Is Solar in Space the next big energy breakthrough?
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Chapters:
00:00 Why We Need Solar In Space
1:20 Are Solar Farms Financially Viable?
2:48 Clustering - The Future Of Space Projects
3:46 Space Solar And CASSIOPeiA
4:45 Ad Read
6:43 Transmitting Energy Wirelessly From Space
9:20 CASSIOPeiA And It's Breakthrough Design
12:41 The Risks With Solar In Space
16:00 Is It Efficient?
17:40 The Future For Solar In Space
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Thanks to Sam and the Space Solar team for talking to me this week about their work 🚀
You should probably do more research than talking to CEOs this is a dramatic and expensive waste of time, there would still be night times in orbit, infact there may be more when u think of the way an orbit works with all the objects rotating, or stick it in a lagrange point where it needs to shoot through the parts of earth that shield it from much more radiation than having it in low orbit making it non viable with a still spinning planet. We dont need a breakthrough we just need better management and coordination, we literally have access to everything we need to make the solar farms for fractions of the cost of this, just tax the top 4 or 5 companies an extra 1% and we could probably pay for it all like that.
I have no issue with the technology involved but I have a hard time believing space-based solar would have a lower total cost of electricity than a land-based solar farm with 10 times the solar panels and batteries to offset the night and weather issues. Also having high-voltage DC lines between utilities would IMHO be far more cost-effective the space-based solar for pseudo base load.
You have about the same probability of success of ever reaching appreciable energy stores from wind and solar as Elon Musk does terraforming fn’ Mars. They are both wild fantasies that that only serve to hinder real progress in researching and developing new technologies to assist us in confronting problems we will face in the future. It’s a grift.
yea like 80s in and apparently this was off of the idea of "we need drastically new solutions", which is actually not true we mostly need cooperation and policy changes to continue moving towards greener options for infrastructure and thinking about long term disposal of things, several top american companies can individually pay to cover whats needed to end hunger and power the world and still grow. Issue 2, relying on elon musk. Also I dont see how they can have an orbit of earth that isnt in a lagrange point (which would DRASTICALLY lower energy transfer capabilities) that wouldnt also have a night time unless they do a network of satellites, and we are already potentially putting too much particulate matter being held up in the atmosphere which is potentially muting the magnetosphere and we probably dont want that either, companies should have never been let in space. Also the earth could very easily fit enough power generation for people if there was a proper grid system potentially making every building generate some power whenever possible.
The big advantage of this scheme would be that the solar panels in space would produce power 24 hours day, assuming you chose the orbit correctly. Batteries would be unnecessary as well as tracking hardware. I have wondered if it might not be easier to have the solar panels on earth, but use giant space mirrors to focus sunlight on the panels. This would allow double the output during the day, and regular output at night.
Microwaves will be blocked by clouds, right? So you need to direct to receivers that are under clear skies.
Microwaves actually have a pretty good pass through rate which is why we use them for satellite communication.
when i was around 7, i was building my first crystal radio set. it blew my mind to realize the radiowaves themselves carried energy. so i pulled out my invention book and drew a satellite in the sky, beaming down AM radio waves to a big ol' dish on the ground. years later, when i learned that i wasn't the one who actually invented the concept, i decided to become a bass player.
💀
Clearly there's a huge market potential for space based energy production. I think I might have to try and develop my idea for a wind farm in space.
Great idea! Maybe you might look into Dyson Harrop satellites. 😊 Unfortunately, the biggest problem with beaming power to earth with dyson-harrop satellites is the beam spread over the much greater distances involved outside planetary magnetosphere. But solar winds power may one day be a real thing in the distant future. Maybe to power space craft with lasers? 😊
Try using asteroids to turn those blades!
I'm a space farmer is a great pickup line. Go for it
"We don't really have any solution to power demands doubling" yeah. We do. It's called nuclear power.
Over a period of a hundred years, say, worldwide dependence on nuclear isn't totally without its own problems...
