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Space Based Solar Power Within a Decade?
Nancy Atkinson writes "A new company, Space Energy, Inc., says they have developed what they call a 'rock-solid business platform' and they should be able to provide commercially available space based solar power within a decade. 'Although it's a very grandiose vision, it makes total sense,' Space Energy's Peter Sage told Universe Today. 'We're focused on the fact that this is an inevitable technology and someone is going to do it. Right now we're the best shot. We're also focused on the fact that, according to every scenario we've analyzed, the world needs space based solar power, and it needs it soon, as well as the up-scaling of just about every other source of renewable energy that we can get our hands on.'"
The environment (and humanity) is counting on you.
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This is true - space-based solar power is indeed a very good (though not nearly perfect!) solution to energy needs. It also neatly solves energy locality problems - just install a receiver wherever you want, ideally. (probably not in the first version of the technology)
The downside is that importing energy from space upsets Earth's balance - but hopefully the new energy can be used to help remove some of the uneeded, less useful energy (atmospheric thermal energy, I'm looking at you).
But the potential is enormous. Coating the sunny side of the moon with solar arrays would provide something like 20 TW of power if I recall correctly - several times the total energy consumption of the Earth today.
Seriously, they just put a smile in my heart. It is just so stinking ridiculous that you ask yourself, "how in God's green earth did they EVER get anyone to pay them money to build that thing?" Who actually believes that you can put solar panels in space to generate electricity in a cost effective manner? Someone just bought the bridge.
It puts a smile in my heart because, at the end of the day, if we have enough extra resources in this country that we can afford to put them into such a ridiculous scheme, then the recession still isn't nearly as bad as it could be.
Awesome. Props to those salesmen.
Qxe4
you clearly did not RTFA. microwave.
The trick is beaming it back. They can either do it the less efficient way, such as what they're trying to do with wireless power chargers for phones and such, or they can beam it back as microwaves or as a focused heat and or light beam to a giant receiver. either way, the dangerous part is what happens if it somehow missed the receiver. it may become a weapon, or in the case of microwaves, make people sick and or kill them. If they can work the safety part out, it's a great plan though. P.S. I believe the article cites microwave as their preferred method.
How exactly are they going to get the power back down from space?
Microwave transmission.
My pics.
I think of Gundam 00
All they need are a couple of solar panels and a bunch of extension cords. I don't know about the solar panels, but home depot has 50ft extension cords that look pretty sturdy for only $20, and for the 20,000 of them or so that you would need I'm sure they could work in a discount.
Notably they fail to mention what is expected to be the long pole in the tent - launch costs. Even if Musk and SpaceX succeed, launch costs will still be at least an order of magnitude higher than what is estimated will be required for commercial success of space based power plants.
Apart from the fact I doubt bringing more energy on earth that way is fundamentally greener than existing methods, I am wondering what would happen to, let's say, one out of the thousands of satellites orbiting earth if it got caught in the beam? Maybe a good idea for space cleansing at least...
make people sick and or kill them
No, 20TW of microwave energy does not make people sick, it kills them right on the spot.
The weapon abuse is small, since turning a massive satellite takes time. That and you can always hit the solar panels with a nuke.
Even if we got our entire energy needs from this, the effect on the Earth's energy balance will be negligible compared to the effect of the additional heat trapped by our release of greenhouse gases.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Anyone knows what's the consideration for space debris? I can't imagine anyone in their right minds would invest so much money on something that has one chance out of a hundred of being destroyed by a flying screw or something..
If this article can be believed it's hardly as dangerous as you're making it out to be.
http://permanent.com/p-sps-bm.htm
Whenever I see space-based solar power I never believe its economically viable. Based on that quote, they recognize that its not viable in the current market, and that average energy costs would have to increase by a factor of 15 to 20 times in order to make it viable. They think that the trends in energy cost are going to go that way. Somehow, I think as energy costs increase we'll get more creative on the ground, expanding ground based solar power, wind, nuclear, geo-thermal, etc., improving efficiency and developing new technologies to bring those costs back down.
As others have pointed out, launch costs are the critical, incredibly expensive aspect. In order to make it practical, we need to drastically reduce the access cost for space, by at least an order of magnitude. None of SpaceX's most optimistic estimates, or anyone elses, make it more viable.
However, there is a practical path for development of SBSP in military applications. A few satellites and some trucks with microwave receivers on the back are very appealing when compared with the current method for generating battlefield power: supply lines hauling in diesel fuel to power good old-fashioned generators. SBSP has great tactical advantages, and may actually be comparable in cost as well. From here, we may very well see it gain civilian applications as well.
This is silly. Putting solar panels in orbit? Please.
Use the money to build nuclear plants. Don't bore me with the waste issue. There is no such thing as waste, just more fuel.
Other benefits might include transmitting the power to remote locations where generation or transmittal is otherwise difficult (Antarctica for example), and more efficient power distribution on the power grid. If the power could be transmitted to different sites without significant loss, I^2xR losses in power lines across the grid could be minimized. Of note would be peak hours, and sunrise/sundown. I'm not sure what the power usage graphs look like, but I'm assuming there's enough fluctuation that it would be useful to shift power as the time of day changed.
...but these people are the most optimistic businessmen I've ever seen. Implementation is going to be a nightmare. "If everything falls into place for this company, they could be producing commercially available SBSP within a decade." This idea of everything going perfectly for developing an immature technology seems naive. I hope the people can stomach failure after they are a decade in, because most space projects take substantial monetary investment, and if this green fad evaporates, their investment and dreams come crashing down.
If the beam is less energy-intensive than sunlight, then what the hell good is it compared to just putting out a solar panel? I assume I'm missing something here.
What is wrong with you people lately? Why the hell is the GP modded troll?
This project is an orbiting white elephant that would take an enourmous amount of energy to build, would supply only a tiny fraction of what we need at a ridiculously high cost per watt, and could easily be percieved as a space based weapon by other nations. If I didn't know better I would have to assume TFA is a lame attempt to discredit the viability of earth bound renewables.
Here is the sales pitch on costs: "The biggest challenge for SBSP is making it work on a commercial level in terms of bottom line," said Sage, "i.e., putting together a business case that would allow the enormous infrastructure costs to be raised, the plan implemented, and then electricity sold at a price that is reasonable. I say 'reasonable' and not just 'competitive' because we're getting into a time where selling energy only on a price basis isn't going to be the criteria for purchase.
This is total bullshit, cost is the ONLY criteria for commercial electricity generation, the fact that the costs to the environment are not accounted for in our current economic system is the problem.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
If current power plants get damaged, you don't need to send something up into space to fix or replace them. This is already going to be enormously expensive without the risk of putting equipment out in the open. Hopefully it's successful and more people will get involved, to lower costs.
An orbital tether could transmit the energy back to earth, as well as allow us a cost effective way into orbit so we can build the Solar panels, and create space infrastructure.
It seems like it could be made pretty safe. Have the receiver constantly sending a keep alive signal back to the satellite as long as the power beam is on target. If the beam drifts off target for any reason, the keep alive stops, and the satellite will stop sending down energy until it can be properly realigned. It does mean that you lose power for a bit, but that's probably preferable to losing power AND nuking some poor schmuck's house.
Space Based Solar Power (SBSP) is an economical way of delivering power to remote locations or areas isolated by war.
To deliver power to a certain places in Iraq and Afghanistan it costs well over $1USD/kWh, not mention the loss of human life.
The pentagon is seriously considering SBSP as a viable way to deliver power to not only these locations, but other places of humanitarian interest.
The technology to deliver and deploy SBSP payloads (for it will take many deployments) already exist. Improvements will undoubtedly be made, and with the hopeful completion of NASA's Ares V cargo launch vehicle SBSP will be economical for the rest of us. (under 20cents(USD)/kWh.)
As for the microwave radiation concern, it is not as scary as commonly depicted. (Can anyone recall the tale of the discovery of microwave radiation as a cooking tool--something to do with a Snickers bar melting in a pocket? [Who the heck carries a Snickers bar in their pocket?]) If the size of the receiving antenna is increased, the power of the transmitted signal may be decreased on a W/m scale. With a transmitter that can 'dither' the signal over a rather wide swath one can abate errors associated with tracking, solar anomalies and human error.
