[JohnDenver]

How much will the resulting electricity cost considering the $/kliogram to get something into LEO?

A lot less if you piggyback it onto communication satellites which are going up and designed to beam microwaves anyway.

[JayHMorrison]

In the abstract of his book "The oil age is over" (2004) of Matt Savinar, the author states

That was your first mistake. Matt Savinar is a lawyer. He knows about as much as you do on the subject of anything energy related. He has no technical background in any energy related subject. He is just regurgitating what other people have written and putting his own amateur slant on the info. He is a kid who graduated from law school recently and never got a job as a lawyer.

Now Matt Savinar is hawking a book. His book is based on an oil crisis. It is his job to piss on all alternatives and sustain the crisis mentality so he can sell more books. Sounds to me like he should have been a lawyer.

[Devil]

In the abstract of his book "The oil age is over" (2004) of Matt Savinar, the author states

That was your first mistake. Matt Savinar is a lawyer. He knows about as much as you do on the subject of anything energy related. He has no technical background in any energy related subject. He is just regurgitating what other people have written and putting his own amateur slant on the info. He is a kid who graduated from law school recently and never got a job as a lawyer.

Now Matt Savinar is hawking a book. His book is based on an oil crisis. It is his job to piss on all alternatives and sustain the crisis mentality so he can sell more books. Sounds to me like he should have been a lawyer.

You are right in the substance, but in the detail Savinar is partially right.

In the abstract of his book "The oil age is over" (2004) of Matt Savinar, the author states that the technique of Beaming energy to the earth "is plagued by "major technical, regulatory and conceptual hurdles" and won't see the light of day for several decades".

Where he is wrong is his forecast that it "won't see the light of day for several decades". IMHO, it won't see the light of day, period, full stop, end of story. If you wish my views on beaming electrical energy from space to earth, look through the archives.

[challenge]

Thanks for the reactions so far.

I couldn't find the old archives that mr/mrs Devil refers to, but I am certainly intersted in them.

In the linksuggested by John Denver, it is clear that is spoken to the same technique called SSP. It might be that the article is a bit outdated or following the USGS timeframe of depletion of oilreserves and for that reason is suggesting that the technique still has to wait a long time. The article is of 2000 and the peak oil discussion and the barrelprice have already been going up much higher than inflation index!
I wander, sometimes techniques of influencing earth temperature or building on the moon are suggested but these suggestions always end in a problem of time, technique en especially money (perhaps these suggestions should not be followed, since the SSP technique is called rather simple).
Since te reception of solar radiation in space is 8 times higher then at the earthsurface, it seams interesting to state for several techniques a oilprice horizon, showing which technique is feasible, rather then referrring to possibly overtime articles.

Martien Pieters

[JohnDenver]

Where he is wrong is his forecast that it "won't see the light of day for several decades". IMHO, it won't see the light of day, period, full stop, end of story. If you wish my views on beaming electrical energy from space to earth, look through the archives.

For the benefit of the busy reader, I spent the last hour combing through the archives for Devil's comments and here's what I found:

*******

Yeah, sure!

http://peakoil.com/post18407.html

Dammit! We can't manage energy on the earth's surface successfully, so how can we manage it from space? Thank God, I'll be dead before any such hare-brained scheme could doom us to further misery.

I'll believe it when I see it, and that will be from six feet under, if ever! Even if it were to materialise, I could never hope to pay the cost price for that energy.

http://www.peakoil.com/post12865.html#12865

Obviously not a lot of substance in the above. In fact, it would appear that Devil has a sort of ideological (or age-based?) bias against the idea from the get go.

*******
Devil's only substantive comments on the technology appear to be the following:
(From: http://www.peakoil.com/post12865.html#12865)

Just apply a little elementary physics and some modicum of commomsense.

1) Tell me how you are going to generate "several hundred megawatts" of microwave power. To generate 1 kW of CW microwave power (not pulsed) is already a challenge. I don't believe we have the technology for even a single MW.

