Slashdot Mirror
This Satellite Could Be Beaming Solar Power Down From Space By 2025
Daniel_Stuckey writes "A NASA veteran, aerospace entrepreneur, and space-based solar power (SBSP) expert, [John] Mankins designed the world's first practical orbital solar plant. It's called the Solar Power Satellite via Arbitrarily Large PHased Array, or SPS-ALPHA for short. If all goes to plan, it could be launched as early as 2025, which is sooner than it sounds when it comes to space-based solar power timelines. Scientists have been aware of the edge the "space-down" approach holds over terrestrial panels for decades. An orbiting plant would be unaffected by weather, atmospheric filtering of light, and the sun's inconvenient habit of setting every evening. SBSP also has the potential to dramatically increase the availability of renewable energy."
Here's some hard numbers on "traditional" approaches to solar ground vs space:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/03/space-based-solar-power/
"You can even throw in batteries in the ground system without exceeding the space cost, and all the reasons for going to space have melted away."
It would be interesting if TFA had some hard numbers to compare against in terms of generation capacity vs launch costs vs upkeep/replacement schedule... Can't find anything myself though...
Because solar orbit at 10% earth distance would make the magnifying glass zoom around the sun multiple times per earth year. There would be no way to get the rays from the glass to the collector. You'd be better off having the collector out there with an amiable maser.
The $600 Billion that you quote does not include all military spending. quite a bit of the $2.3T you list for social spending includes military pensions, the GI Bill, and the VA hospitals:
That is about $1.1 trillion more than we took in in taxes. The way our 'National Defense' spending is skewed towards big contractors and away from the soldiers, I would probably guess that there are quite a few veterans in the 'Government Welfare' figure as well.
The 'All Other Spending' includes foreign 'Military Aid'. The majority of which goes to Israel, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Egypt to help pay for their military budgets. Total Foreign Aid comes to about less than 1% of budget. About $14 billion in foreign military aid, $23 billion in foreign humanitarian and developmental aid and $18 billion in 'other' foreign aid.
So there is military spending that is outside the pentagon's budget. A lot of it, for soldiers and veterans, gets included in the social spending.