lunar pole, Martian equator, Ceres, Ganymede, Europa etc in the long term. These are far out options though since a test unit hasn't even been demonstrated in orbit. In the deep future our descendants may operate a network of beaming stations inside Mercury's orbit but we have more immediate steps to take.

SSP holds immense promise and it is encouraging that the new administration is at least looking into this promising technology. The basic science and some of the technology is in place, the real question is if it can scale.

-Josh

Re:How?

[J05H]

Some engineers inside the SSP community have talked about flat, phased-array antennae instead of steerable or dish styles. Has nothing to do w/ politicians or buzzwords. Thanks for the additional info.

Re:How?

[kwantar]

Oh, so you took me seriously... As we all know the space elevator doesn't go all the way to the top (it doesn't even get off the ground). I was going for at least (Score: 1, Funny) although 5 would have been nice too.

Re:How?

[catprog]

The panels need to face the sun not earth.

Re:How?

[uassholes]

Not sure why we're beaming microwaves to rectums, but does that mean we can use the beams like campfires to roast our weenies?

Re:How?

[J05H]

yes you can! Simply do a headstand under the beam-spot.

Hallelujah!

[ichbineinneuben]

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!

Re:Hallelujah!

[MichaelSmith]

Not "Thus Spake Zarathustra?"

Re:Hallelujah!

[ichbineinneuben]

...that may be next on the playlist...

Re:How? - I'll tell you how

[Anonymous Coward]

As usual, just throw money at NASA and ignore it when it doesn't work since it's really pork.

Life imitates art

[mind21_98]

Doesn't this remind you of the microwave power plants in SimCity? To me, it does. :)

Re:Life imitates art

[Tubal-Cain]

I see two ways of doing this: The Simcity way, or using a very large mirror to direct light down to the solar panels.
Would the either method be able to burn through cloud cover?

Re:Life imitates art

[DriedClexler]

Actually it reminds me of the Orbital Power Transmitter in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire. (Speaking of which, anyone have a comprehensive list of Alpha Centauri-Civilization series equivalents? I mean, I can get formers/settlers, doctor/entertainer, talent/happy citizen and stuff like that, but I mean a list of all the technologies, weapons, secret projects, etc.)

Anyway, I guess the main challenge is beaming the power down to earth without frying someone's nuts off.

Re:Life imitates art

[JimboFBX]

The "oops!" disaster always was so annoying, but damned if microwave wasn't cost efficient

Re:Life imitates art

[KDR_11k]

With gigantic, rigid pillars used as elevators. That just doesn't work.

Re:Life imitates art

[Eric Smith]

The whole point of SSP is to use microwave frequencies that have low atmospheric attenuation. Microwave to electricity conversion by a rectenna farm will be very efficient, so the overall system efficiency is much higher than use of land-based solar with space-based mirrors.

Pie in the sky

[yog]

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.

Re:Pie in the sky

[DynaSoar]

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.

I almost added some similar editorializing to the submission, but opted to leave it as it was. I'm also very skeptical of the proposal itself. However, I find the interest in it as compared to the other proposals on change.gov to be encouraging. This is especially so since Obama was at first hardly pro-space. Their interest in this proposal is another step away from that stance. And I believe Obama's team still to be capable of being influenced and directed to better things. This proposal is too far off, but it makes a good focus point for choosing a more positive direction. O'Neill's ideas were similarly distant, but they persist as well developed starting points.

Re:Pie in the sky

[MichaelSmith]

From here on getting things done in space will require a twenty to thirty year outlook. Unmanned exploration can get away with that by being cheap, but manned programmes need constant political support and it is hard to get that for more than ten years at a time.

Re:Pie in the sky

[glitch23]

when we drive cars that have half or one third the fuel efficiency they could have,

Gasoline engines are more efficient now than they were in the 70s however due to the increased weight that many vehicles possess the resulting MPG is less. When you put a 400HP engine in a crossover utility vehicle (XUV) weighing almost 2 tons you tend to not get that great of gas mileage however the efficiency is still there as far as I know (I'm not an engine builder).

Re:Pie in the sky

[LWATCDR]

I tend to agree. I in High School I had hopped to that I would semd my life helping build O'Neil's L5 Space colonies.
It didn't happen. Of course the latest science is saying that oil and natural gas are not a major contributer to green house gas emissions the real problem is coal.
Makes sense. The simple truth is that if we want to really cut CO2 we need to stop using coal and go for nuclear for power. Supplement with wind and keep researching and supplementing with solar. Use Geothermal where practical and skip tides since it very limited and really just a side show.

So...the ultimate global warrming?

[MaggieL]

Isn't BHO opposed to that?

Nonterrestrial materials

[Baldrson]

Interestingly it was Gerard O'Neill who argued in the 1970's for solar power satellites constructed from lunar material and, as part of that argument predicted the industrialization of China would lead to increased CO2 emissions from coal burning that would mandate radical restructuring of global energy technology. It may be too late now to pursue nonterrestrial material SPS since the baby boomer generation, raised and educated to pioneer space from childhood, was denied that opportunity by --- well that is the question of the millennium if not the epoch isn't it? There are almost as many answers to that question as there are religions.

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:

* (c) Private enterprise; access; competition

In order to facilitate this development and to provide for the widest possible participation by private enterprise, United States participation in the global system shall be in the form of a private corporation, subject to appropriate governmental regulation. It is the intent of Congress that all authorized users shall have nondiscriminatory access to the system; that maximum competition be maintained in the provision of equipment and services utilized by the system; that the corporation created under this chapter be so organized and operated as to maintain and strengthen competition in the provision of communications services to the public; and that the activities of the corporation created under this chapter and of the persons or companies participating in the ownership of the corporation shall be consistent with the Federal antitrust laws.

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

Re:Nonterrestrial materials

[randall_burns]

Perhaps no lunar beanstalk is needed, but any kind of non-conventional launch system from the moon to lower earth orbit will be much easier than going from the surface of the earth to lower earth orbit. I expect we'll see a variety of activity in that area once the powers that be start to realize just how high the stakes are here.

Re:Nonterrestrial materials

[MichaelSmith]

Then we should have continued on from Apollo. Build a small base and a reliable transportation system. The Saturn V was too expensive and the program had to stop.

Doing it that way adds at least 20 years to the timeline. But if you want to build anything big it has to be made either on the moon or on a near earth asteroid.

The fact is that nobody is going to build large scale SPS in the next hundred years.

But I can believe orbiting mirrors to keep solar power plants working at night. Mirrors can be made extremely light and once delivered to LEO they could fly themselves up to a high orbit.

Re:Nonterrestrial materials

[Baldrson]

True, and I presume that by "lower earth orbit" you don't mean "low earth orbit", but that geostationary orbit is lower than lunar orbit. What you say is particularly true of geostationary orbit, where solar collection is more continuous.

Re:Nonterrestrial materials

[icebrain]

Then we should have continued on from Apollo. Build a small base and a reliable transportation system. The Saturn V was too expensive and the program had to stop.

That was the idea behind the space shuttle... but then politicians got involved, and we see how well that ended up. Ironically, it would have been cheaper on operational costs alone (ignoring shuttle R&D) just to keep building and flying the Apollo-issue Saturn V, even without economy of scale or eventual improvements.

Re:Nonterrestrial materials

[MichaelSmith]

Then we should have continued on from Apollo. Build a small base and a reliable transportation system. The Saturn V was too expensive and the program had to stop.

That was the idea behind the space shuttle... but then politicians got involved, and we see how well that ended up. Ironically, it would have been cheaper on operational costs alone (ignoring shuttle R&D) just to keep building and flying the Apollo-issue Saturn V, even without economy of scale or eventual improvements.

Yes that was the idea but I don't see how they could have planned to do it that way. Shuttle can't re-enter from an earth return trajectory. A capsule like Apollo was needed for that so however you see it, Apollo was a requirement.

Re:Nonterrestrial materials

[icebrain]

Yes that was the idea but I don't see how they could have planned to do it that way. Shuttle can't re-enter from an earth return trajectory. A capsule like Apollo was needed for that so however you see it, Apollo was a requirement.

You could build a dedicated earth-orbit to moon ship that flies back and forth but never enters the atmosphere. Use the shuttle to go up to the station or whatever and rotate the crews, but you don't need to send it out of LEO. Takes a bit more infrastructure, but ultimately it's a bit more flexible.

Re:Nonterrestrial materials

[MichaelSmith]

Yes that was the idea but I don't see how they could have planned to do it that way. Shuttle can't re-enter from an earth return trajectory. A capsule like Apollo was needed for that so however you see it, Apollo was a requirement.

You could build a dedicated earth-orbit to moon ship that flies back and forth but never enters the atmosphere. Use the shuttle to go up to the station or whatever and rotate the crews, but you don't need to send it out of LEO. Takes a bit more infrastructure, but ultimately it's a bit more flexible.

With our limited infrastructure and immature technology that approach is not safe. The vehicle in lunar orbit (even better the one on the lunar surface) needs to be able to aerobrake and land on Earth.

From The Economist

[airfabio]

Recent space solar power article from The Economist

http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12673299

Re:From The Economist

[leerpm]

Mod-up. It's a great article. SSP is a ways off from being economical viable for domestic/mass-consumer use, there are other applications (i.e. military) where the current cost/kWh is higher and SSP is more feasible in the short-term.

Re:From The Economist

[ColdWetDog]

Nice read. Makes quite a bit more sense the TFA.

Re:From The Economist

[a.ameri]

Excellent read. Full of information, with lots of insightful details. The Economist never disappoints, it's an awesome publication.

The fact that it publishes the content of its print edition online, one day BEFORE the print edition is delivered, and it has still been able to massively increase its subscriber numbers (doubled in the past 3 years), just shows to prove that even in this age of Internet, when everyone else in the newspaper industry is complaining about falling revenues, good journalism has its place, and will always be valued.

