Slashdot Mirror
Japan Eyes Solar Station In Space
An anonymous reader writes "By 2030 [Japan] wants to collect solar power in space and zap it down to Earth, using laser beams or microwaves. The government has just picked a group of companies and a team of researchers tasked with turning the ambitious, multi-billion-dollar dream of unlimited clean energy into reality in coming decades."
Great , now we not only have to worry about stray godzilla attacks, now japan gets pew pew lasers
Godzilla is made, all that microwave radiation frying the Lizard DNA...
Don't tell Japan they had it coming to them!
Not going to happen. No use writing why AGAIN, I think this reply to the original post is just fine:
http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/here-we-go-again-with-the-spss/
History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Japan's just preparing for the near future.
My work here is dung.
I remember the game SimCity 2000. If you ran a city until about the year 2020, you could build a microwave power plant that did exactly this. If you entered the cheat code, "priscilla", you would get a menu full of fun new disasters. One of them was a microwave beam misdirect. When that happened, if you had a microwave power plant, about 16 squares next to it, equivalent to 64 houses, would start on fire!
However, these real life systems are actually much safer. The beam can be focused so that if it accidentally runs into something other than the power plant, nothing will happen.
...ever since I played SimCity 2000... But I don't want the beam pointing toward my head when I am not wearing my tinfoil hat!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
make sushi?
Yours In Baikonur,
Kilgore Trout
Reminds me of the space station in Asimov's story Reason. All we need is a robot prophet.
I do not have a sig. You are hallucinating.
I read this... uh two weeks ago? All the same things we said back then still apply (you'll lose ~99% of your power over the 20,000 mile beaming distance), et cetera, et cetera. Highly inefficient.
Now maybe if they converted the solar to hydrogen first, and then used that to fuel spaceships to colonize Mars and other planets, it might make sense.
(shrug). Whatever. I think mankind is about to experience a major energy drought. The last two centuries were built-upon the solar power captured over 100 million years (by evergreens). Now it's almost all gone. We won't die-out of course, but life in the 2100s might look a lot like life in the 1700s (cold homes, very little travel, and dark nights).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
We won't point it at anything else guys honest. Why do we need 50 of them? well one might fail.... and there just fun to build.
(using the American notation of 1 Trillion = 1,000 Billion). Anyway, they are putting the cart before the horse so to speak. They should really put their effort behind:
1) making long carbon nano-tubes on an industrial scale to build a space elevator. I read somewhere that with such "unobtanium" it would (only) cost 5 Billion to build an initial elevator from which supposedly they could expand.
2) support deep space exploration with the goal of eventually mining asteroids. To build a really decent sized elevator you'll need a LOT of material (megatons). Why bother lifting it out of the gravity well if you could just take a passing NEO and nudge it into geo-sync? Good practice for asteroid deflection also.
I doubt I'll see this before I die (I'm in my mid-40s) but this would truly, completely change the economics of spaceflight. As well as making space based solar power arrays even remotely economical. Who knows, maybe the language of the solar system won't be english or chinese but japanese? (A really really hard language to learn).
I think this post needs a 'frikinlasers' tag.
Shameless plug alert: Game server control panel
I'd be more worried about steering malfunctions that might end up like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8zsdIQe9UQ
The Japanese are wasting no time in implementing orbital elevators from Gundam 00.
The Agriculture Ministry is not in charge of Gundam.
Not yet.
It's a good idea. Plus, if N.K. keeps threatening, they can direct the beam away from the collectors and crisp them.
From: "[ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power" :-)
http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2008-November/046620.html
"""
I spent a long time around 2003 and 2004 on the SSI email list (now on yahoo
groups if you want to look at the archives) explaining why space-based solar
power will not in any likely time frame be of any value on Earth.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ssi_list/
And I want to make it clear I was a SSI Senior Associate (five year pledge
of money) back in the 1980s, and even took a (intro Physics) course from
Gerry O'Neill. So this in not just a casual disagreement. I am very sad that
the Space Studies Institute even now pushes an outdated agenda (well, now
they are moving to scaring people with asteroids, to the extent they are
still operating). I feel if Gerry O'Neill was around now he might agree with
this analysis of the current prospects for space-based power in the next few
decades, since he always was an adaptable and innovative guy, even if,
unfortunately, ultimately an unsuccessful businessperson with GeoStar and
LAWN with which he hoped to fund space habitation. I think by coupling the
two -- a desire to build space habitations coupled with economic arguments
for space solar power (or even other space activities) -- that one may miss
out on sooner realizing the dream of space habitation done for its own sake
(as a hobby).
