Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
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.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
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.
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
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.
He didn't play SimCity 2000 either.
Yeah cause a 3:1 ratio would suck...
50 tons of gold would be worth approx. $1,558,720,000
Cost of 1 shuttle launch $450,000,000
Ok so some math here, let me see carry the 1...
Ok that leaves us with a measly $1,108,720,000 ok your right fuck that idea, thats not worth it at all... hehe
Why is common sense called that if it's not common?
Nobody cared during the life of Nikola Tesla.
Although his idea was that everybody/everything would have a collector antenna to tap in. Not very commercial for him, the project was stopped.
Yes, granted the are gigajoules sent the Earth every s, for *free*, its still far to be the salvation from fuel...
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
Parent post is good, but it's really much simpler than that.
Cost per kg to send something to GEO orbit: $10,000
Cost of solar cells per kg: $400
Space-based cells produce about twice as much energy as the same panels on the ground.
So until launch costs drop to equal to the cost to build the panels, it'll be cheaper to just build twice as many panels on the ground.
Space-based power is a factor of 20 away.