Making space power pay

Posted: Friday, September 18, 2009 7:41 PM by Alan Boyle

Mafic Studios

Click for gallery: Get a step-by-step look at how a space-based solar power system might work.

Power-beaming systems are moving from drawing boards and computer slideshow presentations to actual demonstrations on tabletops and in exhibit halls. But what will it take to turn power beams into profitable outer-space ventures?

Strangely enough, the challenge of constructing a sheet of thin-film solar cells that unfolds to a width of 1,000 feet (300 meters) in orbit is not the issue uppermost in the mind of William Maness, chief executive officer of Everett, Wash.-based PowerSat Corp. The problems that lead his list have more to do with earthly affairs - such as getting investors, utilities and regulators to buy into the idea.

Maness told a small gathering at a National Space Society meeting in Seattle this week that the pitch for space solar power has been directed too often at space enthusiasts who don't have a financial stake in the issue, rather than energy utility executives who do.

"This is one of the reasons why this concept has taken so long to start to catch on," he said.

Maness favors a more market-centered approach to the issue, and there are signs that the approach is taking hold. But other signs show why the challenge facing Maness and his colleagues in the space-power business is so daunting.

The Solaren story
First, the positive side: Maness pointed to Solaren Corp.'s deal with San Francisco-based Pacific Gas & Eelectric for a 200-megawatt space solar power pilot project as a potential success story. "That was some brilliant work," he said.

The deal still must pass regulatory muster, however, beginning with approval by California's Public Utilities Commission. Cal Boerman, Solaren's director for energy services, told me today that he expected the commission to make its decision in October or November. The company is also continuing its talks with potential launch providers such as United Launch Alliance, Boerman said.

Solaren's plan calls for sending power-generating satellites, or powersats, into space on four Atlas 5 heavy-lift rockets. The satellites would convert solar electric power into microwave energy for beaming down to a ground station, based within a mile or so of the existing power grid. Proximity to the grid is key, Boerman said: Neither PG&E nor the PUC wants to put in miles and miles of new high-voltage electrical lines to make use of solar-generated power.

The scheme would have to gain approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (because of the commercial launches) and the Federal Communications Commission (because each powersat is essentially a big telecommunication satellite), as well as from all the regulatory agencies who have a say in how the ground power station is built. Then Solaren would have to put the system into operation by 2016, or risk penalties prescribed by its PG&E contract.

Some say the Solaren deal is a "scam ... pure and simple." One scenario suggests that PG&E pursued the deal because it's a no-risk way to line up an excuse for falling short of California's renewable energy standards ("Gee, we tried our best, but our suppliers just couldn't follow through on their promises"). Maness, however, thinks that Solaren has displayed enviable business savvy so far. He counts the company as a rival to be respected.

Cost vs. benefit
Maness' vision for PowerSat would go far beyond Solaren's pilot project to put 300 powersats into orbit, forming a constellation capable of generating 2,500 megawatts of power. That would be an impressive resource, equal to more than a third of Grand Coulee Dam's electrical output. The only problem is, right now the project's numbers don't add up.

PowerSat Corp.

PowerSat Corp. CEO William Maness

To be competitive with other power sources, Maness figures that the powersat system's launch costs would have to be around $100 per pound - which is roughly one-hundredth of the current asking price. Launch costs may be heading downward, thanks in part to the rise of SpaceX's Falcon rockets, but Maness can't yet predict when the charts tracing cost and benefit will cross into the profitable zone.

For now, Maness is targeting the 2017-2018 time frame for a space demonstration project. In the meantime, he's hoping to work through a tangle of regulatory issues and also keep an eye on his potential competitors - including not only Solaren but also Space Energy Inc., Space Island Group and Welsom Space Consortium.

"It's a race for us right now," Maness said.

Demonstrations in the works
Just in the past month there was quite a buzz over reports that Japanese companies were planning to join a $21 billion effort to set up a powersat system - but it's now clear that those reports were overblown.

The near-term investment is more on the order of $2 million for a demonstration of power-beaming technology, Maness said. If the technology works successfully in Earth-based tryouts, the Japanese plan to launch a test powersat in 2015. But a 1,000-megawatt space generating system of the sort mentioned in the initial reports is probably two decades down the road.

Japanese researchers have already made progress in the Earth-based demonstration phase: During a powersat symposium conducted this month in Toronto, Kobe University researcher Nobuyuki Kaya and his colleagues demonstrated an antenna system that could beam enough microwave energy across a 30-foot (10-meter) exhibit hall to power a small rover.

