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Pentagon Urges Space-Based Solar Power
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Oct 14, 2007 06:54 PM
from the let-the-beam-me-down-jokes-begin dept.
from the let-the-beam-me-down-jokes-begin dept.
eldavojohn writes "The Pentagon issued a report indicating that space-based solar power 'has the potential to help the United States stave off climate change and avoid future conflicts over oil by harnessing the Sun's power to provide an essentially inexhaustible supply of clean energy.' The report, from the Pentagon's National Security Space Office, calls for funding the development of space-based solar power culminating in 'a platform in geosynchronous orbit bigger than the international space station and capable of beaming 5-10 megawatts of power to a receiving station on the ground.' The Pentagon's interest in such an effort stems from the need to acquire energy on the battlefield, which today often comes at a painful premium."
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Could be a tremendously capable tool, but.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They can do this now (with the civilian president's executive authority), it's just terribly inefficient to do so.
And it's doubtful that they ever would turn off everyone's power - particularly since they haven't so far.
American Agri-business Versus DOD (Score:5, Interesting)
My hunch is that the answer is "no". Even though Brazilian sugar-cane-based ethanol is much cheaper than American corn-based ethanol, Washington levies such a huge tariff on the former that it is more expensive than the latter. The whole point is to placate the angry American farmer.
An effort that favors any alternative fuel source besides corn is sure to run afoul of the farm lobby. Isn't Iowa one of the earliest primary states?
Oh yeah. Coca-Cola, long ago, dumped sugar in favor of corn syrup in the soft drinks. A tariff here and there sure can change the economics of life.
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Re:American Agri-business Versus DOD (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:American Agri-business Versus DOD (Score:4, Insightful)
Around Passover time, you can find coca cola in the U.S. with real sugar instead of HFCS (high fructose corn syrup). You will still have to travel to certain major metro areas (i.e. the ones with lots of Jews.) Google for "passover coca cola" for more information.
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Re:American Agri-business Versus DOD (Score:4, Interesting)
It is far worse than that. Corn for ethanol is actually using up one of the largest underground water aquifers in the world which resides under the Midwest. The Ogallala Aquifer [wikipedia.org] is a significant source of water for cattle and crops a like. Additional pressures forced by ethanol means in as little as one to two hundred years basic items such as FOOD may not come from our own country because there is no water to grow it.
So in a nut shell we pay farmers subsidies to crow a crop we don't need, which is thought to create health problems, so we can pay a premium on said crop at the market so we can pay another subsidy on ethanol, so we can pay a premium at the fuel pump, all the while using up our fresh water supplies.
If you feel sorry for the small American farmer, don't! They are killing us now and setting us up for famine later. If the small American Farmer insists on being so irresponsible, they deserve to become extinct. Remember, they could actually lobby for alternatives, but they don't even try.
Add in the fact that much study is currently underway to prove HSCS is the cause of the rapid increase of cancers, obesity, and diabetes in Americans only makes things grimmer; all of which seem to follow the same curve as our shift from cane sugars to HSCS. Long story short, the American Farmer is a greater threat to the US population than is any terrorist plot.
To add insult to injury, alternatives are available for ethanol production, including hemp. Contrary to popular myth, hemp is NOT pot; though pot can be used at hemp. Hemp can actually yield three to four times the same ethanol per acre than corn. Hemp is naturally insect and drought resistant, requiring a fraction of water consumed by corn. Hemp can be grown is almost every state in the US. Hemp is editable. The ONLY problem with hemp is that it has a very long list of political enemies including; corn and sugar beet growers, chemical and petroleum companies, paper growers, and cotton farmers. As most people are completely ignorant of hemp and believe hemp is pot, hemp doesn't have much chance to succeed; thanks in large by the misinformation provided by chemical and petroleum companies following the concussion of WWII, which is the last time it was grown in the US.
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Re:American Agri-business Versus DOD (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:American Agri-business Versus DOD (Score:5, Insightful)
Add to that the fact that it is limited to one crop per growing season, is a mono-culture highly susceptible to natural or artificial pathogens, drought, floods and hail and you have what is probably the least desirable energy source of all.
What is pushing the Ethanol industry? Corn ethanol subsidies totaled $7.0 billion in 2006 for 4.9 billion gallons of ethanol. That's $1.45 per gallon of ethanol (and $2.21 per gal of gas replaced). There are 17 NEW Ethanol plants being built in Nebraska because of those subsidies.
What makes the WHOLE THING A TOTAL DISASTER is that Ethanol is NOT the path or even a bridge to energy independence. It is merely a drain on the Federal treasury driven by greed and corruption.
