This Satellite Could Be Beaming Solar Power Down From Space By 2025 245
Daniel_Stuckey writes "A NASA veteran, aerospace entrepreneur, and space-based solar power (SBSP) expert, [John] Mankins designed the world's first practical orbital solar plant. It's called the Solar Power Satellite via Arbitrarily Large PHased Array, or SPS-ALPHA for short. If all goes to plan, it could be launched as early as 2025, which is sooner than it sounds when it comes to space-based solar power timelines. Scientists have been aware of the edge the "space-down" approach holds over terrestrial panels for decades. An orbiting plant would be unaffected by weather, atmospheric filtering of light, and the sun's inconvenient habit of setting every evening. SBSP also has the potential to dramatically increase the availability of renewable energy."
lol (Score:5, Interesting)
not even mentioning the fact that if you had 40km^2 of land you could just set solar panels there and do the thing for yourself with much less energy losses.
Japan and the ESA are doing it too (Score:5, Interesting)
Japan is already working on a prototype solar power satellite. The ESA has an active project. I'd hope NASA could work with them on this one.
Nope. (Score:5, Interesting)
The energy needed to put solar cells into orbit is not recouped over their lifetime outside the protecting atmosphere. Solar cells are used on spacecraft out of necessity, not because they're cost efficient.
I know this is an unpopular view on Slashdot, where atomic energy fans come together to bash all other technologies, but solar cells work fine on the ground. You can fill the supply gaps with conventional power plants and still come out far ahead CO2-wise compared to the current power mix. Production has hardly scaled up, but solar cells are already competitive in some markets. The point of these stories about satellite solar farms is to give you the impression that there needs to be some extraordinary investment or innovation before solar power can be used. That's a lie, designed to put a drag on solar power. Solar power is ready to be used, you just have to do it.
"no night" orbit? (Score:4, Interesting)
The only orbits that have no period when the sun is blocked by Earth's shadow ("night") are polar (remember the pictures of sunrise over the Earth shot from space by various astro/cosmonauts?). No single ground station could receive the power.
Also, there would be considerable photon pressure pushing the satellite(s) away from the Sun and, hence, Earth, plus gravitational drag attempting to pull the orbits around he Earth. Not a big deal for a short-term recon satellite, but these would be intended to there for years. Any of the rocket scientists out there know if the polar orbits are even vaguely stable, or will the satellite need boatloads of fuel to stay where it's needed. Of course, the beam of Earthbound power is a thruster, too, raising the orbit.
Put the collector at the Eath-Sol L1 and you've got to have REALLY good beam control to keep from raising the temperature of the entire Earth.
Sounds more like weapon than a power source to me.
Re:My god, what has science wrought??? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Less than a day's worth"
You''re being WAY to generous, the US military spending for 2012, ignoring all of side costs (possibly as high as $500 Billion) is roughly $900 Billion dollars. Broken down to a "By Day" cost it is $2.46 Billion per day, with that kind of money you could probably finish development and put a significant amount of this concepts hardware into orbit. If any taxpayer money was used on this study it would probably be measured in seconds of military spending (~$28,500 per second) at most.