SSP - Solar Satellite Power

[aTOMiC]

www.space.com/adastra/070517_adastra_so ... rsats.html

The basic idea: build huge satellites in Earth orbit to gather sunlight, convert it to electricity, and beam the energy to Earth using microwaves. We know we can do it, most satellites are powered by solar energy today and microwave beaming of energy has been demonstrated with very high efficiency. We're talking about SSP - solar satellite power.

This approach certainly would have an enormous impact on how the world generates power. It could be argued that along with advances in power cells, personal vehicles would be powered by the same energy via the power cells being recharged by the general power source. Of course this future has been speculated about in one way or another in fiction. Of course there is always some super villain or alien race that renders the earth powerless by knocking out our satellites. Very interesting.

[Zarathustra]

Yeah, Asimov suggested this idea decades ago. I still have no idea why we're not doing it.

[High Lord Tolkien]

I've hacked into and taken control of Satellite A-5!
Unless my demands are met I will begin to cook all of NYC.
I want.........5 billion dollars in small unmarked bills!


Yeah, that's wild.
No danger to the ozone or anything like that though?
And what about a bird or a plane flying through it?

[wayfriend]

I'm sure we're not doing it because the size of the solar array required is huge and it still costs millions of dollars per pound to get things into space. We can barely build a space station, never mind a solar array large enough to power a city.

I would hope that they would study the impact of microwaves on the upper atmosphere. We wouldn't want to warm it up.

And there is the threat of disaster, accidental or intentional. (Imagine an off-course passenger plane.) I'm not sure if the public would give a warm reception to a laser beam that could fry people orbiting above their heads. If you were Russia or China, would you want the US to have one of those up there?

(I'm sure there actually is a military application for such a device....)

[Zarathustra]

The article talked about using lunar material to build these things. The cost of launching from the moon is much less due to lower gravity. The article also said that beaming microwaves has already been demonstrated as safe. Sure, the up front cost would be 100s of billions of dollars. But given that the benefits are so huge--and profitable--I think in the long term it would pay off. I think the main reason this hasn't been done is relatively cheap oil. But that's changing.

[High Lord Tolkien]

You know I'd almost be in favor of the Gov taking over all the oil companies if they used the oil money to finance energy projects like this.
Seriously.

But I know the money would just go to union contracts and welfare.

[wayfriend]

The article talked about using lunar material to build these things. The cost of launching from the moon is much less due to lower gravity.

Well, we're really not quite there with launching things from the moon either. So that's a show stopper, too.

But there has been talk about a manned moonbase ... that has to happen first, right?

You know I'd almost be in favor of the Gov taking over all the oil companies if they used the oil money to finance energy projects like this.
Seriously.

But I know the money would just go to union contracts and welfare.

Actually, the republican-sponsored energy bill gave all the money to explore new sources of energy to .... the oil companies.

[Zarathustra]

Well, we're really not quite there with launching things from the moon either. So that's a show stopper, too.

Always the optimist, aren't you Wayfriend? Yes, it's a show stopper if we let it stop us. If we never start, it's true that it will never happen. However, we ARE going back to the moon, and the plan is to have a lunar base. And we have successfully launched off the moon each time we returned humans from the surface. So we have been "quite there" ever since the 60s. Forty-year-old technology got us to the moon and back, and that was before we conceived a huge profit factor (not to mention preventing global warming) for going there in the first place. If we can spend billions of 1960 dollars to have guys playing golf on the moon, maybe we can get serious and use today's technology to save the world.

But you're right--it won't happen tomorrow. Saving the planet and transforming our global society through a revolution in our energy supply will take time. But that's not a reason not to try.

Between this idea and the other thread on green technology, you don't sound very enthusiastic about new developments in the energy field. What energy source gets sparks your imagination? How do you think we should end our dependency upon oil?

[Nav]

Well I'm sure anyone who's ever played SimCity 2000 will remember the biggest drawback to using Microwave power was the occasional incineration of a city block when the collector missed the reciever. The quality of the solar energy up there is far, far higher than what we can achieve down here though, so in terms of generating electricity it may well be viable. The trick is getting it back down here, and beaming gigawatts of power in the form of microwaves through the atmosphere sounds like it would generate an awful lot of heat.