Here's the full story

[purdueduck]

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

Space solar but not sustainable colonization?

[macraig]

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.

Re:Space solar but not sustainable colonization?

[similar_name]

I've often wondered if Governments are afraid to colonize space what with the history of colonies on Earth.

Re:Space solar but not sustainable colonization?

[DerekLyons]

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.

Given that the technical challenge is all but non-existent - why does that warrant such a discussion? (Or, "Even though your question was articulate, it is obvious that it was nonsensical".)

Re:Space solar but not sustainable colonization?

[hardburn]

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.

This problem is the most straightforward one. There are two holes in the spectrum normally blocked by the Earth's atmosphere, one in the microwave range and the other in light (infared, I think). Both are easy to transmit and convert back into electricity.

The problem that isn't so straightforward is getting launch costs cheap enough to make it competitive with other solutions. Which ends up being exactly the same problem that colonization needs to solve, so there's no reason why research into one won't help the other.

Re:Space solar but not sustainable colonization?

[macraig]

The likely scenarios and consequences have been pretty thoroughly explored in science fiction, haven't they? All too often, the theorized results haven't been good for the centrists and control freaks, have they?

Re:Space solar but not sustainable colonization?

[amorsen]

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.

Moving a significant fraction of the Earth population into space isn't going to happen unless we find a way to get essentially unlimited energy on Earth. And if there's plenty of energy on Earth, why move more than a few colonists?

Re:Space solar but not sustainable colonization?

[macraig]

If you perceive that technical challenge to be non-existent, perhaps you'll need to explain how and why. Some of us apparently aren't as expert on the topic as you are. After perusing your blog, I can clearly see that you attempt to tackle much bigger social and technical issues than I do, so I need the benefit of your highly specialized experience and knowledge of this topic.

Re:Space solar but not sustainable colonization?

[macraig]

I wouldn't want to be the unfortunate bird or jetliner that happens to wander into the path of such a concentrated beam of radiation, regardless what particular wavelength in the spectrum it occupies!

BTWnot blocked".

Re:Space solar but not sustainable colonization?

[macraig]

We had almost unlimited energy, didn't we? Perhaps we should have been more focused on investing that energy to give us better long-term returns, rather than borrowing against it to buy the energy equivalent of cars and 52-inch plasma TVs?

I think it's still feasible, but we need to be focused in a way that would be truly historic for the species.

Re:Space solar but not sustainable colonization?

[J05H]

Colonization and other industrial activities can evolve from SSP if done as public-private enterprise. Enable sSP to create a much larger launch market - the govt. can enable businesses to build, fly and operate SSP. Flight frequency is the #1 determinant of cost-of-launch. Hundreds of SSP component launches per year would open up space access to vastly more organizations and individuals, hence enabling settlement and development.

The best thing the govt. can do is create an open environment for making this happen - NASA should not be in the power-station business any more than it should be in the rocket-launching business - they should be doing R&D and daring exploration with people and robots. Let the professionals handle the transportation. NASA could already have been assembling the lunar stack if they had gone the sort of route outlined.

The problem with calling for space colonization now is one of economics and infrastructure - everybody knows it's further in the future than something like space tourism or SSP. Anyone that studies space settlements issues will understand that we are 2+ decades minimum away from having the necessary infrastructure for any scale of colonization. Projects such as Bigelow Aerospace's line of commercial station modules need to be available for it to happen, there is a lot of other hardware needed. SSP would be a powerful enabler to help that happen.

Re:Space solar but not sustainable colonization?

[hardburn]

Why? SimCity was just a game looking for an additional disaster scenario. They're forms of non-ionizing radiation. In the case of the microwaves, they're too spread out to warm up the air by more than a few degrees. They're meant to be captured by rectennas spread over farm fields and still allow crops to be grown underneath. I haven't studied the laser proposals as in-depth, but it would be a very thin beam.

Re:Space solar but not sustainable colonization?

[synaptic]

What if we could construct an initial segment of the power collector using conventional means (rockets, etc.) and begin beaming that power back to earth.

Then it seems like instead of having a "rectenna" on the ground, you have it on a cargo craft. The energy it captures is used to power it's ascent. Sort of like beaming up, it needs to stay in the path of the energy beam and can ride it all the way to the array.

Astronauts or automation then offload the payload, attach any materials for return to Earth, and the craft rides the beam back to Earth.

I suppose the questions are:
1) do we have technology that can convert electrical power into sufficient thrust to escape earth gravity and work in space
2) using that technology, how many watts of power does it take to lift a pound to escape velocity when you don't have to carry all of the fuel of conventional rocketry, just the energy capture and thrust conversion equipment.
3) how big of an array do we need to reach launch capabilities such that we can expand the array (let's say a lift capability of 1 ton).
4) what rockets do we need to put that array in place
5) profit!

Afterwards, we don't need rockets.

Re:Space solar but not sustainable colonization?

[khallow]

Energy has reached this threshhold on Earth already. For example, the average US home consumes enough energy each year in the form of electricity to put somewhere around 500 kilograms into escape velocity. I assume the average consumption of electricity is roughly 1 kW and that it takes, ignoring air resistance and gravity losses, 60 MJ of kinetic energy is contaiend in one kilogram of mass accelerated to escape velocity, 11 km/s. If energy was the restriction, then the US alone would be able to put an amazing amount of stuff into orbit. For example, since 1949, I calculate that the US has consumed roughly 73 quintillion btu. 60 MJ is roughly 57,000 btu. So that amount is 730 quadrillion kilograms reaching escape velocity or 730 trillion tons. If every person needs 100 tons of stuff (very generous estimate to be honest) in space to survive with a reasonable standard of living, then you're looking at accelerating to escape velocity enough mass to substain more than a thousand times the Earth's current population. This ignores food energy. A considerable portion of that comes from plants absorbing solar radiation.

The real problem is reaction mass. For anything to reach space, something must push in other direction to conserve momentum. This is generally reaction mass. Currently, the only engines we have that can generate a thrust to weight ratio of better than 1 (that's the absolutely minimum needed to overcome gravity) and reach space, are chemical rocket engines, though there are plenty of ideas out there.

Re:Space solar but not sustainable colonization?

[Jeremi]

I wouldn't want to be the unfortunate bird or jetliner that happens to wander into the path of such a concentrated beam of radiation,

Two easy solutions to that: either put the beam in a 'no fly zone' so that jetliners won't be in the area (sorry birds!), or just don't make the beam concentrated. I don't think there is any reason why the energy couldn't be collected over a fairly large area.

Re:Space solar but not sustainable colonization?

[hardburn]

1) do we have technology that can convert electrical power into sufficient thrust to escape earth gravity and work in space

Most electric-based propultion methods don't have the thrust to make it off Earth, but are great once you're in a vacuum. See VASIMR and Ion Engines. Laser propulsion could work, but would need the laser system to be Earth-based, assuming you even had a laser powerful enough to get even a 1 kg object into orbit.

Re:Space solar but not sustainable colonization?

[JoeMerchant]

Were you requesting bread or circuses? Are you surprised that a broad cross section of the population was bored?

Re:Space solar but not sustainable colonization?

[similar_name]

Historically colonies have a way of breaking away from the 'parent' country. Becoming even more powerful than the original. I'm thinking of where the United States stands in the world compared to Britain, and where they stood 300 years ago.

Re:Space solar but not sustainable colonization?

[amorsen]

We had almost unlimited energy, didn't we?

Not the kind of unlimited that would enable us to send even one million people into space.

Re:Space solar but not sustainable colonization?

[DerekLyons]

Don't try and bullshit me. Even a brief survey of the topic will show how the system works - get of your ass and educate yourself. (Or "You again make it obvious why your question was modded down".)

Re:Space solar but not sustainable colonization?

[4D6963]

OMG, Obama won't let us colonize other planets during his term? That's not change I can believe in, what a rip-off! Vote for Palin in 2012 and we'll be colonizing Titan before we pull out of Pakistan!

Re:Space solar but not sustainable colonization?

[macraig]

You wandered into this and declared that I was ignorant/stupid, but didn't have the courtesy to specifically explain why. That's not constructive criticism, that's just arrogant or malicious. I accuse people of being ignorant often enough, but at least I have the decency to briefly explain why; I do it because I want them to be more educated/aware when I next encounter them, but from your approach you seem to have a different motivation altogether, a motivation that's more about you than anything egalitarian. Perhaps you need to take up yoga or something.

Re:Space solar but not sustainable colonization?

[Baruch Atta]

A very late comment....

When the state of the art robotics is advanced enough for robots to automaously go and create factories for making more robots....

Then the only limiting factors are
a - raw materials
b - energy

Both of which are virtually unlimited in space, i.e. the moon, astroids.

No comment needed on the implications of an unlimited and cheap work force.

Secondary question - how many humans are needed (on Earth or off) to insure the species and for progress, once working becomes obsolete?

Who needs exploration, anyway?

[hax0r_this]

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.

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[Eskarel]

Exploration most certainly does have value.

That said, expensive exploration, without the means to capitalize on it, when the economy is in trouble and we're trying to cut our energy use probably doesn't have a whole lot.

Nothing wrong with sending more landers, probes, etc to mars, the moon, wherever else we can get em. It's expensive, but it's potentially valuable. Sending a person somewhere just to say you've sent them somewhere is really rather silly.

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[couchslug]

"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."

We can send robots instead of meat puppets at less cost and no risk to personnel, whose loss would endanger programs that are much more valuable to mankind than a few dead astronauts. We need to develop machines to do our exploration and our work because humans are delicate, weak, and high-maintenance, so send unmanned missions for a few decades and get good at it.

I'm fine with lunar missions, but not with expensive tourists when sending robots is a more worthy goal. Exploiting space should be done using unmanned systems while humans do the design and enjoy the benefits without personal risk. Catering to meat tourists SLOWS development life cycles (Space Shuttle, anyone?) and is a drag on science.