Military applications, however, are not quite as concerned with stray microwave beams.
Do not forget that SBSP is exposed to the sun for 24 hours--no interruptions!
On another note the Japanese are working on developing devices that may convert solar energy to transmittable energy in upwards of 40% efficiency by converting solar power to laser.
Look, we know that the future is in teleportation, and since I have this snappy name, I am the best shoot at it. Leave you name and my director of investment will contact you to take you money... err... I mean to offer you great investment opportunity.
Well they claim its clean in everyway, but it just makes me wonder one thing. If they take solar energy that normally wouldn't reach lower atmosphere and beam it directly to ground level what happens around the area where they beam it. Can it start changing weather, and what kind problems there will be when it reaches the scale in which it will be solution to worlds energy problems. I don't know it they would really have clean solution if applied to ALL energy use.
First problem is reliability. It isn't protected by earths atmosphere and there are situations in which magnetosphere won't protect enough.
Its one of those things, that a single meteor storm of small meteors that cannot reach the earth could literally take out ALL satellites they have, or some strong solar activity could make them offline for a while.
And worst of those is the thing that it gets broken and its beam starts wandering around.
Probably its not SO clean when considering ALL the emissions required for getting a satellite on orbit. Any way I haven't done any calculations on it so all is still speculation, unlike on some other green ideas.
Lots of "green" ideas won't be so green when applied to everyone on planet. For instance some "green" farming technologies double the area required for farming. Now if everyone would do that=double world farming area= bad for environment. ;) .
Biodiesel= maybe useful if done from waste. But try solve worlds energy problem by it and world doesn't have enough rain forest to convert to agricultural lands to supply all the demand for energy
©God
100% agreed, and there's no way that the launch costs are going to drop by the 3 orders of magnitude required to make this viable. I presume that his is an effort to extract "stimulus" money while the extracting is good, then fail later out. Someone will end up a millionaire and nobody is going to get any damn space power.
Brett
I forgot to mention that microwave radiation may adversely affect the atmosphere. (yeah, I wonder how many others are thinking about this...) No one knows what long term affects of pumping that much extra microwave energy through the atmosphere are.
The "greens" will never let it happen. They already go nuts when a wind turbine wacks the occasional eagle. Can you imagine the "environmental studies" needed to cover FLOCKS of birds flying through the microwave download beam?
Greenpeace: Stopping progress one idea at a time.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Actually, they could combine this project with the space elevator. As long as you have a long tether to a big weight out in space, why not make that weight a power generator and have the cable do double duty as tether and conduit.
J
He didn't play SimCity 2000 either.
You know how the latency in a satellite kills that way of communications for gaming, correct? Considering that light travels 180,000 miles per second, and that geostationary satellites are 20,000 miles away minimum, that is a good fraction of a second where the satellite can be knocked out by space debris or what not. Imagine the swath it's aiming at with just a small degree, we are probably talking at least dozens of miles.
OTOH, the energy would be distributed along that entire area, but still.
As another commentator pointed out here, a microwave beaming system would be seen by other countries as a potential space weapon, spurring a space arms race that we might not want to start right now. I think the only completely unobjectionable method of getting power down from orbit would be transmitting it along a space elevator a la Kim Stanley Robinson's trilogy beginning with Red Mars . But I suspect that before a space elevator would be feasible, the human race will have already perfected fusion power, which would rather solve our energy needs, wouldn't it? Indeed, fusion is always 30 years away, but a recent BBC report makes me optimistic.
Hey, the Delorean can make 117 trips!
What was once true, is no longer so
A rectenna is much cheaper per m^2 than a solar cell.
If SimCity 2000 is anything to go by this venture will result in a massive fire, followed closely by an alien invasion.
No I don't think so. Only advances I foresee are in making more portable, cheaper, more environmentally unfriendly electronic gadgets to distract the masses from the incompetence of their leaders. That or if all goes to hell we'll see amazing advances in shotguns and can openers.
Have the receiver constantly sending a keep alive signal back to the satellite as long as the power beam is on target. If the beam drifts off target for any reason, the keep alive stops,
Clouds, humidity, storms, LEO debris flying thru the beam, the Earth's rotational wobble, the Moon's tidal effects, and probably a dozen other factors I haven't thought of will all affect aim and focus, plus availability.
And what about when it breaks? There goes a large fraction of a country's electrical power.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
The renderings in the article show round or hexagonal collectors that seem to be radially divided into identical slices.
Pie in the sky?
Set your phasers on "funky"!
> And what about when it breaks? There goes a large fraction of a country's electrical power.
That applies to any power source you can think of. The usual solution is to have some spare capacity to cope with such situations.
The article does not say how much power is in that microwave, but I'm guessing it has to be enough to fry a bird on the fly.
I'm all for cheap power, but someone will have to clean those antennae every time a bird drops dead from flying into the beam
And let's just hope no planes fly by during the "testing" period
A rectenna is much cheaper per m^2 than a solar cell.
And 3 times as efficient.
Yah, that's exactly what we need. Huge solar panels out in space sitting out there just waiting to get hit by something and end up being smashed into pieces resulting in more orbiting space trash.
If we're going to do this, we need to re-invest in "StarWars" so we can vaporize any space trash that's out there. Or better yet create automated robots stay in orbit and clean up the orbiting trash for us and compact it and eject it towards earth to burn up (think Wall-E except in space instead of on earth).
The challenges of hosting this solution in space greatly exacerbate the problem, though.
To all those concerned about the power beam going off target and frying the neighbours - the easiest solution (even if it is just psychological) is to put the receiving station in the middle of a large lake or other body of water. That way if the beam does go off target all it does is slightly raise the temperature of some water (probably by an amount too small to measure). As I said - psychological. The same reason why the Sydney Harbour Bridge has four large pylons that are purely decorative.
As for using it as a weapon - sure, you could. And in doing so you'll be shutting off a large piece of the power supply to your own people. I think the greater concern is physical security of the actual transmitter. Bit hard to put barbed wire and guard dogs around a multi-square kilometre object 36000km above the surface of the Earth.
Little ovens.
Am I the only one who doesn't quite see how they intend to make this profitable?
I assume they're planning on geosynchronous orbit (the article mentions they are), since anything else will mean intermittent power and moving collectors. In that case, the typical launch cost is $20,000/kg, and the there are serious total weight restrictions per launch. Solar cells come in two varieties: Heavy and inefficient. Trucking and installation costs of solar cells here on Earth are what, $200/kg, if that?
The big advantage? Something like 3x the total incident power per unit area. Even if they somehow get more power (by utilizing UV light, for example, which the atmosphere mostly absorbs), you can't ignore transmissions losses, which are going to be nontrivial from geosynchronous orbit.
So let me get this straight... they're planning on spending about 100x the cost of a terrestrial system for 3x the power gain? Wow, what a business case! Let me sign right up, I want to buy their stock *NOW* before anyone else gets wind of this!
Even if we're incredibly generous and let them have a 10x reduction in launch costs (wishful thinking), then they're still off by a factor of 3x from matching, let alone beating, terrestrial solar power costs.
And no wait.. I forgot.. they still need a stupid huge ground station to collect the power! So, all that money they saved having to install ground based equipment? Still have to spend it! My back-of-the-envelope maths (probably wrong) is that if they use a 1 mm wavelength microwave beam, they're looking at a receiver over 1 km wide due to diffraction limits. Mmm... cheap.
As another commentator pointed out here, a microwave beaming system would be seen by other countries as a potential space weapon, spurring a space arms race that we might not want to start right now. I think the only completely unobjectionable method of getting power down from orbit would be transmitting it along a space elevator a la Kim Stanley Robinson's trilogy beginning with Red Mars . But I suspect that before a space elevator would be feasible, the human race will have already perfected fusion power, which would rather solve our energy needs, wouldn't it? Indeed, fusion is always 30 years away, but a recent BBC report makes me optimistic.
This may sound childish, but I'm sick of waiting for the future.
As you say, Fusion is always "30 years out". Though I have been a supporter of Nuclear Fission in the past, this seems to offer all the Pros of Nuclear Fission with none of the Cons (though I consider the cons of fission to be minor, I can not deny they exist).
If it is truly possible to do something like this in 10 years, then I say full speed ahead.
I mean, my God, we built the atom bomb in less than 5, and they were practically writing the physics books as they went along!