The core points of the argument I advanced there:
* About a third to one half the cost of residential electric service is
maintaining transmission lines. So, at best, space solar even if *free* at
the ground station will be at best one-third the cost of utility power is
now at the home meter. As the costs of home power generation fall from
advanced manufacturing, the cost of home solar power (or wind, or
cogeneration) will drop below that cost at some point for self-contained
homes producing all or most of their own power, making space solar power
obsolete for home use. Since space solar power will initially be expensive,
it is non-viable right now. And since the cost of solar panels (like
Nanosolar's) is dropping way faster than the cost of space operations, and
since solar space satellites have a twenty to thirty year time horizon for
significant production, they are a non-starter and too risky investment
comparatively. Things might have been different in the 1970s, but it is
thirty years later. Also, one can make an argument for limited solar power
for large commercial facilities producing aluminum or liquid fuels or doing
laser launching, but that is only likely to be worth doing once we already
have a space presence since then only the incremental costs will need to be
paid, rather than expect solar power to pay to develop a space
infrastructure as O'Neill and others proposed (and people still propose).
I'm sure one can look hard at situations where transmission costs are
minimized, but this cost of transmission argument is a very deep one and
I've never seen it rigorously discussed. We know how to do solar on the
ground, there are ways to store the energy at night (molten salts, ever
improving batteries, pumping water up hill, compressed air, production of
synthetic liquid fuels, production of hydrogen, a superconducting world wide
grid backbone, etc.), and there are complementary technologies like wind
power and cogeneration by burning biomass that together with solar produce
fairly reliable power (as well as a lot of local hands-on jobs in the short
term). And there are organizations promoting R&D to make this all even better:
http://www.google.com/corporate/green/energy/
* A rebuttal to this is
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Helpless people on subway trains, scream 'My God' as he looks in on them.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Duh
. . . meanwhile, some space experts have questioned Japan's plans for a shark crew.
A NASA spokesman commented, "I'm just not exactly sure, but something seems not quite right with a laser satellite to be crewed by sharks."
A Japan space agency spokesman countered, "Sharks don't sleep, so we will be sure that they are always paying attention to the sensitive instruments, 24/7. And they don't get cancer, because of some mysterious substance in their cartilage. Sharks have survived for millions of years in the oceans of the Earth. Outer space is the next logical challenge for them."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Do not look at solar station with remaining eye!
Seriously... Dr. Evil.
If we remain in Afghanistan to stop AQ, then getting supplies into there is hard. A big part of this is fuel for electric power. This is the ideal situation for a small 10-50 MW space generator to beam it into bases, esp. forward bases. We can cut the power to the base, if it is taken. In addition, it prevents fuel from being used as a weapon. We could easily have a small version available within 2 years.
In addition, this same idea could be used in the US and other locations to beam 10 MWs into disaster locations. The ability to bring in say 1 MW into multiple locations within 1 hour would make a HUGE difference in say hurricane, earthquake, or even another 9/11.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Space elevators, orbital solar power station, and an orbital laser that can do massive damage with pin point accuracy. Just like you planned Japan, just like you planned. Now all you need is a bunch of rogue scientists building a base in a bunch of asteroids.
Where is the "Ignorant" mod tag?
If we suddenly start collecting more enegry from space and beaming it into the planet wont this also cause us to heat the planet more? After all this energy will not have been collected naturally to start with.
Tinfoil != Aluminum foil
When I think about beaming energy from space to ground, I wonder about the impact on global warming...
