Japan Eyes Solar Station In Space 247
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."
Threat? (Score:2, Funny)
Great , now we not only have to worry about stray godzilla attacks, now japan gets pew pew lasers
Re:Threat? (Score:5, Informative)
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I invoke Giant Robot and his Atomic Punch on your Mothra and Godzilla. p0wn3d!
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Informative? You mean the movies were real? Shit, some of my friends are over there now!
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Pretty much, [slashdot.org] yeah...
So this is how... (Score:3, Funny)
Godzilla is made, all that microwave radiation frying the Lizard DNA...
Don't tell Japan they had it coming to them!
Oh no! There goes Tokyo! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Go! Go! Godzilla! (Score:2)
Helpless people on subway trains, scream 'My God' as he looks in on them.
Nobody picked up the gundam 00 reference. (Score:4, Interesting)
Space elevators, orbital solar power station, and an orbital laser that can do massive damage with pin point accuracy. Just like you planned Japan, just like you planned. Now all you need is a bunch of rogue scientists building a base in a bunch of asteroids.
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Just wait til the Super Dimensional Fortress crash lands on Earth. Then the shit storm will fly.
Good luck with that... (Score:3, Informative)
Not going to happen. No use writing why AGAIN, I think this reply to the original post is just fine:
http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/here-we-go-again-with-the-spss/
Re:Good luck with that... (Score:5, Informative)
Your argument is a bit silly and is ignoring the economy of scale.
The majority of the cost in Rocket development is in personnel and support. The actual physical materials and fuel used aren't nearly as expensive. With a large investment into capital and mass manufacturing of rockets, cost can be driven down significantly.
Re:Good luck with that... (Score:5, Insightful)
> 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
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Well true or false, you've got to admit its a better way of stimulating jobs and research with government money than giving it straight to failing banks, right. ;)
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Not if those banks are failing, and will continue to fail, because they did put all the money in your research projects. ^^
Think around the next corner, people! If someone has less money, another one has more! :)
Just find out, who has loads and loads of money now?? Then find out what he wants, or thinks he wants. (Thoughts can be changed!
And then, sell him as much of that as possible in the most huge addictive shopping frenzy of all time! ^^
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Bankers.
The rest of our money.
Re:Good luck with that... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm wondering - does this take into account land costs of ground based solar cells, particularly in Japan?
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> does this take into account land costs of ground based solar cells
Ummm, you realize you need a ground footprint just about the same size for the rectenna, right? And unlike a rectenna, you can build solar panels in settled areas, like rooftops, car parks, etc. The land footprint of ground-based solar is FAR less expensive than the same power beamed from space.
Maury
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To be fair, you have to remember that unlike other power-generation technologies, solar has the advantage that you can just slap solar panels on any rooftop, providing power right at the point-of-use. However, the problem with this is that, to be economically feasible, you need to be in a location where you get plenty of sunlight on your rooftop. Here in Phoenix, Arizona, that's a given, and it's shameful that we don't exploit this advantage more in this city. In Japan, it's not like that. Given their h
Re:Good luck with that... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Good luck with that... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
There's no limits on human progress by using solar instead of dirty technologies like coal. However, no matter what technologies we use for generating power, there are limits on human population because of resources. Humans need to stop breeding like rabbits.
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.
No, we need more technology, cleaner technology, technology which lets us live better with nature (so we can still have nice places to go camping on vacations, and nice fish and seafood to eat that aren't filled with mercury and PCBs), and we need fewer humans with higher standards of living so we can enjoy our resources and manage them better, instead of fighting over them and squandering and polluting them. We also need fewer people so we can avoid more extreme forms of socialism. The only way to manage larger and larger populations of people will be socialism, and in particular the more nasty kinds that impose all kinds of limits on our freedoms. You can't have many freedoms when we're all packed together in ultra high-density housing; we'll have to have stricter rules and more government to keep us from killing each other, or keeping some nutcase from committing mass-murder. You want less government interference and more freedom? Work for a smaller population. Stop having so many babies.
