Quote: Original post by curtmax_0
Space solar collection systems are pretty retarded. Think of the cost of construction. I don't have exact figures, but solar panels are pretty heavy... how many rockets are needed to launch it into space?

Depends on how much you can lift at once. With current tech, the most that can be lofted is about 25 metric tonnes per launch to LEO. If the folks who (used to be) in charge of NASA have their way, in a decade or two that'll be upped to 140-160 tonnes per launch to LEO. Getting to geostationary orbit knocks quite a bit of that down, so with that particular LV (Ares V) it would be more like 50 tonnes or so. Maybe a bit less, I'd have to whip up a spreadsheet and get the right data and run the numbers to be sure. To be fair, though, there's some doubt as to whether that particular LV will ever fly due to budgetary constraints...

Of course they could always build the Sea Dragon... Or they could develop an architecture based on cryogenic propellant transfer, which I'm told could get them to the asteroids and maybe even Mars as well without developing huge heavy-lift vehicles. They could even get solar or nuclear electric propulsion spacecraft off the ground and boost those numbers even more.

In any case, there's probably room for improvement in both cost and payload even with current rockets. There are already some upgrades to various launch vehicles that could be done without much trouble but simply have yet to be funded. Increasing the flight rate would bring the cost to orbit down. Maybe building solar power satellites would (finally) provide a reason to have a high enough flight rate to build a reusable launch vehicle and move away from expendables, which by the way also get cheaper as flight rate increases since a big portion of the cost tends to be manpower (which is why Shuttle is so expensive - refurbishing the orbiters takes a lot of people). Maybe this could be the incentive to provide the groundwork for space activities that finally (eventually) move humans out into the solar system?

Quote: Original post by Cypher19
I'm definitely for this. My town in Simcity 2000 had a microwave power plant working great for years.



...until that incident that caused half of the city to burn up in flames.

Someone left a fork in the reactor?

I think that generating the power on site will be more efficient. Imagine if all the paints,windows, roofs of buildings and all the roads are capable of generating electricity.

I once read that simply painting white roofs would cut household and general building's construction by about one quarter. Multiplying by all buildings around, the savings are MASSIVE. The cost would be close to nothing compared to a so big space project and generate way more work on a distributed basis... and this is why it's not going to happen.

Ever heard of green roofs? Not only a properly designed roof cuts building consumption, but can also help in regulating water flows to the local sewers with several advantages for the whole grid.

The cheapest form of energy is the nega-watt, as well as the fastest to deploy. I generally look at the Rocky Mountain Institute for efficiency ideas, some of their projects are truly far-sighted.

Those announcements are great for news but they always give me the feeling they're just that.

sounds like a cover story to create a death-ray

Having a gigantic parabol mirror floating in space seems like a truly bombing idea. Reminds me of the guy smoking on the nitroglycerine barrel.

So what happens if one day that thingie is hit by some micro-asteroid, or if it has a malfunction of some kind which causes it to tilt by 1-2 degrees, even if only for a second before it can corrected its position. Probably even the vibrations of some otherwise insignificant impact may be very noticeable at such a distance. Just think of how much the little red dot shakes if you point your little hand laser at something half a kilometer away. Now imagine the distance 72,000 times greater, and a trillion times more energy behind it.
And imagine that there's half a second lag in the best case when you have to hit the "emergency off" button (assuming that a parabol mirror can be easily "switched off" at all).

Would be "fun" to watch the bundled microwaves (or laser beam, or whatever) cut a 5 meter deep trench through the next nearby city ("nearby" meaning any city within a hundred kilometers), except it's considerably less fun for the people happening to live in that particular city.

Quote: Would be "fun" to watch the bundled microwaves (or laser beam, or whatever) cut a 5 meter deep trench through the next nearby city ("nearby" meaning any city within a hundred kilometers), except it's considerably less fun for the people happening to live in that particular city.

This is assuming that the collectors actually are that close to a city and aren't out at sea or on a mountain somewhere.

Well, a 1° deviation at 36,000 km is over 628 km... so "close" is maybe a somewhat misleading word. Japan is only about 300x1400 km total, so placing the collectors more than a hundred kilometers away from a city might be a real challenge, unless they plan to have them somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean (which would mean logistic problems, safety concerns, and meteorological consequences).

Also, imagine what would happen if that "death ray" swiped over North Korea by accident and anihilated a few small towns. This is not a situation you want to get into with a psycho like Kim Jong as your neighbour, who's sleeping with the finger on the "nuke" button.

Heh they'd have to detect if a plane accidentally got close to the invisible beam. :P Should be easy to detect though with basic radar. I like this idea a lot. With a few relay stations they could redirect multiple beams down to all parts of japan.

Quote: Original post by ddn3
... China is building the worlds largest solar plant (2000MW) of power in the Gobi desert (compared to Americas largest plant of 20MW). ...

That plant is slated to be built by an American company, First Solar Inc. According to news reports, the largest solar panel plant in the world should be online by now. "... at 25 megawatts, it will generate nearly twice as much energy as the second-largest photovoltaic facility in the U.S." Largest solar panel plant in US rises in Fla.

Bechtel to Build Solar Plant in California -- 440-megawatt. Bechtel is the Democrat counterpart to Republican Halliburton. There are supposed to be a couple additional gigawatt scale facilities built in California. I don't have links at hand about them.