[kokoda]

In a way it is kind of old news ... this idea has been around for a while now.

The upside is that it is the most efficient way to collect solar energy with no atmosphere and 24 hour a day sunlight. An orbiting solar power station would be three times more efficient then a ground based system.

The downside ... A lot of this energy would be lost in transmitting it to the Earth. In fact the nett amount of power gained by the time it reaches our power grid might be no more than that of a ground based solar collector.

Things might change in the future ... but for the time being it is still a pipe dream.

[whereagles]

There are two kinds of problems with this:

1. Technical: the downstream microwave beam has to be treated so that it doesn't scatter too much through the atmosphere. That requires real-time weather conditions monitoring and beam focusing. Not impossible to solve, but difficult and time-consuming.

2. Political: such a beam could be pointed to anywhere on the sattelite's visible hemisphere, so it could be used as a VERY POWERFUL WEAPON. It so happens that there's an informal agreement between nations with space ability not to build this sort of stuff. This information (informal agreement) was given to me by a reliable insider at the European Space Agency.

[ohanian]

2. Political: such a beam could be pointed to anywhere on the sattelite's visible hemisphere, so it could be used as a VERY POWERFUL WEAPON. It so happens that there's an informal agreement between nations with space ability not to build this sort of stuff. This information (informal agreement) was given to me by a reliable insider at the European Space Agency.

Diamonds are forever

[lateStarter]

If this was a perfect world and all of humanity was working together, it would have already been done. Instead, what feeble, last minute attempts to accomplish this will also witness satellites/platforms equipped with weapons to remove the competition. More for us, less for them...

[TheDude]

Those things really raised hell in SimCity, too.

[whereagles]

More for us, less for them...

well, that's how humans work. The piramid is

#1 me
#2 my family
#3 my clan
#4 my country
#5 my species
#6 my planet

Numbers 1,2,3 are what they are because that's how we used to live in the hunter-gatherer times. You had to be ruthless, selfish and have a killer instinct to survive.

The passage nomad --> sedentary was just 10 000 years ago. Too short in biological terms to revert priorities to life-in-society mode.

[aahala]

The one thing that makes me think that some of this might actually be put into place is that the US military is interested in it. Is that enough of an interest that we will see at least some systems launched?

If the US military is indeed interested in this idea, I can guarantee
you three results:

1.Vast sums of taxpayer money will be expended on the project--
nearly all of it wasted.

2. The actual benefits(if any) will be incredibly small compared
to original promises and occur long after the original target date.

3. The technology will be stolen by others; so we will have to
have another project to defend against its use against us.

[rdsaltpower]

This idea was touted as up and coming in a National Geographic mag. on the first space shuttle launch in 1980! I still go back and read that old NG mag for a few laughs! Power from space, a sure thing for the shuttle after 1990 according to NASA projections. What a damned joke......on us.

[Carlhole]

Space-Based Solar Power Breakthrough

First-of-a-Kind Long-Distance Demonstration of Solar-Powered Wireless Power Transmission Technology

What:
Space solar power could be a clean, renewable solution to America's long-term energy needs. John C. Mankins, former manager of NASA's Exploration Systems Research and Technology Program, and one of the foremost experts on space solar power, will announce on Friday a milestone demonstration of the critical technology enabling SSP: long-distance, solar-powered wireless power transmission.

The project demonstrated wireless power transmission between two Hawaiian islands 148 kilometers apart, more than the distance from the surface of Earth to the boundary of space.

It will be featured in an hour-long special that evening on Discovery Channel as part of DISCOVERY PROJECT EARTH, an eight-part series on the most ambitious geo-engineering ideas to tackle global climate change and the need for new and sustainable energy sources.

Space-based solar power, in which large satellites would collect plentiful solar energy in orbit and beam it safely down to Earth, could one day reduce our carbon emissions to virtually zero. It is the only energy technology that is clean, renewable, constant and capable of providing power to virtually any location on Earth.

Mankins will describe the demonstration project and show a realistic plan forward to develop this promising technology.

When:
Friday, September 12, 2008 at 9:30am

Where:
National Press Club, Lisagor Room
529 14th St. NW, 13th Floor
Washington, DC 20045
202-662-7500

Who:
John C. Mankins, COO of Managed Energy Technologies LLC
Mark Hopkins, Senior Vice President, National Space Society

Hosted by:
National Space Society

Please RSVP to:
Katherine Brick
[email protected]
(202) 429-1600

More information about space solar power is available at www.nss.org/ssp

About the National Space Society
The National Space Society (NSS) is an independent, grassroots organization dedicated to the creation of a spacefaring civilization. Founded in 1974, NSS is widely acknowledged as the preeminent citizen's voice on space. NSS counts thousands of members and more than 50 chapters in the United States and around the world. The society also publishes Ad Astra magazine, an award-winning periodical chronicling the most important developments in space. For more information about NSS, visit www.nss.org.

[Cashmere]

The technogeek side of me thinks, "awesome", the long term, rationale side of me thinks, "how can something that requires a tremendous amount of non-renewable energy to build and implement (blast into space) be considered "renewable"?"