Alan Boyle / msnbc.com

PowerSat CEO William Maness' wireless power demonstrator lights up tiny LED
lights, just to show it's possible to beam electrical power through the air safely.

Maness has his own earthly demonstrations in the works: At the Seattle talk, he showed off a wireless power generator the size of a breadbox that transmitted enough power (5 watts) to light up LED lights about a foot away. And he has grander plans for building a demonstration power beamer mounted on a 20-foot truck, capable of transmitting 10 kilowatts over a distance of about 300 yards (meters).

The clock is ticking, however - not only for the powersat market but for other energy alternatives as well.

Terrestrial solar power may have its drawbacks. In addition to potential environmental concerns, large-scale solar farms can't generate a steady flow of electricity at night, or during cloudy weather. But if engineers ever figure out a way to store up the intermittent energy generated by solar cells or wind turbines, at levels high enough to keep utilities flush with power, Maness thinks that would deal a heavy blow to his powersat dreams.

"At that point, I take my marbles and go home," he said.

What do you think? Is space solar power little more than a sci-fi dream - at least until the space elevator is built? Or is it an idea whose time is about to come? Feel free to leave your comments below.

An earlier version of this report mischaracterized Space Canada as a potential PowerSat competitor rather than a nonprofit organization to promote powersats.

Join the Cosmic Log team by signing up as my Facebook friend or following b0yle on Twitter. And reserve your copy of my book, "The Case for Pluto," which is coming out next month.

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Comments

We should consider many options that move us away from oil. This idea goes back to the '70s and it sounded good way back then. The isuue alway boils down to launch cost, but as pointed out it is heading down. Let's hope one of the technologies pay off. As a space enthusiast I say if we (meaning the US government) want to buid infrastructure then back this kind of inititiative. It will yield power and technology gains.

Mark Flavin, Santo, TX (Sent Friday, September 18, 2009 8:27 PM)

It should be pointed out that these things could easily and quickly turned to use as weapons. There is also a large potential for big accidents (say a thruster malfunctioning and raking the energy beam across a US state. There are also health and safety issues to being constantly bathed in microwave radiation. We already are to some extent, but if we start beaming power around that'll get ALOT worse, especially in cities. If powersats and powerbeaming are on the horizon, people had better start thinking about how to regulate it now, or their respective industries will do just what they want, and they are money-driven, not public good -driven.

And by the way there ARE ways of storing energy collected by ground based solar and wind for use later. It's just that the fossil fuel industry (and powersat cheerleaders...) like to use the 'intermittancy' argument to hold back development of these alternatives. And no, I *don't* mean grossly inefficient batteries.

JC, Fairbanks, AK (Sent Friday, September 18, 2009 8:54 PM)

The methods that came to mind for me were pumped water and compressed air (which are essentially pretty low-tech). Is that what you were thinking of, JC? Here's a list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_energy_storage

Alan Boyle (Sent Friday, September 18, 2009 9:35 PM)

This is the most insane idea that continues to reapear over and again I have ever seen. Besides the technical issues there is the cost. Oh, and don't forger the birds, satellites, and anything else that gets between the transmitter and reciever. For far less small grid tied systems could be placed on roof tops around the country doing far more good. Distributed generation would stabilize the grid, lower energy costs to consumers, and offset tons of carbon. The embeded energy alone to place a system like this into space would never be recovered in it's working lifetime. Investors beware.

Thomas Werkema (Sent Friday, September 18, 2009 9:56 PM)

Sounds like a good plan to me! Would work best for western states that are bigger and have spots with no people. But why use microwaves? wouldnt laser power be more concentrated? then microwaves being shot down? I dont think this is going to stop the use of fossil fuels but combined with, hydro, conventional solar, wind, sea power, would help to ween us off fossils! so lets give it a shot!

Courtney, Seattle, WA (Sent Friday, September 18, 2009 10:02 PM)

There are various chemical reactions that can be used, but certainly compressed air and other mechanical means could be used. I was thinking of electrolysis of water, since it is pretty efficient, can 'smooth out' virtually any sort of variable output (as long as generation equals or exceeds usage) and extra generation capacity (in form of H2 could even be piped or shipped for use as fuel. Of course there's the old flywheel too. But I imagine if we put some of our scientists to work on the problem, we'd get some pretty clever ideas. (Note that the oil industry claim that "batteries are so inefficient that you lose 2/3 of the energy to it" is irrelevant; the problems are fundamentally different in scale and details. Batteries are an awful way to store lots of energy, as my home town has found out: Fairbanks' giant battery backup to its power grid has been an albatross)

JC, Fairbanks, AK (Sent Friday, September 18, 2009 10:11 PM)

Ah, neat link. I'll have to read it.

