Inhabitat

How will they return the energy to space after we’re done with it?

Please think ahead before spending ridiculous amounts of money on a project that will add to our collective doom. When we take energy from space that normally wouldn’t enter the Earth’s already overabundant energy reserves we add additional strain to the growing problem of overheating our planet.

Please do more research on the topics you present. Reporting a project as “$21 Billion”, when the only source of that figure is one of the researchers who said “the project might end up costing as much as …” is not reliable.

As for the Solaren project, the only webpage for the company that I found is http://www.solarenspace.com/ , which is completely empty… considering they are supposed to launch 1 Million pounds of solar panels into space by 2016, I am understandably suspicious. As you should have been too, before copy/pasting the whole story.

To John Strickland:

Why do you believe privatization drives cost downward? Many examples prove this to be untrue. Education, health care, military, and banking. Not only didn’t they reduce cost but in many cases drove the cost upward and additionally service and quality suffered.. Anyway who do you think pays the bills for the charter schools run by private companies, Medicaid, the mercenaries, like Black Water, and pays to guarantee the student loans…why I do believe its the government. In all of these cases the government could have provided the services better and for less. Big business wants privatization for two reasons; no competition from the government and who ever provides the “private service” is usually paid by the government (taxpayer).

Sure, let’s shoot an energy beam capable of powering 294,000 homes down to Earth from space.

What could possibly go wrong?

I suppose you might get the aim off by a millionth of a degree and burn down Australia, but that seems to be unlikely to happen, and I’m sure everyone would feel suitably bad about it.

It always surprises me how many people are convinced that space-based solar power is going to somehow ‘heat up’ the planet. This is not the case- the energy incident on space-based solar arrays would enter the earth’s atmosphere *whether the solar collectors are there or not*.

In other words, the solar collectors would not somehow “add” extra energy to the earth that would not have been there before. In fact, because they could never be 100% efficient, some of the energy would be absorbed as heat by space-based solar arrays and never radiated to earth at all.

This is the most plausible near-term replacement for fossil fuels, and the only other alternative is a massive skewing towards nuclear energy. Take your pick.

How exactly do you “beam” power back to the earth? As polarized concentrated light energy, in the form of a laser perhaps? I can’t think of any other methods of “transmitting” energy without cables, since it’s the only way to keep a beam of anything tightly focused, isn’t it? Electricity doesn’t lend itself to “beaming” does it?

Privatization – how can you privatize the military? This example makes no sense. On the other hand, some services provided by governments in some areas and private companies in other areas have gotten cheaper. One example is electrical power before fossil fuel prices started to rise, the rise driven both by demand and govenment restrictions on energy use. Also, look at the price of computer CPU’s and computer memory. A VCR cost about 1/4 Million dollars to TV Studios when they were first invented. Now no one wants them.

Getting to orbit: Why is access to Earth orbit so expensive? The government space access system uses very expensive rockets which are thrown away (they smash into the ocean and sink in lots of little pieces), The big companies who build these rockets want to keep building them, so they have tried to stop the new companies, which want to build rockets which can be re-used, just like airplanes, from getting a share of the government’s business. This transistion is about to occur – the big companies are losing the political battle to stop re-usable rockets from being used by the government.

Transmittting Power: Yes, lasers are rather inefficient at transmitting power. The best model is still the use of those old-fashioned radio waves called microwaves, just like the ones in your kitchen. However, all the scare stories about beams frying people are just that- scare stories. The actual beam would be 1/4 as strong as sunlight, and at a frequency which reduced its interaction with rain and water. However the beam is there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so area for area on the ground, you get twice as much energy from the space solar beam as you do from actual direct sunlight.

Yes they can: The ability of microwaves to transmitt energy efficiently (over 80%, which is better than some long distance transmission paths through wires) has been proved multiple times. The Goldstone test in 1978 proved it once, The Discovery channel show in 2008 proved it again. If you do not think energy can be transmitted by photons or waves, then how come the sun keeps the earth warm and growing. The key is being able to convert a large portion of the micro-wave energy directly into electricity. This has been done, and done, and done. The data is out there on the Internet for any doubters. Any more questions on this would be like a creationist asking for just one more missing link!

How it works: The solar photons hit the photovolatic collector (film) surface in Geosynchronous Orbit (the same orbit the comsats use). All the solar sats can use the same frequency since no information is being transmitted, just power. The electricity from the collector surfaces is conducted to a transmitter dish about 1/2 to 1 km in diameter. The power sats are large but very light – almost gossamer, since they do not have to stand up to large forces. The power is converted to microwaves at 2.45 Gigahertz freqeuency. The power beam spreads out to a few miles wide when it hits the ground. The reciever consists of an oval array of inexpensive TV-antenna-like dipoles aimed at the beam. The very high-frequency power collected on the ground is converted to 60-cycle alternating current before being sent onto the grid.

Personal POV: I am not against ground solar and wind. I was interested in ground solar before I heard of space solar. I am retired and have no financial intererst in any space or energy company. We have real choices to make in our energy future. Space solar is just one of those choices, but it does offer a gigantic source of energy which produces no greenhouse gases and is ideal to replace fossil fuel generated electricity.
Just keep an open mind and pay attention to economic issues for both ground and space based power choices.

Dead Unicorns and geokstr:

The power will be beamed back as microwave energy.

AnonLol:

There are a number of choices they have in providing a feedback signal that will cut off the beam if it starts to wander.

sharks with fricken laser beams

Wow – what an amazing combination of truly superb posts (w00t John Strickland) and posts showing the reader’s absolute failure to comprehend the technology being discussed. Nice to know that ignorance never keeps an induhvidual from expressing an opinion. And Big Boy – what do you think of Preparation H – on the whole? :-P

[...] Inhabitat » Japan Plans $21 Billion Solar Space Post to Power … [...]

Why isn’t anyone ever concerned about the human health hazards of all this electro-magnetic radiation especially with the talk of wireless electricity from the WITRICITY.

Could you imagine having all this radiation frying our brains while they transmit this wireless electricity to our homes, cars,cell phones and computers.

I think the NWO(descendents of the Rothchilds & Rockefellers) would escape to their secret underground cities while the general population eventually dies of brain cancer.

Dirty electricity generated by florescent lights,computers,photocopy machines etc. has already been demonstrated to cause (EHS) Electrical Hyper Sensitivity in certain school buildings.