2) Bearing in mind the inefficiency of CW TXs at those frequencies, I would imagine that, for a 500 MW space station, you would need about 4 to 6 km2 of solar panels to power it. How are you going to get them up there?

Newer designs do not call for large space stations, but rather for Iridium-like swarms of small satellites. The panels would be piggybacked on communication satellites, as indicated here:
NEW DESIGN

3) As such a station would need to be in geostationary orbit above the receiving dish, it will be in the dark for half the time.

This issue is also addressed by the new design:
"A network of solar power satellites in low earth orbit could provide power to any spot on earth on a virtually continuous basis because at least one satellite will always be in "view" of the receiving station."

4) How do you overcome atmospheric diffraction changes?

How exactly will such changes affect the system? They don't seem to hinder cell phone microwave transmissions.

5) It is simple physics that if you increase the radiation energy into the earth's biosphere, so the latter will become warmer. However, half a dozen such stations would not make much difference.

This doesn't appear to be a significant problem. How much of a temperature rise are we talking about?

6) What will you do with all the roast birds that will fall to earth (not to mention aircraft that inadvertently pass through the beam

The roast birds will provide tasty hot meals for the homeless.
Actually the new design addresses this issue as well:

"Some fear that a network of solar power satellites could turn the atmosphere into one big microwave oven, cooking whatever wanders into the beam's path. In reality, the microwave intensities that we propose would be orders of magnitude below the threshold at which objects begin to heat up. People would be exposed to microwave levels comparable to those from microwave ovens and cellular phones. While some critics speculate that microwaves pose nonthermal threats to human health, there is no reliable epidemiological evidence for adverse effects from microwaves at these low levels. Higher levels of microwave radiation would be found at the rectennas on which the beams are focused, but fences and warning signs could demarcate these areas of possible danger. But according to our calculations, microwave intensities even at the perimeter of the rectenna would fall within the range now deemed safe by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration."

7) How will you perform maintenance on a geostationary device using thermionic components?

I don't believe any maintenance is done on satellite swarms. When one poops out, you just launch a replacement.

*******

That would appear to be everything in the archives.
John D.

[JayHMorrison]

The cost of putting anything is orbit is huge. I think it is something like $10,000 per pound right now. So just from the cost perspective of putting something in orbit, that would seem to make this concept very inefficient. Perhaps if we had a working space elevator the numbers would change. But that is clearly not happening anytime soon.

This entire concept just produces electricity. And it appears we are just discussing a few hundred MW. That is not much electricity.

There is not a shortage of electricity. The issue is more about a shortage of oil/nat gas and it's key use as a transportation fuel and feedstock for chemicals and fertilizers

[challenge]

Well done John Denver,
It could save a lot of time if a good reference is done.
On the site that John has linked to there also is an article "Satellite Data Shows It's Getting Warmer and Wetter"
posted: 01:59 pm ET
28 January 2000that states:

New satellite data shows that Earth's atmosphere has grown warmer and wetter over the past 11 years, with the amount of water vapor increasing 2 percent.

In a study appearing in the January 27 issue of the journal Nature, researchers compared measurements of sea surface temperature, air temperature and humidity from three satellites.

"The three satellites combined provide some of the strongest evidence so far of a climate trend of increasing air temperature and humidity," said Frank Wentz, a physicist at Remote Sensing Systems. "Water vapor is really the primary greenhouse gas in the atmosphere and has a greater influence on global warming than carbon dioxide, but we're not sure whether this increase of water in the atmosphere will lead to an increase in global warming."

Comparing the three data sets showed an expected outcome, according to Wentz and his colleagues: As air temperature increases, the atmosphere is able to hold more water; and as the Earth's global temperature increases, the amount of water in the atmosphere would be expected to increase.

The data came from instruments aboard the Advanced Very High-Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), the Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) and a Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSMI).