JC (Sent Friday, September 18, 2009 10:14 PM)

We apparently have a global warming problem, and this proposal is to beam in more energy, to be released eventually as heat, to the planet?

Steve Lebus, Cupertino, CA (Sent Friday, September 18, 2009 10:15 PM)

"It should be pointed out that these things could easily and quickly turned to use as weapons."

You cannot concentrate the beam of a system designed for power delivery enough to be an effective weapon.

(any more than a nuclear power plant can become a nuclear bomb)

Frank Glover, Rochester, NY (Sent Friday, September 18, 2009 10:23 PM)

nothing sinister in using technology?

bill green (Sent Friday, September 18, 2009 10:26 PM)

I think that it's a plausible enough possibility. And an idea that, given its potential benefits, is worth pursuing.

David Fox, Denver, Colo. (Sent Friday, September 18, 2009 10:30 PM)

Orbital power seems like a great idea to me, though I wonder about the potential down sides it would involve. I'm really not terribly savvy when it comes to physics, but what I wonder is if anybody ever is able to construct a space elevator, would it be possible to use that infastructure as a conduit to transport energy from orbit to earth? Would the wire (whatever form it takes) be too heavy for the support structure or the requisite voltage simply be too high to justify the project? I dunno, if it's a good idea then somebody will come up with a way to make it work. If not, then one which is a good idea will take the same place which it would.

Chris, Idaho (Sent Friday, September 18, 2009 11:37 PM)

JC please feel free to share you magical battery concept

corey (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 12:06 AM)

Call me a cockeyed pessimist, but I think as long as space travel is dependent on chemical powered descendents of the V2, not a heck of a lot of useful stuff is going to get done.

John, Salisbury, NC (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 12:34 AM)

I don't think they would make effective weapons in the way people think. More likely than being turned into a death ray,they could perhaps be used to damage electronics and interfere with communications over an area.

The demonstration sending 5 watts over a foot away, is really no big deal. EVERY single engineer knows that this is not only possible,but trivially easy. Sending hundreds of megawatts over hundreds of miles however,while certainly possible,presents much greater technical challenges. The biggest issue here is the cost however. Launching these satellites will be very expensive. The advantage of course is more sun in space (the atmosphere does not block any) and no clouds. The disadvantage is that its very expensive,in fact vastly more expensive than just banks of batteries on earth,and any advantage you have from the sun not being absorbed by the atmosphere,will be negated by the massive energy losses that will be inherent in the transmission process. I think that ground based solar energy is the way to go. Combined with energy storage technologies (Both existing and yet to be developed) and advanced power transmission technologies (for instance superconducting power lines to get the power where its needed from places like Arizona where there is a lot of sunny weather) earth based solar technology seems to be the way to go.

Actually,storage of power could be cheaper than you might think. Hydroelectric is a technology that could work. Build two reservoirs at different heights. When there is excess power from the solar plant,pump water from the lower reservoir to the upper. Now when you need more power than the solar can provide,you can release water and generate power,just like any other hydro plant.

michaelm (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 12:35 AM)

If NASA is going to spend $80 billion anyway between now and 2020 to develop new human spaceflight capabilities, why not spend that on building and maintaining a space-based solar power industry? This should involve public-private partnerships with companies like the PowerSat and Solaren Corporations, and with the utilities that will need to buy what they produce. It should also involve new linkages between NASA and the Department of Energy. A second target for NASA could involve public-private partnerships with mining corporations to explore near Earth asternoids (NEAs) for volatiles and metals that could be used to sustain a human presence in space, built constructs in space (such as solar power satellites), and maybe even export back to Earth.

Charles A. Gardner (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 1:23 AM)

I am in total agreement with JC on the dangers of the beamed microwave energy. Think of it as a miles wide microwave oven. On the energy storage systems, there seem to be installed Redox Flow Battery systems that are in the large KWH capacity range that utilities use with overall efficiencies above 70%. It has been in investigation and tests for 15 years or more. I found this quickly: www.pdenergy.com

LR, Dallas, TX (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 1:45 AM)

bad idea

mrb, tucson, az (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 2:18 AM)

The key isn't space elevators but just plain old industrial learning curve applied to launch services:

http://environmentparty.org/node/6

James Bowery, Shenandoah, IA (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 2:21 AM)

There's an excellent novel I read called Sunstroke by David Kagan that answers Alan Boyle's very pertinent question "What will it take to turn power beams into profitable outer-space ventures?" In Sunstroke, the US Pentagon comes to the rescue of an aerospace firm committed to developing a space solar power satellite that beams down the Sun's energy to Earth via concentrated microwaves for electrical power generation. In the story the Pentagon of course intends to use the satellite for military purposes, such as supplying overseas armed forces with unlimited electricity, and when the need arises using it to fry enemy ground troops, aircraft, and ocean-going vessels. Such a satellite would also be used to disrupt enemy communications as well as destroy their agricultural capabilities. Yes, that's how a power-beaming satellite project in the US could in reality be financed.