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Also the Fear of Where the Money Comes From (Score:5, Insightful)
Worse yet is something that didn't make it past the editing in my submission of this summary. I read around and it seems like a lot of people think that this budget for such an expensive extensive project would almost certainly be cut from any other alternative energy sources.
In my opinion, our defense spending is already through the roof, this could be a political move to put something powerful in space and get the money from alternative energy spending (or at least under the guises of it). Maybe my tin foil hat is on too tight but a lot of news sources were saying that this could drain and/or draw attention away from other just as valid efforts at escaping the grip of fossil fuels.
Like everyone's been saying, our solution to these problems of dependence on the middle east & emissions is going to be a host of different solutions specific to different areas. I fear that the funding and attention will go into this and we'll have all our eggs in one basket
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Re:Also the Fear of Where the Money Comes From (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Also the Fear of Where the Money Comes From (Score:5, Informative)
Do you even have an idea of how many square feet of PV cells you need for 10MW? There's a system in Portugal that's that big, you can see a photo of it here [dailytech.com]. Even figuring that you might get slightly more efficient cells and by putting them in orbit might be able to get more power out of each, you're still talking about a *huge* station.
I strongly suspect you are talking about a Shuttle launch or using one of the Russian or European heavy-lift rockets (I think an Ariane 5 can lift something like 10,000 kilos to geostationary orbit), and that's assuming you can lift it in one shot to begin with.
I think this is neat technology too, but let's not understate the difficulty here. This is an immense undertaking.
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Re:Also the Fear of Where the Money Comes From (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Also the Fear of Where the Money Comes From (Score:5, Insightful)
One tenth the size and rather than powering a city they can http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/22/0420239 [slashdot.org] or if they prefer they can http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/22/0420239 [slashdot.org] and torture a whole city at once.
Personally with their current track record, there are a whole lot of countries that will not trust the water boarding US military with an enormous energy weapon in space.
Even if you give them the benefit of the doubt, what happens when a micrometeorite damages the control systems and they accidentally fry a city, it might be clean but it is inherently very high risk.
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Re:Also the Fear of Where the Money Comes From (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, it's possible to launch such a system, but there were a feasible way to transmit power from space to earth, then the reverse would also be true. Wouldn't we already powering space based systems from earth if this were remotely easy? Wouldn't it be cheaper to power the shuttle by beaming power to a dish rather than sending up all those heavy batteries and fuel cells?
I think launching this system will be the easy part.
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Re:Actually, this could save money... (Score:5, Funny)
because we haven't found any giant space sharks yet...
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Re:Actually, this could save money... (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't.
Look up anything about the international court for proof.
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Re:Could be a tremendously capable tool, but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Could be a tremendously capable tool, but.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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yeah! (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Could be a tremendously capable tool, but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Could be a tremendously capable tool, but.... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is only proof of concept, 5 or 10 megawatts is a drop in the bucket for commercial or military use. Heck, there are operating 5 megawatt wind generators.
The point is that somebody should at least try to demonstrate the feasibility (or infeasibility) of space-based solar power stations, and NASA isn't going to do it so who else is there?
The important thing is to develop the technology and techniques to build solar power stations. Once we have those, commercial power companies can just contract out to Boeing or Lockheed to have them built. But it's developing the technology and techniques that are critical.
It's like the Navy is funding Dr. Bussard's Polywell [wikipedia.org] project. The Navy can ostensively use it for powering naval vessels, but once (if!) it works, the technology will be available for commercial use. The military has a long history of sponsoring R&D that has dual military and commercial uses.
After all, if the Pentagon (US government) plays its cards right,
I'm curious, do you have any examples of the US "playing its cards right" in any foreign policy matters?
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Right... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Right... (Score:5, Funny)
No, no, no. This is the NEW Pentagon. They're here to help developing countries. If they need some power, we'll give it to them.
Oh, and sorry about the little incident where we fried your communications infrastructure. We'll help with that, too. Just got a few bugs in the system. Complicated technology and all that.
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Re:Right... (Score:4, Interesting)
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The military. And space. And energy. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is one of the reasons the US military is interested in space-based power. One of the many, of course. Providing troops with power is a benefit. The militarisation of space, the extension into earth's orbit of US control, is a benefit. It's an exercise for the reader to decide which is a tangential benefit, and which is primary.
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5-10 Megawatts? (Score:3, Informative)
Life imitates art (Score:5, Interesting)
In practice, it'd be a piece of cake to implement a safeguard against that.
Tinfoil hat? (Score:5, Funny)
Tinfoil hat?
Need I say more?
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5-10Mw? That's stupid. (Score:3, Insightful)
However, a nice focused microwave ray can literally bake people without (much) damage to property.
