Pentagon Urges Space-Based Solar Power

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."

Could be a tremendously capable tool, but....

[BWJones (18351)]

Sooo..... would this mean that the Pentagon could *bogart* all of the power when needed, or reduce power generation at critical times? This is one of the principal complaints about the GPS system as currently structured. There is no doubt that the GPS system has revolutionized much of the developed world and I am not criticizing that. On the contrary, I am just pointing out a possible criticism. After all, if the Pentagon (US government) plays its cards right, this could be a way to ensure that Gap Nations can be provided power to help them integrate into the Economic Core. (brilliant background on theory of Gap Nations and Economic core here [thomaspmbarnett.com]).

Re:

[MBraynard (653724)]

this mean that the Pentagon could *bogart* all of the power when needed

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

[reporter (666905)]

One organization that rivals the influence of the military industrial complex (of which the Department of Defense is a piece) is the farm lobby (also known as the agri-business lobby). If the farm lobby -- or, more specifically, the pro-ethanol corn lobby in the midwest -- opposes the solar-power idea in favor of ethanol, will the government still build an orbiting solar-power transmitter?

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.

Re:American Agri-business Versus DOD

[Xonstantine (947614)]

The whole point is to placate the angry American farmer.

You mispelled "Archer Daniels Midland".

Re:American Agri-business Versus DOD

[Morty (32057)]

And man would I kill for some real Sugar in my Coke too. The HFC crap they use instead tastes like garbage. Only took one trip to Japan with REAL Coke with sugar in it makes the stuff we have in the US impossible to drink now.

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.

Re:American Agri-business Versus DOD

[GooberToo (74388)]

However, ethanol will leave the system highly vulnerable to climate change, a risk the US govt with its denial-stance will probably ignore.

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.

Re:American Agri-business Versus DOD

[LurkerXXX (667952)]

You mean the large farming conglomerates are killing us. The small farmer is glad to take a subsidy to not plant anything and let the fields recover. Archer Daniels Midland wants money from products.

Re:American Agri-business Versus DOD

[Jerry (6400)]

It is impossible to switch to Ethanol. The Ethanol industry's own data (each gallon of Ethanol produced yields an excess of 17,000 BTUs. 125,000 BTU/gal Gasoline / 17,000 BTU/gal excess = 7) shows that it takes SEVEN gallons of Ethanol to replace ONE gallon of Gasoline. The average yield of Corn is 135 Bu/acre and each Bushel of Corn yields 2.68 Gal of Ethanol. To replace Gasoline with Ethanol made from Corn grown in the US would require 44 Million MORE acres of agricultural land than the TOTAL acres of agricultural land available in the US.

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.

Also the Fear of Where the Money Comes From

[eldavojohn (898314)]

That's an excellent point.

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 ... a basket owned by and controlled by the DoD.

Re:Also the Fear of Where the Money Comes From

[IWannaBeAnAC (653701)]

Recoup the initial expense? Launch something bigger than the ISS into geosynchronous orbit (26,000 miles, compared with the ISS orbit of about 210 miles), for a measly 10 megawatts? You were kidding, right?

Re:Also the Fear of Where the Money Comes From

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

You doubt the entire thing will weigh (okay, mass) 4000 pounds? Look, I was with your back-of-the-envelope numbers up to that point, but 2000 pounds for 10 megawatts of solar panels, plus meteorite shielding, control/propulsion systems, and the microwave transmitter to beam the power back down? No way. 5000 pounds is a fair weight estimate for a modern communications satellite [astronautix.com], and they're a whole lot simpler.

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.

Re:Also the Fear of Where the Money Comes From

[StikyPad (445176)]

I vote we build huge photovoltaic rings around our planet perpendicular to the sun, then we can collect energy AND look almost as cool as Saturn.

Re:Also the Fear of Where the Money Comes From

[rtb61 (674572)]

Well it is the US military we are talking about and to be blunt it be an effectives weapon it doesn't need to be that big or generate that much power.

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.

Re:Also the Fear of Where the Money Comes From

[ArcherB (796902)]

I think it is feasible if it plays out right

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.

Re:Actually, this could save money...