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[Dutchy Wutchy]

Solely relying on robots for exploration will breed a society with little to no desire to ever send humans into space. After all, if robots can do practically everything humans can do, what is the point in ever taking the risk of sending "meat puppets"?

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[Your.Master]

Why is this inherently a problem?

Look, I think manned space exploration is cool and all too. But if there's a reason to send humans into space, then we will have a desire. And if they don't, then this society we breed is immensely practical and correct, which is an improvement over today's society :).

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[roguetrick]

Very silly logical fallacy called the slippery slope. You ignore that if there became a viable reason to send humans up there, we still would. Sending them up there to try and force us to continue sending them up there is silly.

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[neokushan]

Not true, we've been sending Robots to Mars for years now and we still pine for a manned mission.

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[aliquis]

If nothing else the better we get at leaving this rock in space the higher probability of us surviving the time we fail as species on earth.

Also if we would happen to be the only life in space it makes a hell of a difference =P (but only for us :D)

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[gregbot9000]

Exactly, what really needs to be known is if their is water on the moon, and how much, first. That can be done through probes a lot cheaper.

If there is an ocean at the pole than sending people up at a later date would make sense because you could then extract essentials in-sutro, saving lots on resupply missions, and with the low gravity potentially allowing longer stays than Micro G saving cost on replacing crew. Which could then possibly assemble more probes on the moon cheaper then pushing them up the gravity well or even catch a NEO. Why we haven't figured out the most important part of future space travel (what resource's are easy and cheap to get off the moon) through cheap probes yet I can't figure out.

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[Waffle Iron]

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.

If Lewis and Clark had come back reporting that there was nothing on the west coast but dust, no economically extractable minerals, and that had zero atmosphere and only trace amounts of water, and that another trip would cost multiple billions of 2008 dollars, and a colony would cost hundreds of billions, then there would indeed have been no reason to go back.

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[Tychon]

The obvious solution is to transfer human consciousness to machines and do away with mobile meat sacks. Long live the Core!

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[chromatic]

Ah, you've been to Las Vegas.

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[KDR_11k]

So you want to colonize the moon? That rock isn't very interesting for anything except research and that can be done with rovers (though I don't think there's even a need to do that anymore). You're comparing a barren rock that happens to float in the sky with a continent on a planet with atmosphere, valuables, etc.

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[KDR_11k]

Novel ways of feeding astronauts can be developed for the ISS too, you don't need to land on a random rock for that.

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[KDR_11k]

Long live? Pah. At the current rate Core is headed for total annihilation within two or three days!

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[nine-times]

Nothing wrong with sending more landers, probes, etc to mars, the moon, wherever else we can get em.

Especially if you suspect that these places might have resources that we can figure out a way to use. Exploration for the sake of exploration is fine and dandy, but that's not generally why human exploration has happened. The reason people sailed across dangerous uncharted areas has usually been because they expected to find something of practical/financial value on the other side.

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[sumdumass]

I thought the moon was full of helium 3 or 4 or something like that and it was the ultimate Green fusion material that would end the GHG problem and give us our energy independence.

There definitely is a way to capitalize. Or at least capitalize within one of his other goals. We just need to get Fusion to work in a practical way.

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[Teancum]

As if NASA has done much original exploration lately. How long has it been since anybody has been to the Moon?

About the only genuinely ground breaking missions currently on tap are the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Dawn mission to the asteroids. I am excited about both, but they certainly don't need an agency the current size of NASA to support either or both missions.

The spirit to boldly go where nobody has been before seems to be lost right now with NASA. No astronauts are setting altitude (aka distance) records to explore the depths of the Solar System. Heck, it was Apollo 13... a "failed" mission... that set the all-time distance record for anybody away from the Earth. There just doesn't seem to be any fire in the policy makers to have a difference here. This isn't even a Democrat or Republican issue, as both political parties are to blame.

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[Teancum]

The problem with Helium 3 is that the fusion device to be able to practically use it has yet to be invented.

This particular isotope of Helium is found in the outer-atmosphere of the Sun and has been blowing onto the surface of the Moon for billions of years. As such, it permeates the top layers of the Moon and can be extracted economically to be able to... by itself... pay for manned trips to the Moon.

The problem is that the world-wide demand for Helium-3 right now is so minuscule that a single trip to the Moon would satisfy world-wide demand for the substance over the rest of this century.

Assuming that some fusion reactors actually get built and can produce practical energy supplies, there would certainly be demand for this on an industrial scale to justify permanent mining operations on the Moon. But that is assuming technological break-throughs are going to happen here... which has at least so far proven to be quite difficult to achieve for fusion devices.

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[Teancum]

You are talking about a planet-sized object that doesn't have to be lifted out of the Earth's gravity well.... and the ability to do metal fabrication on an industrial scale using techniques that can only be dreamed about on the Earth.

The Moon has the surface area of North America and has mineral deposits at least equal to anything found on the Earth. Wouldn't it be better to stip mine the Moon to extract resources there rather than to destroy major eco-systems here on the Earth for the same resources?

And don't even get started with some of the high-metal astroids, that even a small asteroid has more precious metals than everything that has ever been mined in the history of all mankind to date. Of course the problem would be on how to mine it and send that to the Earth economically, but that is a problem I'm sure somebody will eventually figure out.

Space gives us two things we seem to be hurting on here on the Earth: raw natural resources and energy. This is energy by far and away more abundant in multiple forms than all of the petroleum reserves, nuclear fuel reserves, and "alternative energy" sources combined that can be exploited over the rest of the history of this planet here on the Earth.

This is also dismissing the fact that even going somewhere else and having to apply human ingenuity to new environments almost always produces side benefits that ultimately help all of the rest of mankind as well. Explicitly because of the development of space sciences to date, mankind as a whole is better fed, lives longer, safer, and much more comfortable.... on a planet-wide basis.... than our species has ever been before.

Every single problem you think may be plaguing mankind... from war, famine, disease, and natural disasters... has been made more comfortable and less damaging due to advances in space science. Name a problem you think should be fixed, and I'll tell you explicit space projects and missions that have made life much easier.

If you want to live like people did in the 1930's before any of this happened... go ahead. Just make sure you know what life was like back then before you push the rest of us back to that sort of lifestyle. I really don't think you want to go back to living under those conditions... even if you lived in a place like the USA or Europe of the 1930's.

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[Eskarel]

And why do we need to send anyone to Mars to develop those things. If in fact there is a need for such things(and I'm not disagreeing with you on this) then we can develop them here.

I'm all for space exploration, but a manned mission to Mars would be astronomically expensive and provide little to no benefit. By all means work out the technology to make it work, as that will probably ave practical value, but actually sending them, especially if we can't keep them there for very long, is really rather pointless.

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[chilligan]

We could crash some high-mineral asteroids into the Moon, then extract them "at ease"

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[oni]

This is a case where you have to get the infrastructure in place first, then it becomes useful/profitable. It's like the internet. Once it was in place, it turns out that (in addition to porn) there is all this wonderful, world-changing stuff that we do with it. People's lives really are better because of the internet.

But nobody could have envisioned any of this. And if people like you had poured cold water on the whole thing by saying, "whoa whoa, before you start running cables everywhere, I want to see a long-term plan showing that this is profitable" then we'd NEVER have the internet.

Now let me paint a picture for you of an alternate historical timeline. The most powerful rocket in history was designed 50 years ago. Had we continued development along those lines, then today we'd have the ability to loft complete solar power stations into orbit. And then, suddenly, space solar power might make sense. But because of people like you, we don't have that capability. And so, because of people like you, whenever someone talks about space solar power, they are talking about multiple launches to get a small array working - and because of people like you, it doesn't make economic sense.

And if we continue listening to people like you, our grandchildren will be having this same conversation in 50 years - only they'll be trying to decide if they should use the last few drops of fossil fuels on planet Earth to fund this, or to make a bit more fertilizer to stave off global starvation for a few more years.

So let me just say, on behalf of all the people who will die because of closed-minded, backwards-thinking people like you, thanks for nothing.

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[sumdumass]

The problem with Helium 3 is that the fusion device to be able to practically use it has yet to be invented.

I don't think this is so much a problem seeing how out capabilities to safely return to the moon still haven't been reinvented yet. I mean it isn't like we are going tomorrow and at least an abundant supply of the stuff could make the research more availible.

The problem is that the world-wide demand for Helium-3 right now is so minuscule that a single trip to the Moon would satisfy world-wide demand for the substance over the rest of this century.

We are looking to the future right? I mean If the tesh to use it is as safe and productive as the claims say, then a future mission to the moon compiled with future uses would basically make it worth it. No one is going to ramp up a need for something we can't get. That would be like purposely forcing a shortage in a market just so it costs more. With it here and the ability to get it, then usage would increase to make it viable and probably self supporting.

Assuming that some fusion reactors actually get built and can produce practical energy supplies, there would certainly be demand for this on an industrial scale to justify permanent mining operations on the Moon. But that is assuming technological break-throughs are going to happen here... which has at least so far proven to be quite difficult to achieve for fusion devices.

I think we are at a Chicken and the egg type impasse here. Which comes first, the need for a supply of Helium3 to feed the otherwise limited reactors or feed supply to produce the capabilities of them resulting in the creation and dependency on it. Right now, we have to rely on a government to go to the moon and pick the stuff up or have it created as well as captured in rather expensive ways. One of those ways require extracting fossil fuels from the ground and isn't very productive.

Even if we had one condenses load of it, and a means to get more with the expectations of it being availible, I'm willing to bet that the need will be there.

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[Waffle Iron]

No, if we listen to people like you with your unrealistic space solar power pipe dreams, then we'll never have the resources to implement practical earth-based solar power.

*You* are the one who will be personally responsible for all the poor starving babies and puppies.

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[oni]

2008 -

if we listen to people like you with your unrealistic space solar power pipe dreams...

2000 - if we listen to people like you with your unrealistic "wikipedia" pipe dreams, we'll never have the resources to print enough encyclopedia britannicas for everyone!

