Is There a Future for Space-Based Solar Power?, by Emmet Cole
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 game-changing energy technology.
But could a new wave of SPS designs bring space-based solar power closer to reality?
Most SPS concepts involve launching solar cells and power storage systems into geosynchronous orbit, where the energy produced is converted into microwaves (or a laser beam) and beamed down to special stations on earth, where it is then converted into electricity.
These designs offer several challenges. For example, the cost of getting the equipment into orbit is prohibitively expensive, especially when one is dealing with monolithic SPS's weighing approximately 10,000 tonnes.
Further, the heat generated by the systems themselves can cause inefficiencies. And there is a range of energy inefficiencies associated with beaming microwaves to earth and converting them to electricity for the grid.
One possible solution to the technological and economic costs of using extremely heavy SPS systems would be to produce a modular system composed of lightweight, mass-produced parts, an idea that has been proposed by John C. Mankins, president of Artemis Innovation and Management Solutions.
Mankins' SPS-Alpha concept uses a network of autonomous robotic solar cells to create an SPS consisting of tens of thousands of cooperating pieces, none of which is more than one or two hundred kilograms in mass.
"The heart of the SPS-Alpha concept is to hyper modularize the idea of the solar powered satellite to go with a very modular biomimetic kind of architecture, and thereby achieve affordability," Mankins told Space Quarterly....
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"...there is always clean fusion, or tar/shale anything, or nuclear fission I mean look at Japan's Nuclear success story" - DRS;)
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