As I understand it, these Power Satellites require no new technology, just a massive re-tasking of currently available technology (Large enough launch vehicles, Microwave power transmission, etc.)
"Don't be a martyr -- BE THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY!"
It's clearly an impossible project announced just to leverage on the green and CO2 buzz to make money.
Wireless power transmission? Not yet possible!
Wired power transmission? Only in low-end comics and sci.fi.
Ground based receiving plant? Not yet designed!
Security? Not even taken into account!
Money from investments and stock markets? Yeah!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Here's a good link demonstrating the capability of wireless power transmission.
http://www.spaceislandgroup.com/biz/NASAPowerP1.mov
All they need are a couple of solar panels and a bunch of extension cords. I don't know about the solar panels, but home depot has 50ft extension cords that look pretty sturdy for only $20, and for the 20,000 of them or so that you would need I'm sure they could work in a discount.
You forgot to account for the duct tap to hold it all together with.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
Why bother with a nuke? You don't need anything approaching large yield to take out a satellite. A standard Air-to-Air warhead would do the job fine...
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
If you want to know the weight of a microwave transmitter, lift your 1000 watt microwave oven and multiply. They will put a huge microwave transmitter in space?
A microwave beam in the sky would raise NIMBY, not in my back yard, to the nth power. It would be NIMS, not in my sky; "I might get fried if something goes wrong."
The article says, "The basic concept of SBSP is having solar cells in space collecting energy from sun, then converting the energy into a low intensity microwave beam..."
Other objections:
Solar cells are expensive, and there is plenty of desert, where they are far more easily placed and serviced. Solar cells require servicing; they aren't permanent.
A "low intensity" microwave beam will not carry much energy. A high intensity beam will be dangerous.
Birds and lost airplanes will be fried if the intensity is enough to carry much energy.
Reflections and scatter will create difficulties with radio transmissions and radar.
In my opinion, this is possibly FRAUD, attempting to take advantage of investors.
Sage said SBSP will never be cost comparable with the current going rate of 6 or 7 cents a kilowatt due to the enormous set-up costs
The proposer of this scheme also says that "there are times in the US when electricity is sold wholesale for close to a dollar a kilowatt" so it looks like this is the market they're going after.
For it to be viable, therefore, there would have to be many occasions when this spot price was reached. If that's the case, I'd prefer to go with ground based solar for my personal electricity supply, rather than being dependent on a single[1] satellite up there beaming energy in my general direction.
[1] we've all heard recently what happens if you have two satellites too close to each other - and these puppies aren't going to be small, either. So the number that could service a particular location would be quite small. Eggs? Baskets?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
SERIOUSLY?! Is the solar power in space sooo much better? I don't care if it's 10x the power per square inch. It costs like $10,000 to put some on my roof and like $30 million to put some in space. It's beyond idiotic. Plus, they're going to beam it down with microwaves, right? Yeah, that'll never fail will it. Even if it has a laser system where if the laser line of sight breaks, the microwaves shut off, then what? The whole town is out of power every time that happens? And what country wouldn't consider giant microwave guns in space to be weapons. That's all they are is directed energy beam generators! You could set whatever you wanted in fire with those! And planes suddenly can't fly within miles of that area. What do we do when this supposedly catches on and there's a thousand of these microwave receivers across the country? We just don't fly planes anymore then? And what about animals? There goes a flock of geeze! And will it lose connection when it's cloudy or raining or snowing? When it hits a cloud, will it heat it up and cause some weird and bad effect like a giant lightning storm or something. This has to be the stupid, least cost effective, worst invention I have ever heard of in my entire life!!!
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
...uninhabited, and sunny some of them are too. ;-)
:-) for construction and maintenance, and don't require the "no-small-feat" type of accomplishment to find a way of beaming down the power without creating a death ray that will fry the neighbors at the first malfunction. (<theory=conspiracy>Or wait a minute, maybe that's the hidden agenda here...</theory> ;-))
;-)), AFAIK the likes of Circuit City don't stock superconducting nanotethers for space elevators that will double as a power line either.
Admittedly the energy harvest per square meter of solar cells won't be as much as in space, but arrays built in a literally more down-to-earth way are probably just a little more accessible
And no, to exclude further Star Trek solutions (besides inverting the polarity or remodulating something
Well, if you can engineer a war that hinges on the development of remote power transferral, then the rest of us will be happy to comply and exterminate you (or your patsy). Remember, we already have atomic bombs, so you'll have to come up with something impervious to atomic bombs but that could be neutralised by remote power transfer (???).
They'll store it as static on balloons by rubbing them vigorously, then the balloon will be popped and fall back to earth to be discharged. Replacement baloons will float up to the generator by using helium.
POKE 36879,8
We could shoot your nukes out of the sky before they reach anywhere...
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
Actually, you're wrong, the real question is why the hell are you up there in the first place trying to get power? There are literally thousand of square miles here on earth where you can put solar power panels that are 10,000 times cheaper. Yes, they may drop to 33% efficiency compared to an equivalent panel in space due to atmospheric absorption/reflection of the light. Yes, you may have to clean the solar panels here on earth more often, but there is nothing here that makes up for a 10,000 to 1 installation cost difference.
Until someone can explain that, this whole business model is all pie int he sky BS. This doesn't pass the laugh test.
Oh... and once you handle that hurdle (good luck), THEN you have to deal with the "how do you get it back to earth" question in a way that *maintains* the 3x power advantage you gained by being up there in the first place.
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
I would have expected better from slashdot. There is no such thing as renewable energy, it would contradict the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Damn neo liberal ecological right wing leftists, their brainwashing seems to work.
Earth is a beta site.
"Almost 200 million gigawatts of solar energy is beamed towards the Earth every second, which is more energy than our civilization has used since the dawn of the electrical age."
Let's see. 200 million gigawatts * 1 second = 0.2 exajoules. Worldwide energy consumption is on the order of hundreds of exajoules per year.
This article must be using the wrong units somewhere, but I guess that's just the status quo nowadays.
Based on that quote, they recognize that its not viable in the current market, and that average energy costs would have to increase by a factor of 15 to 20 times in order to make it viable. They think that the trends in energy cost are going to go that way.
No matter what happens to energy costs, space based solar cannot outcompete ground based solar. Space based solar can collect roughly twice as much power as ground based. (It's lit twice as long because there's no night, gains a bit from not having atmospheric reflection, but loses a bit in transmission.). So, ~2x power from the same array.
But what's the additional cost to put it up? The optimists think we might get the shipment costs of launch down to $100 per pound. Right now it's more like $10,000.
It is much, MUCH cheaper just to build twice as many solar arrays on the ground. Even if you have to build 5 times as many to have them close to where you need them, it is still dramatically cheaper than putting the damn things in orbit.
Prices CANNOT go high enough to make orbital solar competitive, because they would make ground-based solar competitive long before we got there.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Hello fellow Gundam 00 fan!
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
The trick is to build the receiving stations out in the desert or places where missing by a degree or two isn't going to incinerate Small Town, USA.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
You all talk like its obvious that wired transmission would not work...could someone please explain why not?
Space elevators seemed somewhat viable for a while, wouldn't this be easier still? High voltages are transmitted across land without too much hassle... have a balloon lifted power station on the way!
anyway pls elucidate why wired == not work
maybe I could start a new insurance company, and charge them much more than I would ever have to pay out, were there ever to really be such an accident. Just like the REAL insurance companies do...
Space based solar power is a useless idea. The earth's atmosphere is quite transparent to light, so you don't gain much by moving outside it. If you do everything right, you gain up to a factor of two because you can stay in sunlight much longer. But to get that modest improvement you pay many orders of magnitude more in transport and maintenance costs.
The biggest issue with space-based solar power, however, is that you're giving someone access to megawatts of power ready to be aimed at any point on the globe. The people who wan t space-based solar power want a weapon, nothing more.
Well, I guess it might be OK just so long as he doesn't pitch the planet into eternal darkness because of all the shadowing solar cells. Perhaps they should set them up on a exterior ring to capture the light that hasn't landed on the planet.
But that would be a rock solid business model: We'll capture all the suns energy and sell it back to people so they can have light and heat.
