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Chinese Scientists Plan Solar Power Station In Space
knwny points out this lofty proposed power plan in China. "The battle to dispel smog, cut greenhouse gases and solve the energy crisis is moving to space. If news reports are to be believed, Chinese scientists are mulling the construction of a solar power station in a geosynchronous orbit 36,000 kilometres above ground. The electricity generated would be converted to microwaves or lasers and transmitted to a collector on Earth. If realized, it will surpass the scale of the Apollo project and the International Space Station and be the largest-ever space project."
Will never happen.
It certainly won't happen until we get better tech, but never say "never". But TFA is about some 93 year old retired Chinese geezer "mulling" the idea. He is speaking only for himself, and has no budget whatsoever. There is no "news" here.
Putting solar panels on high altitude kites or balloons may make a more sense. They would be above most clouds, and could be tilted to always directly face the sun.
JAXA (the Japanese space agency) has done the maths and decided it will definitely work. They describe the system in detail here: http://spectrum.ieee.org/green...
JAXA intends to test the technology in 2018.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
> JAXA intends to test the technology in 2018
No, they don't. The project died, if it ever existed in any meaningful form, because it never had a budget.
It was a trial balloon sent up by the space industry to create demand for new rockets. That's the only reason this idea keeps getting floated, as an excuse to make more rockets or heavy launchers.
When your government is full of engineers, not lawyers, and when you can just ignore the flat-earth lobby instead of wasting half your funding fighting their just-because-we-can delays, you can test ideas like this. If it can be made to work, it would mean baseload solar.
The biggest unknown is the microwave link to send power to Earth. Would locating the receiving antenna ("rectenna") array in the desert avoid weather interference? Would the beam wander? I don't see it as being usable as a weapon because a huge structure in space is easily disabled from the ground.
The next-biggest unknown is availability of construction materials. After the initial proof of concept, lugging large amounts is metals up the terrestrial gravity well is not goiong to be an option. This is an application for "local" metals, from the Moon or from the Belt. Implementation would have to wait until this supply becomes available.
I think a large problem is going to be space debris - debris from previous launches and defunct satellites.
When the idea of an orbital power station was first formed in the early days of space exploration, space debris was not a problem. These days there is a huge number of tiny objects circling the Earth at high speeds - like bullets being shot at random.
The larger the orbital mirrors are, the more surface area there would be for collecting space debris.
Sure, you could place them in higher orbit, but then the mirrors would not get as much protection from solar wind from the Earth's magnetic field.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley