Pentagon Urges Space-Based Solar Power 552
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."
Life imitates art (Score:5, Interesting)
In practice, it'd be a piece of cake to implement a safeguard against that.
Re:Could be a tremendously capable tool, but.... (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.
Re:5-10Mw? That's stupid. (Score:2, Interesting)
I, Robot (Score:2, Interesting)
"Reason" (1941)--Powell and Donovan are assigned to an energy station--it gathers solar energy, and then sends that energy, via a focused beam, to Earth. (...) QT-1 banishes the humans from the beam control room. This worries Powell and Donovan, because a storm is approaching, and it could deflect the energy beam, destroying a good portion of the Earth."
"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.
Re:Could be a tremendously capable tool, but.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Could be a tremendously capable tool, but.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Guess we should keep an eye out for them launching a bunch of mirrors.
-Peter
Re:Kumbayah, indeed. (Score:3, Interesting)
If you gave the fusion project to us, four guys would be in prison for fraud, the taxpayers would have been bilked out out of several hundred million dollars, the project would be two years late - with mods on top of that - and we'd all be driving Mr. Fusions by now!
That was in the late 80s - twenty years ago.
Lot of truth to that way of thinking.....
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Over thirty means near-recent history.
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.
Re:Kumbayah, indeed. (Score:3, Interesting)
Bring up the dyson spheres already.
Re:Right... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is the stupidest thing i've ever heard (Score:2, Interesting)
There are many places that we have an abundance of sunlight that we're not using (see the entire state of New Mexico for example). Those places are all ripe to be tapped >IF we could make solar power work economically (or if we could provide enough dis-incentives to using coal).
Don't kid yourselves into thinking that somehow the coolness factor of putting this thing in space is really going to change anything. For every benefit you can list I can list a huge negative. You think that the lack of an atmosphere is great? Try dealing with tiny meteorites that fly by every once in a while and turn your GIGANTIC solar panel into swiss cheese. In addition I bet that if you did the calculations you would find that the amount of energy that it took to put a solar panel up in space would take 100 years to recoup from that same solar panel even if you ignore the major and nearly insurmountable hurdle of getting the energy back to earth!
This is flat out insane.
don
Re:Also the Fear of Where the Money Comes From (Score:3, Interesting)
The total solar energy available to the earth is approximately 3850 zettajoules (ZJ) per year.
Worldwide energy consumption was 0.471 Zettajoules in 2004.
So, maybe you could have the size of your solar farm. But you would have to keep part of it rotating in step with the Earth's rotation, so that it always faced the Sun.
Re:American Agri-business Versus DOD (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:American Agri-business Versus DOD (Score:3, Interesting)
Military needs local resources (Score:3, Interesting)
No. The military needs to acquire resources as close to the battlefield as possible. They can not rely on ethanol coming from the US. Ethanol will be unusable until there are multiple friendly sources around the world. Sun Tzu's comments on foraging still apply in modern times.
This logistics problem is one of the things that makes space based solar so attractive.
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.