Pretty sure commercial scale fusion will be available before space based transmission of power to earth on a commercial scale.View attachment 866916
But...there are US based efforts that might be revealing with time.
For instance: https://www.spacesolar.caltech.edu/
And experiments already conducted in space by the Naval Research Labs (pdf): https://aerospace.org/sites/default/files/2020-10/Vedda-Jones_SolarPower_20201006_0.pdf
Cheers!
The constituencies of the atmosphere does attenuate energy from the sun. I have no idea how much, but since they can do stuff like propel a spacecraft using only photons while in space, I'm willing to give this sort of thing some leewayWhat could go wrong with a 10's or 100's of Megawatt focused power beam? What is the required area of the collection "antenna" to absorb that kind of power without vaporizing? What is the projected cost per KWH, and how does it compare to terrestrial based solar arrays?
"Though we have greatly improved on solar power in the last few decades, there is one ambitious way we could potentially give it a real boost; moving solar panels slightly closer to the Sun."Let's see - 22,370 mi / 83,000,000 mi = 0.00027 => 0.027% closer to the sun. That should be worth a few hundred billion dollars.
"... and the fact that it could move around the Earth, perpetually collecting sunlight.""... geostationary orbit 36,000km (22,370 miles) above the Earth."
These two are kinda mutually exclusive. And, moving around the earth would require multiple ground stations to collect the "downloaded" power. Some of these ground stations would have to be outside of China.
"The energy collected in one year would be equivalent to the total amount of oil that can be extracted from the Earth."
Gotta be talking many terawatts here. or maybe even more. I'd really like to see the analysis for this.
Brew on
I'm aware of atmospheric absorption. I was commenting about a particular piece of technical nonsense that calls the credibility of the article into question. Also, it seems like it would be a lot cheaper to just install more solar panels on the earth to make up for atmospheric absorption and cloudy day effects.
Gotcha. I was commenting on the slightly closer to the sun piece, which I think is significant because they are going to be outside of the atmosphere. My photon comment was not related to the strange description of a geostationary orbit that also moves around the Earth.I'm aware of atmospheric absorption. I was commenting about a particular piece of technical nonsense that calls the credibility of the article into question. Also, it seems like it would be a lot cheaper to just install more solar panels on the earth to make up for atmospheric absorption and cloudy day effects.
I've not seen anything about photon propulsion that indicates it provides enough force to manipulate a satellite's orbit on a continuing basis.
Brew on
Bear in mind... Most journalists--even "science" journalists--may not actually know what they're talking about.
Preach it brother. It's so obvious, I hate repeating it.Pretty sure commercial scale fusion will be available before space based transmission of power to earth on a commercial scale.
Brew on
haha. but srsly, I often think about the evolutionary connections between all things, human and astronomic.
The fudge factor might need assume revising.
The robots are coming to replace humans
Surely any civilization sufficiently advanced to recreate life forms would know better.
this.
Back when the girders were steel. I never did collect enough to have a lot of options though.
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