I think this is the beginnings of an economy based on perpetual growth and fossil fuel energy running headlong into geological energy constraints. Basically I see an undulatory downward path for the rest of my life. From here out, I think any rallies in our economic condition are going to be met with spiking commodity prices that knock us right back down.
Joined: Apr 28, 2005 Posts: 3867 Location: West shore Lake Eire, MI, USA
Posted: Sat Sep 13, 2008 4:31 pm Post subject: Re: Space-Based Solar Power Breakthrough to Be Announced
Lifetime of a solar cell in orbit is hardly forever, more like 7 years of useful energy production. _________________ Always appeal to a man's enlightened self interest, you can trust him to look out for himself honestly, It's when you appeal to his Honor or the Common Good that he stops paying attention.
Joined: Nov 24, 2007 Posts: 129 Location: Christchurch, New Zealand
Posted: Sat Sep 13, 2008 4:51 pm Post subject: Re: Space-Based Solar Power Breakthrough to Be Announced
I think relying on an array of orbiting solar panels for a large percentage of energy use is much worse than relying on oil. At least with oil there are many sources over the world and any temporarily drop in production (hurricanes, politcal events etc) can be mitigated and worked around immediately. It's a bit harder when the panel develops a fault and it'll take you 45 days to get a space mission set up and launched before anything can be done about it.
Space solar seems like a good idea, and certainly it could be a useful part of the mix, but unless we have a very energy-rich future where missions to space were easy and cheap (or something like the space elevator), the panels just seem to be too risky to be part of baseload generation.
Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 12:13 pm Post subject: Re: Space-Based Solar Power Breakthrough to Be Announced
Lanthanide wrote:
I think relying on an array of orbiting solar panels for a large percentage of energy use is much worse than relying on oil. At least with oil there are many sources over the world and any temporarily drop in production (hurricanes, politcal events etc) can be mitigated and worked around immediately. It's a bit harder when the panel develops a fault and it'll take you 45 days to get a space mission set up and launched before anything can be done about it.
Space solar seems like a good idea, and certainly it could be a useful part of the mix, but unless we have a very energy-rich future where missions to space were easy and cheap (or something like the space elevator), the panels just seem to be too risky to be part of baseload generation.
Spaced based solar power is eventually inevitable but for the next century all but useless. The real reason we'll eventually use space based solar power is simply that the earth is limited by radiative capacity and thats where you have to go once industrial civilization surpasses consumption of 10^16-10^17 watts. We're at 10^13 now so we've got at least a couple of centuries before we'll need it. Today, anything on earth is far easier.
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