Direct Report Link (Score:5, Informative)
SBSB Interim Assessment [nss.org]
Dupe (Score:3, Informative)
Kumbayah, indeed. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There are stupid ideas (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:There are stupid ideas (Score:5, Insightful)
I seems like a perfectly reasonable solution to one of the big worries over standard solar arrays: land use.
Funny to hear that about a country which 42% of its territory is desertic.
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The initial version may not be impressive but... (Score:5, Insightful)
"delivering energy directly to the battlefield" (Score:3, Interesting)
All jokes aside, this concept isnt really useful for general energy production until we can decrease the cost of delivering stuff into orbit by at least 2 orders of magnitude.
And cost doesnt mean $, but also energy. People still believe the myth that solar cells dont yield their production energy cost in their lifetime. Thats not true for 2 decades now, but getting the stuff into orbit adds a huge factor in the total energy balance.
Can never break even on energy. (Score:4, Informative)
It would have to run for about two years just to collect as much energy as it took to loft it. Not to mention the cost and weight of the downlink equipment.
Then to recover the launch costs, that's never going to happen.
Re:Can never break even on energy. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not a bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Space-based power would be a tremendous gain. Setting up base in a remote corner of Iran to perform Intel? No problem. Spaceman Spiff justs adjusts the microwave transmitter from the orbital solar array, and you get instant power.
I haven't thought through all the implications, but I can see substantial military advantages in something like this.
Re:Not a bad idea (Score:5, Funny)
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That's 5 - 10 GIGAWATTS not megawatts!!! (Score:5, Informative)
From the report.
http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/final-sbsp-interim-assessment-release-01.pdf [nss.org]
Typical reference designs involved a satellite in geostationary orbit, several kilometers on a side, that used photovoltaic arrays to capture the sunlight, then convert it into radio frequencies of 2.45 or 5.8 GHz where atmospheric transmission is very high, that were then beamed toward a reference signal on the Earth at intensities approximately 1/6th of noon sunlight. The beam was then received by a rectifying antenna and converted into electricity for the grid, delivering 5 - 10 gigawatts of electric power.
The Sun is a giant fusion reactor, conveniently located some 150 million km from the Earth, radiating 2.3 billion times more energy than what strikes the disk of the Earth, which itself is more energy in a hour than all human civilization directly uses in a year, and it will continue to produce free energy for billions of years.
You gotta like that. The SUN is conveniently located!
The basic idea is very straightforward: place very large solar arrays into continuously and intensely sunlit Earth orbit (1,366 watts/m2) , collect gigawatts of electrical energy, electromagnetically beam it to Earth, and receive it on the surface for use either as baseload power via direct connection to the existing electrical grid, conversion into manufactured synthetic hydrocarbon fuels, or as low - intensity broadcast power beamed directly to consumers. A single kilometer - wide band of geosynchronous earth orbit experiences enough solar flux in one year to nearly equal the amount of energy contained within all known recoverable conventional oil reserves on Earth today. This amount of energy indicates that there is enormous potential for energy security, economic development, improved environmental stewardship, advancement of general space faring, and overall national security for those nations who construct and possess a SBSP capability.
A single kilometer - wide band of geosynchronous earth orbit experiences enough solar flux in one year (approximately 212 terawatt - years) to nearly equal the amount of energy contained within all known recoverable conventional oil reserves on Earth today (approximately 250 TW-yrs). The enormous potential of this resource demands an examination of mankind's ability to successfully capture and utilize this energy within the context of today's technology, economic, and policy realities, as well as the expected environment within the next 25 years. Study of space-based solar power (SBSP) indicates that there is enormous potential for energy security, economic development, advancement of general space faring, improved environmental stewardship, and overall national security for those nations who construct and possess such a capability.
Let's get it done!!!
Re:USA USA USA (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:USA USA USA (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is why the government & banks pump 10-14% more money into the economy every year, causing the stock market and property markets to rise exponentially and thereby moving value away from those who only have cash in the bank and CPI limited salary rises to those who own assets and stocks.
Do you have any idea what you're talking about?
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Re:Redistribution == Stealing (Score:4, Insightful)
And you realize that's a crock right? Lots of countries with public health care run balanced budgets (Canada, New Zealand, etc). It's not about borrowing, it's about priorities. If the US wasn't flushing money down the toilet in Iraq, you could fund public health care and have money left over for a decent education system without a running a deficit.
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Re:Redistribution == Stealing (Score:4, Informative)
The NHS system in the UK for 60 million people costs £105 billion a year. Which works out in dollars for around 300 million people something like 1.06 trillion dollars per year.
I'll let you work out where you're going to find something of the magnitude of a trillion dollars per year without borrowing.
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Re:bullshit reasoning (Score:4, Funny)
That's right: it uses clean energy! Everyone wins!
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Re:I'll tell them what I want... (Score:4, Funny)
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