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."

Comments

My god, what has science wrought???

[kruach aum]

A satellite directly beaming solar power down from space? We've created... the moon.

Re:My god, what has science wrought???

[Dereck1701]

"Less than a day's worth"

You''re being WAY to generous, the US military spending for 2012, ignoring all of side costs (possibly as high as $500 Billion) is roughly $900 Billion dollars. Broken down to a "By Day" cost it is $2.46 Billion per day, with that kind of money you could probably finish development and put a significant amount of this concepts hardware into orbit. If any taxpayer money was used on this study it would probably be measured in seconds of military spending (~$28,500 per second) at most.

Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Nope.

[mark99]

Agree with the poster. I figure solar cells in space will not trump solar cells on the ground until we dramatically lower the cost of delivery to orbit. At the moment we SpaceX is quoting 4300 USD/Kg to orbit on a Falcon 9 (1.1 - still waiting on maiden flight Sept5), and maybe down to 1200 UDS/Kg for the not yet built or demonstrated Falcon Heavy. And that is to LEO, Solar Cells probably need GTO which is about twice as expensive. I can't imagine a space based array can be competitive at those prices.
Now if someone built a rail-gun based launcher, then maybe it could make sense.
And as AC mentioned, we are in the midst of a ground based solar cell revolution right now. Very cool...

Re:Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Re:Control API Security

[Kell Bengal]

would someone please at least a security engineer before they design the control API for the thing?

No. There's no pleasing security engineers.