Wentz cautioned that 11 years is a very short time to observe changes in global climate. The study did not consider any possible human contributions to climate change.

end quote..

I believe that incoming solar radiation through the clouds will be less at the soilsurface in the long run, if more clouds are formed in atmosphere. This could give us extra reasons for the use of extra terrestal/spaceborn techniques like SSP. I used to work regularly with the NOAA/AVNRR satelite and I will ask my former collaegue at the Duth Meteorological Office (KNMI) if after 15 years this may be a general accepted view.

Regards, Martien

[Frank]

There's a lot of things we can do here on Spaceship Earth before we should be worrying about beaming down solar energy from space! It might be worthwhile if the collection factor was improved by a factor of 1,000 or so but 8?! Hardly worthwhile! How would you distribute it? We've got enough problems with the grid as is.

Concentrating solar cells can be used right here on earth with cooling water acting as a source of heat. Some concentrators focus energy on a stirling engine design which doubles conversion efficiency compared to solar cells.

People will have to learn that their standard of living will change, like it or not.

[JayHMorrison]

If we are only talking about a few hundred MW, that could be achieved with a modest conservation effort. Have everyone in the USA unplug their TV when they are not watching it and it would save the equivalent of two Hoover dams worth of electricity.

Phantom power draw is huge. The convienence of having a small current running in our electronics, so that the remote control can turn it on at any time, is a massive amount of electricity when you add up all of our electronics.

[challenge]

Frank,
you are right in some aspects, though in the 1979 proposal of NASA a 5 GW SPS centrals was proposed.
http://www.spaceref.com/redirect.ref?ur ... ml&id=2558
the page is the first form a list of SPS-items on page:
http://www.spaceref.com/directory/futur ... atellites/

At that time the costs of building of these SPS-centrals were rather high. nearely 100 Billion Dollar roughly. In the proposals it seems that a lot of labor had to be done on installing the PV-arrays in space.

You also mentioned that by concentrating of sunarrays a much better performance can be obtained.
It seems to me that using ultra light alluminiumfoil sheets with pneumaticly inflated supports (like in some tents nowadays used) the labor required is really little and the weight of the foilmirror extremely low to carry in the spacecraft. The concentrated sunrays can as you decribe it be used in to PV-cells or in a "stirling engine".

The difference in recieved energy between terrestrial and spaceborne centrals is shown at page 8 of the next publication: http://space-power.grc.nasa.gov/ppo/pub ... Sept02.pdf
If at you look at the miserable required budget of only 3.1 Million Dollar for SPS research at Nasa (2002), it seems that Nasa is in a deplorable situation nowadays (already).

One other quote from John Mankins, Manager, Advanced Concepts Studies
Office of Space Flight
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
before the
Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics
Committee on Science
House of Representatives

on October 24, 1997

The global markets for energy are real. If the high-risk technologies needed to enable space power systems to be technically feasible are matured, then private sector capitalization of such ventures should be far more viable than could have been dreamed in 1980.

This was 1997, they are talking of 1c - 10 c per kWh, they are aiming at with SPS!

Martien

[challenge]

From Liamj I recieved in my private mailbox some interesting new links with SSP-plans in 2004 of Nasa (second link). Liamj also states some questions about SSP that I thougth necessary to discuss in this group.
here we go: Regards, Martien

Hi Martien,

I admit to knowing little about SSP & CSP, but on your recommendation have spent some time looking further into it, via
http://www.wronkiewicz.net/ssp/
http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/reports/2004/ ... 212743.pdf
http://www.fpsboard.org/forums/attachme ... jan_05.pdf
http://www.sspi.gatech.edu/

I'm still not convinved there is even potential here. The two questions that immediately sprang to my mind were:
How to keep putting (how many/weight?) satellites up there when rockets run on lots of high quality oil?
What impact will increasing the planets energy input have on climate and and biophysical services? Small e.g., a beam of microwaves would have to have definite heating effect on various layers of atmosphere, locally reducing rainfall.