[Anonymous Coward]

If we give the Pentagon a giant space laser, why do we have to send troops at all?

because we haven't found any giant space sharks yet...

Re:Actually, this could save money...

[TheSpoom (715771)]

This response makes the assumption that the United States gives a shit about international law.

They don't.

Look up anything about the international court for proof.

Re:Could be a tremendously capable tool, but....

[navtal (943711)]

Or they could direct the megawatt beam at things other then a power collector.....

Re:Could be a tremendously capable tool, but....

[ILuvRamen (1026668)]

they'd be more likely to do that by accident. If they're off by like 0.001 degrees in space, they'll hit like 5 miles to the right and torch a whole town with microwaves or however they plan to beam it down. Nobody will want one of those plants anywhere near their town which means tons and tons of line loss from having to run power cables so far.

yeah!

[commodoresloat (172735)]

Or they could direct the megawatt beam at things other then a power collector.....

Like maybe a house full of jiffy-pop?

Re:

[LWATCDR (28044)]

Hate to tell you this but the military already can and has done it in the past. Energy was rationed during WWII. The thing is what everybody seems to forget is that the US military is under control of the civilian government. No matter what the tin hat brigade wants to think. Your comments about the GPS system is interesting. GPS exists only because the military paid for the development, and the deployment of it. Comercial and civialain users are in fact getting a free ride on the military budget for this.

Re:Could be a tremendously capable tool, but....

[_Ludwig (86077)]

Considering the military budget comes out of the pockets of us commercial and civilian users, it's hardly a "free ride."

Re:Could be a tremendously capable tool, but....

[drgould (24404)]

Sooo..... would this mean that the Pentagon could *bogart* all of the power when needed, or reduce power generation at critical times?

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?

Right...

[benhocking (724439)]

Because I can't imagine any other military application behind beaming 5-10 megawatts of power to a focused location...

Re:Right...

[ColdWetDog (752185)]

Because I can't imagine any other military application behind beaming 5-10 megawatts of power to a focused location...

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.

Re:Right...

[jstomel (985001)]

I'm not an expert in power transmission, but if I recall correctly any transmission method capable of punching through our atmosphere would have to be relatively inert with respect to actual human beings. Probably radio or low frequency microwaves. You could probably fry a city's electronics with it, but actually harming people would be difficult.

The military. And space. And energy.

[Mahjub Sa'aden (1100387)]

And weapons. The energisation of space will be accompanied by the militarisation thereof. No question. If there is a critical asset in orbit, something that the USA can simply not afford to lose, it will be protected. Even if this space-based power isn't a feasible weapon in its own right (and I can't really see, from any descriptions I've read online, how it could be), it will be protected. And critical orbital assets will be protected from space. There's no other good way to do it.

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.

5-10 Megawatts?

[Junior J. Junior III (192702)]

You've got to be kidding, that's going to end the energy crisis? Scale it up about 10,000x, maybe.

Life imitates art

[Daishiman (698845)]

Do you remember SimCity 2000 when you could build an orbital solar power station that could potentially misalign and burn down half the city? Fun times.
In practice, it'd be a piece of cake to implement a safeguard against that.

Tinfoil hat?

[woolio (927141)]

In practice, it'd be a piece of cake to implement a safeguard against that.

Tinfoil hat?

Need I say more?

5-10Mw? That's stupid.

[Cyberax (705495)]

5-10Mw is the power output of _one_ _small_ power plant. Typical nuclear power plants output hundreds megawatts of power.

However, a nice focused microwave ray can literally bake people without (much) damage to property.

Direct Report Link

[AugustZephyr (989775)]

Warning: this is a 3.5MB PDF.

SBSB Interim Assessment [nss.org]

Dupe

[Goonie (8651)]

Previous story here [slashdot.org], which also notably mentioned the process by which the report was developed (hint: it might be a familiar one to Linux users).

Kumbayah, indeed.

[haakondahl (893488)]

I'm going to laugh myself unconscious when the United States Military solves the problem of clean, renewable energy for the world. Take that, hippies! Muahahahahaaaaa!

Re:

[nacturation (646836)]

I'm going to laugh myself unconscious when the United States Military solves the problem of clean, renewable energy for the world. Take that, hippies! Muahahahahaaaaa!

