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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."
This stupid idea gets floated every few years. It doesn't work, even in theory. Do the math yourself.
https://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2012/03/17/the-maury-equation-redux/
That is quite surprising, because China is one of the world's biggest manufacturers of solar panels, and has a lot of open area with a lot of sunshine. An much easier and much cheaper solution seems to be at hand. This makes me think that the orbital city-zappe... uh... I mean... solar power plant is not entirely what it appears to be.
This interesting idea and technological endeavor was proposed in the 1960s maybe it was also proposed before, but that is were I read first about it - in a book from the 1960s. Later they did not build it because it was so incredible expensive to get all the materials up, repair it in space, and keep its focus on the same spot on the ground. Next, they will figure out that placing panels on roofs is much more efficient even though it will not work in their metropolises as the air is too polluted. Anyway, they have enough free country side to go for it.
Either this system is implemented and a new era of clean, renewable energy from our single star is to be realized from the heart of the orient, or, takeaway from xishuangbanna goes from 15 minutes to 2 for the crispy pork belly.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I remember doing this in SimCity 2000. The downside was that every once in a while the sattelite would stray from its intended target and vapoirse some random building near the receiver....
That's equivalent to 12 of Beijing's Tian'anmen Square, the largest public square in the world, or nearly two New York Central Parks.
How many football fields is that? (American football). I hope when the specs are released for this space station, the length is reported in Library of Congresses so i can understand it.
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Talking about something and planning it are two different things. It appears whoever submitted this article fabricated the idea that this is being 'planned', or maybe its a problem with reading comprehension. It is clearly not being planned.
What's with all the "mulling"?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Is it getting a little warm in here?
Perhaps a vote on the subject: On the left the Mull opponents; on the right the Mull siders.
Oops! We accidentally aimed it at Tibet.
1. China lacks a lot of knowledge when it comes to building and maintaining large things in space...
2. Imagine China could get this to work, there's so much lost in the down link due to the atmosphere you'd need a REALLY powerful microwave emitter or laser, at which point you've now got a death ray in orbit. There are pretty strict rules about NOT militarizing space and nobody would be cool with a country having their own personal death star in orbit.
3. If instead they decided to use low power, the collector on the ground would have to be so massive, it would have been cheaper to just invest that money into getting fusion to actually work.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Even if a solar panel in Geosynchronous orbit generated 100x more energy than an equivalent panel on earth (which seems unlikely), it makes no economic sense to put it there since you could put several hundred panels on the Earth's surface for a small fraction of the cost. In fact you could fill an entire football field full of panels for a fraction of the cost of the space based solution. Just through sheer numbers they would generate more than the space-based panel even on a cloudy day.
Simple repairs are also orders of magnitude cheaper for the ground-based solution.
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.
Design it as an enormous spherical object covered with solar panels and a large antenna to beam power. And a thermal port ...
[Insert pithy quote here]
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
RTFA. He was an integral part of their rocket program - he's a smart guy - and he specifically calls out what technologies need to be developed to make this economically viable. Your comment comes across like you are a racist, young, and stupid ass hole. Hope that was your goal.
NASA, JAXA and similar outfit drool at the perspective to have a long term project where they need to send a lot of cargo up, means a lot of contract and assured budget.
Those folk tells the space solar collector are possible and desirable.
The folk at energy production on the other hand use a calculator for cost of setting up, maintaining compared to generated energy and they usually view that as possible but not profitable compared to a similarly sized (in megawatt) installation on earth with physical batteries.
Sorry I i trust far more than who are involved i energy generation, than those involved into profiting by cargoeing the stuff.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Have you heard of this thing called light pressure? How do you plan on keeping this magical collector in place?
Mostly random stuff.
It's all fun and games until Elon Musk burns " CHA " on the face of the moon.
Surely that should be "ELO" ?!
We've got a 4x10^26 Watt fusion reactor only eight minutes away. Eventually somebody's going to figure out how to use it.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I suggest stopping the moon in it's orbit and making it geosynchronous, then spray painting it with a highly reflective silver paint. That way we can get enough sunlight at night to compensate with ground-based solar panels.
:-D
That's really simple to do, right? Easy Peasy!
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Don't miss the dish
What happens to birds that fly through that microwave field?
You will need thrusters to position the big satellite in the first place (or the parts if it is assembled on site), and to counteract the Moon and Sun's tidal forces. If you can handle those, light pressure will be a small issue.
I doubt it, now you need a fuel supply, and how do you position something with the consistency of smoke?
Mostly random stuff.
I doubt it's so uniform that it all perfectly evens out.
Mostly random stuff.
Keep track of the effects, and rotate the panels a bit at the right times to provide compensation.
they're contemplating building a moat around the White House.
I'd prefer Megan Mullaly if it's the same to you.
Mostly random stuff.
New grand ideas?
This is straight out of SimCity 2000. That's 22 years old now.
There's no atmosphere to pass through and virtually no day or night if you put it in the right orbit.
You'd need to send it millions of kilometres away to make much of a difference, and all you're doing is converting one form of radiation to another. It would also be in a different orbit, so would spend half its time on the other side of the sun.
Geosynchronous is the only option (unless you watch Falling Skies, then you can put it on the moon - sorry if you haven't seen last season yet.)
Nope. No problem. Stick it at a latitude far enough from the equator and it will never be shadowed by the Earth. Something like the top of China, for example.
I'd work it out but I can't be bothered - All you need is the radius of Earth, the orbital radius of the satellite and the axial tilt of the Earth. Eye-balling it looks like it's somewhere around 40 degrees. About where Beijing is.
Until the alignment of the mirrors is disturbed and it kills millions of people.
"Sorry, the positioning systems have failed. It's going to randomly burn trails in the Earth's surface until someone can get up there and destroy it"
Because what better excuse to build a humongous satellite with a large laser/dish/array aimed at the earth?