@@dogsbodyish8403 Sure. Some problems. Unlike this, which is made entirely of problems. This plan is comically stupid because it relies on the argument that "land area is expensive" and "this is scalable" while only delivering 1/4th midday sun power density. Even if it's continuous and harvested more efficiently, it's the same scale and has the comical disadvantage over, say, solar towers (which also provide continuous power with thermal buffering), of requiring sending enormous amounts of mass into space, where it then cannot be maintained. The speaker also claims with no basis that ground-based solar is 1% efficient while space-based solar is somehow 40% efficient even though they're the same solar panels and the atmosphere (clouds aside) is mostly transparent to the wavelengths absorbed by solar panels. Is there some universe where this becomes viable? Sure. Not at 1/4th midday sun power density of the transmitted beam and likely not while we're still using chemical rockets to launch things into space.
@@yaksher As I think the presenter hints, the main advantages over land-based may be in the ability to maintain supply during night-time or cloudy conditions (like in the UK), and to be able to easily switch the destination of the energy to where it's most needed at any given time. And the efficiency thing may be all about land area usage (as opposed to overall efficiency). Which is again relevant to the UK, for example, as agricultural land is in short supply - for food production.
@@dogsbodyish8403What problem? Resource cuantity? Nope, nuclear is virtually infinite (sea water extraction). Nuclear waste? Fast nuclear reactors turn waste into fuel. Safety? Is the most secure source of energy together with wind and solar.
@@Hansulf Waste is ultimately problematic - some of the most toxic products aren't capable of being recycled - and, despite techniques like vitrification, still require safe stowage. I'd have thought widespread use of nuclear worldwide would eventually pose problems. Still, fusion will be coming along soon...
As someone with a physics background I see some potential red flags that weren't really addressed in the video. The idea is to take sunlight that would not otherwise fall incident on the surface of the earth, and redirect that energy so that it does (albeit captured and re-transmitted as RF). Are there not concerns that we're ADDING energy to a largely closed system in an era where climate change is the number one concern? What about the surface directly below the beam? Are the microwaves not heating the water molecules that happen to find themselves in the path of the beam? This will be exacerbated by placing the collection antenna on the ocean, but even on land, the water in the atmosphere will be heated by the beam. Even if the heating is small, its heat that wouldn't have ever been part of the sun-earth system before, and will have a net heating effect. Am I missing something? This just seems like a HORRIBLE idea for combating climate change, existing only to drum up investment cash and line people's pockets.
You’re absolutely right. The entire concept is a flight of fancy with practically no consideration for the disastrous down stream effects it could have. This is always the issue, and it gets really tiresome. People with more money than sense that manage to wow our fellow physicists or scientists with dollar signs and convince them they’ll one day be a Einstein World Award winner. Inevitably, the tax payers almost always end up paying the tab for these debacles that had very little chance of success from the beginning. Ironically enough, you don’t have to look any further than the current state of wind and solar projects around the globe. Considered by most to be abject failures, we continue to throw good money after bad. And we certainly can’t forget about the promise of a brave new world with only electric cars and trucks 🙄 It’s never ending madness. I apologize for being so cynical, but history is littered with the corpses of these Pollyannsish ideas that just end up biting everyone in the butt. Someone else mentioned it first in the comments, and they were dead on. Nuclear power is the only practical option we have right now to alter the energy equation we are currently faced with. It saddens me to consider just how advanced our reactors could be today with 50+ years of legitimate research and development under our belt. Maybe we’ll come to our senses and for once head in the right direction.