The process basically increases the solar energy reaching the surface to be dissipated (eventually) into the atmosphere. Thus it's a positive direct contribution to global warming. What offsets that? If it reduces greenhouse gas generation sufficiently I can see it might reduce the warming, but I never see that issue discussed.
Joe
and the satellites are exposed to alien attack.. this isn't a very brilliant idea...
whatcouldpossiblygowrong....
Could this be the beginnings of a death ray? The next super-weapon?
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Figure that a single SPS MAYBE covers a few square kilometers. Wikipedia tells us that the earth's surface are is 5.1 x 10^8 square kilometers--call it 500 million square kilometers. The amount of extra energy beamed in, when compared to the amount we get from the sun everyday, is unlikely to be significant. Moreover, there are homeostatic processes going on that tend to regulate the earth's temperature in ways that will have a much more important effect on the earth's temperature than any additional input of energy.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Ahhh yes, the economy of scale claim. People have been making that claim since the 1960s (Seahorse) but in spite of 40 years of new technology it still isn't true.
What new technology?
We're making rockets the same way as we were forty years ago. The options are solid or liquid fuel, and the number of stages used. They're all single-use as well.
The only "new" technology that's been seen is the guidance system which has gone from mechanical to electronic, and has been able to take advantage of Moore's Law so it became smaller.
The last time something original was tried and mocked up were the DC-X and X-33:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-33
Beyond that it's been more of the same, with a short diversion to the Space Shuttle (which hasn't changed since the mid-70s).
If the US is really serious about going into space with lower costs they'd bring back the X projects: experimental prototypes of new design to fund R&D. Each project would be a "throw away" object designed to test functional hypothesis and gather data and what is possible. Any patents created would be free to use by any American company, but could be licensed to foreign manufacturers to recoup the tax payer's expense.
This is not new:
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/gettospace.html
Would a flock of birds disrupt the beam?
More importantly, would the band "Flock of Seagulls" disrupt the beam? After all, they apperantly run, they run so far away. Maybe they'll run into the beam.
Version A)
The microwaves are going to ionize the atmosphere.
Breaking down earth's magnetic shielding from the solar wind.
And then igniting the entire atmosphere.
Unless you give me... ONE...MILLION...DOLLARS!!! MUHAHAHAHAAAAA...
Version B)
Our power needs will go up so far, that we will fill the whole area around the sun with solar panels, and live on top of them.
Thereby making us invisible for any aliens.
So we grow, and become more and more evil and power-hungry.
Until we set out, to harvest other suns.
And the aliens on other planets see sun after sun... vanish from the sky.
"Prepare for an epic billion-year long battle!
In a 40-hour movie, that will burst even LOTR's time frame!
Now in cinemas!"
P.S.: On a more serious note: What effect does this have on the atmosphere? I'd guess somewhat the same as in a microwave: Ionization and heating. The heating won't change much, I guess, when compared to the global warming of fossil fuel power plants. But the ionization certainly has a effect. What are the long-term results of those effects? :P)
And how big of a focus point on the surface are we talking about? I don't want to be at the spot where it hits when it's mis-calibrated...
If those questions are answered, it's a pretty good plan in my eyes. I always wondered why we erect power plants, when nature already gave us the biggest fuckin' fusion reactor one can think of! ^^
(Yes there are bigger stars. But try imagining them!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Giant lasers or masers from space!
But how will they get the giant sharks up there to aim them?
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
What no skynet jokes yet im very disappionted in you slashdot
Asteroid mining for precious metals and in-situ panel production has to be the only way to make this cost-effective. And there's no way we get all that up and running before fusion becomes viable.
The only possible advantage of space-based solar is that it can operate 24/7 and that it obviates the need for land. The land usage issue is a non starter. There is plenty of land. Hell, forget land, we can use oceans instead. And solar thermal or a slightly smarter grid with widespread electric vehicles can easily and cost-effectively fill the storage gap.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
for at least 3 reasons: The country that never sleeps because of a concentrated sunbeam from LEO. How much energy escapes while traveling down to Earth (Global Warming)? Plus this is totally weaponizable.
but I've been watching Solar Space Power technology over the last couple of years and must admit that it is the first truly "renewable" energy source that can give Nuclear a run for it's money.