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Would you rather have overpopulation, with everyone miserable, or a smaller population with everyone happy? How does wanting to limit population make me somehow against human life? Are you one of those religious freaks that thinks everyone should have 14 children?
But yes, expanding into space would allow a larger population. However, that'll take hundreds of years, maybe thousands, because you'd need to either terraform other worlds, or build giant self-contained habitats, to hold any significant number
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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.
God you americans are full of shit most of the time, WTF does energy production and technology have to do with capitalism and socialism? Oh right Socialists countries like France have 74.5% nuclear power (the rest is renewable)! If anything true socialism and even communism are more likely to succeed if there is better tech, if it makes manual jobs redundant the excessive labour that made life in the USSR hard would not be needed.
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I'm not gonna repeat all the arguments of nuclear vs. renewable power http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_debate [wikipedia.org]
But basically, with nuclear power you end up having the same problem as with oil (Uranium is limited), except you have huge safety issues (see recent events in France) and unsolved issues with radioactive waste.
Nuclear power can be a short-time tool to get to sustainable long-term technologies. But it is neither clean nor a silver bullet, and we mustn't stop there.
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Sure, you don't need SPS in Arizona where it's sunny 85% of the time
Oh? What about at night? A solar power station in geostationary orbit will be unaffected by the day/night cycle for most of the year, since the orbit is high enough to seldom pass through the Earth's shadow. The only times this will happen is when the Earth is close to one of the two equinoxes. But even then the "night" will be much shorter than on the ground.
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> Oh? What about at night?
We have all the night-time power we need already, it's peaking demand that's the problem and there's nothing better suited to meeting that than distributed PV. Worse, base load sells for nothing, so you're killing your payback.
Maury
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> but at higher latitudes
Do you mean like here in Toronto? We get 1950 hours of bright direct sunlight a year. When you do the math (the subject of my first post on the topic) you'll get about a 20% difference.
> might require 4-10x (or more) the panels on earth
So? We're not talking about a lot of land. You can power the entire USA with solar panels taking up 1/2 the area that's been paved. We've done this before.
> Don't forget that Japan has very little available land
Don't forget that in addition t
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> but at higher latitudes
Do you mean like here in Toronto? We get 1950 hours of bright direct sunlight a year. When you do the math (the subject of my first post on the topic) you'll get about a 20% difference.
That time of sunlight needs to be multiplied by the solar flux to determine the total energy available per year. The solar flux (W/m^2) in space is about 1,366 W/m^2. After passing through the atmoshpere at the equator, it's about half that. As your latitude increases, the light passes through more atmosphere at a sharper angle, meaning that even bright noon sunlight in Toronto has even less power than in Arizona, let alone the equator.
Once you correct for daylight hours and cloud cover (and, the streng
Re:Good luck with that... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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> Space power also doesn't suffer from cloudy weather
If you read the linked posts you'll note that I took all of that into account. If you take night, weather, low angles, color, you name it, you'll get about 2 times as much power from an SPS as the same panel on Earth over its lifetime.
> little space we have for things like farms instead of solar plants
You have seen a rectenna, right? Are you sure you want to put YOUR crops under a microwave oven?
> That is to say, they can be used for things other
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This can't be right, surely. In space you are guaranteed 24/7/365 of sun.
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And actually, just to reply to myself, it's much more usable power as you know when you are going to be receiving it (all of the time). One of the problems with solar is that you aren't guaranteed it, and have to deal with aspects like trying to store it for when it's cloudy. From space it can be used as 'baseload' power as you can be sure that it will always be available.