1980 - if we listen to people like you with your unrealistic "internet" dreams, we'll never have the resources to put mainframe computers in every house.

1950 - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "satellite" dreams, we'll never have the resources to implement global communications.

1930 - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "offshore oil well" dreams, we'll never have the resources mine the coal we need for our steam engines. Just stop and think about how obviously dangerous, expensive, and stupid it is to try and get oil out of the north sea! You're crazy!

1850 - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "fossil fuel oil well" dreams, we'll never have the resources to hunt the endless supply of sperm wales.

1800 - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "transcontinental railroad" dreams...

1450 - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "sea route to asia" dreams...

4000 bc - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "riding a horse" dreams...

10,000 bc - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "farming" dreams...

60,000 bc - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "leaving africa" dreams...

1,000,000 bc - Ogg not listen stupid "fire" dreams. Rocks hard. Rocks not make fire. Ogg more important things think about, like get food/stay warm.

Why haven't you gone extinct yet? It must be that your ancestors learned to parasite themselves on people that actually do things. Plus, just stop and think about how silly this is:

then we'll never have the resources to implement practical earth-based solar power

Yes, because there's only one solar panel in the whole world, and if we shoot it into space that's it, it's gone, and we can't build a second one for use on Earth. Whoa, better not drop it, since it's the only one we've got.

It couldn't possibly be that investing in either earth-based or space-based power will end up benefiting the other field. No no, that makes too much sense.

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[Waffle Iron]

Your logic is impeccable. There are some new ideas that worked, therefore every new idea must work. Especially the most costly, fragile and unwieldy ones we can dream up when straightforward alternatives already exist.

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[oni]

Your logic is impeccable. There are some new ideas that didn't work, therefore we shouldn't try any idea that looks hard.

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[Waffle Iron]

if they already exist and make heaps of more sense than the space solar power station why aren't we already building our infrastructure around them?

Because it's currently cheaper to scoop dirt out of the ground and burn it. It's cheaper because the external costs of fossil fuels are not incorporated into the consumer price as they should be.

BTW, it's also cheaper (by a far bigger margin) to burn dirt than to launch hundreds of square miles of satellites. If it weren't, then why aren't we doing that already, hmmm?

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[GWRedDragon]

We could crash some high-mineral asteroids into the Moon, then extract them "at ease"

Why does this sound like a really, really bad idea...

Re:Who needs exploration, anyway?

[Teancum]

I think we are at a Chicken and the egg type impasse here. Which comes first, the need for a supply of Helium3 to feed the otherwise limited reactors or feed supply to produce the capabilities of them resulting in the creation and dependency on it.

Actually, no, we aren't at a chicken and egg impasse here. There are some sources of Helium-3 here on the Earth that certainly can be used to bootstrap the research reactors that are currently under development and even fuel most of the initial commercial reactors if it came to that. Helium-3 can also be produced in certain "breeder-reactor" type situations, but that is a rather expensive process. It can be manufactured from Deuterium (Hydrogen-2) and Tritium (Hydrogen-3), both isotopes which occur naturally on the Earth.

In other words, once the reactors get built, the economic picture for Helium-3 mining on the Moon will be so stinking bright that you will be having companies jumping on top of each other to get it accomplished. But the research on the reactors must happen first and doesn't depend on finding sources of Helium-3 in order to be proven viable.

I don't think this is so much a problem seeing how out capabilities to safely return to the moon still haven't been reinvented yet. I mean it isn't like we are going tomorrow and at least an abundant supply of the stuff could make the research more availible.

If America of the 1960's could get to the Moon, 21st Century China, Russia, India, or America certainly could get there. This isn't a discovery in a new kind of physics or even wondering what the environment on the Moon was like.

Instead, it is a trip to Northrup-Grumman and asking them "How did you do it?" and talking to Dr. Harrison Schmidt and asking him what it was like when he was there.

Mankind certainly is capable of getting to the Moon, and there are emerging companies certainly more than capable of building spacecraft capable of landing on the Moon. If it wasn't for international politics and other purely political factors, you, yes you, could put a pile of money on the table right now and take a trip around the Moon sometime in the next six months or less. Landing on the Moon is a solved engineering problem, and treating it as something so incredibly difficult but at the same time so casually dismissing the huge engineering and even pure research challenges facing fusion research is astounding.

If you had enough money and determination, you or anybody else could be walking on the Moon within five years or so. I've outlined how this could happen using mostly off the shelf components currently in production, with the sole exception of a vehicle landing on the surface of the Moon itself. That vehicle is in the Smithsonian and certainly could be reproduced if necessary.

As for fusion research, it isn't inevitable. We simply don't know what is necessary for efficient and commercially viable nuclear fusion devices, or if such a device is even possible. The raw physics of how nuclear fusion work has been known for more than a half-century in fine detail, and actual fusion reactors have been built for nearly that length of time.

Unfortunately, getting reactors to produce more energy than it takes to get them started is the key problem, and an issue that has yet to be solved besides piling a huge bunch of gas together which gravitationally confines the reactor core. BTW, that is called a star if you haven't figured that one out. We know stars work, but that seems a bit overkill for what most people want in a nuclear fusion reactor.

Re:How? - I'll tell you how

[tysonedwards]

At least with NASA, you can watch your money disappear into thin air.

rube would be proud.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:rube would be proud.

[Lord Bitman]

as opposed to lighting fire to rocks to create heat to boil water to create steam to turn turbines to move magnets to pull electrons to power capacitors (which are sometimes flywheels) to store extra power for peak times is so much worse than putting a flywheel in space.

Re:rube would be proud.

[Locke2005]

I suppose you think a microwave oven irradiates your food, too. Planes already fly through the beams emitted by radar installations all the time, and nobody even notices the heating effect caused by that. Does anybody have actual figures on the energy density of the beam used for space-based power, and how long it would have to remain on target to produce real health effects?

Re:Two clear choices

[cnettel]

The world population in 1850 was 1.2 billion. The estimated world population at year 1 AD was 200 million. I think you have some sound points, but your numbers are off by quite a bit, and thus the drama would also be more limited. (And I think fusion or "local" [Earth surface/orbit] solar power are far more feasible than massive transport of hydrocarbons from the outer solar system. The only commodity worth taking from there is water and hydrogen, avoiding the Earth gravity well.)

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Two clear choices

[aDSF762]

I love your comment but a 97% reduction in population world wide, can't we just give everyone a hybrid... ...and "smug" our way though the new millennium. ;)

Numbers?

[hax0r_this]

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?)

Re:Numbers?

[StarsAreAlsoFire]

You don't use panels 'directly'. You use thin film mylar/reflective surfaces and focus a beam to ( some central generator station ). The ( ) are because there are plenty of ways to take a concentrated beam of sunlight and turn it into energy.

I agree with the paper ( as much of it as I've read ) in that 'this WILL happen someday'. But it won't be anytime soon. Worth looking into? Ehhhh. Dunno. I'd love to see it. Personally I think researching it to be a better use of NASA's bucks than a moon shot.

But I also agree with the 'Really? Beaming all this power to central locations won't be dangerous? Come again?' aspect. I read somewhere that you aren't supposed to watch your food cook in a microwave, as there is enough stray radiation ( the technical term for light, not being a kook ) to potentially increase the likelihood of cataracts. E.g. the shielding on the microwave door isn't perfect.

I speak as one that has a BS in aerospace, and really really really wants to see us move into space. But I cannot condone spending money on this as a VIABLE source of energy for the next decade. I would HIGHLY ENCOURAGE investments in space power for *research* purposes.

Re:Numbers?

[Tisha_AH]

I love the idea of beaming power down from space to earth to provide us with electric power. Here are a few problems;

1. For a power source to remain stationary over North America would require a solar array in geostationary orbit (Clarke orbit or Clarke Belt) where we have commercial satellite systems. It is irrelevant to worry about collisions with geostationary satellites as the Clarke belt is approximately 165,000 miles long. The distance from earth is approximately 22,236 miles from earth.

For a closer orbiting solar array it will move across the sky very similar to other satellite systems. Some of the problems with this type of orbit is the significantly higher probability of a collision with existing satellites that would just tear through a solar array (assuming the array is some sort of high-tech solar producing fabric imprinted on mylar. This would degrade solar performance but would usually "kill" or incapacitate the impactor (satellite). Also, being closer to earth, the influences of the planetary geomagnetic forces will damage, short-out or degrade solar system performance over time until performance drops to a few percentage of the initial system capabilities.

2. There are two currently known alternatives for power transfer from space to earth. Microwave energy or space-based laser systems. Since microwave systems are RF systems we need to account for free space losses over distance. This is the same calculation used on terrestrial radio systems. Simplified, the calculation is;

loss = 40+20*Log(r) where r is the distance in kilometers.

What this translates to (roughly) is that around 1:150th of the power sent by the Clarke Orbit solar array would make it to the ground. This does not account for atmospheric losses, alignment issues or the increased losses when the solar array is not directly overhead.

This assumes we can make a very large dish (100 meters across). For a 3.6 Terawatt solar array we would receive around 24 Gigawatts of energy. The rest of the power would be absorbed by the ionosphere, polarization losses, diffraction, and atmospheric heating.

3. Another alternatives would be to use a series of lasers to send the power to earth. Currently our largest CW (continuous wave) lasers can beam about 1 MW of power. (this is a building sized laser). The theoretical power efficiency of a laser may approach 75%, the rest is wasted as heat, RF energy and unrecoverable losses at the laser). To move a Terawatt of power from a solar array would take around 1 million, 1 million watt lasers, all based in space, at a distance where we currently cannot reach with a space shuttle.

Talk about death rays in space. If there was a mis-alignment we could cook big swaths of the earth with a stray laser beam (sort of like standing in a giant microwave oven). These would also generate a significant amount of localized heating and we would need to convert the heat back into electricity (some sort of super solar cell from an old James Bond movie) or some type of Sterling engine operating at the limits of Carnot efficiency.