This is addressed by a downloadable FAQ on the website. Consider these three cases: * Productive solar farms in dry desert regions darken Earth’s albedo, leading to more sunlight being thermalised rather than reflected back into space. Future 30% efficient PV would release 2.3 GWh of heat for every 1 GWh of electricity produced. * The most efficient combined cycle plants achieve approximately 60% thermal efficiency (these are not the 30% efficient gas peaker plants used to back-up intermittent renewables). For every gigawatt hour of electrical energy produced, over 650 MWh of waste heat is released into the environment. * The type of rectenna used in the 1975 Goldstone power beaming experiment achieved over 91% RF:DC conversion efficiency. In the worst case, such a rectenna (at 85% efficiency, 84% beam intercept during heavy rain) would release 430 MWh of heat for every 1 GWh of electricity, i.e. far less than terrestrial PV panels, nuclear or fossil plants. Global warming is actually due to the build-up of CO2 and other GHGs since the industrial era began. it is estimated that the current imbalance in Earth's system is 400 TW. Of the 19 TW-year consumed annually by humanity, 16 TW are fossil fuels, so every GW of electricity produced by fossil fuels is responsible for at-least 2.3 GW of direct heat, plus 25 GW via GHGs. Ian Cash - Inventor of CASSIOPeiA
Surely micro meteorite showers would pepper any solar array of significant size ?
Like they shower the space station and its solar panels?
most shit doesn't reach Earth surface because air...
I think maintainence concern is real but i doubt even a 2 kilometer structure has any size significance when there is a much better gravitational thing to hit. I mean i doubt it will be constantly hit and will probably exist for quite a few years before there are issues
@@stevechance150 The larger the array the more chance it could be hit, plus panels on the space station are more easily replaced.
@@yorkyone2143 And the larger it gets they probably also have to worry about solar wind. Which, although probably negligible, still add an extra cost to the maintenance and/or a loss to the energy produced.
That could never be weaponized…….
and thats true actually, it would make for a very poor weapon
@@coreytaylor5386 Well that, or a super extreme one. Putting mirrors behind the solar panels increases it's efficiency and reduces heating. Both good options for space. I don't know the type of panels they want to use but mirrored ones seem like a good choice. Now a solar cooker of about 1 meter across can concentrate light and reach 400 C and turn a chicken into burnt carbon mess. What would a 1 km across version do? But no worries. It can't be a weapon because they absolutely pinky promise they would never point the reflection towards the earth no matter what the military says. Just the relatively harmless power beam. Right?
@@lucidmoseswell the issue with that is something called atmospheric refraction, DEWs absolutely suck because Earth‘s atmosphere is too thick
@@fiiral5870 Your orders of magnitude off on that. We are not talking about laser that needs to stay in a tight beam. Look up at the ISS. Notice that you can actually see it. Sure it's a bit blurry but the light is making it down pretty ok. Ok to within the size of your eye. With a 1k mirror around the ISS height you wouldn't need to hit something small as your eye.
@@lucidmoses you're confusing sunlight with microwaves
Powerbeaming has always just been a matter of time. But good to hear they're actual projects in progress not just ideation. Personally i can't wait to sacrifice Mercury to the dyson!
Aiming a 2.45GHz Microwave beam at the ocean, could cause excessive water heating and evaporation. H20 is also one of the most intensive greenhouse effect when in atmosphere. Probably a better idea to aim these at Deserts where there are low quantities of liquid already.
As someone working in the phased array industry, I think I'd safely bet on this never happening.
I'd appreciate your insights on why. Technically the HARRIER experiment has proven (world first) that a helical phased array can form and steer a coherent microwave beam through 360 degrees. Just as-well; I'm the inventor named in the CASSIOPeiA patents (Ian Cash).
Thanks you for the "bad software engineer" comment. It is rare to hear anyone actually saying it aloud and as fact, even though quite clearly it is.
I'm filing this under "Never going to happen". Nice PR for the company and nice low-effort video for Ben though.
Yeah. Right up there with hotel space stations.
Sim City 2000 taught me this was a bad idea 😊
Sounds like an extremely effective weapon. 😂😂😂
it would actually make for a really shitty weapon, similar to trying to make a nuke out of a nuclear power plant it would be nearly impossible and just be easier to straight up make an actual weapon from scratch. the best use would be to just re-direct the energy to a weapons factory or to your own power grid
That is where the funding is coming from. A very shitty but effective weapon . The USA is pushing to put weapons of mass destruction in space at the moment. But it is being blocked by Russia .
It could easily enable/power an effective weapon, but the power transmitter would be designed to send energy at a constant rate, basically an extra sun or two within the beam. That warms you up but won't kill you. A weapon wants to discharge as much energy in as short a time as possible to maximize damage.
