How space solar panels could power the Earth with 24/7 clean energy:
Solar power has been a key part of humanity's clean-energy repertoire. We spread masses of sunlight-harvesting panels on solar fields, and many people power their homes by decorating their roofs with the rectangles.
But there's a caveat to this wonderful power source. Solar panels can't collect energy at night. To work at peak efficiency, they need as much sunlight as possible. So, to maximize these sun catchers' performance, researchers are toying with a plan to send them to a place where the sun never sets: outer space.
Theoretically, if a bunch of solar panels were blasted into orbit, they'd soak up the sun even on the foggiest days and the darkest nights, storing an enormous amount of power. If that power were wirelessly beamed down to Earth, our planet could breathe in renewable clean energy, 24/7.
[...] In the early 1900s, Russian scientist-mathematician Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was steadily churning out a stream of futuristic designs envisioning human tech beyond Earth. He's responsible for conjuring things like space elevators, steerable rockets and, you guessed it, space solar power.
Since Bell Labs first invented the first concrete "solar panel" in the '50s, international scientists have been working to make Tsiolkovsky's sci-fi fantasy a reality. They include Japanese researchers, the United States military and a team from California Institute of Technology spearheading the Space Solar Power Project.
Space solar power "was investigated extensively in the late 1960s and the 1970s, sort of in the heyday of the Apollo program," said Michael Kelzenberg, senior research scientist on the project.
Unfortunately, due to the materials' weight and bulk, the era's technology wasn't advanced enough to cost-effectively achieve the feat. It would've been exceptionally difficult to send classic solar panels to space via a rocket without breaking the bank.
"The distinctively unique and defining feature of the Caltech approach is a focus on reducing the component mass by 10 to 100 times," said Harry Atwater, the project's principal investigator. "This is essential to reducing both the manufacturing and the launch costs to make space solar power economical."
Instead of employing a rocket to transport traditional solar panels to space, the Caltech team advocates a new type of panel that's lighter, more compact and foldable. They suggest dispatching into orbit a large number of these airy, mini solar panels resembling tiles.
[...] Of course, there's a long road ahead. Even if the team's 2022 experiment is successful, there are manufacturing costs to consider, as well as legal questions about taking up orbital space (there may be governmental restrictions). Questions around the practicality of replacing known power grids with space-solar power plants will also remain.
But at the end of that path, we may find something golden.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by CCTalbert on Sunday November 07 2021, @07:14PM (36 children)
Oh my, the sun goes down at night, and sometimes it's cloudy. So let's put the solar panels where it costs 10,000x (100,000x? more zeros?) as much to install and maintain them?
I just don't see the point other than it's a neat thought exercise in how there are cooler but not remotely practical ways of doing things.
So, yeah, under an atmosphere on a spinning planet we get maybe 10% the total output that we might in orbit. So build/install 10x, and do it distributed with few common points of failure.. And put some serious money into transmission lines and some storage. I think a good argument could be made that doing it local/distributed is the better choice regardless of cost.
Don't get me wrong, I love space, and am all for spending any money that direction, even for fairly trivial purposes. You want to build a prototype orbital shrimp farm to provide tasty protein to soon-to-arrive settlers in new spinning habitats? F'n cool, go for it, take my tax$, I'm good with it. I'll accept 100x investment costs for something like that, but not 10,000x. At some point we're better off just burning the money.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday November 07 2021, @07:34PM (7 children)
Not if you have a fully reusable spaceship.
These proposals aren't going to go anywhere fast if they are not even remotely cost-effective. No need to worry.
China Plans Space-Based Solar Power Stations [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Username on Sunday November 07 2021, @09:39PM (4 children)
elevator
All of our spaceship fuels are created with fossil fuels. Once that runs out, an elevator will be easier and cheaper to use. It will also allow you to send the power back down.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by HiThere on Sunday November 07 2021, @10:07PM
Once you build an elevator (or other skyhook, my preference is PinWheels) it will already be cheaper to use. But that first step is a doozy. It'd be a lot easier on Mars. The lesser gravity really decreases the difficulty of building the main cable.
But PinWheels would be a lot easier to build, and you could easily build them to worm on the moon, despite the slow rotation. But they don't quite reach down to the ground, so you need something to lift the cargo pods. On Earth you could do it with a airbreathing plane that climbed to the very top of the stratosphere. On the moon you'd need to steer the pod to reach the cable somehow. I don't think a catapult by itself would do the job, though it could come close, so you'd probably need some weak steering rockets. On Mars ... I don't know. It ought to be possible, but we don't know that much about flying in the Martian atmosphere. It might be more like the moon.
So. PinWheels don't decrease the launch cost as much, but they're a LOT easier to build. They don't require impossibly strong cables. (Well, on Mars an elevator wouldn't need a really impossibly strong cable, just close to it.)
P.S.: If you have enough electrical energy, you can make just about any fuel you desire. Probably even antimatter. But there's a lot of entropy in the process, with energy losses at every conversion. So if you hypothesize sufficient electrical energy, you don't need fossil fuels for space ships. You can strip CO2 out of the atmosphere and turn it into the fuel you desire. So if space ships are a very minor part of your usage, it may be doable, if not be the cheapest approach.
OTOH, I'd be more worried about losses during transmission. They would probably heat the planet less than the CO2 emitted by the stuff they're replacing, though.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Sunday November 07 2021, @10:14PM (1 child)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Username on Monday November 08 2021, @09:10AM
https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-natural-gas-reforming [energy.gov]
https://www.verdict.co.uk/how-is-co2-produced-commercially-shortage/ [verdict.co.uk]
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday November 08 2021, @07:48PM
All the fuels currently used can be synthesized from 100% green sources. Its just cheaper and easier right now to get them from Fossil fuels. Once there is a cheap source of electricity and heat that will no longer be the case.
A space Elevators isn't going to be possible anytime soon unless someone has a major "Eureka!" moment and can cheaply make the material need that can not only withstand the stress but would be affordable to build the 35,000+km of it to be useful. For context on the Earth around the equator is 40,000 some km.
