Pentagon Report: Space-Based Solar Power As an Opportunity for Strategic Security

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/nsso.htm

Space-Based Solar Power As an Opportunity for Strategic Security

National Security Space Office Interim Assessment Phase 0 Architecture Feasibility Study, October 10, 2007

Executive Summary on this page.

Full Report (including Executive Summary), 75 pages (PDF 3.5 MB)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Consistent with the US National Security Strategy, energy and environmental security are not just problems for America, they are critical challenges for the entire world. Expanding human populations and declining natural resources are potential sources of local and strategic conflict in the 21st Century, and many see energy scarcity as the foremost threat to national security. Conflict prevention is of particular interest to security-providing institutions such as the U.S. Department of Defense which has elevated energy and environmental security as priority issues with a mandate to proactively find and create solutions that ensure U.S. and partner strategic security is preserved.

The magnitude of the looming energy and environmental problems is significant enough to warrant consideration of all options, to include revisiting a concept called Space Based Solar Power (SBSP) first invented in the United States almost 40 years ago. The basic idea is very straightforward: place very large solar arrays into continuously and intensely sunlit Earth orbit (1,366 watts/m²), collect gigawatts of electrical energy, electromagnetically beam it to Earth, and receive it on the surface for use either as baseload power via direct connection to the existing electrical grid, conversion into manufactured synthetic hydrocarbon fuels, or as low-intensity broadcast power beamed directly to consumers. A single kilometer-wide band of geosynchronous earth orbit experiences enough solar flux in one year to nearly equal the amount of energy contained within all known recoverable conventional oil reserves on Earth today. This amount of energy indicates that there is enormous potential for energy security, economic development, improved environmental stewardship, advancement of general space faring, and overall national security for those nations who construct and possess a SBSP capability.

...

[PDJane]

1. If there's a way to kill people with it,

The Pentagon will find a way to do it.

[kestrel91316]

2. There is of course no way that our power supply could be held hostage

by a fascist government to force us to accept further loss of liberties, right?

I'll take my chances with local power, thank you.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. A valid point

Of course, the current model with large corporations producing the bulk of the energy (be it electricity or fossil fuels) is little better.

I am interested to see this come around again though. I remember seeing a model of an orbital power station back in the late 70's.

Personally, I like the rooftop solar power model; but while rooftop solar may work for a single house, it doesn't work well at all for a skyscraper.

There will continue to be a need for either utility-controlled power or government-controlled power (until I get pocket fusion perfected... ;-) )

[eppur_se_muova]

4. But at least current utilities aren't operating gigawatt masers ...

which might be redirected towards the recalcitrant if the need arose ...

[phantom power]

5. Nobody is going to do this. It costs $5000 per pound to low earth orbit.

[TheWraith]

8. Exactly. The technical problems can be overcome. The construction ones can't, not right now.

Not only would we have to outstrip all past production of solar cells by a factor of 100 times or so, but to launch all that into orbit, along with the hardware to collect and retransmit the energy, is simply too vast a problem to deal with given our limited launch capabilities.

The only way this would work is if we either had the capacity to built some kind of self-replicating orbital factory, like a Von Neumann machine, or could build a fusion plasma drive that would make orbital launches cheap and easy. Unfortunately, we don't yet possess such tech. The latter is a lot closer than the former, but we're still probably talking 20 years.

[GliderGuider]

6. Solar Power Satellites were a wet dream of my SF days

Huge solar thermal arrays in geosynchronous orbit, running generators that would feel large diameter microwave beams of very low power density, that would be beamed down to huge rectenna farms in deserts on Earth. Straight from the pages of Amazing and Galaxy magazines.

Unfortunately the economics suck, the logistics suck, and we now lack the capacity or time to implement such a scheme even if we did trust the people who'd be running it.

Such plans are now a sandbox for men trying to carve a new career empire out of the American Taxpayer.

Fugeddaboudit.

[Seeker7]

7. Is this the level of discussion here?

I was interested to find this posted here and I appreciate OKIsItJustMe for posting it. I read the report and it is well considered and technically sound.