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How much surface area does Japan have available to place these solar panels? Wikipedia says [wikipedia.org] it's 145,883 sq mi (smaller than 4 states in the US) and that "About 70% to 80% of the country is forested, mountainous, and unsuitable for agricultural, industrial, or residential use." There's also the fact that Japan is part of the Ring of Fire [wikipedia.org]. I'm not sure of the wisdom in setting up lots of (relatively speaking) fragile solar panels in an area prone to earthquakes.
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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?
We're talking about Japan here, not Egypt or Arizona. Where exactly do
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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.
It doesn't really have anything to do with new technology. It never came true because no one has yet attempted to launch large amounts of stuff into space. We will never have economies of scale in the space launch industry so long as we launch only a tiny amount of stuff into space, and we'll never launch more than a tiny amount of stuff into space so long as every time someone thinks about launching a large amount of stuff, they look at the cost in terms of today's small-scale cost/kg and conclude it's not
You want sharks with that? (Score:2)
But how will they get the giant sharks up there to aim them?
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breeder reactors extend by several times the use of available fission fuels
Actually, that is only required of your reactor requires Uranium-235 or Plutonium for fuel. There are reactors that can use natural Uranium for fuel, and for those, breeders are completely unnecessary.
But in my opinion, that isn't really the big problem with fuel scarcity. The big problem is that current nuclear reactors extract around 1% of the energy in the fuel, which is then considered "waste" and sent to deep storage for 100,000 years. If the fuel had been reprocessed, the same fuel could be cycled man
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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
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I find your reply inadequate. It assumes that no solution will be found to the problem of space debris, which is probably false; if commercialization of space is intended to proceed apace (And where else will the robber barons rob next? We're running out of stuff that's easy to rip out of the planet) this is a problem which will need to be addressed. It also assumes that launch costs will remain fixed, which is also probably false. It also assumes that these satellites will be as vulnerable to impact as cur
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Not going to happen. No use writing why AGAIN, I think this reply to the original post is just fine:
http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/here-we-go-again-with-the-spss/
You don't seem to realize that there's more than one way to launch a payload. Here's a /. article from 2006, for instance, that discusses ballistic launches: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/03/1732258 [slashdot.org].
The gist is, if you can pack things to withstand 2,000 Gs of acceleration, you can launch an object into orbit using just electricity. Once the cargo reaches apogee, you need to adjust the orbit to one that won't re-intercept the atmosphere, but that only take a small solid fuel thruster. H
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Not going to happen. No use writing why AGAIN, I think this reply to the original post is just fine:
Plug your ears, dude, and say "LA LA LA LA LA" really loudly while I finish my post!
They said it was infeasible to have an automated car. They were wrong.
They said that flying wasn't going to happen. they were wrong.
They said that "heavier than air" flying wasn't going to happen. They were wrong.
They said that breaking the sound barrier wasn't going to happen. They were wrong.
They said that going into space was ludicrous! hey were wrong.
Going to the moon was infeasible. They were wrong.
Free, global commu
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> seems at least a few people are convinced enough to spen some serious money on this project
I'm not so sure on that count... a few million here and there it seems.
To put that in perspective, they're supposedly blowing $2 billion on a study for high speed trains between Toronto and Montreal (although I hope that's a typo in the newspaper!)
Maury
Today's SMBC (Score:5, Funny)
Always dreamed about that... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Always dreamed about that... (Score:4, Interesting)
...ever since I played SimCity 2000... But I don't want the beam pointing toward my head when I am not wearing my tinfoil hat!
Physics FAIL [mit.edu] (unless your goal is to make your brains extra-crispy)
Re:Always dreamed about that... (Score:4, Funny)
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I think this post needs a 'frikinlasers' tag.
Steering malfunctions more like! (Score:2, Interesting)
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Would a flock of birds disrupt the beam?
More importantly, would the band "Flock of Seagulls" disrupt the beam? After all, they apperantly run, they run so far away. Maybe they'll run into the beam.
Old news (Score:3, Interesting)
I read this... uh two weeks ago? All the same things we said back then still apply (you'll lose ~99% of your power over the 20,000 mile beaming distance), et cetera, et cetera. Highly inefficient.