[Carlhole]

The technogeek side of me thinks, "awesome", the long term, rationale side of me thinks, "how can something that requires a tremendous amount of non-renewable energy to build and implement (blast into space) be considered "renewable"?"

I guess it always goes back to EROEI.

I'm not a knee-jerk believer in things like this either. But I'll tune into the Discovery Channel presentation of it like a 1960's Boomer planted in front of The Wonderful World Of Disney.

Obviously, solar radiation outside the atmosphere is a tremendous energy source... From there, the ideas begin to pour forth.

[heroineworshipper]

It just needs 20 Russian rockets to actually launch it into space. Until then, it's a Hawaiian island power breakthrough.

[sicophiliac]

Any guess on how long these things would last once in space? I mean other than micro meteorite bombardment would there be any deterioration of the panels? The energy to get them up and running would be huge but then again they could function up there for hundreds maybe thousands of years...

[lorenzo]

The technogeek side of me thinks, "awesome", the long term, rationale side of me thinks, "how can something that requires a tremendous amount of non-renewable energy to build and implement (blast into space) be considered "renewable"?"

I guess it always goes back to EROEI.

Indeed, so let's look at the theoretical, ideal EROEI of SSP and at its costs.

(I don't do maths, so the following are not my numbers, but those of Dr Peter Diamandis).


-Let's say an SSP plant weighs 20 tons, which you need to get into an Earth Orbit at 200km altitude

-Potential energy: 200km altitude (E(p)=mgh)
-Kinetic energy: 7.3km/s (E(k)=1/2mv^2)
---->570 gigajoules needed
---->160 gigawatts (if energy expended over 1 hour)
---->Energy cost = 7 cents/kwh

Total cost to EO = $10,000 for the entire 20 tons

Current cost is around $1 billion to get that up with STS (Soyuz-FG, vastly superior, can get it up for $200m).

So when it comes to costs, you can theoretically bring these down by a factor of 100,000. (This will require some tech breakthroughs, though, but that's the current theoretical bottom).

Now when it comes to EROEI, we have a no-brainer. SSP must have an EROEI of anywhere between 100 and 1000 (perhaps more). This is obvious if you look at how little energy it really takes to get 20 tons into 200km altitude EO. And once you're there, you have covered 90% of the energy needed to get your SSP plant (if required) into much deeper space.


Okay, so, like you say: "it always goes back to EROEI". And, as always, the technology has a hugely, megamassively positive energy balance. No brainer there, really.

I estimate the EROEI of SSP (under ideal/theoretical launch conditions) to be 1,000 to 1 or thereabouts.

[Nano]

... and there are a host of different applications of SSP:

For the DoD specifically, beamed energy from space in quantities greater than 5 MWe has the potential to be a disruptive game changer on the battlefield.

No sh!t.

[Triffin]

As long as we're going into space ..
Why wouldn't you site the collectors on the moon ??
Permanent installation and they'd last forever ..

Triff ..

[Carlhole]

As long as we're going into space ..
Why wouldn't you site the collectors on the moon ??
Permanent installation and they'd last forever ..

Triff ..

That would be cool but how do you get the energy to Earth?

[TheDude]

For non-NASA types: STS=Space Transportation System=Space Shuttle. An article in (I think) Popular Mechanics touted the simplistic beauty of Big Dumb Rockets. Goal was to hit $100/kg, 2 magnitudes cheaper than the Shuttle.

Aerojet calculated the cost to $ 59 to $ 620 per kg. NASA had an interest in the Sea Dragon largely because of its large payload capacity. It had the cost calculations independently reassessed and they were largely confirmed. Immagine a $ 100 kg ticket price! In other words, we could fly into space for $ 10.000. Perhaps not cheap but well within range of affordability.

Too bad it didn't come true. As NASA's planetary ambitions shrank (to practically zero), the Sea Dragon was moth-balled and eventually forgotten.

From what I've read it'd still be simpler (relatively) to handle these things on Terra Firma. From Wiki: Space solar power

A 1996 estimate[13] for the production of 5 billion watts (equivalent to five large nuclear power plants) would require several square km of solar collectors (weighing approximately 5 million kg) and an earth-based antenna 5 miles in diameter.

Would be simpler/less materials intensive to build renewables/pumped storage/nuclear for baseload/tied-in grid. Or, since Lorenzo's here, SOFC powered by biomass, which has high potential, sans the NIMBY response you'll get from voters who remember structures being burnt to the ground by out-of-control microwave beams in SimCity. Grandiose renewable schemes like Powering Civilization to 2050 don't factor in SPS as a solution to intermittency - in this case, I posed the question myself, to little response.

[vision-master]

As long as we're going into space ..
Why wouldn't you site the collectors on the moon ??
Permanent installation and they'd last forever ..

Triff ..

Ever wonder why we never went back, eh? E'nough said.

[eastbay]

Everything humans have ever made breaks down.

More importantly, everything we've made in the past few decades breaks down really fast and as we all know, all space based technology breaks down even faster due to deteriorating orbits, tech glitches, you name it. So this will require very costly periodic maintenance flights. This gismo won't just sit up there untended merrily pouring free energy down to everyone.

Don't forget to add that to the EROEI.