Is Space-Based Solar Power The Next Big Thing?

VT explores how the future of Solar Power is affecting how nations formulate foreign and domestic policy

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Energy is everything! It drives policy. Our financial markets are responsive, some say, dictated by energy flows. And the Nations with excess energy capacity always have an economic advantage.

For example. in the current Ukraine War, we have seen Europe be held hostage by its dependency on Russian oil. And when political policy slams into real energy needs, well, it forces countries to twist into pretzels

The truth is carbon-based energy sources are finite. And the negative impact of atmospheric carbon on the climate means the world must reduce its fossil fuel use. Plain and simple! Our very long-term survival depends on it.

The solution to global demand is now coming from many different types of sources. And so far, moving well into our 21st century, it seems a one solution fits all will NOT be the answer. It will be many sources, many types, and many solutions….and one of the biggest solutions for energy is solar power, but not in the traditional terrestrial sense that we know now, but through energy collection in space.

A laser pilot beam guides the microwave power transmission to a rectenna

Yep, that’s right! Solar Power collected from Space

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You see, Space-based solar power (SSP) satellites have the potential to change human life dramatically, in the same manner as previous satellite technologies such as satellite communications and global navigation satellite systems. The world needs to grab on and execute a series of legislative and policy actions to support the space community’s efforts to win the future for this technology.

Space-based solar power (SBSP, SSP) is the concept of collecting solar power in outer space with solar power satellites (SPS) and distributing it to Earth. Its advantages include a higher collection of energy due to the lack of reflection and absorption by the atmosphere, the possibility of very little night, and a better ability to orient to face the sun. Space-based solar power systems convert sunlight to some other form of energy (such as microwaves) which can be transmitted through the atmosphere to receivers on the Earth’s surface.

Various SBSP proposals have been researched since the early 1970s, but none are economically viable with present-day space launch costs. Some technologists speculate that this may change in the distant future with space manufacturing from asteroids or lunar material, or with radical new space launch technologies other than rocketry.

Other than cost, SBSP additionally presents a few mechanical obstacles, including the issue of communicating energy from the circle. Since wires reaching out from Earth’s surface to a circling satellite are not doable with current innovation, SBSP plans by and large incorporate the remote power transmission with its corresponding transformation failures, as well as land use worries for radio wire stations to get the energy at Earth’s surface.

The gathering satellite would change over sunlight-based energy into electrical energy, power a microwave transmitter or laser producer, and send this energy to a gatherer (or microwave rectenna) on Earth’s surface. As opposed to appearances in fiction, most plans propose shaft energy densities that are not unsafe assuming that people were to be coincidentally uncovered, for example, assuming that a communicating satellite’s bar was to stray the course.

However, the fundamentally tremendous size of the getting receiving wires would in any case require huge blocks of land close to the end clients. The help life of room-based gatherers notwithstanding long-haul openness to the space climate, including debasement from radiation and micrometeoroid harm, could likewise turn into a worry for SBSP.

As of 2020, SBSP is actively being developed by the US, UK, India, Russia, China, and Japan

Artist’s concept of a solar power satellite in place. Shown is the assembly of a microwave transmission antenna. The solar power satellite was to be located in a geosynchronous orbit, 35,786 kilometres (22,236 mi) above the Earth’s surface. NASA 1976

So many scientists, commercial experts, and, even consumer industry leaders like solar sales coach Danny Pessy believe there are strong advantages and disadvantages to this technology. VT outlines them here;

Advantages

The SBSP concept is more promising because space has major advantages over Earth’s surface for the collection of solar power:

  • It is always solar noon in space and always has full sun.
  • Collecting surfaces could receive much more intense sunlight, owing to the lack of obstructions such as atmospheric gasses, clouds, dust, and other weather events.
  • Consequently, the intensity in orbit is approx. 144% of the maximum attainable intensity on Earth’s surface.
  • A satellite could be enlightened more than the vast majority of the time. And furthermore, be in Earth’s shadow for a limit of just 72 minutes out every night at the spring and fall equinoxes at neighborhood 12 PM. Circling satellites can be presented to a reliably serious level of sunlight-based radiation, by and large for 24 hours out of each day, while earth surface sunlight-based chargers as of now gather power for a normal of 29% of the day.
  • Power could be immediately diverted straightforwardly to regions that need it the most. A gathering satellite might actually guide power on request to various surface areas in light of geological baseload or top-burden power needs.
  • Reduced plant and wildlife interference.

Disadvantages

  • The huge cost of launching satellites into space.
  • Inability to constrain power transmission inside tiny beam angles.
  • Inaccessibility is an issue. The maintenance of an earth-based solar panel is super easy.   But try that in space! Ouch!
  • Space, by its very definition, is a hostile environment.
  • Space debris!  A major hazard!
  • Broadcast Frequency Conflict!  We would need the microwave downlink to be isolated away from other satellites.
  • We would need a huge receiving station on Earth and it would cost a fortune.
  • Energy losses when converting photons to electrons to photons back to electrons.
  • Waste heat disposal in space power systems is difficult.  I mean, the entire spacecraft is designed to absorb as much solar radiation as possible.
  • Decommissioning Costs!  Where do we put it all?

Fact or Fiction?

Space stations transmitting solar power have appeared in science-fiction works like Isaac Asimov’s “Reason” (1941), which centers around the troubles caused by the robots operating the station. Asimov’s short story “The Last Question” also features the use of SBSP to provide limitless energy for use on Earth.

Eric Kotani and John Maddox Roberts’s 2000 novel The Legacy of Prometheus posits a race between several conglomerates to be the first to beam down a gigawatt of energy from a solar satellite in geosynchronous orbit.

In Ben Bova’s novel PowerSat (2005), an entrepreneur strives to prove that his company’s nearly completed power satellite and spaceplane (a means of getting maintenance crews to the satellite efficiently) are both safe and economically viable, while terrorists with ties to oil-producing nations attempt to derail these attempts through subterfuge and sabotage.

Various aerospace companies have also showcased imaginative future solar power satellites in their corporate vision videos, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and United Launch Alliance.

The solar satellite is one of three means of producing energy in the browser-based game OGame. The city-building game SimCity 2000 also features a Microwave Power Plant.

In the 1978 anime TV series Future Boy Conan, SBSP enables the country of Industria to develop geomagnetic weapons, more powerful than nuclear weapons, that destroy entire continents.

Conclusion

But truly, we don’t know exactly what the future will bring.  Things change so fast these days. But solar power from our sun sure seems like a long-term winner. In fact, I have used solar power in my home for over 10 years and it’s been great. But what will solar power look like in 20 years? 50 years? Will it be space-based? Time will tell.