Now maybe if they converted the solar to hydrogen first, and then used that to fuel spaceships to colonize Mars and other planets, it might make sense.
(shrug). Whatever. I think mankind is about to experience a major energy drought. The last two centuries were built-upon the solar power captured over 100 million years (by evergreens). Now it's almost all gone. We won't die-out of course, but life in the 2100s might look a lot like life in the 1700s (cold homes, very little travel, and dark nights).
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maybe if they converted the solar to hydrogen first
How might they do this?
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Re:Old news (Score:4, Insightful)
So, who is going to volunteer to put a bunch of water into orbit?
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The shuttle's main engines use liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen as fuel anyway, so there's no disadvantage in shipping it into space as water and converting it to fuel in situ versus separating the gases and compressing them on the ground.
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E=mc^2
Of course the anti-hydrogen you'd also be producing would be every so slightly more valuable. And that satellite just got a lot heavier.
And if you microwave beams are inefficient...
Of course, you don't lose 99% of your power over the beaming distance anyway, so it's all irrelevant.
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You are aware that there's enough energy in a single gallon of crude oil to power an entire American home for 1 year, right? It's just a matter of harnessing all that power.
Point-
It isn't that easy. The inefficiencies inherent in converting one form of energy to another leads to waste. Solar panels are lucky to get even 1% of the solar energy converted top electricity. They also take-up a lot of room... which is already occupied by homes, roads, trees, et cetera.
I can live pretty cheaply (trees for shad
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I can live pretty cheaply (trees for shade in the summer; minimal heating in the winter), but I know most Americans would not be willing to make that sacrifice.
When the oil is gone, it's gone. Whether someone is willing to make that sacrifice when the physical system forces them to (you can't reason with the universe). Be efficient or deal with the consequences.
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Wrong on all points. One gallon of oil has roughly 40 kWh of energy.
I think his point is that one gallon of oil actually has about 3kg*c^2 energy, or 75 billion kWh.
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And really, even some of the "dark nights" are being solved in Africa through simple hand-cranked LED lanterns. Light has gotten incredibly cheap.
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Well, the "very little travel" and "dark nights" don't sound to bad, really. "Very little travel" could also mean "live someplace I actually want to spend my time", and "dark nights" could also mean "get plenty of sleep for a change" or "appreciate moonlight and starlight again". Humans managed reasonably well with both of those restrictions for thousands of years.
Even the "cold homes" part is a problem that can be mitigated. In Germany in particular, new housing is getting designed to avoid losing heat unl
Re:Old news (Score:5, Informative)
Losing 99% of the power? Why? You can beam the power down using wavelengths that are not absorbed by the atmosphere.
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I'm usually not a defender of SBSP (except potentially for forward military bases), for various feasibility and economic viability reasons, but I'm curious where you get your 99% power loss figure.
Power is intended to be returned to earth as either lasers or narrowly focused microwave beams. Obviously if you're just taking a basic r^2 power loss equation you'd lose an absurd amount, but no one is going to do that -- throw in the gain from a large microwave antenna and it gets much saner. Lasers are going t
multi-Trillions not billions (Score:2)
(using the American notation of 1 Trillion = 1,000 Billion). Anyway, they are putting the cart before the horse so to speak. They should really put their effort behind:
1) making long carbon nano-tubes on an industrial scale to build a space elevator. I read somewhere that with such "unobtanium" it would (only) cost 5 Billion to build an initial elevator from which supposedly they could expand.
2) support deep space exploration with the goal of eventually mining asteroids. To build a really decent sized e
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Yen cost is ~2 trillion. Dollar cost is 21 billion.
Oh Japan, you silly silly country (Score:2)
The Agriculture Ministry is not in charge of Gundam.
Not yet.
