Russia enters the race for cosmic energy

[bananas]

Source: Russia & India Report

A new space race between Russia, the U.S., and Japan is in the cards. Russian scientists have announced their intention to develop a space-based solar power station, which could be used to transmit energy to Earth.

The United States and Japan are currently both working on projects to build solar power stations in space. Meanwhile, Russia has thrown down the gauntlet to both East and West, announcing plans to put the country’s best brains to work on its own cosmic energy venture.

Vitaly Melnikov is an official representative of the Central Research Institute of Machine Building (TSNIIMASH). “The plan is to arrange a kind of cosmic cluster around the project, which will include companies inside the industry, electronics firms, and universities,” Melnikov announced, speaking at the International Aerospace Congress.

<snip>

Melnikov says that a “working prototype of an SSPS with a capacity of 100 kW is already in development.” TSNIIMASH has not specified how the Russian space station will differ from its American or Japanese counterparts, but experts point out that all three projects are similar in concept. Special apparatuses in geostationary orbit will concentrate solar radiation and directly convert the energy into electricity. The energy will be transferred to Earth using a laser or microwave transmitter. The Russian team is likely to opt for the laser method: to begin with, it is safer; secondly, the technology is already being developed by Energia Rocket and Space Corporation and Lavochkin Research and Production Association.

<snip>

Read more: http://indrus.in/articles/2012/09/03/russia_enters_the_race_for_cosmic_energy_17369.html

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. Beam weapons :(

[freshwest]

2. ...

[Baclava]

4. ayep

[backscatter712]

5. My understanding is that microwave beams or laser beams made to transmit power...

from space power satellites to Earth receiver stations don't make very good weapons - this isn't the movies where such devices are easily made into death rays - the beam's too diffuse for that.

[LongTomH]

6. Correct! The microwave beam from an SPS is only about 1/5th the intensity of sunlight.

The advantage is that, it's in a form easily converted to electricity.

And, no, you can't convert an SPS transmitter into a death ray. The intensity is a function of the size of the transmitter array in space.

The sad thing is, this looks to be another "Invented here, Sold there" technology. The idea was invented by an American space scientist, Dr. Peter Glaser, in 1968.

[backscatter712]

7. The hard part is getting a big enough power satellite into space to generate significant power.

If you're talking about many megawatts of power, the satellite's going to have to be huge. Granted, there are some technological things that can be done to improve efficiency - using mirrors to concentrate sunlight to heat liquid sodium to generate power instead of using photoelectric cells is a possibility, but in the end, you've got to send a large amount of hardware up there, and so far, nobody's been willing to spend the money to get it done.

Hopefully in the near future, enough of the technology will be developed to make it so deep-pocketed governments and investors will find it worthwhile to go for it.

[NickB79]

23. The only way to do it is to assemble the satellites in orbit

Mined from captured asteroids or on the Moon.

At a lift price of thousands of dollars per pound to reach orbit, there is simply no feasible way to economically put up a multi-megawatt solar installation.

[backscatter712]

9. I remember Gerard O'Neill proposed that power satellites be the industry that drove colonization.

He was the one that designed and proposed those big O'Neill colonies, and suggested that the industry that those big habitats would support would be power generation. There would be mines on the moon that extracted metals including iron and aluminum, as well as silicon and oxygen (and helium-3 for fusion power.) There would be big linear mass drivers used to shoot payloads of refined metals and materials from the moon to sites such as the L4 and L5 Lagrange points, where those materials were used to build enormous solar power satellites which would essentially solve Earth's energy problems, and O'Neill habitats would be built to create homes for the workers that built and maintained the power satellites, as well as their families.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

17. Thanks for the reassurance. Sincerely. Could be a big benefit, but very capital intensive. nt

[awoke_in_2003]

20. Russia stealing technology?...

No way

[Posteritatis]

11. No. (nt)

[xtraxritical]

3. I guess because the Russians were finally able to get out of Afghanistan they can afford it.

[RC]

8. Good guess.

But did they air condition the tents while they were there?