The other concern is the debris. Aren't these things going to be pulverized by all the debris that we have up there? This is becoming a real factor to shortening life expectancy. I think it might be a bigger problem with these satellites since they are all about huge footprint.
The problem with massive arrays of otherwise unused areas is the lack of global electricity grid to deliver the power from, for example, the desert to where the big cities are without massive losses on the way.
A space based power system has the advantage that the receiver can be placed near (*1) the population centers.
note 1: as near if not nearer than a nuclear power station for example.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
Your right in the basic point but you also missed the space based 100% on time if place at a correct spot.
This allows it to be a possible base load power generator. I don't think it make's up for your other points but it is an advantage.
Let's see the practicalities here:
1) Finding funding for building solar panels in space taking into account space insurance, multiple launches, space walk fees by NASA, etc.
2) Microwave power that can possibly fry the contents aluminium cans with wings that fly all over the world? It requires dedicated road to space. That costs money in many ways: First of all congressional critters and senators have to bought to introduce an amendment that would allow FTA and FCC to provide an exemption to existing air occupancy laws. Occupying a particular part of air and space 24x7 requires a lot of changes in laws and that costs money. Senators don't come cheap and with the ultra-clean image Obama is promoting, they are costly.
3) Downtime and Uptime for plugging into grids: Coal and Gas fired stations operate on a 99.9996% uptime. Even though the panels stay above weather, the downstreaming of microwaves are affected by Tornadoes, Winds, Storms, etc., This reduces the uptime. Grids don't like unscheduled downtimes.
4) Changes in Grid: It was set up primarily to draw energy from nearby coal-fired power plants and to provide a steady flow of electricity to customers. It was not intended to incorporate power from remote sources like solar panels and windmills, whose output fluctuates with weather conditions -- variability that demands a far more flexible operation. Translation: Storage and resuppy as capacitors or batteries or even to power compressed CO2 which can turn turbines to produce electricity. Is our Grid flexible?
5) Investment Returns: Investors of today expect quicker returns. Within 3 years max. The microwave alone will take about 5 years to setup not including space launch failures, damages panels and bolts, shuttle politics and ESA confrontation. Oh and i didn't include the cost of litigation to fight off patent challengers, copyright grabbers, and local politicians who would put a chicken in the microwave frying pan and show it to FOX as Fried, thus calling it "dangerous"
6) Enviro Nuts: All it takes would be one endangered spotted owl and an Eagle to be fried in the beam to bring the whole project down. With liberals in control and not republicans, they would surround the project to shut it down AND imprison the scientists who fried the eagle and owl.
7) Price of Oil: As an oil baron reportedly said to GM during the EV-1 days: "We can always drop the price of oil." All it takes for Exxon or BP to do is to drop the price of oil by the exact margin of profit of this solar project. Poof! There goes the investment.
8) OSHA and FCC(again): Damages to telecom networks and mobile systems will be high enough for OSHA to raid the plant. Plus FCC would probably put such a low threshold of voltage, that it would be useless except to power RFID chips in the FCC commissioner's passport.
To conclude, Peter Sage is a naive who has read too many "oil crisis" books and thinks starting and running a business in USA is easy.
Obviously he hasn't done it, yet.
Ask any small business owner in USA who has built a NEW business today.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
"Mom, I'm going outside to play"
"OK dear. Just make sure you don't directly come under the rectenna"
If we had a space elevator or launch loop or the like we would have a cable up there and no need for this microwave on steroids..
I'm afraid you're wrong on this one. Low earth orbit is defined as 100 miles to 1240 miles (according to wikipedia). So the *closest* you can possibily get with a satalite is 100 miles... now the problem is that if you're 100 miles above the earth you have to be spinning around the earth at a tremondous speed in order to stay in orbit. This means you can't really aim your power sending beam of whatever (uwave in this stupid article) at a single base station and you've got to be rotating A LOT to keep aiming this at the right spot. Very problematic. You're probably spinning around the planet once every 15 min or so. I don't care what population center you're aiming for, you're only going to be over it for a very short period of time.
Ok... so assume a geosynchronous orbit. This is now muuuuuch worse. You're 26,000 miles from the planet. This is not exactly what I'd call "near" a population center despite the fact that you can now be over it for 24 hours a day. Keep in mind the two cities on this plant can not be more than 12k miles apart.
Real numbers just doesn't back this crazy concept up in any way shape or form.
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
Coming to your local branch of the economy very soon - The Green Bubble.
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Because microwaves are a helluva lot cheaper, will work fine, and don't have "issues" of the sort that we simply can't currently see how to overcome.
But at least it will be sunny there for 24 hours a day, while the low orbit sucks in that regard.
Wouldn't inflatable, giant mirrors in space be cheaper?
So if solar cells became 3x more efficient you'd be better of using them? Come to think of it they don't need to be anything like that. Even a slight increase in efficiency or decrease in cost would make it more cost effective to use solar cells on the ground rather than a rectenna on the ground and solar cells plus a microwave emitter in space.
Of course if you had a space elevator maybe the economics changes a bit, but then again if you had a space elevator why not use it as a cable to transmit power back to Earth. Assuming the unobtanium you make it out of is a decent conductor of course. Still I read buckytubes would be a decent conductor.
Mind you it seems a better bet to try to reduce the cost per watt of solar cells on Earth than try to launch them into space and beam the power back. I actually think energy from solar cells will be very cheap in the long run because solar cell material will be built into roofs or sprayed onto the outside of buildings. Plus you can build arrays of solar cells out in the desert in the US.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Almost 200 million gigawatts of solar energy is beamed towards the Earth every second, which is more energy than our civilization has used since the dawn of the electrical age.
Did he mean 200 million gigajoules perhaps? A watt measures energy used per time. "A watt of energy" makes absolutely no sense.
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
There were no space based solar panels in SimCity 2000. You must have mixed it up with something else.
In SimCity 2000, normally you leveled the field, built a mountain an big as possible in one edge, and filled it with waterfalls.
Then you went to play mode, pressed pause, and filled the mountain with dams for as much money as you did not need to build the actual city. ;)
No need for the other types of power plants.
But there was nothing space based in SimCity 2000, except for the occasional alien that invaded you.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
You mean issues like heating the atmosphere to something deadly, and spreading of the ray possibly burning everything in a 10-mile-radius around the ground station?
I would not want to work in that station. No, thank you...
I hope it's not that bad in reality. ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Well more than likely it would be more cost effective to simply install landbased solar arrays out in the desert than to launch a satellite and build a microwave receiving station.
Also it is my understanding that AC is not very efficient for long distance power transmission. So building power stations in the middle of nowhere is less effective than power stations located near the consumers. DC is much more effective than AC over long distances, but the US doesn't have a DC infrastructure. Popular Science (or mechanics, I forget) had an article a year or two ago about how the US could re-vamp its energy infrastructure. It involved renewable resources (solar/wind/hydro), a DC transmission backbone, and local energy storage using compressed air energy storage (CAES). It was interesting concept, but would cost billions to even start implementing.
I distinctly remember setting up a microwave reciever power station in SimCity.
Umm, you are so wrong, one of the power plant options was satellite microwave. I remember it clearly, and it's mentioned in the wikipedia entry. Obviously you don't get to build the space based part, just the ground based receiver. As I recall, it was an expensive option and I rarely used it.
Oh no... it's the future.
Oh, the recession isn't nearly as bad as the one in the 1980s. Things will grow in the spring - farmers will buy fertilizer, trains and trucks will run with produce, factories will hum... An interesting thing about launch costs: If there was a band of solid gold circling the earth, at a height where the space shuttle can go and get 50 tons of it at a time and bring it back down, it won't be worth it.
Three things: 1) The current recession is ongoing and we don't know how much more GDP has declined since December, 2) at a glance, more "expected wealth" has vanished in the current recession than anything since maybe the Great Depression (valuation of publically traded companies dropped by more than 50% from near term peak, real estate collectively seems to have declined by at least 15% from near term peak by early 2008), and 3) the recession is global in extent unlike the 80's recession.
To explain my extremely crude "expected wealth" model, I look at a usual part of a recession, a large scale devaluation (in relative terms) of "productive" assets. In practice for me, "productive assets" means publicly traded stocks and real estate (I probably should include some estimate of labor value as well since that is at least as big as real estate), adjusted as well as can be for inflation. Viewed exclusively in that light, I don't think any of the US recessions since the Great Depression are as serious as the current one. Having said that, the Great Depression remains much worse with declines of more than 90% in the stock market total valuation (IIRC) and much more than 15% decline in real estate prices.