Neither of these were answered or even adequately addressed by the info I found. If you have any better info on those questions I'd gladly think further. Indeed, if you want to write a decent current summary of tech & hurdles, we at energybulletin.net would happily put online for our readers for their consideration.
Personally I think energy is not our problem, culture is, and more energy would only lead us to more rapid destruction of what little remains. Searching for hightech solutions to cultural/enviro probs has got us this far, but climate chng, crashing fisheries, eroding/salinising/acidifying soils, all point to tech only deferring probs to next generation. I work in very high tech industry, so its hard to admit, but tech is part of the problem, IMHO, not the solution.
Regards
Liam

[JohnDenver]

Personally I think energy is not our problem, culture is, and more energy would only lead us to more rapid destruction of what little remains. Searching for hightech solutions to cultural/enviro probs has got us this far, but climate chng, crashing fisheries, eroding/salinising/acidifying soils, all point to tech only deferring probs to next generation. I work in very high tech industry, so its hard to admit, but tech is part of the problem, IMHO, not the solution.

I don't want to derail this thread, but I would like to register my disagreement with this view. There is a fine line between believing that technology will not provide a solution, and taking a strident luddite stance which aims to stop technological progress. I hope it doesn't come to that, but I'm afraid it will.

It's true that technology may defer problems to the future, but abandoning technology would immediately cause problems which are just as bad or worse.

[JohnDenver]

The cost of putting anything is orbit is huge. I think it is something like $10,000 per pound right now.

It's not quite that high. It can be as low as $211, and is generally in the range of $1000-$5000 for LEO (Low Earth Orbit).
www.futron.com/pdf/FutronLaunchCostWP.pdf

But you're right that launch costs are the bottleneck. The interesting thing is that fuel per se is not the problem. The energy required to put a kg into orbit is surprisingly small, and fuel costs are a negligible part of total costs. Reducing costs is more of a management/design problem than an energy problem. An interesting discussion of the issues can be found here:
http://www.ghg.net/redflame/launch.htm

Space satellites do have a some strong advantages:
1) They don't pollute, and they don't create greenhouse gases, so they may compete favorably with coal and nuclear if those externalities are accounted for.
2) The source will not deplete.
3) They can provide steady base power which wind and ground solar cannot.

One interim step might be to use high altitude balloons and airships rather than satellites in LOE. This would eliminate the problem of cloud cover in ground-based solar (thus allowing generation of base power), reduce costs, and reduce the size of the rectennas needed on the ground to receive the microwave transmissions.

[challenge]

John,

I think for this matter it could be intersting to calculate how much it would cost to install say 10 of these SSP's in space. The thing is that always all costs of a series is put in the first instrument. With the high cost for launching and one of the major posts of high launching is loss of the rocket, a reusable rocket could be much more cost-efficient. And I don't believe that it is only intersting for NY, with our actual returns for sustainable energy (wind) in the Netherlands (0.07 - 0.09 Eurocent/kWh), this is at least the double price of top levelprices (peakshaving) in NY.

Martien

[MattSavinar]

In the abstract of his book "The oil age is over" (2004) of Matt Savinar, the author states

That was your first mistake. Matt Savinar is a lawyer. He knows about as much as you do on the subject of anything energy related. He has no technical background in any energy related subject. He is just regurgitating what other people have written and putting his own amateur slant on the info. He is a kid who graduated from law school recently and never got a job as a lawyer.

Now Matt Savinar is hawking a book. His book is based on an oil crisis. It is his job to piss on all alternatives and sustain the crisis mentality so he can sell more books. Sounds to me like he should have been a lawyer.

.

I've put Jay Morrison on my "ignore" list, but I'm going to go out on a limb and assumme the above two paragraphs were authored by him.

The sad thing is that Jay actually has a rather extensive understanding of various issues related to energy technology, oil depletion etc. . . and is probably capable of some very intelligent and well-researched commentary on space based solar arrays.