@@coreytaylor5386 nuclear power plant is more dangerous since it's more like a radiation weapon killing life for hundreds of years.
they literally microwaving the earth
Thank you for this fascinating new video!
I did research on this in the 70s. Excited to see that it is on the cusp of happening finally. I do worry about "space junk" and solar wind issues still
I like the idea where it can supply energy where the sun isn't shing and the wind blowing to anywhere on earth it was needed. So night-time solar energy at a cost equivalent to terrestial solar.
I cannot see this happening. We'd need thousands of these to power the planet. It is still amazing that it looks somewhat feasible.
Make no mistake, this is a weapon.
eyy, hearing the start of the video, now i get where the creators of deliver the moon got their inspiration from
But is it cost effective?
ofcourse it isnt, humans can already pay for solutions that exist on the planet, the top companies in the world could lose literally single digit %s in profit and end all the pain in the world, and still grow unsustainable, willing this to exist in space is just ignoring what could be real lasting peace causing solutions of powering nations through better management and cooperation
I like the idea of PWM phased beaming between locations on earth to balance power between locations based on need. It might work well with terrestrial solar intermittency to match local demand and reduce the need for fosil fuel peaker plants. Receiving PWM beamed power might create a need for very short term power storage to smooth out the average power recieved over a second or two. I suspect capacitors would ideally fill this role with their high power capacity and long maintenence free life span.
When I was designing and building a solar home in 1982, panels cost $100/Watt, when in Seattle electricity cost 1.5 cents/kWh
I would imagine that there would be enough “leakage” that a smart enterprising person could pirate a significant amount of energy.
That's probably the reason why collectors are planned to be offshore, as opposed to safety concerns as the energy density on the ground is 1/4th of that of direct sunlight, and not in a harmful wavelength to begin with.
To be clear, it wouldn't be theft. Compare to stealing "leakage" from overhead powerlines, you're close enough that an inductive receiver actually produces a load on those powerlines. Here, anything not captured by the primary collectors is waste. You would be recovering their waste, that they dumped on your land. You're "taking" from them in terms of lost revenue, but that's not illegal in most jurisdictions. You would have to make a new law about it, like the BBC's receiver license.
@@YouNameItGaming They're planned to be offshore because they're using the unlicensed 2.4GHz band, blasting away at far above permitted power levels, likely high enough to destroy any of the variety of hardware already operating in that band.
"A diagram so hard on the eyes only a physicist could have made it" 🤣 no truer words! 🤣
SolarFrickinSpacestations!!
I keep hearing this...that solar power is SOOOOOO cheap now. But...what about the NECESSARY energy storage? How much does THAT add to the cost? Gas, coal, and oil store the energy in the material itself. That is the difference.
Batteries, pumped hydro, and heat batteries are not that expensive. Fossil fuels inherently contain energy, but we have to keep digging them up and burning them forever, wrecking the biosphere in the process, so I don't think they are the answer.
Issue i have with this is that many countries are not even willing to improve the lines between their own territories that they have held for many years so this tech would just make electricity cheaper for people already on powerful grids, the reason this is bad is that even in first world countries there are sections with poor conectivity to the central grid and so modernising people there will still not have enough power for cars, homes and such from this expensive complicated near-megaproject object in space. I remember distinctly a place in the UK shown by tom scott who already had green energy and they had a surplus but the connection back into the grid was too poor to accept the surplus which has always been an issue with Home Solar in every country on the world. China build massive power lines to a desert just for a bit better solar bringing the solar to yourself is great but the grids issues still persist
Simply tune the RF frequency and you got an effective space weapon.
What's the half power beam width? The angular width of a two square kilometer disk from geostationary orbit is about 0.0025 degrees. The half power beam width of the Deep Space Network's 70-meter K-band (22 GHz) dish antennas, the narrowest beams ever engineered, is 0.012 degrees. Such a beam would cast an area of at least 44 square kilometers from GEO, about the size of Bermuda.
