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

73 comments on Space Based Solar Power ?

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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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