Something we almost have the tech to build is a Skyhook [wikipedia.org] but even that is not going to happen anytiem soon as its still cheaper to use conventional rockets.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 09 2021, @12:12AM
Twenty or thirty years ago it might have made a difference, but even if the satellite itself was free the ground station would still cost more than the equivalent in solar cells due to safety limitations on the microwave link. While it is possible to concentrate a microwave beam to reduce capital costs this cannot be done safely and such a power satellite would be a space-based WMD by definition. There is no possible improvement to microwave transmission that can bypass this limitation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 09 2021, @03:41AM
And those orbits are very much coveted. Plus de-orbiting tiles as they fail is no easy task - you can't just let atmospheric drag take care of it like happens with StarLink either.
Other nations will consider it a space-based weapon (fry a target with gigawatts of energy) and a target for hackers. Unlike ground based systems, you can't just replace a vulnerable controller with new hardware.
This is not Sim City. The idea is stupid beyond belief.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 07 2021, @07:40PM
OK hear me out. Instead of letting farm animals laze around all day getting fat, put them on a treadmill to generate electricity. Win-win.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 07 2021, @08:33PM (6 children)
It is not the solar collector that is real problem...
It is the delivery system to the Earth now that is the problem.
All require some form of steerable beam of energy. Can you say "Space Lasers!" or "(microwave) Ray-Gun!" You put a multi-Gigawatt killing machine into space. YUp the Military would love that. So the cost is nothing! It is to protect the children!
Also In the end we are boiling water again :)
Main Targets would be
1) Deserts -low localized cooling - least amount of water vapor in air to waste energy on.
2) Oceans - Offshore receiver, lots of water mass under it to cool so efficiency - high water vapor
3) Antarctica - again, lots of water mass, low population - high water vapor
Now with all the heat being sent down, Oh well the goes global warming again.
So we are back to a "Space Tower"... think of the electric cord!
1) MICROWAVE delivery. There will be some form of collector to it. Maybe in the desert areas.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 07 2021, @11:00PM (5 children)
The safety issues are pretty much non-issues. The density of energy is just not that high, nor is it that dangerous. People hear "microwave" and think "microwave oven," but the area over which the energy is distributed is so large that even high power transmission can be achieved with no meaningful effect on living tissue. Contrary to the fear that alarmists love to spread, there is just no danger from microwaves.
https://www2.isunet.edu/index2.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=909&Itemid=256 [isunet.edu]
https://www.osti.gov/biblio/414954 [osti.gov]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0038092X95000834 [sciencedirect.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 07 2021, @11:38PM (4 children)
Its a little loose on the math and facts, even though done by NASA.
"At the edge" up to 5x times which is permiyyed to leak from a microwave oven messured as 5cm (about 2in)
"Assumed size" 2 to 4 kilometers wide, - so distance from the magtron in your kitchen oven to max leak point. Maybe a 30cm (~1 ft). Here trying to give a comfort feeling. The beam 2km wide (1km radius). 5 mW/cm2 at the "edge". Not true, the true edge is 0. Its a bell curve. Highest in the middle, 5 mW/cm2 is 1km away form max, but the beam will leak out wider to almost 2km from center. There is should be 0. So this paper makes light the 1km distance and travel time. Boat or walking from the true edge (0mW/cm2) to the 5 mW/cm2 of his "edge".
All is good until, the beam is "knock off target", then a power station in the desert east of L.A. makes L.A. a hot mess. How can we tell the difference.
Remember it is all fun and games until your reproductive organs are cooked. It why Radar and Microwavew repair tends to be male... not becuase of skill... reporduction issues. "Cook" a lady parts - no more kids, period. "Cook" a man's there is chance it will be back in a year.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 08 2021, @12:53AM (3 children)
I'm having trouble understanding your argument, but yes, the beam is spread over a large area. I've heard 10km to 30km diameter would be practical. The actual focus of the beam is dependent on the ratio of the aperture size to the distance traveled and is limited by diffraction (the same sort of diffraction that limits camera image sharpness with respect to F-stop). But this isn't really a big deal, because you don't actually want an extremely tightly focused beam because you want it to spread out so that there's not too much energy intensity in any one place. This is not just for safety but also because the more energy focused in one place, the beefier the infrastructure has to be to send and receive it.
If the beam went off target the only way anyone would even notice would be if their power went out. It's not a weapon. (And satellites don't just "knock off target")
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 08 2021, @02:01AM (2 children)
Read the math. The center of beam will KILL, if you got into it, flown thought it. Roast Seagull on the nightly menu.
30km beam is waste of money and space. Lets cover 600+km2 area to receive this power and send the power from (assuming a cylinder space). NASA guy has it down to 2km or 3.14mk2 much better sized.
Talking to you like the guy in the 70's who wanted to cover 100mile2 of AZ in solar cells to support US power needs of 70's. Plan was 5miles2, every year. With a system that had a 5yrs life (tracked the sun) It would have taken 20yrs to build, and take a work force of 4x times as many when started and never be at above 90% active, since you had to keep tearing and replacing the equipment every 5 yrs. Not to mention the need to fix broken pnales along the way. Berkeley Professor could not see the forest or the trees.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 08 2021, @05:25AM (1 child)
You aren't understanding the papers. And frankly I don't care if you do, but your misinformation might convince others that there is something unsafe.
Insolation is a conveniently easy to remember 1KW/m^2. This is three times the energy at the center of the beam. You get this by walking outside at noon in the summer. I haven't noticed any birds bursting into flames from being outside in the summer, but let me know if I'm missing something. Anyway, wind turbines kill plenty of birds too, but that is still much less than those killed by house cats.
The size of the beam and receiver depends on how much power you need to transmit, in order to keep power levels reasonable. The scale envisioned in the paper was 5GW, which is real power production (and comparable to the power that could be delivered by the panels in one Starship launch), but on a continent scale to end fossil fuel dependence you need 1000 times that. So, larger rectennas. Of course, you could have multiple smaller ones covering the same total area.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 08 2021, @05:50AM
So your agreement is that you are just replacing a solar cell on a building ??? So we just keep doing what we are doing now. Wow. Will end world hunger
Now starting talking about REAL power. Enough to replace US demand. Then let’s talk about the dpace death ray!