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Why ground based solar makes more sense (Score:3, Funny)
From: "[ExI] Thoughts on Space based solar power" :-)
http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2008-November/046620.html [extropy.org]
"""
I spent a long time around 2003 and 2004 on the SSI email list (now on yahoo
groups if you want to look at the archives) explaining why space-based solar
power will not in any likely time frame be of any value on Earth.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ssi_list/ [yahoo.com]
And I want to make it clear I was a SSI Senior Associate (five year pledge
of money) back in the 1980s, and even took a (intro Physics) course from
Gerry O'Neill. So this in not just a casual disagreement. I am very sad that
the Space Studies Institute even now pushes an outdated agenda (well, now
they are moving to scaring people with asteroids, to the extent they are
still operating). I feel if Gerry O'Neill was around now he might agree with
this analysis of the current prospects for space-based power in the next few
decades, since he always was an adaptable and innovative guy, even if,
unfortunately, ultimately an unsuccessful businessperson with GeoStar and
LAWN with which he hoped to fund space habitation. I think by coupling the
two -- a desire to build space habitations coupled with economic arguments
for space solar power (or even other space activities) -- that one may miss
out on sooner realizing the dream of space habitation done for its own sake
(as a hobby).
The core points of the argument I advanced there:
* About a third to one half the cost of residential electric service is
maintaining transmission lines. So, at best, space solar even if *free* at
the ground station will be at best one-third the cost of utility power is
now at the home meter. As the costs of home power generation fall from
advanced manufacturing, the cost of home solar power (or wind, or
cogeneration) will drop below that cost at some point for self-contained
homes producing all or most of their own power, making space solar power
obsolete for home use. Since space solar power will initially be expensive,
it is non-viable right now. And since the cost of solar panels (like
Nanosolar's) is dropping way faster than the cost of space operations, and
since solar space satellites have a twenty to thirty year time horizon for
significant production, they are a non-starter and too risky investment
comparatively. Things might have been different in the 1970s, but it is
thirty years later. Also, one can make an argument for limited solar power
for large commercial facilities producing aluminum or liquid fuels or doing
laser launching, but that is only likely to be worth doing once we already
have a space presence since then only the incremental costs will need to be
paid, rather than expect solar power to pay to develop a space
infrastructure as O'Neill and others proposed (and people still propose).
I'm sure one can look hard at situations where transmission costs are
minimized, but this cost of transmission argument is a very deep one and
I've never seen it rigorously discussed. We know how to do solar on the
ground, there are ways to store the energy at night (molten salts, ever
improving batteries, pumping water up hill, compressed air, production of
synthetic liquid fuels, production of hydrogen, a superconducting world wide
grid backbone, etc.), and there are complementary technologies like wind
power and cogeneration by burning biomass that together with solar produce
fairly reliable power (as well as a lot of local hands-on jobs in the short
term). And there are organizations promoting R&D to make this all even better:
http://www.google.com/corporate/green/energy/ [google.com]
* A rebuttal to this is
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You wrote: "Solar (and wind) is simply too low density."
What is that supposed to mean? Seriously?
Especially as you seem all happy to mine vast amounts of uranium ore and concentrate it...
Renewables are growing exponentially. In twenty to thirty years at current exponential growth rates they will meet all our energy needs.
I'm not saying fusion energy in some form (who knows? Mr. Fusion? Cold fusion? etc.) might not be nice. But we don't *need* it to have a great society
Pointless, Fusion will be here in 2050 (Score:2)
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My bet is that it will be some other means of doing it.
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The funny thing is that for the last 50 years, I kept hearing that it was off by 10 years. Now, that the whole planet is involved, it will take 40 years. What do you think is the chance that it will not work?
My bet is that it will be some other means of doing it.
Whoosh. Grandparent is a reference to SimCity 2000, which a) let you build power plants like those of the OP, and b) unlocked fusion power in every game in the year 2050.