They gave the receiver station area as about 70 square kilometres to receive a total power of 2GW, peak intensity 250W/m^2 at the centre, fading towards the edges in the manner of an Airy Disk
We, HELIOFLOAT - Austria, do the off shore floating MW receiver
Good job
I question whether the videographic at 17:21 is at all accurate - 22,000 miles sounds like geosynchronous orbit, which means it would hang over one spot on earth - basically essentially stationary (hence the name)... the graphic shows the opposite. I believe a more accurate representation would show a stationary Earth-powerstation pairing, with the day/night terminator 'shadow' moving across the surface. The powerstation itself is never in shadow since it's so far above the Earth, and it was mentioned the solar array receives power from the Sun omnidirectionally so there would always be continuous power. If I've got any part of that wrong, please correct me!
16:37 LMAO, that got a good chuckle out of me
4:04 I thought that the longest man-made object is the Dingo Fence in Australia.
Given the effect of a house hold microwave (2.4ghz) on your home wifi. I would wonder how much effect this will have on the environment?
I wonder if the RF beam coming from space would trigger any chemistry as it passes through the atmosphere to the ground. Or is the RF beam not powerful enough to interact with air molecules in that way?
the peak intensity (middle of the beam) is 250W/m^2 (comparable to 1/4 of the midday Sun at the Equator) and lower wavelength than visible light - hence lower energy per photon and non-ionising. It could add a little energy to something, but not anything that doesn't already happen.
@@MattNolanCustom This is good to know. Appreciate the reply.
Just curious, Elon Musk was asked about this awhile back (before taking over Twitter) and said that it wasn't feasible due to the loss of energy in the conversion from AC to DC (or vice-versa) in order to transmit the energy to the ground based grid.
My only real concern for this is the "construction phase" that will be the real issue if, or when, this technology comes to fruition--past the planning and investment phase.
Do you include your sources some where, I'm curious about the graphic you used to show solar as being more affordable.
I was really uncomfortable to see you did not cite your source in the video
Search for Frazer Nash Consultancy techno-economic study reports on space based solar power, for both UK gov and ESA.
Staggering.... I think you are right about the inevitability of space based power generation and in the value of doing a huge project like this... The experience of constructing things in space potentially is more valuable than the energy it would produce.... The first of things also tend to be the worst of things... The wright brothers built the world's worst plane but their pioneering paved the way for craft to evolve into what it is today 🤔 excellent videos.
At 9:00 about interference beans, the energy consumption will be reduced ou the same? You produce the wave, but the interference will create a narrow bean. The result is different, but the necessary energy is the same, right?
I thought we were trying to cool the planet not heat it …. Madness.
A giant energy Ray pointed towards Earth you say. Sounds really safe and not at all dangerous if something goes wrong
is it possible to convert fisible light or heat into microwave without electronic? so basically, it uses 0 energy while idle.
So we haven't touched on this.Does this mean that there is a possibility that we will no longer need to charge cell phones cars eventually by plugging them in?Will we be beaming power within our homes?
I know it's 'geek speak', but you never mention the calculated LCOE (levelized cost of energy) of this hypothetical 2 GW system. I'm sure Space Solar has a calculation. That's why they chose 2 GW - it's probably only at this scale that LCOE over 25 years theoretically competes with nuclear. Also the 'falling costs of solar' DO NOT automatically translate into 'falling costs of solar panels made for space', which are much more complex devices. I'm more of a fan of massive deployment of land based solar and all forms of electrical energy storage. This stuff might be cool for delivering energy to isolated places where traditional renewables or grids are just not feasible.
at the lower cost of 3Billion per spacesolar installation you could build no less than 2000 entire solar farms here on earth: --- How Much Does a Solar Farm Cost? The cost of building a solar farm in Australia varies widely based on the project's scale, location, and technology used. On average, the construction of a solar farm can range from $1 million to $1.5 million per megawatt (MW) of installed capacity. --- So; cool idea, never close to realistic...
it would also be more flights to make than the ISS, need to be in a lagrange point for constant view of the sun causing more losses due to an extremely long communication time, and would likely be practically impossible to keep in a stable orbit, and could you imagine the service costs when some space debris/dust hits that, this is such a massive waste of money, even as an RnD startup.