3. A giant extension cord, this would make copper even more expensive and lead to the removal of millions of miles of wire from people's homes. Heck, if we can string a power cord to the Clarke orbit, let's go with a superconducting space elevator.

I believe that the technological progress to achieve this level of space based solar power system would make the entire NASA budget pale by comparison. Unless we are willing to spend trillions of dollars we will not see a return for decades to come.

Re:Numbers?

[jstockdale]

Um ... not to nit-pick, but free-space losses are for isotropic radiation, and can be compensated for by a high gain antenna -- remember that lasers are also em-waves -- a perfectly focused beam, if technologically possible to generate, would travel through a vacuum indefinitely (otherwise, it'd be a violation of conservation of energy, no?). So, throw a well designed antenna system up there and although you still won't have 100% efficiency, it certainly won't be 1/150th of the power generated in geosync.

Re:Numbers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that about 1GW of solar energy reaches a square kilometer on Earth. That's during the daytime, on a sunny day, sun overhead, so let's say we only really get a quarter of that on average. 50% efficiency solar cells get us 1/8 GWh per square kilometer. 3000 square kilometers is an area of just 55 by 55 kilometers. There is no shortage of room on earth in suitable areas. So why would anyone put solar cells in space? The first thing that comes to mind is "dual use technology"...

Re:Numbers?

[rbrander]

I read the Economist article and noted the name of the scientist ("Mankins") who researched it.

I typed "mankins microwave transmission efficiency loss" into Google and the second link was an IEEE article with the abstract appended below.

Your number is 45% for DC-to-
DC.

So not assuming that solar-cell efficiency can make it to 50%, but cheerfully assuming that the kind of cells that will do well in an industrial setting space for long periods can reach today's in-the-lab max of 40%, your area comes to:

560 km^2 / 40% / 45% = 3111 km^2.

And so what? There's a lot more space than that out there. (See opening paras of Hitchhiker's Guide for how much.) The question is the available money, not the available space. Those 556GW of nuclear had a total capital cost of well over a trillion. (And a land area sucked up of well over 3111 km^2 by the way, add up all the mines and waste dumps and reprocessing facilities, not just the plants. And that's area we can use for other things, down here; not a lot of other things to do with 3111 km^2 of orbit.)

The Economist article is unequivocal: SSP would cost FIFTY CENTS per kWh. That's just awful, way worse than earth-based solar or wind, even backed up with 85 watts per 100W so that they are base-load capable.

But one lives, and allocates research dollars, in hope. I'd bump the fusion budget from $300M to $500M, and match that with SSP research funds...about $400M of which would go to "cheaper lift costs", the truly key barrier.

Space solar power programs and microwave wireless power transmission technology
McSpadden, J.O.; Mankins, J.C.
Microwave Magazine, IEEE
Volume 3, Issue 4, Dec 2002 Page(s): 46 - 57
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MMW.2002.1145675
Summary: Future large-scale space solar power (SSP) will form a very complex integrated system of systems requiring numerous significant advances in current technology and capabilities. Ongoing technology developments have narrowed many of the gaps, but major technical, regulatory, and conceptual hurdles remain. Continuing systems concept studies and analyses will be critical to success, as will following a clear strategic R&T road map. This road map must assure both an incremental and evolutionary approach to developing needed technologies and systems is followed, with significant and broadly applicable advances with each increment. In particular, the technologies and systems needed for SPS must support highly leveraged applicability to needs in space science, robotic and human exploration, and the development of space. Considerable progress has been made in the critical area of microwave power transmission. At 5.8 GHz, DC-RF converters with efficiencies over 80% are achievable today. Rectennas developed at 5.8 GHz have also been measured with efficiencies greater than 80%. With optimized components in both the transmitter and rectenna, an SPS system has the potential of a DC-to-DC efficiency of 45%.

Re:Numbers?

[JoeMerchant]

Think: mirrors, concentrated sunlight on a generating station in the desert - or, on unruly cities, or troublesome mountain ranges with AlQueda infested caves.

Re:Numbers?

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

Now I can't find any good numbers on the efficiency of this "beaming" energy back to earth...
I saw a documentary on this the other day on Japanese televison. I think it was called Gundam 00. We use space elevators to pipe the energy back down to earth and everything turns out ok until some long dead scientist sends some giant mobile suits to end all conflicts on earth.

Re:Numbers?

[Sehnsucht]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_War_Era_technology#Satellite_system

'After War Gundam X' even more appropriate.

"The satellite system is the most destructive and powerful weapon which was ever invented to be used by mobile suits. The satellite system was first used in the GX-9900 Gundam X and its Bit mobile suits of the Old United Nations Earth and it appears that only one unit is necessary to destroy an entire space colony.

To use the satellite system the flash system is required to contact a microwave station on the moon. The station then enables a laser lock with the Gundam and sends a microwave beam to load the weapon."

Re:Numbers?

[eonlabs]

It's also important to realize that this technology wasn't just described in Batman and Robin.
It was in Sim City 2000, which is significantly more likely to have a viable prediction of the future in it.

To be fair, the nuclear submarine was a pipe-dream when 20,000 leagues was written.

Re:Numbers?

[fatboy]

Path loss is path loss. You need to understand how large a "perfectly focused" antenna would be to compensate for path loss from geosync. At 1GHz, that's 185dB of attenuation. At 10GHz, that's 204dB of attenuation. At 100GHz that's 224dB of attenuation.

This is a stupid idea. The numbers make it a stupid idea.

Re:Numbers?

[truckaxle]

Yes that really sounds more practical. A few years ago the Russians tried something like this and failed, but learn from that mistake and move on. It is really a good idea.

A broadly focused mirror could even provide additional light and heat to northern cold dark metro areas in the winter reducing fuel and lighting costs.

Re:Numbers?

[mako1138]

I'd bump the fusion budget from $300M to $500M

Let's just hope that the US fulfills its ITER contribution this time around.

Re:Numbers?

[david.given]

a perfectly focused beam, if technologically possible to generate, would travel through a vacuum indefinitely

They're not just technologically impossible to generate; they're also theoretically impossible to generate. The beam aperture causes diffraction, which means that all beams diverge. You want to check out Airy Disks on Wikipedia for the full mathematical treatment, but very approximately, the beam spread is proportional to the wavelength and inversely proportional to the size of the aperture.

Since microwave antennae tend to be really big, particularly the kind of huge grid that a solar power station would use, and the wavelength is long, you won't get much beam spread in this situation; but you'll still get some, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Re:Numbers?

[JoeMerchant]

Yep, bring on the coming ice age - stop burning fossil fuel and just use nuclear power on the moon launch material to build mirrors as needed - much more quickly adjustable and targetable than greenhouse gasses or bio-based systems. And, if we overcook the Earth, we can also put sunshades in orbit, adjust them like a window blind to control how much sunlight gets down.

I really like the idea of a winter farm outside of Anchorage, or even on the North Slope.

Re:Numbers?

[James McP]

The Economist article is unequivocal: SSP would cost FIFTY CENTS per kWh. That's just awful, way worse than earth-based solar or wind, even backed up with 85 watts per 100W so that they are base-load capable.

I take it you ignored the part that talked about the military being the initial customer, since they routinely pay $1/kWh?

If 20% of the fuel used in Iraq is for generators and the cost savings is a fairly conservative $5/gallon equivalent (on prices of $5-20/gallon), that comes out to a cost reduction of 1.6M gallon/day x 20% x $5/gallon = $1.6M/day. There may be additional cost savings since you've reduced the supply tonnage by ~14%; I'm not sure if the Economist costs include ancillary costs, like security for fuel convoys.

This is not an immediate-results project so it wouldn't be live for Iraq. However the odds of the US *not* receiving benefit from this tech once it becomes available is low.

Depending on the actual costs by a full engineering study, this has the potential to be a double win, cutting costs for the military and advancing science.

Re:Numbers?

[rbrander]

Sure I read it. But the discussion here is about large-scale implementation, competition with 5 cts/kWh coal, saving the world from global warming, etc. Relieving the atmosphere of the army field emissions in Iraq is nice, but about 0.01% of the world-wide carbon load. (0.05% of the US population...)

As with many things, this may become a proven technology courtesy of the military being willing to pay 10X the competitive rate for it. But it will never be *larger* than the military field market unless it can drop prices down below a dime or so per kWh.

Yeah, the economic math doesn't work

[IdahoEv]

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.

 

Re:Yeah, the economic math doesn't work

[LandDolphin]

However, it makes people that care about the earth and its other creatures and don't want to pave over it with Solar Panels or Concrete.

Re:Yeah, the economic math doesn't work

[extrasolar]

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.

But doesn't this depend on the orbit? More exactly, doesn't this depend on the distance the orbit is from the earth? The higher your orbit, the less time you have in the earth's shadow. Consider the moon's orbit, which is much higher than we need, but consider how often the moon falls into the earth's shadow. When was the last lunar eclipse you've seen?

Re:Yeah, the economic math doesn't work

[WillDraven]

We could put the collecting satellites into a dawn/dusk sun-synchronous orbit and get near 100% light collecting time. Just stick relay satellites in geosynchronous orbit over the U.S. (or any other country we want to sell power to). In space we don't have this messy atmosphere diffusing our transmissions so we can bounce the power around a bit if we need to without too much loss.

Re:Yeah, the economic math doesn't work

[Yvanhoe]

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.

Space power won't solve the US dependency on foreign oil, but as you point out, it is something that could be developed given enough efforts.
I see a great benefit at space-based power generation and transmission : If it is transmittable to US, it is transmittable to almost any part of Earth. Maybe you can add a x10 multiplier on the profit made by selling this energy to remote islands which can't afford building power plants or transmission lines and who would be more than happy to cut down their dependency on the oil ship that sometimes doesn't come.
It is transmittable to any place on Earth, but could as well be transmittable to a lot of other places, in earth orbit, in Lagrange points, on the moon surface... This program could pave the way for missions requiring a lot of power (electrolysis station on the Moon's North pole, anyone ?)

