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Japan Plans $21B Space Power Plant
Mike writes "Japan has announced plans to send a $21 billion solar power generator into space that will be capable of producing one gigawatt of energy, or enough to power 294,000 homes. The project recently received support from Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and IHI Corp, who are now teaming up in the race to develop new technology within four years that can beam electricity back to Earth without the use of cables. Japan hopes to test a small solar satellite decked out with solar panels by the year 2015."
... of a recession in June? They must be high on life now ... spend spend away!
To avoid repeating myself...
http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2009/06/12/space-power/
The DOD, as well as FEMA, should be pushing to have several built for the America. This would actually enable more private launches, but also give the DOD a means to bring energy into areas that they need. Transportation of fuel is EXPENSIVE. The ability to bring power into a hurricane hit area will enable quick power. More importantly, the ability to beam energy will have to be developed. That would enable many of our construction and open pit mining vehicles to move off diesel. Basically, that would help to drive new innovations.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Here's a random thought: If we were to detect (with sufficient warning) an incoming comet on collision course for Earth, could this thing be reoriented so the microwave beam begins to ablate material off the comet and change the trajectory?
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
This is why it's important. A 1GW power plant in space will be the largest space construction project, dwarfing the size of the International Space Station. Furthermore, since the actual devices being sent into space are relatively simple in comparison to a space habitat, economies of scale kicks in quite quickly. So sure, the first 1GW installed may be pretty damned costly, but what about the second? Third? 10th? Not to mention the spill-over technologies in heavy lift rocket design, solar panel construction (this should be a huge boon to solar companies), robotics, etc. Hell, even after the service life of the solar panels have ended, it would still make a super attractive large structure in space to anchor stuff off of (antennas/relay satellites, refueling stations for future long distance missions, maybe even a new space station and living quarters), or just to refurbish and extend its life for possibly hundreds of years.
Because in 2050, you version 2.0 will say
"Hey, guys, if we continue at the current rate, sea levels will rise by about 11 centimeters in *2150*. Let's just work on the problem later".
Nuclear power has those problems only because we throw out 99% of nuclear fuel before we use it combined with the fact that all our nuclear facilities are aging (because we stopped building nuclear power plants) and using 30 to 50 year old technology.
A modern feeder/breeder reactor would be much cheaper and is more "green" than this (remember all that rocket fuel you have burn to launch the orbital platform and a feeder/breeder can use up the "nuclear waste" of obsolete reactors as fuel with minimal waste).
There are only two advantages of the orbital solar/microwave plant.
1: The NIMBY sheep won't be upset.
2: You can use it as an orbital death ray.
The wikipedia article is a little vague on the lost-in-transit question, noting only that you can beam it one mile at 80% efficiency.
I found a paper on the subject the last time this came up on /. :
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1069437&cid=26187965 ...that boiled down to just 45% transmission efficiency. Or, to get 1GW into the grid on Earth, you have to generate 2.2GW of electricity up in space. Some is lost converting to microwaves and is radiated away up there, some is lost in space before it gets to the atmosphere, some is lost in the atmosphere, some is lost in the reconversion to electricity from microwave. The last two losses come out as heat in the biosphere. A little under 1GW.
And now for the important news: ALL electrical energy turns into heat except that which goes into making products like aluminum from aluminum ore...and even that turns back into heat in the very long run.
More news: all electrical energy except hydro, anything that involves boiling water to turn turbines, runs at maybe 33% efficiency. You'd have to burn 3GW of uranium, or coal, or oil into heat to get out 1GW of electrical energy in any earth power plant.
So, summary: to get 1GW of electricity by almost any means but hydro, you have to dump 2GW into the air or water, immediately, and the remaining 1GW goes into heat when it's used. This technology would dump less than 1GW into the environment immediately, and the other 1GW when it's used. Net SAVING of heat dump into the environment.
And it doesn't matter. Larry Niven's warnings in Ringworld about the trillion Puppeteers "drowning in their own waste heat" to the contrary, waste heat is a tiny percentage of the global warming problem; almost all of it comes from trapping more normal solar heat in the biosphere.
There aren't very many (or any that I know of) terrorist organizations that could hit a LEO object, and if they're talking geo-sync then you're really safe. I mean, governments have a hard time with that. Your only potential threat maybe would be North Korea (for LEO, geo-sync would be out of their range too). Terrorist groups thrive on cheap, easily deployed destructive devices. There's no concealing something capable of going 300+ miles straight up.