It should be noted that Japan demonstrated in 1981 with their Project Minix that sunlight in space can be converted into microwaves and beamed down to Earth for conversion into electricity. In that year they launched a sub-satellite in a suborbital trajectory that transmitted a concentrated microwave beam to a ground receiver (rectenna) which successfully converted it into a few watts of electricity. Japan is in a heated race with California's PG & E/Solaren to be the first to beam down space solar power in the form of concentrated microwaves. However Japan may be more environmentally and safety-conscious than their competitors by being concerned about the dangers involved should the high-intensity microwave beam veer away from its ground-based receiving antenna, as described in the book Sunstroke by David Kagan.

Robert Oberman (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 3:27 AM)

Solar PowerSats are the least likely thing to be weaponised in space. Beaming microwaves has limitations on power density that mean it'll remain pretty 'diffuse' - albeit concentrated with respect to sunlight given the right design. Being parked over a single location also makes sending them on attack missions impossible. And the arrays are vulnerable to counter-attack. A no-brainer really.

Would be nice if ground-based solar expanded as well as space-based. The two are really potentially synergistic rather than in competition. Ground-solar is great for peak-power supply, while space-based can supply for base-load. Win-win really.

But consider the physics. Ground-based will always be limited by the diurnal cycle, weather and the attenuation of sunlight by the atmosphere. It will always produce at least ~4 times less energy per unit area over a year than space-based solar. Sometimes much, much less. Space-based needs receivers on the ground and loses some power through the inefficiencies of power-beaming. But both have huge growth potential. Earth itself absorbs 122,000 terawatts of power from the Sun, and we use just 15 terawatts. Using just 1% of the land area (29.2% of Earth's surface) to collect energy then we'd have 350 terawatts to play with. No other power source has that sort of growth potential.

Adam (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 5:37 AM)

GAIA TWO is the perfect reflective configuration.

steve smyth (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 7:04 AM)

Beam Me Up Alan, great story! It's about time that the science of beaming power from space gets more investment and interest. Yet again scientists are turning a science fiction idea into scientific reality. Let's all hope that this is the panacea they say it is.

One problem that I wonder about about beamed power in microwaves is the health and safety issue. What would happen if an airliner were to pass through one of those microwave power beams, could the power beam shut down the electronics or harm the people with microwave radiation? We know microwave radiation isn't exactly good for us so what are the health and safety ramifications of this new power source? I hope the scientists haven't forgotten to ensure this system is safe and won't cause unanticipated problems.

Eric, Salinas, CA (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 9:19 AM)

--
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it's every day more INCREDIBLE to see that a so CRAZY and SENSELESS "concept" like the "Space Solar Power" STILL has credibility in the press, from military and in the space industry!!!
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it's really INCREDIBLE that NO ONE sees (or WANT to see) that EVERY KIND of solar array, also the most efficient, cheap and lightweight, will cost 300-1000 TIMES more, than deployed in a desert place on Earth, due to today's (and future) very high launch costs!!!
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and (MOST INCREDIBLE AT ALL) the companies that study and develop this kind of NONSENSE technology, have every day more credit and receive lots of funds from an energy-hungry planet!!!
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as explained in my article "Space Solar Power hoax/illusion DEBUNKED" [ http://www.ghostnasa.com/posts/038sspdebunked.html ] the "Space Solar Power" will NEVER become a viable alternative to the Earth-based solar power plants, NOT EVEN if (thanks to new, cheap and reusable rockets, we DON'T HAVE today!) the launch costs will fall (someday in a FAR future) from today's $10-20 million per ton, to 1/10th or 1/50th
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also, the "Space Solar Power" (that must be deployed in GEO at 36,000 km. of altitude!) is impossible to repair and maintain with astronauts, must be replaced with new arrays every 10-20 years and will face several safety problems and strategic security issues!!!
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in other words, if we'll rely on the SSP, someday, every crazy country with a bunch of rockets (also with non-nuclear explosive heads) could launch them towards our energy source and destroy the solar power plants, to "shut-down" the energy to the entire planet in a matter of minutes!!!
--
--

gaetano marano - ghostNASA.com (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 9:41 AM)

JC: Pretty much any object can be turned to use as a weapon, including hammers, baseball bats, baseballs, and ornamental squash. Automobiles and airplanes have been used as weapons with fairly destructive results. We still see about as many people die in auto accidents every year as were killed in the Vietnam War. Would you have argued against developing these technologies, lo so many years ago, because someone *might* die through accidents or malicious use of the technology?