I'm disturbed, though, by the ignorant, knee-jerk replies to the post. Is this the best you can do? RTFA, people!

I've been leaning Democratic, but if this is representative of the Democratic Underground, I may have to resign myself to another decade of loathsome Republican tyranny.

[TheWraith]

9. Don't mind the locals too much.

For starters, the Environment/Energy forum is plagued with a lot of people who view anything other than solar panels and commune-farms to be evil and the work of the devil. For that matter, DU has more than its fair share of nutbars on any number of topics. It's something you get used to around here, but it's certainly not representative of Democrats as a whole.

[Seeker7]

11. Thank you.

Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I'll give the forum some more tries.

[Kolesar]

10. Your "first post" and you complain about another DU poster

:hi:

[Seeker7]

12. Do you want to win or just play in a sandbox?

Not complaining about one poster, despairing at the level of discussion over most of the posts. Knee-jerk reactions won't beat the Republicans. We have to be more knowledgeable and thoughtful than they are.

I'm trying to figure out if this place is worth my time. My time is my only wealth and I'm not going to waste it on a forum dominated by jerks who won't help us win the future for my children.

[GliderGuider]

14. I want to move forward into the future as much as anyone.

That is why I refuse to waste my time and energy on ideas that won't help that process. I've looked at SPS systems for a long time already. They will not cut it. Use your time and energy to build windmills, develop local gardening systems, promote electric rail, heck even electric cars or solar panels. There are lots of energy alternatives out there that make some degree of sense. SPS isn't one of them.

[Kolesar]

16. That's laughable

You take criticism of what is literally a pie-in-the-sky panacea and try to turn it into a a critique of our agenda to defeat republicans.

If you think this forum is "dominated by jerks", well nobody is forcing you to get a screen name and write posts here.

[NickB79]

13. You feel this is technically sound?

Without cheap means of transporting materials into space, it would bankrupt every nation on Earth to build enough orbital solar stations to supply even a fraction of our daily energy. As Phantom Power pointed out, it costs $5,000 per pound to put material into Earth orbit. Short of a space elevator to shuttle solar panels and computer components up into low orbit, this idea is completely technically unfeasible.

Sorry some of the things you're reading here at DU are painful to hear, but some of us are starting to see that the future isn't going to be business as usual, rampant consumerism, ever-growing economy, etc.

[Seeker7]

15. We don't have to stay stuck

Until recently, there was no significant progress in rocketry for about 30 years. Even so, some launchers are approaching $2,000 per pound. Elon Musk is aiming to price his Falcon rockets at less than $2,000 per pound, but that's just the beginning. He can go lower with higher volume and reuse of some of the stages, if he succeeds. If he doesn't someone else will. It's time to railroad.

And that's still just scratching the surface. The fuel cost of getting into orbit is only about $50-100 per pound. The rest is all throwing away expensive hardware and paying thousands of technicians. Historically, mature transportation systems spend at least 20% of total operating expenses on fuel. Airlines spend about 40% on fuel. If space launch were a mature industry, that translates to $125-500 per pound, which shows how far we have to go. That's an order of magnitude less than the current prices. Orders of magnitude can change business cases.

Beyond that, no single answer is going to be enough to solve the energy challenge. I don't think you realize how much energy it's going to take to bring all of humanity up to a decent standard of living. We need small is beautiful, fusion energy, space-based power, and any other half reasonable idea, and all together they might not be enough. We are, for the time being, still a wealthy civilization. We shouldn't be playing stupid either/or games with each other. We should be doing at least proof-of-concept research on as many ideas as possible.

Or are the progressives arguing for no progress?

[bananas]

17. "a space-borne proof-of-concept demonstration in the next decade" sounds good to me

Space solar will absolutely be a major energy source at some point, the sooner the better.
And you make a good point - people with such a regressive vision of the future can hardly be called progressives.
I hope you keep posting, here is some related reading:
"Secular Apocalyptists, Dystopias and Christian Millenialists."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2101764

[Kolesar]

18. Boeing &Lockheed Martin's fondest pipe dream

Why spend billions developing a weight reduced photovoltaic array and putting into orbit at the cost of a huge amount of fuel when we can build more photovoltaic arrays with a shorter duty cycle here on the surface of the Earth?