Even if this doesn't prove practical before 50 or 100 years, it is not a bad policy to explore the possibilities nevertheless.

Re:Yeah, the economic math doesn't work

[nine-times]

The real issue that I see is that extra-planetary solar power is the most obvious source of power where we wouldn't have to worry about running out of fuel (at least as long as the planet is habitable). We may have to worry about running out of materials for solar panels, but it's hard to imagine getting to the point of creating an entire dyson sphere of solar panels and still needing more power.

On the other hand, I'm just waiting for solar power on Earth to pick up, for us to essentially pave large areas on earth for collecting power, and then to have all the environmentalists complain about that. I'm anticipating that at some point we'll hear about "global cooling" concerns, since efficient solar power would also take heat out of the atmosphere.

Nuclear power comes out looking pretty good, but with rising energy needs, how many years of nuclear fuel do we have? However many we have, I hope the human race has more years than that.

I think we're eventually going to have to look for some kind of science-fictiony source of energy. Hopefully by the time we need it, science and engineering will have reached a point where it's less science-fictiony. But in the mean time, I think there's real value in imagining these sorts of solutions, evaluating what would be needed to make them work, and working toward making them practical. That's how progress gets made.

Re:Yeah, the economic math doesn't work

[extrasolar]

You mean an orbit where the sun is always in view? Is that possible? It just seems that such an orbit would be way too slow and would fall into the atmosphere, as wouldn't it need to orbit the earth once per solar year?

Additionally, I don't know if a geostationary orbit is required or not, so that the energy beam doesn't need to move.

Re:Yeah, the economic math doesn't work

[smaddox]

I can't believe someone in Obama's camp seriously suggested this. He should be replaced immediately, as his mind is clearly up in the clouds.

There are two renewable energy technologies that are ready for mass deployment - wind and solar (photovoltaic and possibly steam generation). All others should be considered research projects.

The main reason photovoltaics is not a larger industry in the US is because start-up companies have trouble finding experienced workers. The technology is there. It is well developed, and it is scalable. Just take a look at CSG Solar and First Solar.

The US government needs to make a commitment to funding education in current generation renewable energy.

Re:Yeah, the economic math doesn't work

[catprog]

According to my data the energy payback is less then 3 years for solar PV.

Lifetimes of more then 20

= 6-7 times more energy made then produced.

Re:Yeah, the economic math doesn't work

[radl33t]

totally agree. I have 8 tires and 4 Al-Mg alloy rims in my living room. I'm probably going to burn them for heat this winter due to the favorable economics. end of story.

Re:Yeah, the economic math doesn't work

[Malkin]

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.

You forgot to take into account cloud albedo, smog, and other types of atmospheric attenuation of the sunlight, all of which substantially reduce the amount of energy collected by terrestrial-based panels.

Apollo was the wrong paradigm

[Baldrson]

Please review my statements about private launch services and the difference in policy with the prohabition of NASA from competing in communications satellites. Apollo was simply the wrong paradigm -- it was technosocialist. If there is one thing that socialism fails at miserably it is investement risk management of pioneering technologies.

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".

This Planet

[Barryke]

It says "this planet"

Nuclear power technology cannot be safely shared with most of the countries on this
planet because of proliferation concerns.

how refreshing!

Why bother with space solar power?

[Khyber]

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.

Re:Why bother with space solar power?

[mikelieman]

WHY?

The sun NEVER SETS in GEO.

and once you build the infrastructure to build/service the constellation of satellites, you have the infrastructure to go to the Moon, Mars, Titan and anywhere else you care to go.

This technology simply is the killer-application which will drive American domination of the Universe.

And if it ain't us, it'll be the Chinese. Your choice.

Re:Why bother with space solar power?

[modestmelody]

Though this is more about pie-in-the-sky this would be cool and inspiring stuff, practically, our best options right now are solar thermal power.

Concentrated solar power uses no new materials-- glass, steel, mirrors, steam turbines, water, and occasionally fancy salts that we've already invented. It's one of the only renewable alternatives that doesn't want any money for research, just help getting some of the start up money to use materials we already have and make here in the US to build up these plants. Though they're not price-competitive yet, most research suggests that once enough capacity is built, economy of scale will kick in and it'll be competitive with fossil fuel costs within five years.

Talk about the ability to prime pump a market.

Plus, concentrated solar works naturally with usage peaks and can be used for desalinization/purification of water which is great considering regions where there is little rain/cloud coverage is ideal.

Two things need to happen-- we need to build more terrestrial solar capacity, both concentrated thermal and photovoltaic, and more importantly, we need to construct better power infrastructure so we can deliver energy from high solar density areas (which are typically desolate and therefore don't have the power pumping capacity some areas have) across far distances.

Re:Why bother with space solar power?

[GileadGreene]

Actually, the sun does set in GEO. Just not for very long, and only at certain times of the year. Eclipse seasons for a geostationary satellite occur around the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. The seasons last around 40-50 days, with maximum sun-occultation duration of about 72 minutes. A discussion of the relevant orbit geometry can be found here.

Re:Why bother with space solar power?

[timmarhy]

no, you'll be broke thats what you'll be. there needs to be some kind of meaningful production to come out of the money you invest. not having that is what got america in the mess it's currently in now....

Re:Why bother with space solar power?

[Khyber]

Why? Lots of reasons, the most important being:

A. Cost of putting such a LARGE array up there.

B. Inefficiencies in power transmission (how're you going to beam it to the surface? Microwaves? Why not just harness it at ground level and store it in batteries, and cut out several points where conversion losses would be found?)

C. Maintenance costs/damage protection/prevention - just how do you plan on keeping these things safe from random space debris flying at ultrasonic speeds?

D. energy costs to build/deploy - these things would have to be MASSIVE with current solar technologies to get usable power after factoring in loss for transmission and conversion.

Need more?

Re:Why bother with space solar power?

[An Onerous Coward]

Well, if you assume the cost of getting the infrastructure up there is zero, space-based systems have some major advantages. There's more energy falling on the solar cells, and it spends almost all its time in full sunlight.

The big drawbacks are the cost of installing and repairing, and the fact that it just cannot be done small. The microwave antennae are about a kilometer wide, so you have to hook up a lot of panels to justify that fixed cost.

Still, once we have a heavy duty space elevator running, the rest is easy. :)

Re:Why bother with space solar power?

[khallow]

This technology simply is the killer-application which will drive American domination of the Universe.

There has to be a huge need to fill first before you can have a killer application. Space solar power (SSP) delivered to Earth is not the killer app because aside from some niche markets there are cheaper terrestrial ways to deliver energy. (The niches are things like military and disaster recovery logistics, that is, power supply to isolated locations.) These won't in my view be enough to justify space infrastructure supplied from Earth.

In the future, when one can build this sort of infrastructure much more cheaply, then of course, SSP might become viable. But as a technology that pulls us into space? I don't see it. The economics isn't there.

Re:Why bother with space solar power?

[unit8765]

I think I'd rather the Chinese waste money on this, and then just copy whatever they come up with, and save money on R+D.

Re:Why bother with space solar power?

[lotho brandybuck]

The sun never sets on earth, either.

It would seem much more effective to find 3 deserts, spaced approximately 120 degrees around the globe, then run and HVDC power transmission link connecting everything.

Or, you could combine solar power plants (either solar thermal or direct PV) with pumped storage systems. All realizable with present technology. There are many reasons we need to be in space. Solar power is not one of them. The sun shines all the way down here with only a 30% reduction in power.

Re:Why bother with space solar power?

[mikelieman]

All the energy we'd ever need isn't "nothing"

Re:Why bother with space solar power?

[Khyber]

I like the idea of solar/thermal hybrids.

I also have in mind an idea for solar/wind hybrids. We have Nanosolar out with thin, lightweight, printable solar panels. We have strong and lightweight carbon-fiber that can be used to build wind turbines.

Let's coat the wind turbine with the PV material from Nanosolar. No metals needed for power transmission since carbon is conductive and can be doped to be non-conductive in the places where it would matter (such as forming a trace path for power flow.)

Most wind turbines for power are located in a place with no obstructions such as hills or buildings, so usually there is maximum sun exposure under favorable weather conditions.

Bada-bing, you have solar/wind hybrid that's very feasible, doesn't require any tech that doesn't already exist, and can be improved upon with relative ease (relative being dependent upon new PV technologies.)

BTW This counts as prior art in case anyone tries to snag this idea and profit. MINE.

Re:Why bother with space solar power?

[doom]

A. Cost of putting such a LARGE array up there.

The size of the array isn't so much of a problem... you can build pretty light-weight structures in microgravity. However, boosting anything up from earth is a problem, if you've got NASA running the show. Some commercial start-up might crack the launch cost problem at some point, however -- as I under stand it, as far as energy expenditure is concerned, it isn't much different from flying across the Unites States.

Also, of course, space industrialization freaks such as myself really want to raid the moon and/or the asteroids for raw materials to avoid boosting it all out of the earth's gravity well.

B. Inefficiencies in power transmission (how're you going to beam it to the surface? Microwaves? Why not just harness it at ground level and store it in batteries, and cut out several points where conversion losses would be found?)

Do you have any idea how much sunlight is filtered out by the earth's atmosphere? You only have around 10% of it available down at the ground. Think of a solar power sat as a fancy "concentrator" solar system.

C. Maintenance costs/damage protection/prevention - just how do you plan on keeping these things safe from random space debris flying at ultrasonic speeds?

Well, most likely you'd need put them where the amount of debris is relatively low, and you'd need to think about redundant hardware that can deal with some damage.

D. energy costs to build/deploy - these things would have to be MASSIVE with current solar technologies to get usable power after factoring in loss for transmission and conversion.

