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?

[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?

[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.

Life imitates art

[mind21_98]

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

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.

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

From The Economist

[airfabio]

Recent space solar power article from The Economist

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

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.

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?

[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?

[chromatic]

Ah, you've been to Las Vegas.

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.

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?

[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%.

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.

 

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?

[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?

[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?

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.