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Power Science

Japan Eyes Solar Station In Space 247

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the they're-gonna-need-a-gundam-to-defend-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "By 2030 [Japan] wants to collect solar power in space and zap it down to Earth, using laser beams or microwaves. The government has just picked a group of companies and a team of researchers tasked with turning the ambitious, multi-billion-dollar dream of unlimited clean energy into reality in coming decades."
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Japan Eyes Solar Station In Space More

Japan Eyes Solar Station In Space

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  • Yay. Another one. (Score:1, Insightful)

    by NervousWreck (1399445) on Monday November 09 2009, @11:37AM (#30033416)
    Reminds me of the space station in Asimov's story Reason. All we need is a robot prophet.

  • Re:Good luck with that... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Maury Markowitz (452832) on Monday November 09 2009, @11:52AM (#30033614) Homepage

    > Your argument is a bit silly and is ignoring the economy of scale.

    Ahhh yes, the economy of scale claim. People have been making that claim since the 1960s (Seahorse) but in spite of 40 years of new technology it still isn't true.

    You did read the linked articles right? You need a reduction in launch costs of over 100 times before it can think about breaking even. I _might_ be inclined to believe a 10 times reduction, but 100 times? Riiiight....

    And that's ignoring the space debris issue, the fact that most of this technology doesn't exist, that the rest has a 100% failure rate, and that you're economically better off leaving them on the ground anyway. That last one is vitally important. Space power gets you about 2x the power from the same panel on Earth, once you beam it down.

    That's it, that's the end of the argument right there. Build twice as many panels right here, and you get the same amount of power for 1/100th to 1/1000th the cost. It doesn't make a difference what panels you use or what technology, anything that changes the economics of the panels in space does the same for the panels on Earth. So I'll just buy 100 times as many and deliver 50 times the power. Why the heck would you put them in space? (if you're going to come back with "24 hours" or some other vapid argument, read the other articles first).

    I'm sorry, but I would disagree that the argument is "a bit silly".

    Maury

  • Re:Old news (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jeffmeden (135043) on Monday November 09 2009, @12:05PM (#30033770) Homepage Journal

    So, who is going to volunteer to put a bunch of water into orbit?

  • Re:Good luck with that... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 09 2009, @12:12PM (#30033888)

    Not going to happen. No use writing why AGAIN, I think this reply to the original post is just fine

    I like a well laid out argument as anyone, but people have historically been very poor at guessing what will work and what not via dry analysis. Indeed, according to our knowledge, most of the technology and achievements we have today would never work.

    In business there's a saying: "Never mind how well you plan, your plan will never work out. But never start without a plan". This is why it is good that some people take on a project by leap of faith, or take a risk, if you will. You never know when a small discovery may ripple into all the equations and change the balance in favor of the project.

  • Re:Old news (Score:2, Insightful)

    by seanalltogether (1071602) on Monday November 09 2009, @12:18PM (#30033994)
    Which is why you should start investing in nuclear now, we might not be able to scale up solar fast enough in 20 years to meet the drought, but we can scale up nuclear energy that fast. Nuclear may also not last forever, but if we could get to 50/50 split nuclear/solar, we'd be in good shape.

  • Re:Good luck with that... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by asylumx (881307) on Monday November 09 2009, @12:19PM (#30034002)
    Random bloggers > japanese national space agency...

  • Re:Old news (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FooAtWFU (699187) on Monday November 09 2009, @12:20PM (#30034022) Homepage
    If it comes to that, we have nukes. By the 2100s, we might even have fusion power too (I'd hold out for 2200s for that, though, myself). Heck, even coating the landscape with solar panels and windmills is cost-effective if the alternative is "cold homes, very little travel, and dark nights".

    And really, even some of the "dark nights" are being solved in Africa through simple hand-cranked LED lanterns. Light has gotten incredibly cheap.

  • Re:Good luck with that... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by RemyBR (1158435) on Monday November 09 2009, @12:39PM (#30034306) Homepage
    If you lived in a country where every square meter of real estate is extremely expensive, as is the case for Japan, you would understand that using 100 times more panels is not really an option.

  • Re:Good luck with that... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bakkster (1529253) <Bakkster@man.gmail@com> on Monday November 09 2009, @12:39PM (#30034316)

    And that's ignoring the space debris issue, the fact that most of this technology doesn't exist, that the rest has a 100% failure rate, and that you're economically better off leaving them on the ground anyway. That last one is vitally important. Space power gets you about 2x the power from the same panel on Earth, once you beam it down.

    That's it, that's the end of the argument right there. Build twice as many panels right here, and you get the same amount of power for 1/100th to 1/1000th the cost. It doesn't make a difference what panels you use or what technology, anything that changes the economics of the panels in space does the same for the panels on Earth. So I'll just buy 100 times as many and deliver 50 times the power. Why the heck would you put them in space? (if you're going to come back with "24 hours" or some other vapid argument, read the other articles first).

