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Based on what I've read (in particular, this blogpost: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/03/space-based-solar-power/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/03/space-base
by rotexo 8y ago
Based on what I've read (in particular, this blogpost: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/03/space-based-solar-power/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/03/space-based-solar-power/) space-based solar power (SBSP) is not as easy or promising as it might appear.
Getting that energy to the ground is difficult. Maintaining a solar power plant in space is difficult. With the energy required to make and launch solar power installations, the energy returned on energy invested might not be all that much better than terrestrial solar panels.
Additionally, the factor of 10- to factor of 100-reductions in launch costs that seem to be necessary to make SBSP economical might never materialize. SpaceX seems to have had success in reducing launch costs, but it could be credibly argued that that success so far has been a result of their organizational approach. Also, I think they are still running the experiment regarding whether or not reusability can reduce launch costs further (an impression I have gathered from reading the NASASpaceFlight forums, so take it with a grain of salt--I'm just a biologist). Remember that dramatic reductions in launch costs were promised with the shuttle and never materialized. SpaceX has learned from many of those mistakes, but maybe there are other unknown problems yet to discover.
- fixermark 8y agoIn addition to the physical concern, there's the unfortunate political concern that anyone who builds something that can redirect useful amounts of energy from space to Earth for planet-side consumption has probably also built a death ray.
- Pica_soO 8y agoI find this argument to be pretty useless by now. We all live in a modern society. You can order a crisper-cas do it yourself chemistry kit for your home, your devices are powered by potential electric hand grenades and you can write software in your basement that could cripple the worlds infrastructure for months. Everyone can create a potential doomsday device in his/her basement. And with every physics discover, the likelihood for ease of access to the world-burning zippo is dropping faster and faster. And its a good thing. Any high energy ray in orbit could be gunned down with railguns or destroyed with reflection. I know its fancy to pretend that security is something real, not just a safety dance, ever after 9/11 - so in order for everyone to feel safe- we are going to do cavity searches on astronauts from now on.
- regularfry 8y agoThere are good points in that article, but it falls into the common trap: if you're going to do space-based solar, the one thing you probably wouldn't do is make your collecting area out of a load of PV panels. If you want a mahoosive collecting area, the best idea is probably acres of mylar sheets, reflecting onto as small a converter as you can get away with. That fundamentally changes the available sunlight watts per launch kg ratio. You've just bought yourself a heat dissipation problem, and it does nothing to help with the downlink, but those aren't insurmountable.