Please do real math first.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 07 2021, @10:44PM (7 children)
It's easy to underestimate just how good orbital solar is.
Utility scale solar costs about $0.90 per watt [solarreviews.com] but, as discussed in the last article about renewable energy, you only actually get about 1/4 to 1/3 of that. Let's say $3 per actual delivered watt. Solar panels last about 20 years. Assume that space-based solar costs the same to manufacture. Obviously, space-rated stuff costs more, but it also works 24 hours a day (sort of - we'll get to that).
Solar panels built for space mass about 20 grams per watt [nss.org] or 20kg/kW. Earth-based panels are much heavier, not just because stuff for space has to be made light, but because Earth-based panels are designed to put up with wind, snow, etc. that space-based panels just don't need to deal with.
Starship, once operational, should have a payload capacity of 150 tons to LEO. Power satellites are probably going into a Molniya orbit, so derate that some for the awkward orbit and some more for Muskerbole. Call it 50 tons. It should also cost $2 million per launch and emit about 2500-3000 tons of CO2. (Wikipedia is the source for Starship performance). Molniya orbits are geosynchronous but not geostationary, they spend about 40% of the time loitering and the rest of the time moving quickly relative to the ground. The latitude at which they loiter is good - it corresponds to roughly the Canadian/American border, Germany, northern China, southern Australia, or South Africa. And of course you could also use a traditional geostationary orbit, which would provide even more power, but that orbit is very crowded.
50 tons of solar panels then ought to produce about 2500 kW of power. Delivered for 20 years, that works out to be somewhat over 400 million kW-h of total energy. $2 million for the launch plus $3 * 2500 * 1000 = 7.5 million for the panels works out to $9.5 million or so total. Derate this to about 40% again for the Molniya orbit (which isn't on station 100% of the time). You might lose a few percent more because of solar panel degradation. Overall, it works out to about $25 million. You're just not going to service these, other than perhaps at the initial installation. Panels on the ISS (which spend all their time in low orbit where they take more damage) lasted 20 years, never got serviced and lost about 10% of their power during that time.
Natural gas plants emit about 430 to 550 [bizjournals.com] grams of CO2 per kWh of power. Multiplied by 400 million, that's about 180,000 tons - 60-ish times as much as the rocket launch. It's oddly difficult to find out how much natural gas power costs the utility when factoring in operations, construction, etc. but typical retail prices [centerpointenergy.com] work out to about $0.06 per kWh, about 2/3 of which is for the actual power and the rest is for delivery, environmental fees, etc. So let's say $0.04 per kWh. Producing 400 million kWh from gas would therefore cost about $16 million.
Not factored in: The cost of the rectennas (a one time, relatively inexpensive capital investment), transmitters (assumed to be small in both cost and mass relative to the panels themselves), the possibility that the panels would have too low of a density to fully occupy the Starship payload capacity. The actual power transmission itself is extremely efficient, 90% or so.
So, this is something that's at least competitive, especially when you factor in the environmental advantages and the fact that space based solar is more or less unlimited.
Safety wise, it... is. It would definitely need an aircraft no fly zone, because the high intensity of electromagnetic energy would fry the electronics. Similarly, you'd need to take precautions when people go in to do maintenance (turn the satellites off so your metal tools don't shoot sparks). Put up a fence and lock the entrance gate. But it wouldn't be a hazard to wildlife. The area of the rectenna would be relatively small, less than 100km diameter, probably much less.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Monday November 08 2021, @03:14AM (6 children)
I like PV panels as much as the next girl, but there is another option to consider for space-based solar. GE took a bunch of NASA $ to prove out space turbine technology, and it worked in comet testing. Down that road instead of PV panels you can use dirt-cheap weigh-almost-nothing not-heat-sensitive mylar reflectors to concentrate heat on ceramic collectors to drive big turbines.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Monday November 08 2021, @04:55AM (1 child)
Keith Henson has been promoting both / either for decades, and he says the big problem with the turbine system is not collecting the energy, but the cooling system. You can't afford to evaporative cool it, it has to be radiative. That means massive radiators and moving parts to pump your cooling fluid to them.
Several decades ago, the turbine system would have been preferable, but solar panels have been steadily improving. I think the better system now comes down to scale. For low numbers of SPSs solar is more reliable and cheaper. If you are going to put a string of them around the equator and power the whole planet then having a permanent space-based maintenance crew is feasible and the turbine systems become competitive again.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Monday November 08 2021, @09:20PM
You're right, radiative cooling is a very big problem. The total heat dissipation power of all of the big white panels on ISS is equivalent to about two car radiators. I can't wait to see how it turns out. :)
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday November 08 2021, @07:57PM (3 children)
I had never heard of that concept being used in orbit. Obvious and practical now that I think about it. easy to build. easy to deploy and easy to scale. And we wouldn't have to worry about birds getting burned alive when they fly into the concentrated sunlight around the collector like happens on Earth based versions.
Thank you for bringing that to my attention. :)
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Monday November 08 2021, @09:17PM (2 children)
There are still concerns about roasting birds|airplanes|people|spacecraft alive, so it's not all roses. Terrestrially the risk is on the receiving side where the power is downlinked to Earth. This is mitigated by making the receiving array large to keep the power density low. In space it's scary dangerous as a failure could reduce an approaching spacecraft (or the power generation hardware) into a superheated cloud of expanding gas. We'll need to do a lot of very careful testing and fail-safe/make-safe systems design before it can happen at a large scale. There's still a lot we don't know. That said, it's a multi-trillion dollar market opportunity with the happy side effect of saving the planet. I'd be surprised if orbital solar isn't flying in some form by 2060.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday November 09 2021, @04:06AM (1 child)
I wasn't even thinking about getting energy from orbit to the ground. I was thinking about using the turbine concept on Luna or an orbital station for local power generation only. Beaming Gigawatts of power down from orbit any frequency is not something I personally really want to see happening anytime soon. Partly because if the beam emitter can be tuned to "harmless" microwaves that would mean it could be tuned, by accident or intent, to harmful frequencies as well.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Tuesday November 09 2021, @07:20AM
Beam emitters can be made untunable by the simple technique of fixing the frequency with a design that operates only on a frequency set by physical dimensions.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by anotherblackhat on Monday November 08 2021, @01:26AM (8 children)
Some assumptions;
Solar panels weigh about 10kilograms per square meter.