Need more?

Yeah, I need more numbers, preferably from someone who's spent a few minutes reading about the subject. This idea is a solid four decades old, it's not like people haven't been trying to think it through.

Here, try this: space solar power

Re:Why bother with space solar power?

[Khyber]

The energy expenditure is CONSIDERABLY different. Flying across the USA is NOWHERE comparable to the energy expended just getting to speed to break free from the majority of gravity's pull.

Also, if you're gonna need fuel to get to the moon, you're gonna need fuel to move stuff from the moon, granted not as much, but what're you going to do, extract it from the lunar soil? Riiiiiight. We don't have that tech.

10% my ass, more around 20-30% and that's still more than enough for our entire planet PLUS. The entire state of AZ covered in PV would power the entire North American continent, the only problem there is storage and transmission. I'm still wondering how you're going to send the energy to the earth from space. Hell, the inefficiencies alone in just converting the gathered power is going to be nuts.

Good luck putting it where ANY debris is relatively low - The Perseids should be a good enough example.

It only takes someone with a decent understanding of engineering principals to spend ten minutes thinking rationally to come to the conclusion that space power is not something we need unless we're living directly in space. Sending it to earth when we already have other power sources to tap/hybridize on the planet makes no sense.

Quit looking for a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, it wastes money and resources.

Re:Why bother with space solar power?

[doom]

10% my ass, more around 20-30% and that's still more than enough for our entire planet PLUS. Great, let's use your figures (which are double anything I've seen elsewhere, but what the fuck). For you to win this point, you need microwave transmission loses on the same order, and they're just not there.

The energy expenditure is CONSIDERABLY different. Flying across the USA is NOWHERE comparable to the energy expended just getting to speed to break free from the majority of gravity's pull.

And if you SAY IT IN CAPITALS it HAS TO BE TRUE.

Also, if you're gonna need fuel to get to the moon, you're gonna need fuel to move stuff from the moon, granted not as much,

Yes indeed. Not as much. Thank you, that's the point. If you were building a lot of this stuff, you'd want to look into doing it this way. Of course, the pilot projects would be done with earth based materials.

but what're you going to do, extract it from the lunar soil? Riiiiiight. We don't have that tech.

We might if we'd started working on this forty years ago, but unfortunately there were a bunch of people like you around back then too. (Lunar soil has a fair amount of aluminum, iron, silicon and so on. Unlocking it all from the oxides takes some energy, but it isn't exactly, uh, rocket science.)

The entire state of AZ covered in PV would power the entire North American continent, the only problem there is storage and transmission.

Oh is that all. (Wouldn't you have objections from residents about blotting out the sun for an entire state?)

I'm still wondering how you're going to send the energy to the earth from space.

I have an idea: why don't you read something about it. That makes it a lot easier to pretend you know what you're talking about.

Hell, the inefficiencies alone in just converting the gathered power is going to be nuts.

"Nuts", yes, a technical term at last.

Good luck putting it where ANY debris is relatively low - The Perseids should be a good enough example.

You know, you seriously seem like someone trying hard to sound like you know something, but I'm afraid...

Two birds with one stone?

[DrEasy]

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?

Man I really hate scribd

[epall]

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??

Re:Energy from space - a bad idea in the long run.

[DrEasy]

I don't know, maybe if the Space Panel is deployed as some sort of Giant Mirror it can also cool off some uninhabited areas to contribute to global cooling.

I mean we are already exposed to all that solar energy, it's just that we aren't using it. With this proposal we would get closer to the source to harvest it more efficiently, and at the same time we could deflect it from areas where it's being wasted. The total energy received from the sun by the planet would be constant, or even negative, but here we would be making good use of some portion of it.

Gundam 00

[BobSixtyFour]

As seen on Gundam 00, clearly the future is lead by a ring of solar panels around the earth!

Re:Two clear choices

[The Living Fractal]

That you received +5 Insightful for your post is staggering.

My favority scenario (although rather unrealistic) is people marching into gas chambers while watched over by the Eco-Troops.

This is your favorite? Seriously? How very insightful that you are able to pick your favorite way for billions of people to die!

I find it intriguing that you think these potential futures are 'choices'. As if the collective of Humanity is actually going to do anything without being forced to do it! Name one thing Humanity has done as a whole that was a 'choice'.

It's as if you think that we had a choice going from your purported 200million limit to where the population is today. What, was everyone going to just up and stop fucking? I don't think so.

BTW, you are dangerously out of touch if you think the world cannot support more than 200 million people.

Pipe dreams, in the sky

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Pipe dreams, in the sky

[afxgrin]

Dr. Dickinson? :-)

Re:Two clear choices

[ionix5891]

you go first

Re:The problem is power control

[mikelieman]

Get caught up on the technology. They fixed that one a long time ago. Simply put, the ground station emits a pilot beam. Go study the topic, and you'll see that it's 1970's technology.

If Reagan had started the ball rolling, we'd have stations online now.

Space Frontier Foundation

[tekrat]

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.

NOBODY wants to reduce consumption

[mangu]

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 ...
  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.

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.

Re:NOBODY wants to reduce consumption

[timmarhy]

umm that would be me? i have plenty of cash to throw at a hummer if i really wanted to, but i drive a corolla instead.

on a whole i think we are all moving in the right direction, if we could just get rid of the stupid do gooders in government and get people in that look at science and not public opinion, we will be ok.

Two words:

[The Master Control P]

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.

Who do you trust with a death ray?

[victim]

Whenever you read "spaced based solar power", just replace that with "municipal scale death ray". Now decide who should be in control of it.

Re:Who do you trust with a death ray?

[afxgrin]

The power density would probably never be high enough to turn it into a death ray. Anything in the RF region would diverge terribly, and would need a multiple square km receiving array.

The death ray concern is the least of the problems behind this idea. Lasers really are out of the question as well in my opinion. What's the point of converting laser light with photovoltiacs on the ground when we could just do that for the regular sunlight that we receive? In addition to that, the dc to laser power efficiency for the desired wavelengths just don't seem to exist.

Re:Who do you trust with a death ray?

[JoeMerchant]

The power density would probably never be high enough to turn it into a death ray.

A 1" magnifying glass can make solar death rays for ants... any multi giga watt system capable of transmitting that power to the ground in a useful form is going to be capable of frying stuff. It may be "completely harmless by design" - but with what this system is going to cost to build, I can't imagine it getting funded without a military application onboard.

Re:Who do you trust with a death ray?

[bnenning]

The Justice League, obviously.

Re:Who do you trust with a death ray?

[afxgrin]

That's a poor analogy.

You're putting all the light at a focal point. This would be the equivalent of having the lens too close to the ant, with it out of focus... the ant will just be rather bright.

What I'm saying with the microwave beam is that you can't focus it that finely. Instead the system would be transmitting from many point sources, and the beam just can't be that easily focused without having a huuuuuge dish.

One of the earlier proposals from the JPL was to use a phase-injected array of magnetrons to provide a steered microwave beam. That beam will still be really, really wide ... remember the wavelength of EM energy we're dealing with is on the order of centimeters in length ... the EM energy going through your magnifying glass is nanometers in length. You can easily focus that energy with a 1" magnifying glass... when it comes to microwaves, especially from GEO, it's just not going to be that focused. Even if you scale this up to multi-gigawatts ... let's say 1000 GW - the entire US demand for electricity at the end of 2007. If that power was beamed down from the sky at 100% efficiency, over an area of land of 100km x 100km, that's only 100 W/m2 ... now if we reduce that down to an area like 20km x 20km, it's 2.5 kW/m2 - that's probably not safe.

But at 100 W/m2 it should be okay ... obviously there's no single 100 km x 100 km site that's practical, so you have different sites around the country... makes sense anyhow - you don't want all the power in one spot anyhow.

Every single paper explaining this project basically cites the beam as being highly divergent and requiring - a very large field - to harvest the power.

An anonymous poster further up however provides the best response about risks -

  - the amount of rocket launches required to implement a system on the scale we'd want would basically destroy the ozone layer.

That's not acceptable by any means ... that risks killing off large portions of the biosphere. Most photosynthetic plants really don't like UV light in any higher dose than necessary. It's one thing to zap them with a single short pulse, it's another thing to provide continous wave ionization of the epidermis...

The military application has always been the ability to have a power source anywhere the forces go in the world.

Death beam from above isn't practical using this system, they'd more likely use orbital death rods, fission reaction powered gamma/x-ray beam, or good ole missiles.

I vote the idea down simply for the damage we'll do launching that many rockets into space.

Re:Who do you trust with a death ray?

[JoeMerchant]

Anything on this scale would require a new approach, different from chemical rockets launched from Earth's surface - not only from the damage to the ozone perspective, but also from the basic economy - there are so many more efficient ways to do it that are only impractical because we haven't put in the initial development - the scale of this kind of project justifies the initial development several times over.

10,000 sq km (2.5 million acres) seems like a lot of land area to devote to receiving microwaves from space - how much could you generate from plain old solar power in that area, even with cloud cover? Now, how much could you generate from solar power in 1/100th that area if you put plain old mirrors in space to concentrate the sunlight, instead of a gee-whiz system that converts sunlight to electricity to microwaves?

With the mirrors out at GEO, they would be relatively defensible from ground based attack, and this system would have far greater military potential than the current nukes on ICBMs system.

Re:Who do you trust with a death ray?

[MozzleyOne]

Whenever you read "nuclear power plant", just replace that with "weapon of mass destruction". Now decide who should be in control of it.

Re:Who do you trust with a death ray?

[victim]

I can only use my nuclear power plants against my own people. The solar death ray can be targeted anywhere on the planet.

Re:Who do you trust with a death ray?

[victim]

Your numbers are likely off by several orders of magnitude. 100W/m2 is 1/10th the energy density of direct sunlight. i.e. you can do ten times better than that with a flat mirror, no concentration.