Granted, I have mixed feelings about any new tech that helps us believe, as a society, that physical limits don't apply to us humans. But of the various ways in which we could be powering our computers and air conditioners, this probably wouldn't be a bad one. *All* human technologies come with unanticipated problems. We hopefully learn to deal.

Loren, SF Bay Area, CA (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 10:33 AM)

It's a common misconception that the microwave beam can be used as a weapon. The physics of the system make it extremely difficult. From high (geosynchronous) orbit, hitting a small spot on the earth (1 mile across), requires a transmitter aperture of roughly half a mile across. The design energy density is no more intense than sunlight at the core of the beam. So, the worst thing an 'off target' beam can do is warm things at the rate of a sunny day. Hardly what one would call a death beam from space. To make the spot size smaller, the transmitter has to be made bigger. To get the power density up high enough to make an effective weapon, you'd have to have a transmitting antenna more than 7 miles across. This is hardly something that is economical to build, or can happen by accident. The comparison to a weapon is suggesting that one can use a power plant to shoot someone. Guns are a lot cheaper.

William Maness, Everett, Wa (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 11:00 AM)

Any time space solar power is talked about there is fear that it could malfunction and kill people somehow. If one looks at the space solar power literature you will find that in order to avoid plasma instabilities as the beam passes through the ionosphere the intensity of the beam must be extremely low. In order to get a low intensity the beam is made to be very large. This means that in the beam where the microwaves are being sent the peak intensity is less than that of the solar radiation that we all stand in every day.

There may be other problems that will come up as these are looking into more serious, but the death ray concern isnt one of them.

David, Ann Arbor, MI (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 11:01 AM)

What about the obvious question? Is it safe? Beaming down microwave radiation from space will heat water vapor in air and affect climate. It will also interfere with radio waves and local wireless networks. Then what happens to birds and aircraft fying through these beams?

As it is scientists and industry rarely raise safety questions. Now with science being sold like soap by savvy PR departments, like Maness's own "market-centered approach" for PowerSat, then uncritically rehashed by the media as news, how is the public going to make informed decisions on these new technologies? Where is the debate on science?

CERN's $10 billion Large Hadron Collider has already been built, with no public input and its safety based on in-house assessments which catastrophically failed last September, only 9 days after start-up.

For a discussion of safety issues in mega science projects like the LHC, see my blog, The Science of Conundrums, http://bigsciencenews.blogspot.com/

Alan Gillis, McKellar, ON (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 11:07 AM)

I strongly disagree that "these things could easily and quickly turned to use as weapons" or that "there is also a large potential for big accidents". Statements like these point to a conceptual misunderstanding of the technology. The idea is to have a low power density spread out over are large area. The receiving stations are on the order of miles in area. "The radio frequency radiation in the beam has less of an effect than an ordinary cell phone" according to the PowerSat website. I don't think a cell phone could easily be turned into a weapon and even if it could, it would be virtually impossible to do once the satellite is in space.

The issue is not just storage of wind and solar, it's also an issue of transportation of that energy. Strides are being made in transportation of energy here in the US with HVDC lines but nothing substantial yet. Additionally, HVDC would always remain an easy target for any person wanting to cause a lot of suffering a little bit of effort.

The final point is that space based solar power can generate between 400% - 1900% more energy. The only limiting factor is the large costs of launching things into space. As more competition comes to the launch market, these prices should come down.

Derek, Seattle, WA (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 1:35 PM)

Couldn't simple capacitors, a pair of conductors separated by a dielectric, be used to store the energy?

Duke Lukem, not gonna, WI. (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 3:10 PM)

I'm in favor of developing alternative energy sources, but I believe those sources should remain "ground based". WE are already seeing problems with an over crowded orbit of sattelites and space junk. The time will come when it will become impossible to track everything in orbit....making space travel extremely more hazardous than it already is.
I believe the science involved in this project is very good, but perhaps better served with ground based collectors on mountain tops with less atmospheric interference.
Please leave the path to space as clear of debris as possible...so we have a less hazardous path for space travel and exploration.