The cost of putting something in orbit is about $1,500 a kilo.
Sunlight is about 1.3 kilowatts per square meter at 1 au.
Solar panels are about 13% efficient.
Electricity sells for about $33 a megawatt-hour.
Some calculation;
A 1 meter panel in space produces about 170 watts continuous.
It takes about 5880 hours or .66 years to produce 1 MWh of electricity with that panel.
The cost to put that 170 watt panel into orbit is roughly $15,000.
The ROI time therefore roughly 300 years.
That's a lot better than I expected, but it's still clear that space based power satellites are impractical at this time.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 08 2021, @05:27AM (6 children)
Your mass is high for space solar. They don't need to stand up to gravity, rain, hail, and wind.
Currently-available commercial technologies have a specific power of 80-100 W/kg [spacefuture.com] (÷ 5)
Your launch costs are high. Musk is aiming at under $50 / kg with Starship ( ÷ 20)
Your price/MWh is pretty close for wholesale.
You didn't allow for the mass of the transmitter and support systems. ( call it half your mass * 2)
Or the cost of the collection systems (probably high, but call it half your total expenditure *2 )
Combined that divides your ROI time by about 25, bringing it down to 12 years.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday November 08 2021, @08:49PM (3 children)
some other things that need to be taken into account.
Solar panels lose efficiency over time, about 1%/year so while that isn't much of an issue over the 12 years you cite it will add up over the 40+ years that the station would need to operate. Bigger and additional arrays will compensate but the more panels in orbit the more the second ignored issue comes into play.
Damage from space junk will damage and or destroy a number of panels every year. The orbital arrays will have to be huge and the number of panels that get damaged every year is something that is going to have to be factored in to the cost. And the junk issue is only going to get worse.
Did you factor in the amount of power that is going to be lost transmitting the energy to Earth? Second law of thermodynamics, your going to lose about 30% just converting the electricity from the panels into whatever method your going to transmit it with. Then the lose to the Earths atmosphere, then the additional lose of converting that transmitted energy back into something that can be fed into the grid.
And some other things about this concept that no one seems to be talking about.
Who is going to own it? Will each nation have their own fleet of arrays in orbit? Any nation that uses ground based energy sources will have a major tactical advantage if they can take out or even threaten the orbital power stations of an adversary that is dependent on them.
What sort of environmental impact will Gigawatts of energy being dumped into the atmosphere at multiple levels have on weather, communications, astronomy, air travel? Remember that unless the stations are in Geostationary orbit the transmitted power will be sweeping through the atmosphere as it tracks the ground stations.
just my 2 cents but I don't see this happening in time to save the world, or even at any point in the future due to cost, politics, environmental impact, etc. There are other ground based and cheaper sources of energy already available that can meet the worlds needs with much less cost, effort, and environmental impact. Orbital power stations are fun to talk about but we need to focus on options that have faster ROI and are going to be easier to implement today, not 20-30 years from now.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 09 2021, @03:42AM (2 children)
Losses in orbit are something the SPSs are going to have to be designed to cope with. Whatever they are they will have no effect on Earth.
The total conversion from MASER energy to grid electricity has already been demonstrated at better than 80% and is expected to be over 90% on a full size system. For a 5GW system, dumping 500MW in the air seems like a lot, but it is much less than the cooling system of a terrestrial plant dumps and is much more spread out.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday November 09 2021, @05:09AM (1 child)
Question; has this actually been done from a satellite in geosync to a ground station on Earth or was it across a lab in perfect conditions?
based on what? Calculations assuming more perfect conditions?
The experts used to believe that CFCs and PCBs was 100% safe too.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Tuesday November 09 2021, @07:31AM
The characteristics of electromagnetic waves are well understood.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 09 2021, @04:04AM (1 child)
You also need to deorbit those panels once they die. It's not like orbital decay from geosynchronous orbit is going to happen at any decent speed compared to the 10 years for StarLink.
Also, solar panels in space need to be radiation-hardened, and they still age, same as earth based panels. And it's not like you can put them in a ring around the planet and beam to ground receivers all over the world. Most of the planet is ocean, and the optimal place to locate receivers (directly under the satellites) is the equator, not exactly noted for having a superabundance of the earth's land area.
Add in the cost and weight of the equipment to convert that electricity to microwaves, and the cost and weight of the transmitter antennas (you'll need a bunch of them because you want a beam that isn't also a death ray) and the systems for stabilization (after all, those large areas of panels are going to act like a solar sail, so you need to be able to do station-keeping). And the need to shut everything down during solar flares …
Ain't gonna happen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 10 2021, @03:25AM
LEO to GSO might double the cost. But the original factor should have been 30, not 20. Make it 15 then.
Do you understand what the receiver actually is? It is nothing more than a grid of wires. Extremely cheap to make, and if you elevate it on poles you can make normal use of the land for pasture or crops.
Why would you ever do that? If you get to the point of building SPSs in space, you replace faulty panels. Either refresh or recycle the materials. At worst you simply stack them around your maintenance personnel habitat as extra shielding.
Okay polar receivers might be out, but you can certainly aim the beam up to 45 degrees north or south without doing much more than making the receiver an ellipse.
I allowed half the SPS mass as transmitter and ancilliary systems.
No. You want one, as big as you can afford. At 36000km the problem isn't having a death-ray, it is keeping the beam tight enough for economical collection.
Hmm. With a bit of smart engineering maybe you could use the solar sail effect for station-keeping.
That is probably less downtime than ground based power plants.
The universe is not limited by your opinion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 09 2021, @12:22AM
The best power transmission we have today is via microwave link, but those are power-density limited due to safety concerns. Solar panes caught up about ten years ago and still have a lot of room to improve. This means that the ground station alone puts space based power into the red with no chance to recover.