If our Japanese friends are willing to be the Ginnie pigs, I'm betting they will have to honor of setting off a new international space race to see who is the first to receive %100 percent of their electricity from this source. Once the inevitable initial bugs are worked out, I mean, come one,...you're talking about *TERRAWATS* of power 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year with *no* greenhouse gas emissions at the source.
You can't tell me, no matter really how much it costs to get off the ground, that you can't make damn buckets of money off of this. I mean, with that type of energy source, it becomes completely reasonable to manufacture Synthetic hydrocarbons (which really, at their heart, only need electricity, hydrogen, and sucking CO2 out of the air). The main block to Synthetic Hydrocarbon fuel up till this point has been the enormous cost associated with supply the base-load energy needed to split hydrogen from Sea Water and the enormous pollution associated with producing that energy (which, in the United States at least, would most certainly be predominately from Coal).
I've long thought Nuclear would be the perfect solution to this, but am not under any illusions to the likelihood of people shedding the NIMBY syndrome anytime soon.
I just hope this doesn't become a victim of a brand-new form of "NIMBY" in the way of "What if they aim it at *my* house!"...or some such complete bulls...excuse me nonsense.
"Don't be a martyr -- BE THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY!"
These space platforms are going to require a lot of power, so are they going to have some kind of nuclear plant to supply the necessary power? Whatever they use, it had better be green, such as wind or water power. Maybe they could run it on methane from cows.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Wouldn't importing sunlight make global warming worse? Or would it rather leave a load of CO2 where it lies? (I didn't RTFA)
Winkey shortcut mapping for 64bit windows. WinKeyPlus
It is a bird-roasting food delivery system in disguise!
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
How about upper-atmosphere wind? You basically have a gigantic kite with a turbine in it flying waaaay up in the upper atmosphere where the winds are crazy fast and never really die down. In a place with an east coast like Japan you could probably fly it mostly over the ocean, too, so you needn't worry too hard about having it crash into a city if the tether snaps or anything like that.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
... as with practically ANY discussion of making money from space. People latch on to this stuff because it sounds cool, and pay no attention to the fact that it's an utter cost-effectiveness fail. The next time someone talks about mining $RESOURCE from the moon, or Mars, or my personal favorite, the asteroid belt, you'll see all the same kinds of arguments. "But there's He3 on the moon!" So? "But there's enough iron on Mars to last us the whole lifetime of the universe!" Yeah, and even if Mars was made of solid platinum, you couldn't economically recover it. "But the asteroid belt is full of valuable minerals!" Yes, and they're spread out over a quadrillion cubic miles of space, most of which is filled with 1) vacuum, 2) silica, or 3) iron/nickel, and we have plenty of all that on earth, thanks. How would you even prospect for the stuff, much less get it back to earth and make money?
People's common sense goes out the window when you talk about this stuff.
I'm betting you could find plenty of rooftop space to solar panels. There are only so many rooftop driving ranges anyone can use. And you could buy out the driving ranges and convert the roofs to solar a HELL of a lot cheaper than this satellite power thing. Or you could put them at sea. I don't think your objections are serious enough to block consideration of land-based solar.
As the kids say: [citation needed]. Turnabout is only fair play, so here's my citation:
And that's just wind. Solar adds a lot more to the available energy. Sure, we'll probably need some base load generating capacity (probably nuclear), but to say that other renewable sources are wholly inadequate to the task is a little off base.
And as for this:
Now I get it: you're nuts. Sorry to have bothered you, might want to mop the spittle off your chin.
Ok, again:
[citation needed]. Last I saw that over the entire life-cycle of a nuclear plant, it about broke even with wind and was only a little better than solar. More importantly, the up-front costs of building a nuclear plant are so high that you don't even start making any money until years and years down the line, and as a result, no one is willing to provide financing to build one.
So? Nuclear plants produce all their energy at one spot, where as wind plants distribute the generation over a larger area (and you can use all the land around the turbines to grow crops and stuff). This isn't an advantage for nuclear, it's an advantage for wind. A problem at your nuke plant takes all the generating capacity down right now. A power at a single wind turbine barely changes the total generating capacity at all.