My point is not whether or not they are technically viable. It is a matter of scalabity, time, etc. . ..

When comples civilizations collapse, it is usually because they insist on turning to increasingly complex solutions rather than simplfyhing their society. I feel space-based solar arrays are exactly this type of "solution."

The lowly bicycle is more likely to save us than something as complex as rewiring our transportation, defense, agriculutre, etc. . . to run on space derived solar energy.

For those of you open minded enough to listen to Coast to Coast AM, they did have an entire show on space based solar arrays about two weeks ago.

Matt

[EnviroEngr]

Viable short term?

[challenge]

To turn back to the subject. John Denver and I did still have some interesting questions, so I today sent an Email to Lee Mason of the GRC Nasa research center to find out some cost - revenue items on SSP's nowadays.

With a perspective that SSP receives 8 times more sunradiation, works continuously night and day and has enough alternatives to bring it in a low orbit and might perhaps do some peakshaving all over the world, I think politicians should review their 1997 decision. In 1997 US congress decided in favour of bringing man to Mars. But with nowadays prospects on oil reserves and price development as can be read all over the PO forum, a mix of all kind of terrestrial and spaceborn sustainable energy solutions for the near future may be more needed then these Mars experiments.
In the mean time I keep on doing most of my transport by bike (as a lot of Dutch people still do and a lot of chinese used to do).

If there's contact made to Nasa (Houston here!) I will send the information to this site,

Regards, Martien

[challenge]

John, I just checked on the latest NASA news on space transport, since you dicussed with JayHMorrison on putting SSP's in space orbit.

The cost of putting anything is orbit is huge. I think it is something like $10,000 per pound right now.

It's not quite that high. It can be as low as $211, and is generally in the range of $1000-$5000 for LEO (Low Earth Orbit).
www.futron.com/pdf/FutronLaunchCostWP.pdf

But you're right that launch costs are the bottleneck. The interesting thing is that fuel per se is not the problem. The energy required to put a kg into orbit is surprisingly small, and fuel costs are a negligible part of total costs. Reducing costs is more of a management/design problem than an energy problem. An interesting discussion of the issues can be found here:
http://www.ghg.net/redflame/launch.htm

Space satellites do have a some strong advantages:
1) They don't pollute, and they don't create greenhouse gases, so they may compete favorably with coal and nuclear if those externalities are accounted for.
2) The source will not deplete.
3) They can provide steady base power which wind and ground solar cannot.

It turned out that the latest costs involved will be $ 400/kg ($181/pound) for SSP development as can be seen in next article: http://nkma.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/nexgen ... paOlds.pdf
This means a factor 50 lower then JayHMorrison claims. You can always turn down a sustainable technique if you overestimate (part of the) costs so much.

Martien

[TrueKaiser]

John, I just checked on the latest NASA news on space transport, since you dicussed with JayHMorrison on putting SSP's in space orbit.

The cost of putting anything is orbit is huge. I think it is something like $10,000 per pound right now.

It's not quite that high. It can be as low as $211, and is generally in the range of $1000-$5000 for LEO (Low Earth Orbit).
www.futron.com/pdf/FutronLaunchCostWP.pdf

But you're right that launch costs are the bottleneck. The interesting thing is that fuel per se is not the problem. The energy required to put a kg into orbit is surprisingly small, and fuel costs are a negligible part of total costs. Reducing costs is more of a management/design problem than an energy problem. An interesting discussion of the issues can be found here:
http://www.ghg.net/redflame/launch.htm

Space satellites do have a some strong advantages:
1) They don't pollute, and they don't create greenhouse gases, so they may compete favorably with coal and nuclear if those externalities are accounted for.
2) The source will not deplete.
3) They can provide steady base power which wind and ground solar cannot.