(Score: 2) by srobert on Monday November 08 2021, @04:01AM
" And put some serious money into transmission lines and some storage."
If you can get those transmission lines across the Bering Strait between Siberia and Alaska, then you could have a solar network across 5 continents. The sun is shining somewhere on that network 24 hours a day. With some work on eliminating transmission losses, lots of storage might not be necessary.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday November 08 2021, @03:08PM
Agreed. Orbital solar plus ground-based receiving stations are in direct competition with ground-based solar plus energy storage. Even if SpaceX eventually brings launch costs down to $10/kg, that's still going to be a really hard competition to win, especially with liquid metal, iron-air, and other such battery technologies beginning to reach market that should utterly demolish lithium ion prices for stationary applications, once they start benefiting from economies of scale
Orbital solar does get you, I think, about 5-7x as much daily generation potential per m^2 as on Earth - assuming you are in a high enough orbit that the Earth doesn't block the sun for much of each orbit (uninterrupted sun times 50% more energy/m2 without atmospheric losses = 36 (ground) peak solar hours per day). But you're likely to lose a LOT of that transmitting the power to Earth - as I recall the best long-range wireless power transmission experiments to date have only managed a few dozen miles with appalling efficiency. And if you want your solar generating farm to be in geosynchronous orbit so it can be a regional investment, instead of something like Starlink that inherently needs a globe-spanning swarm to deliver consistent coverage of any one location... then you're talking about needing to transmit power across more than 22,000 miles.
Which I suspect is the real motivation for governments to even consider any of these sorts of plans - transmitting power efficiently over those distances pretty much requires a very tight-beam laser or maser transmission - even if you want your receiver to be 10 miles across you're still talking about a beam spreading angle of only 0.026 degrees (assuming a point source, much less from a phased array). And if you can deliver that kind of precise focus, you can almost certainly tighten it just a bit more to have an orbital death ray available on demand, giving you a huge strategic advantage in defense, and any regional offense you might engage in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 09 2021, @04:57AM
Having the power to fry Kremlin or WashDC or Beijing from the space microwave oven?
Not even an original idea.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 07 2021, @07:39PM (4 children)
Solar is cheaper than nuclear on earth, fine build your solar. Building solar in space... probably not cheaper.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 07 2021, @08:06PM (1 child)
So what you are saying is they should build nuclear plants in orbit....
(Score: 2) by Username on Sunday November 07 2021, @09:53PM
There is an ongoing nuclear explosion at the center of our solar system that will eventually wipe out our planet. This has turned everything that does not have an atmosphere into a nuclear wasteland.
This nuclear wasteland would be the perfect, most ideal, place for a nuclear reactor. Just make sure it's not placed in such a way that it falls back down onto my planet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 07 2021, @08:48PM
So space nukes it is then?
(Score: 2, Disagree) by crafoo on Monday November 08 2021, @10:24PM
only because the clueless boomers demanded their politically-motivated and asinine regulation of nuclear energy in the 60s and 70s
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 07 2021, @07:41PM (1 child)
I don't have enough extension cords to reach into near earth orbit. Or geosynchronous orbit. Or any other orbit.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 07 2021, @09:35PM
Hillbillies . . . in . . . Spaaaaaaace!
"Ma! Fetch me a 'nother fiddy foot cord. And some duck tape to keep the ends ta'gether. We almost got 'er done!"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by turgid on Sunday November 07 2021, @07:54PM (37 children)
How would you transmit the power down to Earth safely? What are the options?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday November 07 2021, @08:11PM (20 children)
1. Microwave/MASER or LASER beam. Receive energy in remote locations.
2. Concentrate sunlight using mirrors/lenses, beam it down onto panels or molten salt towers on the ground.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday November 07 2021, @08:19PM (4 children)
Those would still be hazards to aviation, though. Would they also be a danger to bird life?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Funny) by takyon on Sunday November 07 2021, @08:25PM (2 children)
Make it a no-fly zone. Collect the cooked birds at the bottom and eat them.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday November 08 2021, @09:13PM
unless the orbital stations are in Geosync the transmission beams would have to to sweep through the atmosphere to keep locked on the receiving ground station.
And no mater how good the tech is your going to get significant lose of coherency and diffusion traveling the 35,000 some km between your geosynced station and the ground. Putting it in LEO won't work because at the altitude the station will get shaded by the Earth for half it's orbit.
And lets not forget that any Gigawatte power beam transmitter that can be effective at 35,000km would make for a really nice weapon at closer range.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ChrisMaple on Tuesday November 09 2021, @07:44AM
Design airliners so that the microwaves don't screw them up. They're already mostly Faraday cages, just fix the holes. This would also solve the problem of rude people getting on their cell phones the moment a plane lands.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 09 2021, @05:00AM
In the beginning, yes. But, after a while, the birds go extinct and there no more danger.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 07 2021, @08:21PM
https://simcity.fandom.com/wiki/Microwave_(disaster) [fandom.com]
They called it! Pretty close on the time-frame, too. (Sim year 2050, I believe.)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 07 2021, @08:30PM (10 children)
Either of those methods results in a net increase in energy reaching the surface of the earth. When increasing the amount of energy coming into the system, we should make sure we can dump approximately equal amounts of energy elsewhere. \sarcasm Maybe the solar wind will blow it away? sarcasm/
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday November 07 2021, @09:15PM (7 children)
If energy demand rises enough and supply can meet the demand, Earth would boil no matter what source is used.
Some of the energy could be directed towards geoengineering, like launching sulfur into the stratosphere, or blocking incoming light using space structures.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday November 08 2021, @09:16PM (1 child)
Humans already have such a great track record with fucking around with whats in the air. You sure you want to try again before we clean up the mess from the last time?
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday November 08 2021, @09:39PM
Yes
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 09 2021, @05:09AM (4 children)
Can we direct it in social engineering, please? Like, see, the Earth can support about 10B of Indians, but only about 1.2-1.5B of Americans.