Also, assuming a payload of 50 US tons, the Shuttle should be able to carry around 1.3 billion dollars of gold at current prices (almost $1000 per ounce). Even at 2 launches a year with NASA prices ($2 billion a year fixed costs plus around $250-450 million per flight), you might even pull a profit. At current flight rates (around 5 launches a year), you'd make a huge profit (say around $6-7 billion revenue on $3.5-4.5 billion in costs).
A rectenna is much cheaper per m^2 than a solar cell.
Rectenna? Is that an antenna situated up your...
Never mind, I don't want to know!
Lol that are funny. You shud look @ dat. hahaha. suck goatse tubgirl gay man
Hey, it's better than a nuclear meltdown.
I am officially gone from
I wonder how long a GW satellite would have to operate to capture the amount of energy required to build the PV arrays and the rest of the sattelite, the rectenna, and match the energy consumed in producing and operating the spacecraft used to put it into orbit. Its my understanding that the amount of energy used to create PV arrays is pretty substantial alone...years worth of operation on earth. I hope this is a lot better both in efficiencies creating the modern PV panels, and in capture efficiencies.
The real benefit of this is that if we go full steam ahead, we get GEO capable reusable heavy lift out of the project.
THEN we own the Universe.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Don't forget that the Chinese and US have recently demonstrated the ability to destroy satellites in orbit. Assuming this works and is economical, do you really want to invest billions and become dependent upon a system that can be easily obliterated in a time of conflict?
obligatory: Let the sun shine in
When you recognize love in another and realize how precious it is, everything else seems so insignificant.
But at least that means we're only about 40 years away from fusion power.
The downside is that importing energy from space upsets Earth's balance
Depends where you position your sunlight catching satellite. If you collect energy that would have hit Earth anyway, then the net extra energy that would hit the Earth would be zero. A suitable place to do this is the Lagrange point between the Earth and the Sun (L1), and this would has the dual effect of providing clean energy and blocking sunlight hitting the Earth, reducing global warming in the process! Now all we have to do is to engineer some massive space based mirrors, and launch them 1.5 million km into space...
Let's do the math on this one.
Let's say we want to put up enough PV cells to replace just one largish power plant, say 1GW.
Using conservative estimates, and assuming everything works perfectly the first time, I get a cost per kilowatt-hour of close to $8.
That's mighty steep, like 80 times the going wholesale rate.
The numbers for those interested in such minutea:
watts delivered 1,000,000,000.000
conversion to AC 0.950
DC needed 1,052,631,578.947
uwave to DC 0.850
AC needed 1,238,390,092.879
Receiving ant. Eff 0.750
To recv ant. 1,651,186,790.506
Atm loss 0.900
from sat 1,834,651,989.451
xmt ant eff 0.900
to xmt ant 2,038,502,210.501
uwave gen eff 0.750
DC to uwave gen 2,718,002,947.334
Solar cell eff 0.150
Watts to s cell 18,120,019,648.896
watts per sq meter 1,400.000
avail of light 0.600
watts avg 840.000
sq meters needed 21,571,451.963
weight per sq m 5.000 lbs
cell weight 107,857,259.815
$/lb to geo $5,000.00
cost to lift $539,286,299,074.30
lbs/watt gen 0.010
lbs gen 27,180,029.473
cosrt cells/sq meter $1,000.00
cost cells $21,571,451,962.97
gen cost/watt 1.000
gen cost 2,718,002,947.334
tot cost 563,575,753,984.601
time to build 5.000 yrs
cost of money 5.00%
int factor 0.250
cost fin 704,469,692,480.751
yrs runs 10.000
cost/yr 70,446,969,248.075
kw gen 1,000,000.000
hrs/yr 8,766.000
kwh/yr 8,766,000,000.000
cost/kwh 8.036
current cost/kwh 0.100
overrun factor 80.364
I've been a "greenie" since I was a teenager in the 70's. The last time I heard of birds being used as an excuse to stop a wind farm was here in Australia. It was not the greens who objected but rather a right wing anti-environment minister who went "nuts" and cancelled a $200M wind farm because it would kill (on average) one orange-bellied parrot every 1000yrs.
As for Greenpeace I admired their stance on atmospheric testisng and a few other issues when they first formed but they have been infested with Ludites for at least the last decade or so and many of the original founders have subsequently quit in disgust.
Please stop conflating ludites with environmentalists even if they label themselves as such, it makes you appear just as ill-informed and foolish as Greenpeace's eco-warriors.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Yes, but you've overlooked the downward pressure it would have on the gold market. That may seem a bit pedantic, but if we were to see huge power shifts to space based solar, energy costs would also go down. It still only takes $8-9/bbl to pull oil out of the ground in the easiest places to do so. Coal still only costs $20-25/tn to pull out of the ground, even though it was being sold for upwards of $150/tn.
More importantly, the GP makes a salient point, even if his numbers were a bit off - it's currently too fucking expensive to do anything in space. As fanstastic as it sounds, the simple practicality of getting anything into space is far more complex than it looks on paper. A good 15 years ago I attended a smallsat conference in Utah, and one of the presenters/vendors had a very promising plan to lift payloads into space with a clustered booster on a (three?) stage rocket. I remember it primarily because he has a "dollar per pound" number which he so eloquently related to ground beef - about $1.20/lb. Now, that was per pound of thrust, not per pound of payload, but the upshot was that he could put a medium size satellite in LEO for hundreds of dollars per pound instead of the then-current $10k/lb that the shuttle was running.
Even if he was half the anticipated efficiency, he should have been the premier launch vehicle provider in the world by now. I haven't heard of him since. Being a high power rocket enthusiast myself, it's amazing how high we can send our hobby rockets, and even more amazing how far we are from suborbital flights. $2000 in expendables and 100lbs of rocket won't even get you a sniff at 100km altitude, even without any payload at all. And that's ignoring the fact that the cost to fabricate and launch such a rocket with nothing more to lose than the rocket itself would run well into five figures if you had to count the man hours it takes to assemble it.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"According to every scenario we've analyzed, the world needs space based solar power."
I wonder how many scenarios they analyzed. I can think of quite a few, where we don't need this extra power..
There were no space based solar panels in SimCity 2000. You must have mixed it up with something else.
http://download.cheatcodes.com/faqs/15152.html
Microwave
Cost: $30,000
Max. power output: 14,000 MW-h
Pollution: None
Max. Age: 75 yrs
I lost my sig.
The four words that tip you off?
"rock solid business platform"
So the "company" founders spend 30 years raising money, and incidentally driving lots of high-priced cars and eating lots of expensive meals and buying lots of property for their McMansions. Then, one day, they're off to another country with no extradition treaty with whatever money's left, and the project dies.
It's like the whole internet business plan thing.
"We going to sell useless widgets."
"What? Why the hell should we finance this?"
"On the internet..."
"...where's my checkbook?"
Cynical? Moi?
YOU DAMN BETCHA BUNKIE!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
First figure that the cost of putting a kilo in orbit is NOT going to go below $300, period. Not if you're lifting stuff into space with any sort of chemical rocket. So the cost of a kilowatt of SPS power is going to be MUCH higher. OK, you're PV cells are lets say 400% more efficient, but then you also have to build a giant rectenna or 10 and losses beaming power back to Earth then eats up 50% of your efficiency gains, so hey, it is only 10x more expensive than putting it in Nevada!
The other problem is we still have no idea how to build really large structures in space. Obviously it can be done, but anyone who thinks the basic engineering of that solution will not cost 100's of billions of $ is well, another O'Neil, and if he was even order of magnitude on with his numbers it would be happening now. It is a lot harder than people think. It is a lot harder than engineers think (who usually only underestimate by about 300%).
What we need is HUGE quantities of power. The US needs 15 TERAWATTS of renewable energy installed base in the next 20 years. The gating factor is cost, not efficiency. Instead of screwing around for 20 years figuring out how to build it in space, for no clear benefit, we need to just BUILD IT NOW. Time is a wasting.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
And 3 times as efficient.