John Cline, Two Rivers, Wisconsin (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 4:10 PM)

Why does it always have to be about cost? If this would better us as a Nation, why not have our tax dollars fund the project so the company(s) get paid for the work and we inturn get free power? Well not completely free since we paid for it with taxes?

Chad Hunt, Baghdad, Iraq (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 5:07 PM)

JC,

The power levels of the beam are so low you could grow crops and raise cattle beneath the antenna. Your average city is already bathed in microwaves from mobile phone towers, weather radars, Wireless Internet systems so if the beam did somehow strayed across a city it wouldn't even be noticed beyond some possible static on some of the those systems depending on how close they are to the frequency used by a powersat.

The idea that these are some kind of death rays is pure myth started by those who don't have the slightest clue on the technology involved.

Thomas Matula, San Diego, CA (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 6:09 PM)

Storage of excess power shouldn't be such a problem. Why not use the excess power to pump water from a lower reservoir to an upper reservoir, and then let the water flow back to the lower reservoir through a hydroelectric generator when it is needed. It is an environmentally sane solution.

Steve Amidon (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 6:28 PM)

JC, nobody disputes the fact that there are ways of storing energy for use later. The issue is whether they are economical. So far they are not, except in special situations (such as the ready availability of a geologic resource like a suitably placed lake or salt dome). Nobody's holding anybody back. If they knew how to do it economically I guarantee you they would, because it would mean higher profits.

Bill Hensley, Houston, TX (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 6:43 PM)

Things not to believe from SimCity;
1. Nuclear power plants do not blow up when they get old.
2. Satellite power beams will not burn a line across a state.

The system would have saftey features to shut down the space based transmitter if there was ever a misalign beam. Even if for some very low probablitly reason that the beam were to 'rake' over the populace, you wouldn't melt a crayon let along your brains. Birds will be flying through these beams and trials include measuring any damage done to them if any including affected migratory paths. The recieving end of the beam will be providing a feedback to the transmitter, in a situation where the beam is lost, the reciever provides no feedback. Thus the transmitter would not transmit.

To fear that this system would be used as a weapon and to be scared of 'hackers' taking control of it; we already have placed the same trust in our missle defense and nuclear arms, let along our government. Be fearful of the systems already in place if your going to be scared.

Who knows, a warhead might accidently launch any day! But they never will (accidently).

Open Eyes, WI (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 6:59 PM)

JC, please don't repeat these myths about spaced based solar power. Your concerns were addressed many years ago. Please see the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_solar_power#Counter_arguments

In short:
1. The beam would be much too weak to be used as a weapon, even in principle. This is NOT a narrow laser beam. It is spread out over a large area making the per centimeter power very low. It would be like using a TV station's transmitter as a weapon.
2. Since the beam is so weak, even direct exposure to the beam for prolonged periods would not harm you. 95% of the beam will stay within the receiving antenna with the power dropping to 1mW/cm directly outside the antenna. A fence around the antenna will prevent any exposure to the beam. The metal body of aircraft would completely shield passengers from the beam should they fly through it.
3. Current designs call for feedback mechanisms to prevent the beam from ever being able to transmit outside the receiving antenna area.

DB, Laurel, MS (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 7:44 PM)

Launch costs will not or never go down. This is not a case of manufacturing might, yes, Henry Ford got the Model T down to less than 300 dollars. (Or for that matter many Focus were sold last year at less than 10,000 dollars, both impressively low numbers.)

But Both vehicles get the same MPG, that has never changed. We are hoping that it will improve from 25 to 35 to 55 mpg. But to ask a launch vehicle to burn less than reaction mass required for Earth orbit,,,,,,ain't gonna happen. Physics wins, gravity is very popular and here to stay.

Hmmmm A billion dollars to build something that two wind turbines can do today. Sorry, the math is inescapable. The 10,000 dollars per pound orbital cost is some engine and mostly fuel. ANYONE, and I do mean ANYONE who says, we can blithefully violate the laws of physics, is either a scammer or a dreamer who skipped his physics lectures. Look down microwave power schemes make for good press, but are not AT ALL financially viable. Not even close. Factor of one hundred times too expensive.

Dean Unick (Sent Saturday, September 19, 2009 10:30 PM)

If your having problems getting others to listen, consider this.

The entire world is already solar, from the oil sequestered in the ground to the plants we eat and the air we breath.

