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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."
A satellite directly beaming solar power down from space? We've created... the moon.
how exactly can it "revolutionize disaster relief" when it needs an almost 40km^2 (6-8km in diameter) receiver array on the ground to get the power beamed from the satellite. Disaster relief means fast deployment. How fast can you deploy a 40km^2 grid on the ground?
not even mentioning the fact that if you had 40km^2 of land you could just set solar panels there and do the thing for yourself with much less energy losses.
Japan is already working on a prototype solar power satellite. The ESA has an active project. I'd hope NASA could work with them on this one.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The energy needed to put solar cells into orbit is not recouped over their lifetime outside the protecting atmosphere. Solar cells are used on spacecraft out of necessity, not because they're cost efficient.
I know this is an unpopular view on Slashdot, where atomic energy fans come together to bash all other technologies, but solar cells work fine on the ground. You can fill the supply gaps with conventional power plants and still come out far ahead CO2-wise compared to the current power mix. Production has hardly scaled up, but solar cells are already competitive in some markets. The point of these stories about satellite solar farms is to give you the impression that there needs to be some extraordinary investment or innovation before solar power can be used. That's a lie, designed to put a drag on solar power. Solar power is ready to be used, you just have to do it.
would someone please at least a security engineer before they design the control API for the thing?
No. There's no pleasing security engineers.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
It seems like the fear of weaponisation is whats kept this sort of thing from being explored more fully, up till now of course, but I think that there are logical arguments that prevent this from being an issue. For instance if country 1 put up enough of these things they would be able to supply a large proportion if not all of their countries energy needs creating a significant economic advantage for country 1. Said country then decides to point one elsewhere to burn down a city or military installation in country 2 therefore breaking the International space treaty and probably many others, and the international community forces country 1 to dissasemble their SPS-alpha capability, causing them severe economic dissadvatage.
TLDR using these as weapons makes no economic sense.
In a cybernetic fit of rage she pissed off to another age...
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 only orbits that have no period when the sun is blocked by Earth's shadow ("night") are polar (remember the pictures of sunrise over the Earth shot from space by various astro/cosmonauts?). No single ground station could receive the power.
Also, there would be considerable photon pressure pushing the satellite(s) away from the Sun and, hence, Earth, plus gravitational drag attempting to pull the orbits around he Earth. Not a big deal for a short-term recon satellite, but these would be intended to there for years. Any of the rocket scientists out there know if the polar orbits are even vaguely stable, or will the satellite need boatloads of fuel to stay where it's needed. Of course, the beam of Earthbound power is a thruster, too, raising the orbit.
Put the collector at the Eath-Sol L1 and you've got to have REALLY good beam control to keep from raising the temperature of the entire Earth.
Sounds more like weapon than a power source to me.
Yeah, we're more of a Kardashian Type ''civilization' now.
We're doomed.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Modern nuclear plants have failsafe after failsafe. The control rods are held out of the core electromagnetically, so if the control system loses power they'll all drop instantly an initiate SCRAM.
The reactor can still be dangerous afterwards, though - the unstable isotopes produced as a byprodct of fission continue to delay. That's what happened at Fukushima - the SCRAM worked perfectly, rods dropped the moment the earthquake hit, but the earthquake and tsunami managed to destroy not only the cooling system backup generators, but also the switchgear that connecte up the backup backup generators and the backup backup backup 'We're really screwed now' emergency external power interface for connecting portable generators or feeding power back from the grid. There was a design flaw in there - although there were four seperate means of powering the cooling system and full redundency in the switching, both that switching and the redundant backup were located in the main turbine hall, a room that the tsunami flooded.
Despite all that panic though, Fukushima has a total of *zero* deaths as a result of any nuclear accident, and contamination of the surrounding land is minimal. The ocean took a lot of radiation, but all short-lived isotopes.