Eliminating the Americans (and their "way of life" or "Dream") would go a long way in increasing the sustainability of life on Earth, for all species. In contrast, releasing sulfur oxides in the atmosphere is the most idiotic thing we can do. Even painting the SpaceX satellites in black and launch them in the void of space is less idiotic.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday November 09 2021, @05:29AM (1 child)
Do your part.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 09 2021, @09:21AM
PM your address and I'll do my best to arrange an expeditious hitman. You won't suffer.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Tuesday November 09 2021, @07:40AM (1 child)
If you call that livin' ... It ain't necessarily so.
I'll be clear: 10 billion people living in abject poverty is not a good thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 09 2021, @09:25AM
Friendly advice, remember this when you get to "living in abject poverty" part yourself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 08 2021, @06:12AM
If you do it right - solar panels that reflect IR but utilise visible/UV light - and paint the back of them black, then panels out in the desert can cool the planet. Instead of just a tilt mechanism to follow the Sun, you make them fully rotational on a 24 hour cycle. They spend all night with the black side radiating into space.
You can probably collect significant condensation off them if there is any humidity, too. At least enough to plant vegie crops in rows in between if you space them out correctly.
We as a species need to get smarter about investments, and look for synergies where multiple small payoffs justify a project. The above will never get funded because you can't point at a single income stream that would justify it. Power plant people don't want to know about crops. Farmers don't want to work in rows of solar panels where they can't fit the big JD. Doing it enough to fix climate change would put activists out of work. /rant
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Monday November 08 2021, @03:16PM
It's an infinitesimal increase in energy influx though - a fraction of a rounding error compared to the amount of solar energy hitting the Earth. If it eliminates an equivalent amount of fossil energy it's a *huge* win.
As I recall over its lifetime in the atmosphere the fossil carbon released as CO2 from a power plant will reflect about a million times more thermal energy back to Earth than was produced as electricity. Eliminate the CO2 in favor of adding more energy directly to the system via orbital or nuclear sources, and we're still a million times better off.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday November 08 2021, @04:04PM (2 children)
Yeah, keep the beam wide enough to avoid being an death sentence to anyone in the way, and you've got a reasonably safe option. Might have an interesting effect on weather patterns though, especially if you're punching through a cloud layer.
For mirrors you don't even have the option of being particularly small, at least assuming you're using only a single reflector. Since the light isn't actually coming in parallel rays from the sun you're essentially limited to projecting an image of the sun onto the Earth, with a minimum image diameter equal to the (diameter of the sun) * (distance to ground) / (distance to sun), which is about = 0.01* (distance to the ground). So from 100km up in very low orbit you've got a minimum spot size of 1km across, while from geostationary you're talking 220km across.
Now, you can still pump as much power into that spot as you want - an equivalent area of mirrors will give you noon-time solar intensity, 10 times the mirror area and you can deliver 10x solar noon intensity. But given the huge spot size and environmental considerations, the optimal strategy might well be to use the mirrors to deliver perpetual noon-ish solar intensity onto large circular ground-based solar farms. Heck, for a region like the US that spans a wide range of longitudes you could even redirect solar energy to follow the daily demand curve - why transmit power across the ground when you can simply deliver more of it to the high-demand areas in the first place?
Hmm, as I think about it though a multi-reflector design akin to a Newtonian telescope might work a lot better: A huge primary mirror "umbrella" that always points directly at the sun, and concentrates light onto a much smaller mobile secondary mirror at the "handle". Then you only need to reorient the much smaller mirror to focus sunlight almost anywhere on the Earth's disc, with the much larger mass and moment of the "stationary" mirror providing a relatively stable platform. With a second reflector in the mix you might also be able to concentrate the light onto a smaller spot as well... though I'll freely admit my understanding of optics is not good enough to say that for sure. Of course all that photon pressure bouncing off the secondary would apply a fair amount of torque to the assembly, slowly turning the primary away from the sun, but it would change directions every half-orbit, so as long as the moment of inertia is large enough it should just oscillate a bit - the effect could even be harnessed to keep the primary aimed properly.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday November 08 2021, @04:08PM
I *think* I got that image-size equation right - anyone with a better grasp of optics want to confirm or correct me?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 09 2021, @03:33AM
Nope. You can't. Your original equation controls minimum spot size and no extra optical elements are going to change it. The only way to get a smaller spot would be to use the energy to power a laser or maser.
(Score: 4, Informative) by HiThere on Sunday November 07 2021, @10:14PM (6 children)
The major way considered for transmission down is microwave. You've got to pick the correct wavelengths, of course. You want something that isn't absorbed by water vapor, and preferably not by water droplets. This means you need to use a large grid receiving antenna. The efficiencies are pretty good, and (at much lower power) I've seen animals grazing under such antennas. Whether that would be practical with a power transmission rather than an information transmission isn't clear to me, but some have said that it would be.
But it might not be good for your cell phone.
The real problem with this approach is "How do the sattelites react to a bad solar storm?". I haven't heard any answers to that question.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Monday November 08 2021, @07:38AM (2 children)
If you stick the grid up on poles and have a reasonable collection efficiency then there should be almost no microwaves under the grid. Sheep or cattle can graze no problems.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday November 08 2021, @09:25PM (1 child)
its not "under the grid" that might be a problem, its next to the grid where it would get ify.
The beam will spread out, no mater how good the tech is there will be diffusion and lose of collimation as it travels from source and through the atmosphere
and what happens when, because it will happen eventually, the beam loses it's lock and drifts for some reason?
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday November 10 2021, @03:34AM
Not very much. It won't happen often, because turning it off when it loses lock would be an easy, cheap and very effective safety measure. Even if it did drift it won't do much. The beam intensity on the ground is about equivalent to sunlight. The big wins for the system over ground solar are the 90% collection rate, the 24 hour supply, and the cheapness of the collector.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday November 08 2021, @04:28PM (2 children)
>"How do the sattelites react to a bad solar storm?".
Well, we've had many orbital solar collectors, in operation for decades in the form of satellites, probes, and space stations. Even several in interplanetary space. Have you heard of any major problems from any of the many solar storms they've been caught in?
I think the only thing I've heard of is sparking in mechanical systems like gyroscope bearings that gradually destroys them - but with non-spinning systems you can ground both sides of the pivot to avoid that.