And they can be made as a coarse mesh, so you can hang one over a cornfield or ranch land and still grow crops and cows.
The good is time. A land-based solar collection facility receives its maximum input of solar energy about 25% of the day, and works inefficiently or not at all when there is cloud cover. The amount of time energy can be collected is limited by the curvature of the earth - as the earth spins, the sun sinks over the horizon.
A solar array in space does not have to worry about cloud cover. And because it's many miles higher from the earth's surface than the land based solar panel, it can collect energy to beam to the ground for far longer - put it high enough, and you can get solar energy more than 90% of the day.
Considering the massive costs of putting one or more enormous solar arrays into space, I still don't see how this idea pays for itself. But after you've paid the construction costs, on an ongoing basis it's far more efficient than land-based solar.
Personally, I think we should be pursuing next generation nuclear power instead - there are nuclear reactor designs in production that don't use or create weapons-grade nuclear materials. And maybe Fusion power would not be perpetually 20 years in the future if we invested as much money in it as we spent on the Apollo program.
I understand that "space debris" is the evil du jour, but please try to imagine that you can count. 100kg of "space debris" hitting a million ton SPS isn't going to send the satellite careening about the sky, nor is it going to rotate the satellite to any meaningful degree.
Note that the satellite, while massing a million tons or so, will be, how to put this, thin. A piece of "space debris" will punch a small hole in it, and do damn all else.
If, on the other hand, we want to assume that ALL of the energy of the "space debris" is transferred to the SPS...
Hmm, worst case would be "space debris" moving in a direction opposite to the SPS (basically impossible, since all of our GEO satellites move in the same direction, but go with me here). So relative speed will be about 6100 m/s. Momentum transfer we're assuming is 100%, so that 100 kg piece of "space debris" would change the speed of the million ton satellite by about 0.0006 mm/s.
Which would change the orbit from (theoretically) circular to one with a perigee about 8 mm lower than before the impact.
Keep in mind that these are both (a) absolute worst case, and (b) heavily rounded. The actual deviation might be as much as half again my estimate above, which would mean as much as 1/2 inch deviation in a worst case scenario. In a more typical case, of course we're talking about 1/100000th my "worst case" estimate. You figure out what that is.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
There are NOT MASSIVE LOSSES IN THE GRID! "Although losses in the national grid are low, there are significant further losses in onward electricity distribution to the consumer, causing a total distribution loss of about 7.7%.[6] However losses differ significantly for customers connected at different voltages; connected at high voltage the total losses are about 2.6%, at medium voltage 6.4% and at low voltage 12.2%.[7]"
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grid_(UK)
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
I do see one potential problem nobody seems to be talking about. If you raise cattle on the same land being used for a rectenna array, after a few generations I'm pretty sure they would start firing laser beams out of their eyes and try to take over the planet.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
What's a "way shape," anyway?
It occurs to me that if we can get something like this working for Earth then we'll have a useful product for packaging up and taking with us to Mars - stick one of these suckers in orbit and roll out a collection mat when you land ... 4) Power!
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
You know, I think the real problem here is - how can you make people PAY for the power? If the power is beamed near a population center, how much energy will the populace be able to scavenge (with the right equipment)?
Mon chien, il n'a pas du nez. Comment scent-il? TrÃs mauvais!
How do your solar panels work at night?
Also made of water: clouds, frequently located between space and the ground. Anybody know what happens when you microwave clouds?
I'm thinking "scary weather" is one possible answer.
Please, correct me if I'm wrong, but even if it's fairly expensive to build and launch the array of space based solar collectors, couldn't the cost be fairly cheap as long as the nodes in the array have a sufficiently long lifespan? That is, the 'startup' costs are high, but once the nodes of the array are up in space, the operational costs are close to zero, aren't they?
So, if they are online for, let's say 100 years each (I don't know if that's actually realistic, but just for argument's sake), couldn't the cost per kW/h be fairly low? Again, I'm not sure you could actually expect each of the satellites to last that long - space has its hazards, like meteor collisions, collisions with other human created objects in space, and maybe other hazards I am not aware of, which might significantly reduce the average lifespan of the nodes?
I also thought that useful geosynchronous orbit space was getting crowded.
Also, what happens when another satellite in LEO flies through the power beam?
I find the "Well this won't solve all of our energy needs so why bother?" response to any new energy technology to be really irritating.
Why does everything have to be a holy war? Can't this just be a tech that could add a few percent to global energy generation? It doesn't have to be "The one true solution to all energy problems everywhere forever" to be worth pursuing.
Orbiting solar tech is a good idea, one that people have been thinking about for decades. We may or may not be there yet, but it's certainly worth study even though it isn't going to solve all our energy problems overnight, and even though there will be hazards with the energy transfer.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Maybe you should get a tinfoil hat....
33% on top of 100% peak output. The fact that the satellite can maintain a sun-synchronous orbit, so it can be in full sunlight all the time, is not insignificant.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
It's our giant microwave cannon, er, emitting power station. Trust us, we would never point it at anyone....
#-#
Ad Astra Per Aspera
A rough road leads to the stars
Because we can't even solve the main problem yet of making a tether that won't fall apart. "Oh, and it needs to be superconducting, too" probably won't get far with the engineers.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
The weapon abuse is small, since turning a massive satellite takes time.
So don't turn the satellite. Turn the emitter.
"Because there's no defense, like a good offense!" Like shooting ducks in a barrel!
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
Don't believe it. Losses through transmission are very low. The length of the longest cost-effective wire-based transmission is about 4000 miles...The US is only about 2,600 miles across. A centrally located power generation station would be able to supply the entire US with a reasonable degree of efficiency.
The cost of putting down the wire is the actual burden. You can only send so much power through a line without it either melting, or discharging too much power through the corona effect.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Okay, so I'm not a rocket scientist, nor an engineer on staff for a power company, or any such thing. However, having a college education has allowed me this much insight on this topic. Space based solar collectors offer no real advantage to ground power grids. However, establishing a space based solar array would greatly facilitate all future space missions and conceivably (read if built right) provide a platform for assisted launches, crap cleanup (space junk is a serious problem, it is like we are building our own private meteorite shower in orbit), and provide high intensity remote power for long distance missions within the solar system. Assisting the ground power grid would only be an added, and very inefficient, benefit. So, in conclusion, I am for the building of space based solar arrays, but trying to say that it will fix our ground power problems is fallacious.
The difference here is that most power sources are widely distributed (many separate power plants, solar arrays, or wind turbines), while if we came to rely on space based solar energy generation there would likely be far fewer "power plants" providing much more of our overall power. Now, if a coal plant explodes or whatnot, a relatively small region might loose power temporarily, but if one of these went out an entire country could lose power. Unless you had enough ground-based power sources to pick up the slack, but if you did that what use is the space-based source anyway?
I think you've got it backwards. DC being not very efficient for long distance power transmission was one of the reasons Westinghouse beat Edison in the marketplace.
that'd rock.
We totally need to try it.
For all of those who are doubting the costs/benefits, keep one thing in mind... How much money has the company that launched "spaceship one" burned through, and is continuing to burn through just to make space flight commercially viable? Or NASA burned through to get a human to the moon? Once it has been done, and proven to be a source of revenue, all sorts of companies will want to also participate in that market space, thus driving down the costs of all of the required prerequisites.
One more thing, once the solution is in place, all they would have to do is maintain it. If the company makes a small profit after all expenses are paid (including debt payments on the upfront capital costs), the original upfront cost really is meaningless. Example: say it costs 100,000,000,000 to finance the original project, and all maintainance costs (including financing the debt/labor/parts/etc) is 1,000,000,000/yr, as long as the company makes 1,000,000,001/yr it is a worthwhile venture. This is how not-for-profit organizations stay afloat. It's just carrying a debt several orders of magnitude larger than normal.
Energy that would have passed by earth will be directed to it. This is sorta like putting a big mirror out there.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
You might want to check the max payload landing weight. I get $352,000,000 (US) as the value of gold at that weight.
Is this the same Peter Sage that had an anti-aging company?
From one scam to another maybe?
The full Idea is to place the solar collectors solar orbit then create a network of satellites to transfer power.
For permanent power geosynchronous orbit to beam down to stations on the ground. This would also allow for transmission to remote locations via portable power receivers and possible to provide power to disaster areas.