Until we get around to building our very own space ladder with a big insulated cable inside, I think huge solar farms in Northern Africa are a better bet. We can save the planet and the Third World in one fell swoop!

[wayfriend]

Always the optimist, aren't you Wayfriend? Yes, it's a show stopper if we let it stop us.

The statement was a response to the question, "why aren't we doing it?". It wasn't a response to the imaginary question, "why won't we ever do it?".

[Zarathustra]

Wayfriend, fair enough. My question wasn't clear. I should have said: why aren't we developing this? Or exploring this? Or trying to get people excited about this?

[Prebe]

Why aren't we building more windmills? They are a lot cheaper but not so "trekkie" I know.

Take all the billions it would cost to get to the moon and manufacture a prototype, and you could supply China and the US with wind turbines for the next 300 years. But again, it ain't as trekkie. I know.

[Zarathustra]

Well, that's a good question, too, Prebe. Of crouse there are people who are agaisnt wind farms for aesthetic and wildlife reasons. And there is the issue of space. We can't cover the earth with windmills, though our energy needs will continue to rise every decade and century. Seems like the most logical expansion area would be outer space.

I've heard about windmills that can be tethered and "flown" at very high altitudes. This could eliminate the space and the aesthetic problem. I've also read about turbines in rivers, which wouldn't normally be visible--though it might prove problematic to boat traffic and fish.

However, I don't think anyone is suggesting that we can supply the entire planet's energy supply with wind or water. The long term solution will require something much larger.

But I'm not saying we shouldn't use whatever we can.

[wayfriend]

Given the wayentrepreneurship works, I bet there's someone developing sateliite microwave power somewhere, someplace. But it's probably under non-disclosure, so we wouldn't know about it.

Yes Prebe, the initial cost for such work seems prohibitive. It wouldn't make sense for any privately owned company, unless their plan was to wait for someone else to build lunar facilities.

( I fear wind power will prove to be too invasive of weather patterns if used to widely. )

[[Syl]]

I would hope that they would study the impact of microwaves on the upper atmosphere. We wouldn't want to warm it up.

That reminds me of the Harp Project. IIRC, microwaves are in the UHF band, and HAARP is HF, but..

[hierachy]

Nuclear power is the best solution for now, IMO.

[Avatar]

Agree for the short-term.

--A

[Nav]

I think nuclear is the way to go for the time being, it would certainly give us a bit of time to get truly renewable energy sources into place. Generating waste that will be radioactive essentially forever isn't somthing we want to be doing long term though. I think the orbital solar arrays might eventually become an option, but only if we can set up a lunar mining and manufacturing base or make our own space elevator, both of which are barely more than high science fiction at present.

The most promising, to me, are the new style solar power plants like this very impressive one in Seville: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6616651.stm

The highest quality sunlight available to us is, naturally, along the equator, so if we build these things down there and 'pipe' the power back to consumers everywhere else, it will also bring in huge investment for some very poor countries. Of course, it's likely that it will be oil companies who take the initiative and build them, so I'm sure the capitalist status quo would quickly be restored.

[Prebe]

( I fear wind power will prove to be too invasive of weather patterns if used to widely. )

That is simply not an issue wayfriend. Calculations made in another thread tells me that to supply all of Denmarks present electricity we would need one large windmill pr. 11 km2. And Denmark is densely populated compared to the US.

If you worry about windmills effects on weather paterns you would have to worry a 100 fold more about urbanisation and deforestation. I think the idea of windmills effect on weather paterns must be fostered by someone VERY far from you politically. Sorry

[wayfriend]

I think the idea of windmills effect on weather paterns must be fostered by someone VERY far from you politically. Sorry

No one fostered it on me, it's my own determination. Thanks for the personal attack, but I'd prefer not to have another.

Nuclear power is the best solution for now, IMO.

That's only because at this time global warming has more attention than the threat of a nuclear accident. We're only one nuclear incident away from the public realizing that another chernobyl will have more disasterous and immediate, albeit localized effects than global warming.

If we really wanted to go nuclear, we need to have some nuclear plants not built in the 70s/80s.