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Monday November 08 2021, @06:48PM
We haven't had a really bad solar storm in the last 50 years. Look up the "Carrington Event".
Now perhaps they wouldn't be affected, but I don't think one can just assume so.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday November 08 2021, @09:32PM
Yes actually I have,
from this article [mit.edu];
The Solar arrays won't be in LEO where its fairly safe, they will have to be in geosynced orbit or instead of dozens your going to need hundreds since in LEO half your orbit is in the Earths shade.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday November 08 2021, @03:14PM (8 children)
I'd be curious as to what effect it could have on weather and/or our ozone.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Monday November 08 2021, @04:41PM (7 children)
Should be minimal for power transmission - you'd specifically choose a transmission wavelength where the atmosphere is transparent, so the only effect would be the secondary effects of localized heating where it's absorbed at the ground.
If you were using mirrors to reflect sunlight onto Earth it could be a different - the atmosphere absorbs roughly 1/3 of the sunlight that passes through it, so you'd definitely create a column of heated air along the transmission path. However, that could be dramatically mitigated by simply using a semi-transparent collector mirror. It'd probably be some sort of thin mylar film anyway, and if you engineer it to be transparent to near infrared and UV into the visible blue range it will simply never collect the light that would be absorbed by the atmosphere.
Graph of atmospheric absorption/scattering spectrum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Greenhouse_gases [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday November 08 2021, @09:47PM (6 children)
where have I heard something like that before? Oh yeah.
"Adding CO2 into the air shouldn't cause any problems"
was what was said back when some people expressed concern about the CO2 getting dumped into the air.
I looked at the graph you linked, there isn't any frequency that doesn't have some absorption.
I can't help but find it amusing that people, not you specificly but in general, will raise issues over the known dangers of radioactive substances that can be mitigated and contained with only a little effort and yet in the next breath advocate for blasting the Earth's atmosphere with Gigawatts of EM radiation with unknown long term effects.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Monday November 08 2021, @11:29PM (5 children)
>"Adding CO2 into the air shouldn't cause any problems"
When was that exactly? As I recall it was the late 1800s when scientists first started to realize it might be a problem - long before CO2 production rates were large enough to be a significant problem. And pretty much everyone who honestly looked into the issue since then has agreed.
You're right that there's no near-visible frequency at which absorbtion is zero, so the effect won't be nonexistent, just minimal. Though I believe there are some microwave frequencies where it is 100% transparent (far, far to the right of the spectrum covered by the graph)
It's important to put things in perspective though:
- For every 1,000 watts of power transmitted through the atmosphere at a "transparent" frequency on that graph, you only lose maybe a few watts to atmospheric heating
- Meanwhile you convert between about 100 and 700 watts of that power to heat at the receiver depending on the technology used (solar-electric being the worst)
- But even that is dwarfed in comparison to the roughly 1,000,000,000W of heat added to the atmosphere if you generated 1000W of electricity in a fossil fuel plant.
And no, that's neither a typo or hyperbole - it's estimated that before it leaves the atmosphere the CO2 released from a fossil fuel power plant will reflect roughly 1 million times more energy back to Earth than was produced by the power plant.
So yeah. I stand by "minimal". Maybe we'll eventually discover other problems that need to be addressed, but compared to what we're already doing *right now*, the energy dumped into the atmosphere by orbital solar would not even amount to a sliver of a fraction of a percent of a rounding error.
As for nuclear, no, we don't actually even have a plan to seriously mitigate the hazards of nuclear waste. We do have some untested reactor plans that should hopefully radically reduce the waste problem, even breaking down the long-lived byproducts into something either stable or short-lived. But for the reactors we currently have and are building? Our best plans to date can only reliably contain the problem for maybe a few centuries, at which point our descendants will have a far more difficult and expensive problem on their hands. Though admittedly if we reprocessed 100% of spent fuel and only stored the reaction products, those few centuries would be enough to reduce the rest to something that's at least might not be a bigger problem than it is when it went into storage.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday November 09 2021, @04:42AM (1 child)
completely valid counter points.
One question though.
How long is it going to take to build these proposed orbital solar power stations, ground recievers and the needed infrastructure to link it all to the energy grid?
Remember we are talking about replacing ~65% of the world's energy generating capacity. So, how long will this take?
With the same amount of effort and for probably vastly less cost we could replace every fossil fueled power plant, either via retirement or retrofitting to use a nuclear heat source, within 10-20 years using proven technology we have today or technology that can be developed and deployed in the next 5-10 years. If we decided to do it that way and put real effort into it.
I don't want to think about how much worse will the environment get before things start to get better if we keep waiting until we have a "perfect" solution. THat is what we've been doing for the last 40 years and is how we ended up in this mess in the first place.
Nuclear isn't perfect by a long shot but its a proven alternative we already have on hand that solves the problem we are facing today and already provides 15% of the world energy needs. Solar, wind, geotherm, hydrotherm and the other "renewable" sources, excluding hydroelectric, currently accounts for around 4% of the electricity generated in the world. Hydroelectric accounts for 15%. The rest is from Fossil fueled.sources and those are that is the part we need to do something about..
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday November 09 2021, @04:58PM
I'm not sure "how long" is really a meaningful question - it depends entirely on how much money is dedicated to the project. For comparison, the last I heard is that a new hydro-electric dam or nuclear power plant can reasonably be expected to take a minimum of 20 years from proposal to first power. Much of that is regulatory hurdles, environmental impact studies, etc. though, which shouldn't be nearly as much of an issue for orbital infrastructure.
Personally though I don't think orbital solar is actually likely to make financial sense compared to ground-based solar + batteries, at least within the next 50-100 years, and sort of suspect the only reason any governments are even giving it lip service is the orbital death ray potential.
On the other hand, orbital mirrors focusing sunlight onto ground-based solar farms might have potential, since the orbital infrastructure would be an almost entirely passive, ultralight structure that would continue to work just fine even after having countless holes punched through it by micrometeorites, while it would essentially "supercharge" whichever ground based based solar farms you wished, causing them to generate roughly 3-5x as much energy as they would on their own, assuming the mirrors kept them continuously illuminated at noon-equivalent levels.