I'm not sure who from the wind and/or solar industry pee'd in your cereal, but your objections to the technology are pretty strange.
Well, that sounds like it should be no problem at all! In reality: read up on the system known as ERGM - the Extended Range Guided Munition. This was to be a rocked-assisted round fired out of a 5" gun barrel. The program was ultimately cancelled in 2008 after almost 14 years of development. The reason: the innards couldn't withstand the G forces involved without malfunctioning. The bottom line here is that packing stuff to withstand very high accelerations is a lot harder than you think.
So call me when 1) we actually know how to build an electrical launcher big enough to launch something the size of a space power satellite and 2) we can do it without pulverizing the payload. Until then, this is about as realistic as planning for invisible unicorns to produce your power.
I saw that estimate too - it came from the company currently trying to raise money to actually build one. When you dig a little deeper, though, it turns out that the $5B number is based on... nothing. They have no idea how much it would cost to develop said elevator, so they pretty much made this up out of whole cloth. Which is why they're not attracting too much financing.
Not the asteroids again! Before getting into yet another round of "Yeah! let's mine the asteroids!" - sit down and think about this. What the hell are you going to get out of the asteroids that you can't get (much, much, much) more cheaply on earth? Consider that 1) the asteroids are made of iron, nickel, and silicates. So is the earth. 2) It's really, really expensive to get to the asteroids - remember, it costs over $10k/kg just to get to LOW EARTH ORBIT. You'd have to bring an entire factory up there, and there's no way that would be cost effective. 3) The asteroids are spread out over quadrillions of cubic miles of space, and their orbits are pretty chaotic. Even if you were somehow to find something more valuable than earth's crustal rocks, how would you return to the same location later? Also, regarding moving an asteroid into earth orbit - to work, a space elevator would have to use some sort of carbon nano-tube cable, and asteroids are made out of... not-carbon (mostly - there are a few carbonaceous ones, but you'd have to find one. And even with these, they're still mostly silicates with some carbon bearing minerals mixed in). And does anyone really think it's a great idea to park a giant rock in orbit and start grinding it up? Holy space debris, Batman.
Bottom line: it is fantastically unlikely that any of these space economy projects will ever get off the ground (so to speak), because there's nothing sufficiently valuable out there to make it worthwhile to go get.
You've apparently never seen either a wind or solar establishment. Wind farms are located in one of two areas: 1) open plains, and the surrounding land is farmed, or 2) ridgelines, and the land is too steep/rugged to be used for anything else. Solar plants are built all over the place on roofs, and we have absolutely tons of roof space left. The idea that we're somehow going to run out room to put this stuff is nuts.
There was a way to capture the energy released in a Ha-dou-ken or tap into the energies being released by super sayien auras...
I built one of these but the fusion reactors came out just a few years later and I didn't have worry about frying half of my city.
Fans of Star Wars and Akira will know at once the not so peaceful uses of beamed power.
Helpless people on subway scream
'My God'
as he looks in on them.
FTHFY
Isn't the real problem with this the fact that it would be capturing solar radiation that would not otherwise intersect with the planet's atmosphere? Given the concerns about warming, isn't adding another input ... insane? Don't get me wrong - I'm all for this, as long as they build the giant solar-powered fan and heat sink in space to go with it.
Too bad it'll never work out. The station deserves to be build for the sake of high energy beams randomly poking earth surface due to a software glitch.
I thought we were trying to get rid of global warming. but Might be interesting sight if they point that thing on a cornfield.
on a tectonic plate all its own.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
It's an efficiency thing. Ground-based solar cells might typically convert 14% of the light that falls on them to electricity. By comparison, the receiving antenna for the space power system will convert 80-90% of the microwaves that land on it to power.
Of course, to capture that power in the first place, the solar array in space has to cover several times as much area as the receiving patch down on the earth. A solar array of the same size would capture about 44% more energy by being above the atmosphere.
You can see some of the relevant math in the Wikipedia article, in particular in the safety section:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power