Although low intensity microwaves are suggest the more viable is high intensity electromagnetic wave lasers (I CANNOT REMEMBER THE FREQUENCY) would allow for a smaller surface foot print. The technology should viable in 10 years to the point of prof of concept but full deployment is more like 20 to 30 years away.
The amount of energy that can be collected in space and transmitted is much grater than what can be produced on the ground using solar panels.
The laser technology is also proposed for transiting from one ground location to another remote ground location.
Asimov wrote about a very similar technology in his robot series and the technology is just now getting to the point were it seems outside of the realm of Science fiction.
The fact that the satellite can maintain a sun-synchronous orbit, so it can be in full sunlight all the time, is not insignificant.
Do they really plan on doing this? I would have assumed geosynchronous orbit, to make beaming the power down safer and easier. If the satellites were in sun-synchronous orbit, in order to make use of that power you would then need multiple beam-down sites around the world (politically difficult) or batteries (efficiency loss + massive increase in launch weight). You would also have to be constantly changing the beam angle as the satellite moved across the sky, as well as periodically switching to a new receptor, which would be more difficult and less safe than always beaming straight down.
3x more efficient? What about the night they don't have in space? makes it 6x more efficient plus you will have to store the energy to power the city wiil everybody sleep. What about the clouds?
Ok... so assume a geosynchronous orbit. This is now muuuuuch worse. You're 26,000 miles from the planet.
Does that really matter? It's not like there is a huge amount of atmosphere between LEO and GSO that would increase losses due to scattering, and you can get pretty tight microwave beams provided that you have large transmitter antenna. At worst you might have to build a larger collector on the ground.
There was a Summer Study done at Stanford in 1973 on the practicality of this very endeavor headed by Dr. Gererd K. O'Neill,(President, Space Studies Institute; see here http://space.mike-combs.com/TCoS.html)
The Moon can supply all the raw materials needed for the fabrication plant, the PV panels, and even the electronics fabshop as well by simply scooping the lunar soil, packing it into a bundle and using a maglev catapult. It would be insanity to try to boost that much equipment out of Earth's gravity well. They had calculated the total cost and amortized it over 20 years and if it had been implemented at that time, it would have most likely averted The Oil Wars and our greenhouse emissions would have already been on the decline.
Excellent points on terrestrial solar's drawbacks.
Two points to consider - more has been spent on fusion in 50 years than was spent on Apollo and who ever said that photovoltaics are the only way to go for space-based solar power? Leaps and bounds are being made in lightweight solar-thermal power.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
you did notice that he refered to the "receiver" not the "transmitter" as being near populations? Also please note that no serious SPS proposal has been proposed anywhere under geosynchronous orbit due to tracking and sunlight issues.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Did anyone go to their website and read up on the company executives? This guy Sage cut his entrepreneurial teeth on his company that produced anti-aging products.
.
Yes, these ideas have been around for awhile, of course efficiency can be better achieved with direct lines via space elevators, but that's another discussion.
[...] AFAIK the likes of Circuit City don't stock superconducting nanotethers for space elevators that will double as a power line either.
Yeah, they did, and I got there right after the doors opened for the liquidation sale, but they were all gone already. Crap. That's it for space-based solar arrays.
I'm not opposed to the environment, nor do I want to pollute the Earth, but environmental studies are generally used to prevent progress. Which is what the OP stated. What I am opposed to is using environmental studies and massive regulation to drive up the cost of things some people don't like so they are no longer a viable option.
We know what the environmental impact is of nuclear power. We have standard designs and working plants that we can already study. Hell, we currently track every single part in a nuclear plant, from the main reactor, to the screws on the last exit sign, so don't tell me we don't know. We could go to France, Canada or Japan and see the impact nuclear power has had on their environment or just ask them for the data. Nope, if a new nuke plant is started in the USA, there will be a fresh wave of lawsuits, protests, environmental studies and legislation. Is it any wonder that power companies are building coal fired plants and not nukes?
Screw the will of the people, screw democracy, screw the environment, cause some people thought 'The China Syndrome' was a true story and that they were really doing everyone else, the little people who just don't get it, a favor. I don't know which is more funny, the ones that recently changed their mind or the ones that are holding on to their delusions. Probably have to go with the ones that recently changed who are now finding out that all of the roadblocks that fell so easily into place are going to be hell to remove.
--slightly off topic rant--
Same thing happened to the prison system. People used to get punished in prison, hard labor, bad conditions, etc, but sentences were shorter. It wasn't perfect, but it made sense. Steal something, you get 1 year hard labor, hurt someone and you get 2 years hard labor, murder someone, you get 10 years hard labor. Then a bunch of well meaning morons decided that the prison system should rehabilitate criminals. So they took away the hard labor and bad conditions but increased the sentences so that the prison could rehabilitate the criminals properly. Never mind that they had no proof that they could rehabilitate criminals and no plan to do it even if they could. Flash forward a couple of decades and now we have a prison system that creates criminals and rewards them for good behavior. Yay for us! We're so enlightened!
--rant off back on topic--
Even technologies like wind and solar are feeling the heat from the need for environmental studies, which is kind of poetic in an Edgar Allen Poe meets Twilight Zone fashion. Hopefully they can do block studies on some common designs that won't need to keep paying and waiting for new studies to go forward.
It costs thousands of US$ per kilo to launch stuff into orbit, plus you still need to build the ground station.
You could build a bunch of solar arrays all around the Earth for the cost of launching one into orbit. And I'm not sure there is "no night" for a geosynchronous satellite.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
To quote: "But as wind energy developers move into wilder areas along the gorge's ridge lines, near canyons and amid shrub-covered rangeland, the potential for conflict rises. If bird studies confirm the fears of Oregon and Washington state wildlife biologists, the green-minded Northwest might be forced to weigh its pursuit of pollution-free energy against the toll on raptors and other birds."
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1122105/wind_farms_generate_bird_worries/index.html
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Has the thought occurred to you that sadly for too many of this world's nations, the requirement of nuclear power plants to handle fissible material at some point that might just as well be put to military (ab)use... could have been a major motivation for funding and/or allowing such endeavors (unlike the more recent -AKA reasoned- sealed and safer "nuclear batteries" of late) under the convenient guise of "energy independence"?
I don't think you can just call in the repairman on this one. How much spare capacity will it take to give you time to schedule a space repair mission? How much cargo would need to go up to make the repair?
Ops, I shuld have usd the prevuwe but in.
I'm trying to sleep. That's a lot of light pollution for the astronomers on the ground. There's potential here for annoying a great many people.
Ops, I shuld have usd the prevuwe but in.
The radiation from a cell phone is in the radio portion of the spectrum, it is NOT microwaves.
... just about anywhere, really. Radio frequency radiation is much less energetic than microwaves.
You can find that information on Google, or Wikipedia, or
I think the real cost of solar power is the acquisition of and environmental impact statement of the land used. My impression is that most rectenna plans do not call for much more power per square meter than solar insolation (~1.5 kw/m^2 on a good day).
Which begs the question, maybe it would be better to just have solar panels on the same land rather than rectennas.
Of course, rectennas could be relatively see-through at non-rain attenuated frequencies. So you could also put solar panels underneath them...
I don't think latency would be an issue. You don't need to time stamp the signal, just hear it. From the satellite point of view the break in signal would be instantaneous once it lost line of sight, even if that signal spent 2000ms to get there.
Pessimists.net - as if life wasn't depressing enough.
That's the only question about the operators of this scheme.
The investors on the other hand are simply morons.
The financial analysis is simple:
Solar intensity is about 100% more intense in orbit vs. on earth. Duty cycle is also be much higher (depending on orbit). Assume another 100% increase due to lack of nights. Give them another 100% just for good measure (weather etc). That compounds up to 800% assumed orbital solar cell efficiency increase. Ignore losses/costs in beaming power to earth.
Unless you get the price difference between putting a single solar cell into orbit vs. terrestrial installation (mostly lift cost) below the cost of seven solar cells it will be cheaper to put them in the desert. Making the solar cells in orbit doesn't fundamentally change that cost analysis.
There are whole discussion branches on this topic that should be modded -1 Morons. WTF has happened to /.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
But don't take everything in that article as gospel either. According to the fairly thorough studies I've seen on the subject PV or STP setups based in the southwestern US CAN supply 100% of our projected needs out to 2050 and beyond.