Unfortunately for a purely optical system you're essentially projecting an image of the sun onto the ground, with the laws of optics limiting the resulting "bright spot" on the ground to a minimum diameter of about 1% the altitude of the mirror, which from geostationary orbit is about 360km across (102,000km^2). Which does mostly eliminate the orbital death ray potential, but a single solar farm filling that bright spot would generate about twice as much energy as the US currently consumes *without* supercharging. So you'd probably have a hard time justifying more than one such generating facility on a continent, which would require massive power distribution infrastructure. Might also have some really lucrative farmland in the un-needed portions of that bright spot too.
On the other hand a swarm of such mirrors in a mid-range orbit, say 1000km up, well above the atmosphere and most non-geostationary satellites, would have a minimum spot size of only 10km, and a solar farm that size would only generate 16GW peak power. Of course without being geostationary you'd need the swarm to ensure one was always in range, and you might well need buy-in from around the world to make such a swarm cost-effective. You'd also reintroduce the "orbital death ray" potential, since many mirrors could all focus their output on the same spot. It wouldn't exactly have the precision of an orbital laser, but delivering, say, 100x the intensity of noontime sun to an area would still kill everything there fairly rapidly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 09 2021, @05:16AM (2 children)
In the '70-ies [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday November 09 2021, @05:11PM (1 child)
Sadly the page doesn't make obvious that global cooling was always a relatively fringe idea that the scientific consensus was always against. It also had nothing to do with CO2 based global warming, which was widely accepted at the time. Instead it was focused on particulates and aerosols that prevented sunlight from reaching the ground.
The basic physics was sound - we've seen such effects after major volcanic eruptions, and have even incorporated them into our global warming climate models, but the amount of pollution necessary to cause significant cooling was orders of magnitude greater than what we were actually producing. The only way it would happen is if we did so intentionally - something that was actually been proposed as a way to mitigate global warming. Or "accidentally" - e.g. "nuclear winter" projections, which were based on the assumption that all the major cities around the world would burn to the ground, releasing massive amounts of particulates. But even that would only last a few years, as particulates and most aerosols actually leave the atmosphere fairly quickly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 10 2021, @03:53AM
Dude, I was there. It was never accepted dogma* that we were heading into another ice age, but it certainly wasn't a fringe idea. The discussions were about whether the underlying trend was warmer or cooler, and how much it was modified by not just CO2 but also dust, pollution, deforestation, desertification, and increasing amounts of agriculture.
If wikipedia is claiming it was a fringe idea then it is just parroting the "modern" politically correct line.
*Of course back in the 70's and 80's the idea of scientific dogma was considered an oxymoron. Dogma was something for the priests.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday November 07 2021, @11:52PM (5 children)
Then you don't have to think about the weather, or night time [geni.org]
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Monday November 08 2021, @03:06AM (4 children)
You've just hit on the two big winners for orbital solar power. An orbital power station in geostationary orbit will be lit more than 95% of the time. GEO satellites are only eclipsed for a brief period about a month around the equinoxes. The exact time they are in shadow varies, but has a maximum of about an hour on the equinox.
If you have two stations a few degrees apart transmitting to the same receiver there is no interruption.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday November 08 2021, @03:56AM (3 children)
Putting that kind of size and mass up into geostationary orbit will be kind of expensive. It'll be much cheaper to plant fields of panels out in the middle of nowhere, there's lots of space (get it?) we can't use for much else all around the planet that is much more accessible than geostationary orbit.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Monday November 08 2021, @04:33AM (2 children)
You're right, it'll be super expensive. This technology only works if we have cheap access to space. That's why it's been sitting on the back burner since the 70s. The only way this ever works is if we (And by we I mean Elon Musk) keep knocking zeroes off the cost of getting a kilo to orbit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Monday November 08 2021, @05:43AM (1 child)
In the meantime let's not wait for Musk and use what we have, lots of desert, we could be building right now
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday November 08 2021, @07:13PM
But you have to remember the key part of this sort of thing: So long as we can wait for some sort of future technology to be available that will fix everything, we don't have to actually do something with the technology we have now to solve our problems! After all, there's no possible way that said future technology will take much more to build in both cost and time than anticipated, or might not prove to work at all. And as an added bonus, paying some smart person to spend a month writing something or prepping some sort of public presentation about possible future technology costs around $5000 instead of the $billions involved in doing something that works. /sarcasm
In all seriousness, though, I've yet to encounter a future-technology-can-solve-climate-change argument that doesn't amount to the functional equivalent of using magic.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 08 2021, @02:33AM
Silly me; I thought you were about to say “the British Empire.”
(Score: 1) by Ron on Monday November 08 2021, @03:19PM
Never mind the dollar cost, the EROEI can easily go negative when you factor in breakdowns and damage from micro-meteors over time. Add the ever-increasing risk from orbital debris and it gets worse. Dollars and markets are manipulable. It's not a reliable measure of benefit in the energy equation.
But the real show-stopper is security. People already know how to hack com satellites and imaging satellites. Now they'll have something with weapon potential. Imagine re-focusing the microwave beam onto a target, or just shutting it down. Either could be devastating.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 09 2021, @03:19PM
and probably a small group can hold the planet hostage, that is point the solar collector/emitter past the earth... like gropec could do.
best scenario, all "old oil money" used to finance it.
i think the most social way is to use a trolly and pickup to go to whatever huge hanger sells them panels and go home and plug in... you know, like a fridge or tv or a cortexa?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 09 2021, @09:56PM (2 children)
Put some breeder reactors on the moon, use solar to enrich fuel, ship where needed. Or solve fusion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 09 2021, @10:44PM (1 child)
fusion without a gigantic investment is a huge no-no ... just imagine, seriously how fucked we would be if everbody got a tank of hydrogen and then 1 MW power in their back yard?
i mean, they're burning fossil fuel for ephemeral bitcoins. *wacks head on table* (multiple times). bitcoin is proof that humankind is lost.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 11 2021, @07:16PM
Nah, crypto coins are useful abd butcoin is a neat project. I think it has devolved into a scam of hot potato, the the tech will have uses.