Now some one wants to stop this sun light one block short of it destination in space, and truck it back to earth in a Roll Royce because it already strikes the planet for free?

They want to use a Rolls Royce to get this energy back to earth at 1000 buck a pound to launch it these devices into space and for what, control of the power?

100 miles of desert BLM land will feed the entire country with more energy than the country can even use, and it’s a lot cheaper than hauling their junk into space.

The sun strike the earth already with enough power to run the planet every day, with just a few minutes of this time and power.

But no, lets make it expensive, dangerous, and fancy?

The earth already is covered with 1000s or billions of dollars each day with penny sized amounts of energy, but were too lazy to collect the money because the penny is just not worth it at the end of a day to pick it up?

Grow up. The same mentality got us here in the first place, oil is cheap, when you don have to pay the tab personally.

Chris ...............California (Sent Sunday, September 20, 2009 12:13 AM)

Back on June 15, 2007, Allan, you posted an item about Space-Based Solar Power, inviting discussion from readers. It continued for some time, lots of suggestions, lots of ideas, and addressed the problem of military diversion. At the time it was apparent that universal application was the preferred way to go for the sponsors involved, the Department of Defense. Maybe you could re-visit the site for an up-date.

Des Emery, St. Thomas, ON, Canada (Sent Sunday, September 20, 2009 12:22 AM)

In addition to the weapons potential or accidental mis-aiming mentioned above, solar powersats are also big, fragile targets that could be destroyed by throwing up a few tons of gravel into the right orbit (ignore for now solar storms and the ever-growing amount of man-made space debris already causing aerospace industry concern). A nation that depended on powersats for a significant portion of its energy needs could be crippled in an instant.

There is also the potential of these huge solar arrays destroying the beauty of the night sky in its natural state, or interfering with astronomical research...

Better alternatives are to fund research into ground-based energy concepts such as Polywell pB11 fusion, FRC fusion and LENR.

Bubba, Providence, RI (Sent Sunday, September 20, 2009 2:08 AM)

I think everyone is missing one idea on the space elevator. Being it will be made of carbon fiber it will be a huge conductor that can bring power down from space.

Gene Reed, Sicily Italy (Sent Sunday, September 20, 2009 7:25 AM)

It's a great idea and just like said before we should be open to all options. Safety is a concern such as being turned into a weapon. Well, anything can be turned into a weapon and if it can, it will its human nature. Taking out a city due to thruster malfunction can be solved with simple safety feature that cuts the power transmission. Cost of launching can hopefully be brought down in price by using private corporations such as Space X to launch the equipment into space. And I highly doubt they would beam the power directly into a city. Arizona, New Mexico, would be more suitable and safer than planting the collector in New York city.

Mike, USAF, ND (Sent Sunday, September 20, 2009 8:11 AM)

It's in the sky & sounds like the proverbial pie. The reasons this idea never flew in the past remain unsolved. Beaming microwave energy from space is vastly different to beaming a microwave signal. With a signal, only a tiny fraction of the energy in the transmission needs to get through to the receiver where it can be amplified. You can not afford to have a large signal loss when it is the energy you wish to capture. To get anything like an efficient transmission of energy from space would require huge receiving antenna & that is only one of the problems. When power transmission with a high recovery rate can be demonstrated on earth between say high mountain peaks it will be time to look at the space end of it.
As for power storage, water can store more heat energy per pound than any other substance, but only at temperatures up to 100 degrees Celsius. Above that temperature it has to be pressurised. At low temperatures, the thermal to electrical efficiency is only a few percent. It has to be hundreds of degrees to be efficient. To store sufficient thermal energy to power a city for even an hour would require a huge reservoir of something like molten salt. For overnight storage, thousands of gallons per household. The higher the stored temperature the greater the heat losses unfortunately.
If there was a suitable method of storage, the best use for it initially would be to store the off peak power or surplus power that presently goes to waste from existing generators.
If you like pie in the sky you can believe anything. If you like facts, learn something of the physics, like how much thermal energy it takes to create say a KWH of electricity & the losses at various temperatures, then what size storage tank you would need, how you recover the heat from the storage medium etc. A good start would be to learn about the Carnot cycle. For a simple demonstration of energy conversion see: http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/more_stuff/flashlets/carnot.htm

Carlyle, Brisbane Australia (Sent Sunday, September 20, 2009 9:08 AM)

I admire William Maness' courage to be a leader in space solar power which is definitely a bleeding edge technology. I do however disagree that power storage technology would destroy the market for space solar power. This overlooks the fact that the majority of population of the Earth has little or no electricity. we do not need to simply change to clean power we need to greatly increase the amount of power available. This would be difficult to do with terrestrial solar because the amount of land required and the transmission requirements. We need so much power that it is doubtful that improvements in one area will wipe out the market for other technologies.

