The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand | Space Based Solar Power ?

73 comments on Space Based Solar Power ?

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davebygolly on April 19, 2009 - 9:07pm

There's no end to it -- one techno fix after another. Always based on the idea that there's a huge amount of energy out there -- if we are smart enough, we can get to it.

Matter is energy. E=mc^2 showed that. So the amount of energy right in our finger nail clippings could put us into orbit. So it's totally beside the point. If the various forms of energy were easy to get, we would have blown ourselves up long ago. No -- we would never even have evolved.

We KNOW that radically reducing our energy consumption is possible. But that we don't do because there's no profit in it, never mind its not being a path to world domination. So that route, the one we must eventually take one way or another, doesn't make the list.

To some extent it reminds me of the all the old schemes, some immensely clever, to build perpetual motion machines, despite the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

The problem is that there in no equivalent to the 2nd law of thermodynamics in regard to peak oil and peak energy. There does not seem to be some general law that absolutely precludes harnessing vast new sources of energy. So one is over and over again confronted with new schemes. Many of them require a good degree of technical expertise to evaluate, because on the surface there is no abvious reason they could not work, if only the total EREOI were right. But to show that isn't the case is what's so difficult.

As a general rule, there is a huge escalation is in infrastructure and technology requirements, and exactly how huge they are and accounting for all of them could be a big job. And by the time one does it, one has technical people in fierce debates that are unintelligible to laymen.

But this much can be said: all of these schemes, including all forms of nuclear power too, BTW, depend on the continuance and stability of our current industrial ane technical infrastructure -- they are not robust. They are therefore gigantic gambles.

We are asked to gamble on technology fixes that most cannot evaluate, instead of even giving serious consideration to the one option that we know will address the issue.

I hasten to add that the techno fixes also have in common the feature that they ignore "peak everything", as Heinberg puts, as well as further damaging the natural ecology which is the ONLY resource we'll have left when we do come to our senses.

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One little question about this particular scheme -- no dangers attending to the little problem of getting the energy down to the ground?

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Dryki on April 19, 2009 - 10:26pm

Along the same lines, 5000 secret patents Sounds like time to shut down the Patent Office.

It's not that the system doesn't work; more like it works entirely wrong.

I'm paying to issue secret patents? F*ck that.

cfm somewhere

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DIYer on April 19, 2009 - 11:06pm

Since you can't do a patent search (I presume) on secret patents, how could they even enforce the stupid things? :-/

As Wolfgang Pauli used to say "this isn't right, it's not even wrong!"

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Kiashu on April 20, 2009 - 1:35am

When you attempt to register your own patent, the patent office does a search, and if your patent matches something secret, they tell you it already exists and you can't have it. Generally the government forcibly buys your patent from you.

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ThatsItImout on April 20, 2009 - 12:57am

"all of these schemes, including all forms of nuclear power too, BTW, depend on the continuance and stability of our current industrial ane technical infrastructure -- they are not robust. They are therefore gigantic gambles."

Hey, culture and civilization have always been "gigantic gambles". But most humans felt it was worth the gamble to rise above living like an ape in the woods, subject to slavery to the apes who were willing to take the gamble. Sorry, that bet was made 10,000 plus years ago.

As far as risk, most of us live with the risk of airliners and helicopters crashing into our house or workplace or a train full of toxic chemicals leaving the track and poisoning us before we even know what happened everyday. We just don't think about it all that often. Technology has always created risks, some of them horrific (think Bhopal, India)

Having said that, I am not very keen on the space based solar idea, by the way. There are too many cheaper ways to do it on the ground, and retain some of the great advantages of ground based solar energy: Decentralization, redundancy, and the fact that PV and even solar thermal or solar chimney systems can be built and tested in smaller units, thus breaking up the financial cost of capital. This is an advantage that solar has even over nuclear...unless you go with the sky based erector set. But the big aerospace contractors and the military will love this sky based mess, and will be able to swing the greens over to their side soon enough.

RC

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jokuhl on April 20, 2009 - 12:10pm

RE: 'Swinging the Greens over..'

They may convince the Swanker boardmembers of WWF or Sierra Club on 'Ordained Orbital Power: Solar', but I doubt they'll get any kind of a lovefest from the membership.. it smells too much of Lockheed-Martin and Perchlorate. Greens on the ground floor are running for the gardens.. even the Big Biz atmosphere of the hardcore Wind Industry is a bit of a Faustian Bargain for many of the little people in the Environmental Movement. While I will argue the birdkill issue to some degree, as with Darwins Dog last month or so, I am far from a Devotee who will write a blank check to overscaled technology.

Scaling it to match with our residential and business rooftops seems to me the most sensible way to use that land 'twice'.

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enemy of state on April 20, 2009 - 10:17pm

I suspect the military would like this stuff, although not for the advertised purpose of creating power for land apps. If significant public money was spent trying to develop this stuff, what is the most likely outcome? I think the most likely outcome is an increase in the ability to do spacecraft based PV arrays, but that these would still be astronomically too expensive for the SPS application. But, any military or nonmilitary satellite designer would be drooling over the possibility to have a several times larger power budget. Kindof a slippery backdoor way to get something.