The statement "Solar is cheaper then coal and natural gas" is quite misleading, it is like saying "Water costs nothing for it comes from the sky". There are collection costs, storage costs, maintenance cost, infrastructure refreshment costs, land coasts (are are tons of cost associated generally with electrical energy for it is very easy to tax as finally it goes to a common network), also not to forget the huge amount of technology based subsidies that also play role in that. Considering that over 70% of energy used on the planet, in one form or another, is for heating ( something ) and only about 10% is used in electrical (flux) form, one tend to think that these companies are just exploring some bubble/government subsidized project instead of focusing on the rear problems. In addition, assuming that this was fantastically true, what do you think will happen with the so called global warming, if the humanity somehow manages to intersect additional solar energy, that has never hit the Earth before (for4.5, or so, billion years), and inject it in the Earth atmosphere !!!! I guess, all these people forget that somehow, inconvenient truth, and also that all energy used, by humanity, end up as a residual heat inside the atmosphere ( the first law of the thermodynamic ).
A "technology for reaching net zero emissions" which requires 68 rocket launches to hopefully power a small town...
That's a mis quote. The 68 launches would be for the full scale system.
Ion Cannon ready!
Correct me if I am wrong. The interference canceled parts of the beams should be a total energy loss, isn't it so? Okay, usable energy goes in the needed direction, but all the other directions should be the loss of a spherical radiator. As i said I am maybe wrong. I do not want to be pessimistic, but I guess this kind of solar energy harvesting will be only economical, when we will be able to bring the energy down to earth in a much more.dense form, and/or with very low loss. At the moment there is no way for it. If the space elevators will ever be made, that could bring down wired power from solar powerplants built on them.
If the waves have interfered and cancelled each other then there's no EM field in that direction to do any work
Well, that's one way to increase the greenhouse effect (the effect of which may be negligible)
It sounds really cool but will it ever be price competitive with ground based solar with a storage system?
So, how much can it collect... and how much of that is lost during translation into a transmittable form and attenuated during its travel through the atmosphere. What happens when something else passes through such a concentrated high power beam of energy?
I guess you missed the bit about the peak beam intensity being equivalent 1/4 of the midday Sun (at the Equator, which was the bit they didn't actually mention)
If the power intensity is 1/4 the midday sun, why not just build a regular old solar farm instead to get roughly the same peak performance? It won't work during the night, but it won't need expensive infrastructure in space. I think we should focus more on the HVDC interconnects that send the energy from lit part of the earth to the unlit parts. If we had solar farms at Sahara desert, Gobi desert, and somewhere in the US lets say Nevada, we're pretty much covered the entire 24 hours.
Sorry Ben, but the safety argument you present around 15:09 was debunked last year. I'm surprised to see it repeated here. It's been recognised that the SBSP radio flux discussed in the Fraser-Nash report is more than an order of magnitude above the internationally-adopted safety limits for human exposure to microwaves. The underlying point is that microwaves, being much longer wavelength than light, will penetrate and dump heat in the body. Earlier work on SBSP (e.g. by the International Union for Radio Science, URSI) has shown the need to protect humans from fluxes in the central areas of ground receivers for SBSP.
I watched the first 30 sec of this video. Does it mention LCOE?
I've always been suspicious about solar satellites beaming energy to earth, largely due to lack of efficiency in the downlink. I design radio electronics, so I've taken a quick look at some of the figures... and maybe, just maybe this is comming together. I note an IEEE paper pointing at a 90% efficient ~45dBm PA (class F of course), operating in the same band (Design and Investigation of Broadband High-Efficiency Continuous Inverse Class - F Power Amplifier) .. a 5% loss for filtering and you get the 85% DC-RF figure.. I haven't begun to think about the receiver side.. but it's not going to be a traditional architecture. the 2% atmospheric loss... hmmm.. quick check of the atmospheric absorbtion charts.. yes, good there too.. so far so good. The antenna side looks fairly good.. but it's going to look like a solar farm rather than a wind farm.. you'll need to completely cover a substantial area of landscape, any area not filled will be a loss (holes bigger than about half a wavelength that is.. or 12cm).. the weather sealing of the receive antenna will be a concern.. but again, that's engineering concerns, not outright physics problems. Additionally the satellites are going to relatively affordable to make as they'll each use many identical parts so the high manufacture volume will control costs. Thanks for sharing this.