    Of course, you assume that there is somewhere reasonable to place the panels to maximise their effect. Sure, you don't need SPS in Arizona where it's sunny 85% of the time, but at higher latitudes with greater cloud cover the available solar power is reduced. So, someplace like Japan has different economics, where they might require 4-10x (or more) the panels on earth. Don't forget that Japan has very little available land. Doubling or quadrupling the required footprint of a power plant is not to be taken lightly.

    I guarantee the first system will not break even. The second probably won't either. But it's certainly conceivable that it will at some point in the future. Better to start now and learn to make it effective if/when that happens. It's not a silver bullet, but it's still worth a shot.

  • Re:Good luck with that... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by realityimpaired (1668397) on Monday November 09 2009, @12:47PM (#30034458)

    Space power gets you about 2x the power from the same panel on Earth, once you beam it down.

    That's it, that's the end of the argument right there. Build twice as many panels right here, and you get the same amount of power for 1/100th to 1/1000th the cost. It doesn't make a difference what panels you use or what technology, anything that changes the economics of the panels in space does the same for the panels on Earth. So I'll just buy 100 times as many and deliver 50 times the power. Why the heck would you put them in space? (if you're going to come back with "24 hours" or some other vapid argument, read the other articles first).

    Space power also doesn't suffer from cloudy weather (if the beam you're using to send it to the ground is in the right frequency range), can operate at night (if the sattelite is high enough to avoid being in the shadow of the Earth), and doesn't take up acres of space on the ground. It may not necessarily be economical right now, but as the world's population approaches 10 billion or more, and as we run out of space to build the things (and start needing what little space we have for things like farms instead of solar plants), alternatives that use up less space are going to become more attractive.

    Plus, you're overlooking one very very important point... the rockets they can use to launch solar arrays into space are not purpose built. That is to say, they can be used for things other than launching solar arrays into space. The space agency is going to spend the money building/developping them anyway, because they're still useful for launching communication/navigation sattelites, and because the technology can be adapted to manned space flight. The bulk of the cost of a launch comes from the development and testing process, and that's money that's going to be spent anyway. And as new players enter the market, the cost of launching a sattelite is going down significantly... the ISRO in India, for example, charges about half what it costs the Americans to launch a sattelite.

  • Re:Good luck with that... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by jack2000 (1178961) on Monday November 09 2009, @12:57PM (#30034618)
    Your greatest enemy is your friend here. So make your energy problems go away with wave and wind power generators! Dole out the sun panels for when it's quiet and calm.

  • Re:Good luck with that... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by canajin56 (660655) on Monday November 09 2009, @01:08PM (#30034760)
    Well, I read your link you titled "read it and weep". It disagrees with everything you say, so I'm not sure I read the parts of it you were hoping to? First, it says that both NASA and the ESA think that a 50-100x decrease in costs is possible in the near future. Further, it estimates that only 12x is needed for a solar sat to be economically sound when compared with a conventional, terrestrial power plant, a cost decrease about the same as what you admit may be possible, and far less than both NASA and the ESA are estimating. Sure, some of the tech isn't there yet, but to say that since it isn't there yet, it couldn't possible ever be, is moronic at best. On top of the extra light from being above the atmosphere, you get almost 24 hours of light, an argument you call vapid. Well, whatever, its a lot more than 2x the amount of solar power, so even with existing, inefficient microwave crap, it's still more power and less land usage on earth. And even though you plug your ears and scream no, NASA and the ESA both say you're wrong, launch costs WILL get cheaper in the next few decades, making this economically feasible, so long as in TWENTY YEARS the tech improves, which they say it will, even pessimistically. So, you fall into the usual Slashbot poster category of "NASA IS FULL OF MORONS I AM FAR SMARTER THAN THEY CAN EVER HOPE". Yawn city.

  • Re:Old news (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jane Q. Public (1010737) on Monday November 09 2009, @01:11PM (#30034806)
    That's a silly argument. There's even more energy in a single gallon of DIRT. The trick is in getting at it.

  • Re:Good luck with that... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Prune (557140) on Monday November 09 2009, @02:03PM (#30035620)
    Wind energy is simply too low density (as is solar) to fully satisfy the world's growing energy needs over even the next couple of centuries. And you're forgetting that most of the world's population is in developing and undeveloped nations whose energy demand will grow 10x per capita as they become fully industrialized. Wind and solar are toy projects pushed by rabid environmentalists' infectious propaganda; they very much realize how adoption of these power sources will force severe limits on human progress by suppressing energy availability. And I've no doubt that's exactly what they want--less technology, back to nature Ludditism and, especially, enabling a socialist reworking of human civilization.
    Vote nuclear, kids; save mankind.

Make it myself? But I'm a physical organic chemist!