Can space-based solar power really work? Here are the pros and cons.

[Admin]

The world is struggling to wean itself off fossil fuels. Should space-based solar power be part of the solution?

Can space-based solar power really work? Here are the pros and cons. : Read more

 

[Jan Steinman]

"We have a problem, Houston. We just microwaved Toledo."

 

[danielravennest]

I've done work on space solar power for Boeing and the Space Studies Institute. The main obstacle has been cost, mainly launch cost. The technology exists, because communications satellite have been beaming energy to Earth for decades. The power is measured in Watts rather than MegaWatts, and the signal is modulated rather than continuous, but we know it works.

There are two ways to lower costs. The first is being worked on by SpaceX and others - make reusable rockets. Fuel is cheap, aerospace rocket parts are not, and you can't afford to throw them away after one use. The second is off-planet resources from the Moon and nearby asteroids. The work that I and others have done show that up to 98-99% of the mass of power satellites (and other space projects) can be sourced from materials already in space. Therefore how much needs to be launched from Earth can be greatly reduced.

The combination of cheaper rockets and less need to launch makes the launch overhead small compared to ground-based solar today. But the cost of solar and wind on the ground are not standing still. Space solar power would be chasing a moving target. It is not clear it will ever catch up and become competitive, or arrive so late the world has already converted to clean energy. That said, there are other uses, like power for the Moon or Mars for the long nights or during dust storms. Then it only has to compete with other space energy supplies and has a better chance.

 

[Mr Anderson]

We have over looked the "induction" of the compass needle, this tech is unneeded, the Earth is our infinite supply. Our physics models are incomplete no matter how you slice it, the particles are misinterpretations everything is kinetic, light and gravity are crest and trough of the same wave , equal and opposite. "Electromagnetic fields" adjusted to understand it is the atoms themselves that transfer kinetic energy at the speed of light in cascading impacts(both light and gravity operate under inverse square this is geometry of atomic collision). The math is the problem, ideal states are imaginary starting positions, dark matter/energy represent the difference between prediction and observation... we can fix this. Love you have fun

 

[Ken Fabian]

I remain unconvinced. It makes a great thought experiment but it is not a clean energy solution.

Daniel - I don't see how obtaining materials from the moon or asteroids can do anything but make it a lot more difficult and more expensive.

That grand space dreamers like it is no surprise - the massive increase in space capabilities required appears to open up other space possibilities - but using the legitimate concerns about climate and fossil fuel burning to advance entirely different objectives is unlikely to gain the strong support of people seeking clean energy solutions; it has to be shown to work cost effectively for the purpose. Especially given the scales of pre-investments required to get such a project going the positive economics needs to be clear and unambiguous.

 

[John Frazer]

Objections about space mining and industry adding to costs is wrong-headed.
By the time we're building things of this scale from NEA mined metals, questions of "cost" or "expense" as we know it, won't apply.
What is "cost" when aeroentry barges of previously rare and precious metals are coming in?
The first entity to return even a few kg of loosely sorted metals from an NEA wins forever the "game" of making money, ends the relevance of the scarcity model regarding energy, room for growth, or metals.
Yes, we hear that anyone doing so affects the prices that previously rare or precious metals bring and undercuts their own business. But for that moment, then own more "wealth" in futures than all the mercantile interests or mega-corporations or old-money empires or Nation-States in history, combined.
Please show how this is hyperbole or exaggeration.

Yes, space mining and building of SPS is 25 years away, but it's not any of it reliant on unproven technology or requiring of new inventions.
Yes, it's 25 years away, but it's been 25 years away since the mid '70s.

The NASA Ames / Stanford space settlement/industrialization studies of the '70s did all but nail down final questions about the best ways to do things. For every such question that remains, there are several known ways which would work.
The cost until the first habitat for 10k workers was completed in Earth-Moon space in 2005 or so, would have been like many large infrastructure or industrial developments down here. Like the Interstate Highway System. Like maybe 3 of our CVNs and their air-wings and escorts and the logistics infrastructure to deploy them to fight over oil. Much less than the bailouts we've seen or a small oil war.

Any who disagree, are invited to show their professional qualifications in mining, construction and astronautical engineering and where they're published under peer-review showing that those studies were wrong.

Since 2003, the US has spent ≈$14 trillion+ on the military. Nearly a trillion a year in DoD spending (comfortably more annually than the entire historic running grand total NASA expense). Meanwhile, the 5-sided funny farm has disastrously failed its audits, can't account for half of its assets. Nearly half a trillion a year just disappears. We just give it to them and it goes away.
What can we not afford for energy and resources for the future?

 

[LKK]

Wouldn't this be better posted on the first of April ??

 

[Atlan0001]

Objections about space mining and industry adding to costs is wrong-headed.
By the time we're building things of this scale from NEA mined metals, questions of "cost" or "expense" as we know it, won't apply.
What is "cost" when aeroentry barges of previously rare and precious metals are coming in?
The first entity to return even a few kg of loosely sorted metals from an NEA wins forever the "game" of making money, ends the relevance of the scarcity model regarding energy, room for growth, or metals.
Yes, we hear that anyone doing so affects the prices that previously rare or precious metals bring and undercuts their own business. But for that moment, then own more "wealth" in futures than all the mercantile interests or mega-corporations or old-money empires or Nation-States in history, combined.
Please show how this is hyperbole or exaggeration.

Yes, space mining and building of SPS is 25 years away, but it's not any of it reliant on unproven technology or requiring of new inventions.
Yes, it's 25 years away, but it's been 25 years away since the mid '70s.

The NASA Ames / Stanford space settlement/industrialization studies of the '70s did all but nail down final questions about the best ways to do things. For every such question that remains, there are several known ways which would work.
The cost until the first habitat for 10k workers was completed in Earth-Moon space in 2005 or so, would have been like many large infrastructure or industrial developments down here. Like the Interstate Highway System. Like maybe 3 of our CVNs and their air-wings and escorts and the logistics infrastructure to deploy them to fight over oil. Much less than the bailouts we've seen or a small oil war.

Any who disagree, are invited to show their professional qualifications in mining, construction and astronautical engineering and where they're published under peer-review showing that those studies were wrong.

Since 2003, the US has spent ≈$14 trillion+ on the military. Nearly a trillion a year in DoD spending (comfortably more annually than the entire historic running grand total NASA expense). Meanwhile, the 5-sided funny farm has disastrously failed its audits, can't account for half of its assets. Nearly half a trillion a year just disappears. We just give it to them and it goes away.
What can we not afford for energy and resources for the future?

A closed system.

$31-trillion dollars debt and climbing.

Entropy.

Don't bring it into the room, that isn't expansion and growth. Go forth to it, go out to it, a Biblical-like Genesis and Exodus, beginning with space resources -- particularly space itself, and cloud-city-like city-state habitats to the orbits of the L-points, to expand and grow frontiers, including via two-way exchange, as happened throughout history, the 'Old World' homelands. A tangible growing capitalization of homelands, of the Old World as New World as integral part of that exterior frontier expansion and growth. National debts, negative energies, begin to lose self-destructive closed systematic power to destroy in the energy exchange of frontier's necessary nova-like exhaust of opening systemic exodus. Like a fusion reactor, increasingly more energy coming from it than will be feeding into it.