"not outright physics problems", the orbits, the materials, the cost to benefit analysis of the potential to do it on earth and understanding that the only reason to go to space with it is so u can have something cool to say when someone asks you what your job is
wouldn't a Dyson sphere heat up the Earth and fry it? Same with converting Solar energy in space to micro waves and sending it down to Earth also MUST warm up the Earth. Right?
If it's only 2 GW, that's a fraction of a drop in the bucket compared to the heat that rains down on Earth constantly from the sun.
@@incognitotorpedo42 granted, but then it is also not much of a solution
The Earth receives 174 petawatts (PW) of incoming solar radiation (insolation) at the upper atmosphere.[6] Approximately 30% is reflected back to space while the rest, 122 PW, is absorbed by clouds, oceans and land masses. (From wikipedia). If you add 21 Terawatts of extra solar energy from nearby orbital space, which is the current total worldwide electricity supply, you increase the earth's net energy budget by 0.01%
A full dyson swarm, yes. 2GW is basically nothing though.
The costs in money as well as the energy loss in conversion makes this highly impractical compared to ground based solar. Unless they came up with a solar cell that was produced many times the energy in orbit as it, or any other solar cell, did on the ground this won't really happen. I could understand it as an orbit to orbit type thing where some company could subscribe to having power beamed to their satellites.
What effect does harvesting solar energy in space have on the warming of the planet?
The Earth receives 174 petawatts (PW) of incoming solar radiation (insolation) at the upper atmosphere.[6] Approximately 30% is reflected back to space while the rest, 122 PW, is absorbed by clouds, oceans and land masses. (From wikipedia). If you add 10 Gigawatts, it would increase the energy budget of the earth by 0.000008%.
Sounds good. I don't like the idea of directing energy that was missing earth be then be added.
We need a lot more information about the cost, feasibility, environmental impact, weather resilience, and maintenance issues of these 60 sq km receiver arrays out at sea. Details notably absent. Elephant in the room, methinks.
don't bother. It will never be built. Every ingeneering project basing its numbers on starship's launching cost is doom from the start.
@@inotoff cost of mass to orbit is coming down eventually, one way or another
@@MattNolanCustom Depends which orbit you're talking about. LEO? Maybe. Further ? I wouldn't be that sure.
I think they need to redesign differently other than assemblying the plate. What's wrong with the "square plate" that is attached grid flexibly and rolled into a "tape"? Then you can just unroll it while in space and attach it to the frame.
Wouldn't something this big be a solar sail? How do you keep it in place physically?
This can be interesting for powering moon colonies
an obvious question not addressed here, maybe the most important; with the advent of space-based power infrastructure, and the inevitable development of terrestrial dependency on it, combined with the nature of global public-private partnerships and competing political philosophies, how will such technology change the dynamics of the peaceful use of outer space? space is the ultimate high ground. for example, the inverse of this becomes possible; selectively block the sun. also; with a reliance on space-based energy, and the power dynamics we now witness on earth, what will that mean for national sovereignties, personal freedoms, the ability to fight political hegemonies? i say democratize energy, don't centralize it.
Soo, quick back of the envelope calculation: A 400Wp solar panel is about 2m2, accounting for 1m row spacing that means you get about 100Wp/m2. The 6km radio antenna is about 28mln m2. Meaning that a floating solar farm of this size would have a capacity of 2.8GWp... Am I missing something here or does this seem like a really elaborate way to put up 2GW of solar power? Not to mention the maintenance and production costs... And what about the critical raw materials needed for PV modules with 40% efficiency?
This is only PR. The goal is to lure investors who don't think further than CGI and wow factor. Then they sell the startup and let the project die. There are countless examples of these bullshit projects.