Who says it has to a be a centimeter wavelength? How about the 95GHz pain beam? (I haven't checked to see what the atmosphere does at that wavelength, I would suspect clouds block it at the very least, but given that light is shorter wavelength and it penetrates well, I'm fairly certain there will be something between cm and nm that also works well.)

Of course in normal operation your 1000 units would beam to 1000 different reception sites at a safe level, it is only when you want to destroy someone that you divert them all to your enemy.

Yup, but:

[John Guilt]

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.

Space colonisation

[John Guilt]

The fevered negative reaction this piece by Charles Stross produced makes me think he has a point.

Re:other discussions on change.gov

[synaptic]

lol

Energy is critical to solving the world's problems

[CrazyJim1]

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.

Hey... maybe what we need is...

[phorwich]

... a big ring orbiting an artificial sun. BaRingworld bringing change to you.

Re:Hey... maybe what we need is...

[phorwich]

or maybe... BaRingworld: BaRing the "O" with Obama.

Re:Two clear choices

[An Onerous Coward]

Questions I don't expect a decent answer to:

1) Why exactly does this depopulation have to occur over the course of twenty years? If you jumped it up to a hundred or two hundred, it could be done without a single premature death.

2) In a thousand years, what happens to the six hundred billion people living in the solar system, when the incredibly complex mechanisms we're using to get the hydrocarbons from Titan and the iron from the asteroid belt get disrupted, or start to become less productive? Aren't you just guaranteeing that a forced die-off will eventually happen, but on a much larger scale? Or do you believe that mankind can (and should) continue increasing its resource consumption forever?

3) Why do you peg the long-term sustainable population at 200M? Even the most blunt estimates I've seen from the people making such arguments put the numbers at 500M to 1B. The number of people the Earth can sustain is a matter of the way those inhabitants live and the technologies they use to bring about that lifestyle.

4) Is unemployment really a matter of personal choice? What happened during the Great Depression? Did 25% of the population just decide that idleness and sloth were the new black? Are the job losses of the last few months a result of a sudden uptick in moral vice?

5) Do you realize that it is entirely possible to reduce the amount of energy and natural resources that we use, while simultaneously maintaining or even increasing our standard of living? I'm not even talking about radical technological breakthroughs (though I expect such breakthroughs to happen as we pursue these reductions); existing materials can be used in radically more efficient ways, good design can greatly reduce the need for resource inputs.

6) Why do you arbitrarily demand that the processes that recycle our wastes be "natural?" If we build an electric car with lithium ion batteries, does the car have to be landfilled at the end of its life? Does this mean that we can only build electric cars as fast as the toxic lithium can be "naturally" absorbed back into the environment? If you try to pretend to answer this one, here's a hint: No, it is *not* environmentalists making the demand, nor is it required by the definition of "sustainable".

Proposed Design

[rlp]

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".

Re:Two clear choices

[icebrain]

This is your favorite? Seriously? How very insightful that you are able to pick your favorite way for billions of people to die!

I'm pretty sure he didn't mean favorite as if he liked killing a bunch of people, but rather that he thought it was the most ironic. Poor choice of words maybe, but I see what he was getting at. At least, I would find that situation to be ironic.

I do agree, though, that a path of simply reducing impact and shrinking, never stepping outside the magic circle of earth, is essentially collective suicide. Either we move on to other planets and the stars, or we eventually kill/starve ourselves off or die from a planetwide catastrophe (planet-killer asteroid, gamma-ray burst, etc).

dust

[zogger]

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.

Re:dust

[khallow]

Ok, so we have to solve the lunar dust problem. It's not going to make the problem significantly more difficult or complex. Sure lunar dust behaves somewhat differently than Earth dust and there are a few characteristics that make it a bit tougher both to handle and in its effect on equipment. But we have a lot of experience in handling dust and in creating dust free environments.

As I see it, there are two dominant problems. Figuring out how to make a self-replicating system using lunar materials (and we have modern society as an overly complex example of a system adapted to Earth) and delivering it to the Moon. We already know how to do the latter. The other stuff like lunar dust, radiation environment, etc is basic engineering.

We need big, dumb boosters

[jollyreaper]

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.

Very interesting...

[MJMullinII]

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 :)).

Re:Two clear choices

[bnenning]

The first alternative, which currently is very popular in a stealthy kind of way, is to reduce. Cut back on the emission of pollutants

Yes...

reduce energy usage

That doesn't follow. If we have energy sources that are abundant and nonpolluting (e.g. nuclear) we don't have to reduce energy usage. Of course that offends many greens for whom actually protecting the environment is secondary to Changing Society to Live in Harmony with Gaia.

What about space junk?

[free2create]

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

Re:What about space junk?

[free2create]

Also what happens when metal comes in contact with the transmission beam ?

someone's penny wise, pound foolish

[leftie]

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.

Re:someone's penny wise, pound foolish

[2.7182]

Do you really think that the money for this would come from that ? That's not the entire budget used for the ISS for example, and the shuttle missions. Special money is allocated for such projects.

And if your concerned about who gets how much, note that the NSF Math & Physical Sciences gets only about 150 million.

cost (in energy or money) vs return

[jschen]

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.

Global warming?

[A New Normalcy]

So we gather more solar energy, beam it to earth. THAT ought to heat the old girl up a bit!

CEO Comsat interference?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Two clear choices

[hartze11]

"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."

While your ideas are fantastic and entertaining, the fact is they are currently, and in the near future (e.g. 50-100 years) unrealizable.

We have a major problem of getting off this rock called Earth. Chemical rockets aren't scaling. We can't make them cheap and reliable and big enough. The space elevator is just as entertaining as mining hydocarbons off Jupiter.

I certainly wish I was wrong, but tell us HOW you would do these things, not just that we can do them with today's technology!

This will come about in the next decade.

[WindBourne]

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.

space solar power makes no sense

[speedtux]

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.

wrong analogy

[speedtux]

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.

Actually, Two Other Words:

[Dr. Manhattan]

The Nuclear Lightbulb.

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.

a bit off topic but...

[Ogive17]

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.

Space Solar Power does make sense, sometimes

[DanielRavenNest]

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)

Re:Space Solar Power does make sense, sometimes

[Fireye]

So, a SSP array would produce 5 times as much raw power as one on the ground on a sunny day.

When is it not a sunny day in space? There's a lot less weather outside of our atmosphere to interfere with solar power gathering. Granted, you have to deal with other issues, I'd be especially worried about large arrays of solar panels being hit by space junk.

Some have suggested sourcing construction material from the moon, and assembling panels outside of earth, which would certainly reduce cost if it is feasible.

Re:Space Solar Power does make sense, sometimes

[Teancum]

You still have to transmit the power to the Earth... and surprisingly water vapor also absorbs a great amount of the energy. A cloudy day on the Earth is therefore going to reduce the amount of power available from these satellites. So yeah, weather has an impact here.

BTW, if you thought global warming due to CO2 production was huge, just wait until you get the figures for what happens to that other 80%+ of the energy that doesn't get collected on the surface. It all gets absorbed directly into the Earth's atmosphere. Talk about anthroprgenic climate change. Has this really been thought through here?

Home based solar

[GreenCow]

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

[zogger]

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.

Re:depends

[khallow]

I'm sorry but lunar dust is an engineering problem. We know how to handle engineering problems. We've been doing it for centuries. You say you worked on a farm. Did you stop farming when your equipment got dirty? Of course not. There are two obvious solutions already: maintenance and creating a dust-free environment. For example, there's no reason that a remotely operated factory can't conduct its own maintenance remotely. And once you can create a clean room environment, you can cram a lot of industry in there.

Re:Land Use?

[smaddox]

The space solar idea requires huge amounts of land to capture the microwave energy.

This proposal is absolutely ridiculous. It's insulting my intelligence just to compare it to land based photovoltaics and wind.

Lets talkt about kilowatt and efficiency

[PermanentMarker]

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.

Re:Energy from space - a bad idea in the long run.

[Loke the Dog]

Yeah, you're missing something.

What you need to realize that all the energy humans produce is completely and utterly insignificant to the amount of energy the sun brings to the earth. Now, the thing with global warming and all that is that CO2 captures a very slight percentage of the energy from the sun, and that tiny percentage is also huge compared to all the energy humans produce. Even though it's huge, it only has a slight impact on global temperatures.

The solar panels in space would, in turn, amount to only a tiny fraction of the energy we produce, and as such, the heating from them could not even be compared to the heating that CO2 makes. It would not have any measurable effect on global temperatures.

Re:Energy from space - a bad idea in the long run.

[J05H]

The microwaves are tuned to be transparent to water - eliminating most potential atmospheric heating from SSP.

Second, the rectennae on the ground can be situated close enough to population centers to reduce transmission losses. Example - New England and New York get a lot of power from eastern Canada - about 2/3s of it is wasted in transmission. If we could deploy receivers near NYC and Boston we could help reduce that waste (which also generates waste heat).

Go run the numbers

[bradbury]

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.

Re:Energy from space - a bad idea in the long run.

[MikeUW]

That is true...but generally heat will be produced by the devices that ultimately use electricity. I.e., the energy has to go somewhere eventually - it won't stay in the form of electricity forever.

I suppose if the SSP arrays are positioned between the sun and the earth, then any energy they absorb would be countered by the shadows they cast.

I just figured that if 100 years from now SSP became *the* energy source worldwide, then we might see a gradual impact as more and more energy is beamed down. As long as it's energy that is already being absorbed by the earth one way or another, then it wouldn't really matter. But if there were arrays sending energy from further out - where the sun's rays would otherwise not touch the earth, this would result in extra energy being absorbed by the earth.

This would ultimately have some impact (if it ever really reached a large enough scale). Just like CO2 emissions which were similarly insignificant about 100 years ago.

Lunar-solar solution

[GPS Pilot]

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.

Japan is ahead of US on this

[Randym]

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/07/japans-space-agency-planning-space-based-solar-power-arrays/