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Space Quarterly Magazine

Update on Space Based Solar Power

By Marc Boucher
NASA Watch
June 11, 2012
Filed under

Is There a Future for Space-Based Solar Power?, Space Quarterly Magazine
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Space-based solar energy production systems, commonly known as ‘Solar Power Satellites’ or SPS’s, offer the prospect of effective, environmentally friendly electrical power.
However, experts involved in designing SPS systems agree that it will take at least ten years – but more likely decades – to develop SPS’s capable of feeding the grid back on earth, as launch costs, unclear economic viability, and limited research funding slow the development of this potentially ground-changing energy technology.

SpaceRef co-founder, entrepreneur, writer, podcaster, nature lover and deep thinker.

6 responses to “Update on Space Based Solar Power”

  1. ed2291 says:
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    Yes, it will take awhile and may never come to fruition. Should we give up on anything that is difficult or does not offer immediate satisfaction?

    Bill Nye of the Planetary Society made a joke about it when NASA dropped it as one of their goals. He also made fun of Gingrich and his moon program instead of using the comments to open a discussion. If even space advocacy agencies like the Planetary Society cannot advocate effectively and forcefully for space then the future looks dismal. (OK, Keith is on our side, but even so!)

    • chriswilson68 says:
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      “Yes, it will take awhile and may never come to fruition. Should we give
      up on anything that is difficult or does not offer immediate
      satisfaction?”

      No, we shouldn’t give up, but we should be realistic in setting expectations, and we should probably focus on things that have better near-term prospects.  If you lived a thousand years ago, starting a program to develop a nuclear reactor would not be a smart move.  You’d be better off working on research that would pay off more in the short term.  Over time, that would set the stage for things that would be practical only after a lot of other building blocks had been developed.

      Unfortunately, I think the main reason people cling to space-based solar power for the Earth’s surface is that they find space fascinating and they are looking for reasons to do things in space.  That’s putting things backward.  For power, we should be looking at whatever makes the most sense — space-based solar is way, way, way down on the list from that perspective.  And we should invest in space for its own sake, to explore and to establish and grow a presence there for the very long-term benefits.  We shouldn’t try to confuse two totally separate things.

      Elon got this one right.  He started both a solar power company and a space company, because he thinks both are important.  But he kept them separate.

      • ed2291 says:
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         Good discussion!

        “And we should invest in space for its own sake, to explore and to
        establish and grow a presence there for the very long-term benefits.”

        So how has that worked out? We are in low earth orbit 55 years – over half a century –  after Sputnik. Total science for six people on the ISS is 50 hours a week. Science selection on the ISS is so fouled up that earth science has surpassed it in those areas NASA promised us so much potential. The ISS is not a presence in space – in a few years it will burn up in the atmosphere while NASA brags about its jobs program and not its achievements.

        Setting low goals and postponing ambitious goals means you never make it to the ambitious goals. I am not even saying that solar power is necessarily a good idea to invest in now, just that we need something. We are not progressing significantly, we are just treading water. Mankind has  not been out of low earth orbit since 1973.

        • DTARS says:
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          The building block idea is right. We have not be trying to establish a presents in space because we failed to TRY to commercialize it years ago ISS was a weak attempt because no one tried make space flight cheaper when the shuttle failed to do so. Lol ISS should have been a big inflatable trans-hab  but!

          I’m sure ELON would be the first one to put solar in Space when and if he is successful making space flight cheap enough.  

          Marcels idea looks good to me though I don’t know. Waiting on that grasshopper and that day Elon puts those recovered merlins on a test stand. The building block we so badly need!!!!

  2. newpapyrus says:
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    The best way to substantially reduce the cost of solar power satellites is by utilizing extraterrestrial resources. Photovoltaic cells can accommodate luminosities at least 20 times higher than solar energy received on Earth. Mirrors could be used to focus their reflective light on the surface of photovoltaic power plants.

    Such mirrors could be manufactured from aluminum from the lunar surface which could greatly reduce the cost  of solar power satellites since the delta-v budget from the lunar surface to GEO is only 3.92 km/s vs 13 to 14 km/s from the Earth’s surface. And someday, the photovoltaic cells themselves could be manufactured on the Moon.

    Lunar shuttles transporting such  mirrors to GEO could also be reusable (perhaps 5 round trips before the lunar shuttle engines would have to be replaced) which should also lower cost.

    However, there’s could be a substantially cheaper lunar aluminum mirror alternative. The US NAVY has recently invented an electric rail gun that can launch– aluminum– projectiles at an acceleration high enough to launch these objects into orbit around the Moon if they were deployed on the lunar surface at the Moon’s equator. The mirrors would then have to be manufactured in orbit and then transported to GEO at perhaps 1.38 km/s to 2.05 km/s of additional delta v. 

    Marcel F. Williams

  3. Steve Whitfield says:
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    Clearly solar power is still a difficult proposition and there is learning yet to be done, but I think that the potential rewards clearly suggest that we should be taking it a lot more seriously. The PR exercise to make it acceptable to the public is obviously one of the first steps. I appreciate the difficulty involved in SPSs, but I can recall a quote from a prominent American that people reacted to favorably at the time — “we do … these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard…” The prize is proportional to the effort we are willing to make.

    Steve