I would take any claims SpaceX makes with a shaker of salt.
My worry is that it is so big, which means a lot of area for space debris to hit it
This is going to go horrendously, in the long term. Because that's where planning stops nowadays, just before the future.
Yeah this will happen but probably 2040 as opposed to 2030. Since fusion generators are easier to build; let’s focus on that. We CAN build them; we just need to figure out the fusion part
there's speakers that use this same beamforming too
Their prove is to power a few miliwatts one meter away! Now imagine a failure in the tracking system and you point a gigawatt of power into a city! It’s going to be like being inside a microwave oven!
68 launches to build it doesn't sound as crazy as I thought it would be, but I'm not entirely convinced this is viable, and it is a lot of power to focus on some place on earth.
according to wikipedia, thats 28 more than it took to build the ISS, and is expected to launch from a rocket platform that currently might not exist, that the industry may turn on soon, that actually might be advertising rocketry capabilities (specifically with amount of cargo they are able to carry) that may not be in line with the laws of physics. But since its taken well over 20 years to build the ISS when it had full government support, extrapolating this kind of timeline out for the rnd and everything else, we might be off everything else by the year 2050, but by that point it would have to be land based solar to space based solar, because if we havent transitioned off carbon by then, we likely wont be able to use that energy for as long as we wanted to (extinction risks)
It might also help power things on the moon, considering there are plans to go back there
Why is conflating price and cost such a common mistake, especially among KZhead PhDs?
Power satellites will catch the world by surprise.
Lets say 10kW over 0.5km of atmosphere is slightly different scale then 2GW over 100km of atmosphere. To scale those things up might not be as easy as they claim. So first put a smaller model up in space and show that your technology is holding the promises and then we get in discussion if it is worth the cost.
Isaac Asimov wrote a short story how they built this and put a receiver on the ground and environmentalists blew it up.
If you reflect extra energy at the earth you increase the amount of heating the earth receives.
How can I trust those batteries when they use the Fahrenheit to measure heat
So just curious, since we will be transmitting gigawatts of power through microwaves, will this be safe for mortals? That seems like ALOT of power to send through someone with radiation.
Less than 250W per square metre at the beam peak. That's the heat output of two and a half people at rest, spread over about 2/3 of an average doorway.
And if the energy is misdirected by mistake ,error or intentionally as a weapon, how many people will be vaporized?
as many as are vaporised by 1/4 of the power per square metre of equatorial noon sunlight. Last time I checked, that was none.
My 4 year old son says you look like Ironman!! 😂
Can these effectively service electric Airplanes?
IF this is done on any scale it will dwarf the effects of greenhouse gasses in its effect on climate.
No matter the cost, space solar would effectively monopolize distribution at least to a degree… that is my negative view. On the strong positive side, a successful setup would make solar much more of a constant source of energy to match the constancy of the sun shining.
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SpaceX charge the same as the Space Shuttle per kg to orbit. Monopolies charge what ever they like.
Can you do a video on why they always send the poor?
2.45Ghz is roughly what microwave ovens work on. I worked on microwave transmission systems and even though that was a different frequency (1.8Ghz) the health implications of exposure were pretty extreme. I worked with people who had burn scars on their hands and forearms.
Yeah, it's a death ray, but if that's what we have to do to get AI to create memes for us, what can we do?
Those people who received burns were subjected to far more power density than 250W/m^2 though.
Curious how long the GHG payback is after 68 rocket launches.
There isn't enough matter in our solar system to build a Dyson sphere.
Just as the incineration of the Hindenburg ended the age of dirigibles, the destruction of an airliner will doom the age of space-based solar power..
It looks like a solar sail which could mean it might act like one throwing off its position.
Burj Khalifa is DEFINITELY NOT the longest man made object.
“Commence primary ignition…”
This solves the intermittency issue 🤔🤔
Space solar is good, but I don't think we should be microwaving the Earth from orbit. Since we'll be using the additional power to run computers anyway, just have the computers up in the shade behind the solar panel, and you don't have to deal with all those beaming losses and you won't microwave birds.