Like I say, SPS is a neat concept and I'm not against it, but the research that needs to be done on it is more about 'how do you efficiently get into space' than anything SPS specific. We ARE already doing that.
Notice how there were NO numbers anywhere attached to this SPS firm's site at all? Nothing about ROI or lifecycle costs, etc. There were some fuzzy statements about how its all so easy to do, but frankly I am in serious doubt and I wouldn't put badly needed research dollars into that bin if it meant taking them out of something else.
Best spend the money on making our PV arrays REALLY efficient because wherever you want to use them, space or ground, you'll want that anyway.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
First, a remark on the gold. Yes, adding 250 tons of gold would significantly depress gold prices since there's only about 8-10 times as much traded each year. You still be able to turn a profit. And if you can manage around 40 or more shuttle flights per year (40 flights per year was the target flight rate for the Shuttle, never achieved, of course), you'd probably be able to drive out most of the gold producers. I guess that would probably be somewhere around $15-30 billion a year plus whatever you'd need to expand the launch infrastructure to handle the increased Shuttle flight rate. My bet is that you could get marginal cost of an additional Shuttle per year under $200 million. Even with depressed gold prices, that's still a huge amount of profit per Shuttle flight.
it's currently too fucking expensive to do anything in space.
There's some things that are very high value: communications and defense satellites, for example. These are worth doing even at current costs.
A good 15 years ago I attended a smallsat conference in Utah, and one of the presenters/vendors had a very promising plan to lift payloads into space with a clustered booster on a (three?) stage rocket. I remember it primarily because he has a "dollar per pound" number which he so eloquently related to ground beef - about $1.20/lb.
I've run across a bunch of vaporware plans like that. No offense but paper plans always look better when you're not bending metal.
it's amazing how high we can send our hobby rockets, and even more amazing how far we are from suborbital flights. $2000 in expendables and 100lbs of rocket won't even get you a sniff at 100km altitude,
The two problems typical found in hobby rockets: 1) they're too heavy and can't get the necessary mass fraction (dry mass to completely fueled mass), and 2) they typically use solids and other inefficient propulsion systems. Sure you can get to orbit solely with solids, India showed that back in the 70's. But bipropellants, especially liquids like LOX/kerosene are more forgiving with the mass ratios. I think as amateurs improve in manufacture and ability to handle these more exotic propulsion systems, you will see rockets challenging the 100 km mark.
All we have to do is put a gigaton or so of unobtainium into geosynchronous orbit and then weave a cable 35,000 miles long out of it, lower it to the Earth, and then figure out how to make a vehicle that can climb a cable for 35,000 miles.
Worse yet, if we fail it is a serious problem. We can't even build suspension bridges with 100% reliability. Whoever thinks we're going to build a beanstalk right on the first try is probably wrong.
I put beanstalks into the 'who knows what might be possible in a century or two' category. Even if we DID know how to make one it would likely take decades or more to build it.
(there are better ideas than beanstalks, launch lines and fountains come to mind).
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Actually, you're wrong, the real question is why the hell are you up there in the first place trying to get power? There are literally thousand of square miles here on earth where you can put solar power panels that are 10,000 times cheaper.
On the ground, the Sun doesn't shine at night.
There is no feasible large-scale energy storage mechanism. There is no feasible trans-global power grid. In Clarke orbit, the Sun shines all but continuously (with a few very short daily eclipses occurring around an equinox).
Of course, SPS still might not be practical or cost effective, but the answer to your question.
Working IN the station (inside a very well grounded Faraday cage) would sure beat working NEAR the station (in a normal building).
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Why do they list power as MW-h? That sort of thing always annoys the hell out of me, it's like last time I went shopping for gas heaters and the salesman was crapping on about 3 gigajoule and 6 gigajoule heaters, I asked him what time period that quantity of energy was released over and he just gave me this blank stare as if I'd started speaking Martian.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
I forgot...
8. Anti-environment PM is awarded medal of freedom.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Jane Q, you've got some good points but it's still a bit mixed up. IAAME (I am a microwave engineer)
1/ A rectenna the size of New Mexico would actually be very inefficient. Narrow beams are the best way to efficiently transmit microwave signals.
2/ Correct, microwaves are not ionising radiation. Microwaves just heat you up and cook you from the inside out, they don't cause mutations and cancer like the other sort of radiation.
3/ Correct, 100 mW from the transmitter is not necessarily 50 mW at the target.... unless the target is close enough of course :) But microwave propagation follows an inverse square law, so double the separation and exposure drops to one fourth.
4/ Radiation from cellphones and from WiFi are both in the microwave bands. Low bands, sure, but definitely microwaves.
5/ 50 mW might sound big but it's nothing. Check out Microwaves101 for more about exposure levels: http://microwaves101.com/encyclopedia/biological.cfm
For what it's worth, I think this SPSS is a crock. Too expensive, maintenance sucks, and there are too many other options that are lower risk and lower cost.
"Waldo must figure out what effect broadcast power has on humans. Grimes is seeing a slow weakening of the human physique, and he blames the radiant power industry." -- from the Wikipedia entry on WALDO
I remember seeing some PBS show about the routine performance of the Roman warrior, how far they would march carrying standard kit, and how modern folks were not up to it anymore. It could also of course be those hormone-confusing-chemicals which the genome has never had to deal with before. Sigh.
Is perfect the space elevator!
While this is clearly impractical and there is at least one obviously more practical solution, I wonder if they have overlooked the light sail effect. NASA has established that it is possible to move small masses away from the sun using nothing but a thin film catching photons. It would seem to me that even if you could build this power station it would be stopping photons in proportion to the energy generated. That would mean a steady drift and the need for even more complexity to get it to "hold station" as the navy calls it.
The less-impractical solution is just to put thin film reflectors in orbit, with a minuscule pointing pod, and reflect photons down to Earth where you can put lots of solar cells you don't have have to boost anywhere. A parabolic reflector with adjustable focal length is trivial with thin film and micro gravity, so you just need to keep it pointed. This reduces the cost and weight of the orbital payload to something practical.
At some point the light sail effect would move these reflectors to the point where they would not be producing useful energy, but with a payload in pounds rather than tons, it is reasonable to call them expendables and a benefit in reliability to having multiple reflectors in place, in case of damage to one. As an added benefit, the energy from each reflector would be far less dangerous than a multi-GW microwave beam, avoiding the real danger of intentional redirection of the beam for terrorist purposes.
I think that any really large scale orbital structures will be built from lunar material.
Above some limit (10K tonnes?) it would make more sense to get the bulk of the material from the Moon, rather than lift it up from Earth's gravity well.
Another reason to press ahead with Moon colony ideas - even if people only spend 6 months or so at a time there. Most of the work wil be automated. Not to mention the science benefits.
Pretty much solved. No doubt there are modest engineering challenges, but microwaving power is certainly a well understood problem. No basic research seems required.
Honestly I think it is not ridiculous to build a prototype SPS, it will be a useful exercise even if nothing else comes of it. We'll know what the next set of problems will be and at this stage of the space game anything learned is likely to be applicable to a whole slew of other projects.
I just think it is far from proven, and likely VERY optimistic, to think that we're 5 years from commercial deployment of an SPS as these guys are implying. Having worked on some Aerospace projects on the engineering side in the past I think the basic rule of thumb is "if the engineers say it is a 5 year job, then it is a 15-20 year job."
It is probably a bit uncharitable of me to say so, but I actually think these people stand a pretty good chance of setting back SPS by another 20 years, probably a better chance of that than of succeeding. If they sell investors on a 5 year deployment target they are almost SURE to miss badly, and then we'll have a situation where 10 years later when it maybe COULD be done, nobody will touch it with a 10' pole because they lost billions the first time around.
I know their ancillary answer is "well, it just HAS to be done", but that is actually no kind of argument at all. All it says is that we are neck sheep in dip and modern civilization is basically done, stick a fork in it.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
No what we should be pursuing is manufacture in space. I.E. Asteroid capture and return, mining and construction in orbit. Why aren't NASA capturing that massive asteroid that passes 'close' in 2012. Even if we can't use it well for another 20 or 30 years it would be a huge bonus to science and the planet.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...