Buzz Aldrin: it's time for solar energy from space

[bananas]

http://blog.nss.org/?p=1821

Space Solar Power is Unspillable

Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the Moon, has proposed an answer to the Louisiana oil spill. It’s solar energy harvested in space, known in the space community as Space Solar Power.

“The timing of the oil catastrophe,” says Aldrin, “is a great opportunity for re-evaluating solar energy from space.”


Click on image for larger version. May be freely distributed.

We’ve been harvesting solar power in space and sending it to Earth since 1962, when the first commercial satellite, Telstar, was launched and began transmitting energy harvested by the solar panels studded all over its beach-ball-like surface. Today, the space solar power harvesting business is a quarter of a trillion dollar industry. We call it “the commercial satellite industry.” That industry uses space solar power transmitted to earth for everything from satellite radio and television to direction finding via GPS.

The Japanese space agency, JAXA, has committed $27 million to space solar power and has plans for a satellite capable of powering 300,000 homes. JAXA says it has the backing of 15 other nations in its effort. And Russia, China, and India are all working on space solar power development.

Space solar power means no more Louisiana oil spills. No more carbon in the atmosphere. No more nuclear waste. No more energy wars. No more nations hogging resources and driving up prices. And no more villages in the hinterlands of Africa and Asia kept in poverty by the cost of running landlines hundreds of miles to reach them.

There are currently four American commercial companies seeking capital to make space solar a reality: Solaren, the Space Island Group, Space Energy Inc, and Managed Energy Technologies LLC. One of those firms, Solaren, has a power purchase agreement with the California’s Pacific Gas and Electric and anticipates being able to begin delivery of solar power from space by 2016.

Take the load off the earth. Drill up not down.

From a press release of the Space Development Steering Committee. A larger version (1050 x 1050 pixels) of the “Unspillable” graphic is available on the NSS website and may be freely distributed. Image credit: Jason Louv.

[Botany]

1. cut out the middle man

[TheMadMonk]

2. Except this particular middleman tripples the yield at least.

500% better performance per panel and asssuming 60% transmission efficiency which was acheivable back in the 70's.

In fact the whole thing was planned out in detail in the 70's and even earlier.

• Drop a small (100 MW IIRC) nuclear reactor on the moon.
  
• Mine and refine basic raw materials.
  
• Using a linear accelerator launch these materials into a covoluted orbit that brings them to where they are wanted in geosyncronous orbit at very close to the correct velocities. Slow enough to catch in a net.
  
• Onsite, process into solar waffers and structural extrusions. Make them like lego bricks for easy robotic assembly.
  
• Power is beamed as microwaves to receiving fields on Earth. The receivers are nothing but a bit of wire and a diode. lots and lots and lots of them. The beam is kept difuse enough and of a frequency that doesn't strongly couple with living creatures, thus it isn't dangerous. Aircraft can of course steer around the beams.
  
• land beneath the reciever array remains available for agricultural purposes.
  
  
• Since then, wind tunnel testing strongly suggests that a flying saucer shaped craft with a dish scooped out of the upper surface can "climb" a microwave beam most of the way to orbit. The dish focuses microwaves and ionise air above the craft. A current running around the rim of the craft can accelerate this ionised air downwards, pushing the craft upeards. A shockwave is also created, causing a partial vacuum above the craft, creating further loft.
  
• If this can be made to work to launch payloads of as little as 50 kg (bigger is obviously better), and there are no obvious reasons why it can't, an entire space based solar power generation system could be bootstrapped from the ground bypassing the moon altogether.
  
• Get just enough up there to launch that 50 kg, and the rest is simplicity itself you can snap on a 50 kg solar module each time.
  
• Since the solar array and microwave transmitter are in geosyncronous orbit and always in exactly the same spot, launches can take place at intervals of as little as 10-15 mins.
  
• Every x launches the potential exists to double the payload capacity. In 5 times x launches that would be the capacity to launch over one hundred thousand tons into geosyncronous (or lower) orbit every single day using little more than sunlight. All the parts and fuel for a Mars mission a day, or one to the asteroids if you wish.
  
• Given that first power station and transmitter, and a working launch vehicle, the rest is a matter of how fast we can build modules to expand that power station and build duplicates.
  
  
  A beanstalk without the stalk.

[Kolesar]

3. Nailed! ... eom

[Saboburns]

4. er, um. Where are the cords??

I mean to say, the article implies that we an somehow beam power from satellites back to the ground without wires.

I am a big proponent of this type of solar power, but I know that we can't wirelessly beam power hundreds of miles. I understand that it is possible to do this over a few feet, but not the distances and amounts discussed here.

However this is the technology I think will save us, sometime in this century.