[BlueStreak]

10. That article seems really bogus

1) It talks about exponentially greater efficiency in collecting solar power outside the atmosphere, but the losses are not exponential.

2) You will encounter much of that same loss due with the laser beam transmitting the energy. After all, the laser has to shoot through the atmosphere too.

3) The solar panels would have to be huge -- thousands of times larger than the Space Station.

I think cold fusion would be a better investment.

[Selatius]

13. Cold fusion has proven to be a myth. Regular fusion power is far more promising.

We already have experimental fusion reactors that run. The only thing is that they are barely net positive in terms of electrical energy input vs. thermal energy output. Having said that, it is fairly realistic to say that at the current pace of progress, it could be several decades before a commercially viable fusion reactor design is found. Probably the most conservative estimates put that marker roughly a century away.

In the meantime, other renewable energy sources would have to be tapped until fusion is realized, and to buy more time, it is likely this strategy would be coupled with a program of energy conservation and pollution control.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

18. The word exponential does not mean Big or that A is Bigger than B. It is about rates.

Folks, Please be careful about accidental misuse of the word exponential to avoid being confused with somebody who does not understand elementary mathematics.

The word exponential does not mean Large or Huge. It can't be used for a comparison of two numbers or two quantities, (not to say A is Bigger than B). It is about rates of change, growth, decay, increase, decrease.

A linear rate of growth is ct or constant c multiplied by variable t.

Example (10 points): c = 2, t = natural numbers: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, ....

A geometric rate of growth is t^c or the variable t raised to power of c, like squared or cubed.

Example: 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100, ...

Exponential growth is c^t or the constant c raised to the power of t.

Example: c = 2, t = whole numbers (naturals and zero): 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, ...

[bemildred]

19. Good luck with that.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

22. People are free to use language ignorantly. Language is as language does. nt

[bemildred]

24. I know, you lose these distinctions, and pretty soon you can't think at all. nt

[BlueStreak]

21. That may be true in a purely mathematical sense, but in this context

the clear intent of the word "exponential" was to suggest an overwhelming advantage.

[Posteritatis]

12. Just a reminder that anyone invoking Simcity doesn't know enough about this to talk. (nt)

[thelordofhell]

14. American scientist Reed Richards has developed his own rocket to collect Cosmic Rays

He intends to fly it into space with his pilot Ben Grimm, his girlfriend Sue Storm and his girlfriend's kid brother Johnny Storm

[Tunkamerica]

16. okay. i got it. who else?

watch out for gamma rays is the only advice I can give.

[thelordofhell]

25. Now, now

We all know that Dr. Bruce Banner is the expert on Gamma Rays

[krkaufman]

26. not much to hget

it wasn't fantastically subtle.

[Tunkamerica]

28. oh.

ok.

[oldsarge54]

15. Robber Barons

America used to be a leader. Our companies led the world in innovation and exploration. However, when Presidents of companies were replaced by bean counting CEOs, the vision of the corporate world in the United States dropped to the next quarter's statement. That when the government started taking over the exploratory science, and now the bean counters want to cut that out as waste. We're going to lose this one, because the haves are just interested in creasing what they have, and the have nots are just into surviving.

[truthisfreedom]

27. Proof of concept seems to be the objective.

What we should put money into is creating another Thorium reactor design that runs safely and reliably. Thorium reactors could provide us with clean power for hundreds, if not thousands of years, because there's so dang much Thorium on the planet. Our Air Force built one that operated successfully in the 60s. What's cool about it is that the "hot" waste products break down into safer, easier to store low-level waste in about 25 years, so the hot waste can be cycled in and out of underground (think Yucca) storage very often. The low-level waste is very manageable. The reactors can be designed so that if they loose power (think Fukushima) they simply shut themselves down quietly. They have a negative feedback mechanism that keeps them from overheating under any circumstances... their core is completely molten so it expands if it gets too hot, which causes it to loose reactions and cool back down. Thorium reactors will likely be man's ultimate power source. They can be quite small, too, and because of their inherent safety, can be located very close to the cities they'd supply.