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FMagyar on April 21, 2009 - 9:32pm

Hey, culture and civilization have always been "gigantic gambles". But most humans felt it was worth the gamble to rise above living like an ape in the woods, subject to slavery to the apes who were willing to take the gamble. Sorry, that bet was made 10,000 plus years ago.

Actually that could only be true if civilizations were planned, not a single civilization ever was. Civilizations evolve and are highly dependent on a number of very specific a priori conditions. If they weren't then peoples like the Australian Aborigines would have developed civilizations similar to that of the Egyptians since there are no underlying biological differences between the two and they are equally intelligent and equally capable. Jared Diamond's book Guns Germs and Steel does an excellent job of explaining how and why this happens.

Unfortunately humans seem to be built in a way that makes it very difficult for them to understand that they are not special and their civilizations are subject to natural laws, including the exponential function.

I would be much more impressed if humans civilizations started to live within their means. Not that I don't believe that it can't happen but every time I hear someone make a statement such as "we have risen above the apes", it really underscores the fact that humans (great apes) really haven't a clue.

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SP on April 22, 2009 - 10:03am

I had a similar feeling on reading that text from ThatsItImout.

My take on it was to recall (vaguely) Stephan J Gould and the Left Wall.

When we say that that "choice" was made 10,000 years ago... that's projection really, isn't it. Did humanity 10,000 years ago really "choose" or were they at the left wall and drunkenly moved right?

This kind of thinking/projection is a habit among those (typically middle class westerners with high speed broad band) with choices... passing judgment or expressing an opinion on those with a much more restricted range of choices, either historically (as above) or for people in developing nations.

Word for the day... empathy.

(The Left Wall refers to the concept that there are statistical distributions (ie not normal distributions) where it is impossible to move to the left and that the only possibility is a move to the right (or extinction)... how far depends on stochastic processes.)

There was some mention of Asimov and energy above.

I was reminded of this Asimov story (which I think I was introduced to either thru Big Gavs site or TOD). The metaphysical theme of the story is what happens if you crave and pursue unlimited energy supply...

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Big Gav on April 23, 2009 - 7:49am

I don't think I ever posted that story, but I do remember reading it as a kid...

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Big Gav on April 20, 2009 - 4:43am

One little question about this particular scheme -- no dangers attending to the little problem of getting the energy down to the ground?

The game Simcity had (and presumably still has) a space based power option that would occasionally fry cities.

However the danger of this sort of malfunction seems exaggerated (well - you won't burst into flames anyway - what the long term health effects of being bathed in some additional radiation are I'm not so sure) - according to Wikipedia (ie. take with a grain of salt :

The use of microwave transmission of power has been the most controversial issue in considering any SPS design, but any thought that anything which strays into the beam's path will be incinerated is an extreme misconception. Consider that quite similar microwave relay beams have long been in use by telecommunications companies world wide without such problems.

At the earth's surface, a suggested microwave beam would have a maximum intensity, at its center, of 23 mW/cm2 (less than 1/4 the solar irradiation constant), and an intensity of less than 1 mW/cm2 outside of the rectenna fenceline[40] (10 mW/cm2 is the current United States maximum microwave exposure standard). In the United States, the workplace exposure limit (10 mW/cm2) is at present, per the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA)[45], expressed in voluntary language and has been ruled unenforceable for Federal OSHA enforcement.

The beam's most intense section (more or less, at its center) is far below dangerous levels even for an exposure which is prolonged indefinitely. [46] Furthermore, exposure to the center of the beam can easily be controlled on the ground (eg, via fencing), and typical aircraft flying through the beam provide passengers with a protective shell metal (ie, a Faraday Cage), which will intercept the microwaves. Other aircraft (balloons, ultralight, etc) can avoid exposure by observing airflight control spaces, as is currently done for military and other controlled airspace. Over 95% of the beam energy will fall on the rectenna. The remaining microwave energy will be absorbed and dispersed well within standards currently imposed upon microwave emissions around the world.[47]

As for techno-fixes, I think you should address each one on its merits - this one seems exorbitantly expensive and probably impractical, but I strongly believe we can meet all our energy needs using a combination of wind, solar (solar thermal, thin film, PV and passive), geothermal, biogas and ocean (tidal and wave) power, and a largely electrified transport infrastructure (combined with some biofuel usage).

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Cretaceous on April 20, 2009 - 9:42am

Just like Nuclear Fusion, this satellite power stuff is another example of Biffvernon's "Peculiar Theory of Relativity"...

...Commercial nuclear fusion is 40 years away. It has been 40 years away for a long time - and always will be 40 years away, no matter how fast scientists and engineers work...

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enemy of state on April 20, 2009 - 10:22pm

Commercial nuclear fusion is 40 years away. It has been 40 years away for a long time - and always will be 40 years away, no matter how fast scientists and engineers work...

Actually its worse than that. When I started working on Fusion in 79, it was only 25years away. And a retirement aged fellow who'd been working on it from the beginning, thought it was a simple bait-and-switch job when he started. The feeling was they would crack it within a couple of years, and then switch the recruited scientists into Nuclear weapons work. So it has gone from 2 years away, to 25, and now 40 or 50!

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