Karen Cramer Shea (Sent Sunday, September 20, 2009 9:28 AM)

Alan, the energy storage methods in your link, with the exception of water pumping are impractical because of the vast storage volume required to get meaningful amounts of energy stored. Water pumping where there is an existing hydro power plant is practical in some situations & is used, but only where otherwise waste power is available virtually cost free. Every time you convert from one form of energy to another, you suffer losses. When you pump water up to a reservoir & later use this water to convert the kinetic energy back to electricity, you more than double your losses. To use hugely expensive solar for this purpose is out of the question. Because of the losses, your collectors would have to be many times larger as well if you were relying on storage.
People promoting these schemes have to rely on the ignorance of the investor regarding the physics involved.

Carlyle, Brisbane Australia (Sent Sunday, September 20, 2009 9:31 AM)

Yes, I can see that beaming microwaves through the atmosphere could pose health, both global and individual and there is potential it could be weaponized. (It would make a great science fiction story).

As an aside, I've just been studying regulatory economics and it makes me laugh at the mention of the "tangle of regulatory issues". We certainly need to regulate 'industry' for the good of all, but reason and sanity should also be brought into the mix!

MM, Bellevue, Michigan (Sent Sunday, September 20, 2009 9:41 AM)

Compressed air won't do it because the compressers are only about 25% efficent. Then there are temperature issues with geeting the air back out of it's container. That's also why that compressed air car that's been 'in the works' for so long won't be in your dealers showroom-ever.

Pumping water up hill is also bound by the efficency of the pumps, but we have lots of expertise in useing running water for power and the pumps should be more efficent, but we're still looking at a loss.

Much more attractive would be to store the heat produced during the day as heat itself. Perhaps in an insulated underground structure useing some non-reactive metal or other.

As for the space based mocrowave thing-forget it. Just like transmitting electrial power with power lines, the problem is line loss. You would have to keep your micrwave beam as tight as possable, not so bad in space, but when it has to rip through the atmosphere things get dicey and it starts to spread out. Then, as JC pointed out, control and the ability to use this as a weapon should doom the idea, as if the unrealistic launch expenses weren't enough. Good idea it may have been, but file it and forget it.

Bill Mullins, Belgrade, Maine (Sent Sunday, September 20, 2009 9:47 AM)

Getting launch cost down a hundred fold is not impossible, just a huge capital investment. It is impossible to make the investment without a market. So whoever wants to do power sats is going to have to develop the transport too. A first pass analysis gave about $60 B. Google henson oil drum for details.

Keith Henson Prescott, AZ (Sent Sunday, September 20, 2009 10:43 AM)

The microwave space power satellite problem is not
the solar panels, it's the cascade of inefficiencies
all the way down the line. Sure, the panels have a
lousy 20%-ish efficiency. But that's only the start.
Your best-in-class microwave power amplifiers (tubes,
still) are well below 50% efficient. What do you think
you can do with half a megawatt of waste heat, in a
vacuum? Cook your electronics, that's what. Already
down to 10% net efficiency now, and that excludes the
losses in power conversion and housekeeping, aging and
so on. Satellites last 10 or so years on orbit.

So given that you want to beam a tight 100kW of
microwaves down, how do you ensure a better safety
for the public than (say) a nuke plant? You remember
the last major satellite constellation, Iridium? And
how the reaction wheel assemblies on many of the birds
went kaput, causing them to tumble uselessly and be
replaced with spares? Now think about what happens if
100kW microwave beam steers off 0.01 degree and hits
a housing development instead of the collector array
on the other side of the mountains. A 700W microwave
oven will cook your head's mass worth of meat in a few
minutes. Cut that timescale to a second, at power-
delivery beam intensities.

The only sensible space solar is plain mirrors - dumb,
simple, diffuse (limit to maybe 10X sunlight areal
power density), no electronics in the power path, and
solves the primary problem of no solar at night.

Everything else is plain kookiness looking for bigger
kooks to fund it. Throw away that "wireless power" toy
demo, and call us when you're serious. LEDs are
milliwatts, we need megawatts, that's a billionfold
of smartening up and breaking physics barriers before
it's any less of a joke than all the times it's been
proposed before.

Dick Freebird (Sent Sunday, September 20, 2009 12:34 PM)

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