And with a vast enough array of collectors blocking the sunlight, they could also solve global warming.
 

There are stupid ideas

[Cracked Pottery (947450)]

It takes the military to come up with a REALLY stupid idea. We can develop better solar cells, or improve battery technology, or maybe put up more wind energy farms, but why not put the solar cells in space and beam the power down in focused beams with some sort of Buck Rogers scheme that has never been developed or tested and would probably, if it could work at all and not just be a cover for spending for a space weapons platform, be much more vulnerable to attack by potential adversary countries with access to space, e.g. the Russians or the Chinese. God save us from these morons.

Re:

[darkmeridian (119044)]

If you're cynical enough to believe that the military is using this as an excuse to develop high-powered lasers, or potentially a space-based death ray, then why do you also say that it's a really "stupid" idea? By your thesis, it's a good but *evil* idea.

Re:There are stupid ideas

[4D6963 (933028)]

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.

The initial version may not be impressive but...

[Koreantoast (527520)]

Yes, this initial version doesn't generate a lot of power, but if the military were to actually go through with this plan, it would absorb the initial R&D costs to take orbital solar platforms from scribbles on the back of a cocktail napkin to a real, working prototype. Once the process is proven, then it would be a much smaller economic risk for the private sector to transition the technology to the civilian sector and expand capacity. Very few entities in the United States, let alone the globe, have deep enough pockets to absorb the immense financial risk and ready access to the limited pools of specialized aerospace engineering talent required as the United States military. Personally, I would rather have the military spending money on technology that has civilian benefits instead of buying yet another set of nuclear weapons.

"delivering energy directly to the battlefield"

[imsabbel (611519)]

is such a perfect euphemism. Those insurgents better get some suntan factor 2000 if our space ray starts delivering :)

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.

[Ancient_Hacker (751168)]

Do the math. To loft a 10-Kg solar panel into orbit takes about 100 Kg of fuel, or 4.2 x 10^9 Joules. If it's 10 meters squared in area, it's going to generate about 10KW. Assume a conversion efficiency of 60%, it's 6KW, or 6K joules/second. Assume a wildly optimistic 30% collection rate, and we have 1800 watts delivered to the ground.

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.

[QuantumRiff (120817)]

Hmm.. Just how long does it take to recover the cost of building a terrestrial power station? I seem to remember a $25Million dollar gas power plant built just out side my town. They generate about $8Million a year selling power, which they have to pay for gas, employees, and the construction costs.. Of course, we're ignoring the cost of about $3Billion for the western power grid that it hooks into...(since were not mentioning the cost of downlink equipment, seems fair to not include the cost of distribution)

Not a bad idea

[MetricT (128876)]

The military has a problem. They need a lot of power for computers, communications, all the conveniences of modern warfare. *But*, they often work far away from any established (or reliable) infrastructure.

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

[pintpusher (854001)]

Do not look at transmitter with remaining eye.

That's 5 - 10 GIGAWATTS not megawatts!!!

[itsybitsy (149808)]

Woops, you made an error of three orders of magnitude, that's five to ten gigawatts not megawatts.

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

[SnowZero (92219)]

Free as in taxes, right?

Re:USA USA USA

[Colin Smith (2679)]

Right...

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?

Re:Redistribution == Stealing

[Comboman (895500)]

You realise that this redistribution of wealth requires increased government borrowing.

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.

Re:Redistribution == Stealing

[Colin Smith (2679)]

And you realize that's a crock right? Lots of countries with public health care run balanced budgets

Canada and New Zealand are not "superpowers". The US hasn't balanced a budget for decades and to socialise your healthcare you would have to forget being a superpower and get rid of your military almost entirely. Iraq is being paid for by borrowing, not taxation. If you stop the Iraq war tomorrow, the US budget will still not be balanced and will not pay for socialised healthcare.

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.
 

Re:bullshit reasoning

[the_humeister (922869)]

An airstrike anywhere on earth with a high powered laser would be the ultimate clean weapon.

That's right: it uses clean energy! Everyone wins!

Re:I'll tell them what I want...

[NecroPuppy (222648)]

Was it a dream where you see yourself standing in sort of sun-god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you?