. . . laser satellite with a shark crew . . . (Score:5, Funny)
. . . meanwhile, some space experts have questioned Japan's plans for a shark crew.
A NASA spokesman commented, "I'm just not exactly sure, but something seems not quite right with a laser satellite to be crewed by sharks."
A Japan space agency spokesman countered, "Sharks don't sleep, so we will be sure that they are always paying attention to the sensitive instruments, 24/7. And they don't get cancer, because of some mysterious substance in their cartilage. Sharks have survived for millions of years in the oceans of the Earth. Outer space is the next logical challenge for them."
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You think i think you jest, but duringst the meanwhilst...
http://dsc.discovery.com/space/slideshows/sharks-space/hsw-mars-rover-625x625.jpg [discovery.com]
UN/America needs to do this now (Score:3, Interesting)
In addition, this same idea could be used in the US and other locations to beam 10 MWs into disaster locations. The ability to bring in say 1 MW into multiple locations within 1 hour would make a HUGE difference in say hurricane, earthquake, or even another 9/11.
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I think it depends on how easy it is to ship diesel fuel to the disaster zone. If moving things in and out is a nightmare, then a collector truck of similar size to a large truck with a generator may be a better solution, simply because you only have to get it in there once.
The main advantage for a military base is that you severely reduce the logistical needs (and potentially cost, but thats secondary). Hauling in truck after truck of diesel fuel through either a war zone or a disaster zone has a lot of
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I smelll a movie plot... (Score:3, Funny)
Version A)
The microwaves are going to ionize the atmosphere.
Breaking down earth's magnetic shielding from the solar wind.
And then igniting the entire atmosphere.
Unless you give me... ONE...MILLION...DOLLARS!!! MUHAHAHAHAAAAA...
Version B)
Our power needs will go up so far, that we will fill the whole area around the sun with solar panels, and live on top of them.
Thereby making us invisible for any aliens.
So we grow, and become more and more evil and power-hungry.
Until we set out, to harvest other suns.
And the aliens on other planets see sun after sun... vanish from the sky.
"Prepare for an epic billion-year long battle!
In a 40-hour movie, that will burst even LOTR's time frame!
Now in cinemas!"
P.S.: On a more serious note: What effect does this have on the atmosphere? I'd guess somewhat the same as in a microwave: Ionization and heating. The heating won't change much, I guess, when compared to the global warming of fossil fuel power plants. But the ionization certainly has a effect. What are the long-term results of those effects? :P)
And how big of a focus point on the surface are we talking about? I don't want to be at the spot where it hits when it's mis-calibrated...
If those questions are answered, it's a pretty good plan in my eyes. I always wondered why we erect power plants, when nature already gave us the biggest fuckin' fusion reactor one can think of! ^^
(Yes there are bigger stars. But try imagining them!
How are they going to power it? (Score:2)
These space platforms are going to require a lot of power, so are they going to have some kind of nuclear plant to supply the necessary power? Whatever they use, it had better be green, such as wind or water power. Maybe they could run it on methane from cows.
Re:SimCity 2000 (Score:4, Interesting)
The real life systems distribute the microwave energy over a very large area... In the case of Japan, potentially an off-shore site that would pick up the microwave radiation.
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It can also be focused to destroy your enemies. No nation would willingly permit another nation to put this thing up.
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One of them was a microwave beam misdirect.
Note that while you could only manually trigger that disaster with the help of the cheat it could also happen randomly (assuming you have "no disasters" turned off).
Re:But Can The Solar Station (Score:5, Funny)
Sushi is raw fish with this everything gets cooked even you.
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Sushi is raw fish with this everything gets cooked even you.
We are talking about japan, not soviet russia, right?
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Sushi is rice with vinegar.
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How much of that energy would have reached Earth anyway, albeit in a less concentrated form?
Think about it... (Score:2)
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Crisping Kim Jong-Il.. I could live with that..
Crisping the NK population.. Not so sure..
--Ivan