It turned out that the latest costs involved will be $ 400/kg ($181/pound) for SSP development as can be seen in next article: http://nkma.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/nexgen ... paOlds.pdf
This means a factor 50 lower then JayHMorrison claims. You can always turn down a sustainable technique if you overestimate (part of the) costs so much.

Martien

well thats just for one. how many do we need? and how much more will it cost as each year goes by and the fuel to launch these gets more expencive.
all it is, is a creative way to burn up what economicly viable oil that is left.

[JohnDenver]

A fascinating technology which may ease our energy worries in the future. Some possibilities:

-Focus sunlight onto a small spot on the earth, and use the heat to drive solar furnaces.
-Focus sunlight on the tar sands and melt them so they can be pumped out.
-Gather and transport wasted light (which would never strike the earth anyway) using mirrors, and concentrate it for power generation.

Mirrors in space may seems like an "out there" idea, but they aren't really. There already are many mirrors in space, in spy satellites and the Hubble telescope, for instance.

The Russians have already launched film-based mirrors into space, and illumined the dark part of the earth (i.e. the part where it is night), much as you would light up a spot on the wall with the reflection of your watch. The idea looks like this:




The Znamya 2 was successfully deployed in 1993. "The first illumination from space took place in the early hours before sunrise over Western Europe. A reflected spot of light of about 5 km in diameter traveled at a speed of 8 km/hour from southern France through Switzerland, Germany, Chec. Republic, Poland and disappeared in early sunlight in Byelorussia. Unfortunately, the weather was not favorable in Western Europe that morning due to heavy cloud coverage. Still, many people reported seeing a flash of light, such as a report from a weather station in the German Alps."
http://www.space-frontier.org/Events/Znamya/

In 1999, the Zanmya 2.5 became tangled during deployment and failed, but it did stir up a lot of controversy:

Headlines like: "Russians will attempt to banish night with artificial 'moon'"
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9902/03/space.mirror/

And criticisms: "But the horror that most people must surely feel at any scheme to abolish the night, even in selected areas of the planet, is a much deeper, more basic one. It is not based on practical, scientific or material objections, but is rather a reaction deep down in that ancient part of ourselves that is still tied to nature; to the ancient cycles of the seasons, the rise and fall of the birdsong and the grasses, the primal rhythm of night and day."
http://www.paulkingsnorth.net/newmoon.html

Clearly, any technology which already has the environmentalists horrified is not just some "out there" scheme on the drawing board. It's the ease with which it can be done which makes it so threatening. Furthermore, there is no way the genie is going to go back in the bottle because this technology (space mirrors) has such obvious utility in so many fields. The military is interested in big mirrors, because they can use them to build higher resolution spy satellites and "Star Wars" style missile defence systems. Astronomers are interested, because they want big mirrors for the next Hubble. Even commercial enterprises are interested -- they want to put advertising up there. Yet another idea is to flip the mirrors over, and use them to reflect sunlight away from the planet, thus enabling precise, reversible control of global temperatures.

Now, you may think that Znamya 2.5 failed and the Russians don't have it together, so we've heard the end of all this. But read this, and think again. The Russians are totally dominating the space industry. It is their most succesful export industry, and one of the main reasons is that they are running it as a business. Quick, dirty, reliable and cheap -- they're in it for the money, not the pooftah "science".

Personally, I could care less about the aesthetics. A big MickeyD's moon in the sky would be a small price to pay for a reliable energy source. And the big cities? Why not light them up all night with mirrors? They're already lit-up anyway. Nobody is even outside in the first place in cities like Las Vegas. They're all inside gambling and drinking and watching TV. So what it if it's daytime all the time? Just imagine all the energy you could save by turning out all those lights. It would probably have a powerful anti-crime effect as well. And nocturnal animals... Who cares? I hope we disturb their rhythms because the only nocturnal animals I see in the city (and I live in a big one) is huge rats infesting the garbage bags around 3AM in front of Kentucky Fried Chicken.