[Seeker7]

19. Because it's not enough

Because of the day-night cycle, changing sun angles, weather, atmospheric attenuation, dust, bird crap, etc., you could cover all the readily available surfaces and it won't be enough. There aren't enough deserts and they aren't in the right places. Storing energy for night-time use alone creates massive waste and environmental impact.

Do you really want to destroy our cropland and clear our forests, in addition to roofing over our cities so we live in perpetual shadow? That's a science fiction dystopia I don't want to see.

[Kolesar]

21. My great grandmother raised a family in a house with *no* electricity & it was enough...

...apparently. The tribe of Avengers is here continuing our DNA on this planet so there is your proof.

[Seeker7]

22. If you're selling poverty, not many will buy

No electricity was enough for your great grandmother because there was no electricity. Generations before, being a subsistence farmer was good enough because that was all there was. Go back far enough and being a hunter-gatherer was good enough. Now we've experienced different standards of living. Not many people are going to choose to go backwards without a fight. Try putting it to a vote in any democracy and you might get 1 or 2 percent. If you don't watch out, you'll ensure the victory of your worst enemies. (When has that ever happened?)

Try forcing developing nations to accept eternal poverty and they're likely to plant a bomb under you. Don't worry too much about that, though, almost no one will take you seriously.

[losthills]

23. Hunter Gatherers...

have the most leisure time of any other socio-economic group.

More time to rest, more time to play, more time to socialize, more time to philosophise, more time to do art and to procreate.

That kind of poverty I could live with....

[Kolesar]

25. ...had better diets than grain-based agricultural societies, but that is an aside...eom

[Seeker7]

26. Praise for the good old days is irrelevant

because most people won't buy it and you can't shove it down their throats. Haven't you learned that the path to utopia runs through dystopia and usually stops there. Your agrarian utopia won't support the millions already living in the cities, much less the aspirations of the billions in developing nations. How do you propose to kill them all off? Or will you wait until the collapse you are promoting and hope not to get overrun? I see you teamed up with the crazy right-wing survivalists, armed to the teeth in your compounds and shooting strangers on sight.

[Kolesar]

24. She played piano. She read to her children. That's a meaningful life.

[Seeker7]

20. Thanks

for the link to the apocalyptist discussion. Doesn't it seem that all extremists of a type resemble each other: apocalyptists and millenialists, Christian and Islamic theocrats, tyrants of all stripes.

Maybe that's why the wing nuts talk about Islamofascism instead of Islamic theocracy. They're afraid someone will notice their own theocracy or that of their Saudi partners. On the other hand, Fascism would seem to be almost as dangerous to them, since political control by corporations and other wealthy financial interests is central to Fascism. I don't see much of that in al Qaeda, but a lot of it in the right wing.

[Seeker7]

27. Even better

I did some checking and the cost of relatively expensive fuel is less than $25 for each pound in orbit with today's technology, about 0.5% of today's total cost. That makes less than $100 per pound in orbit a reasonable target for a mature industry , fifty times less than today's costs.

[Traditional Liberal]

28. Only a matter of time, and regulatory burden

A lot of technology is coming online in the next few years, and by few years I mean less than ten, that will profoundly change the energy profile of the country.

Nanotube materials for hydrogen generation, storage vessels, and solar power

Proof of concept of wave power, already under construction off Oregon coast

Solar panels that use more wavelength to beat current efficiencies (already used by NASA, and being researched in a number of places to make them cheaper.

Thin film solar production methods

fuel cells that use far less platinum and work several times more efficiently, less suceptible to deterioration.

windmills that compress air underground as stored energy to power turbines on demand

All of this can happen, can, if the current climate change bill in Congress becomes law.

[bananas]

29. Bigelow Aerospace to offer $760 million for spaceship to orbit

Some interesting comments in this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=228x35344

Bigelow Aerospace to offer $760 million for spaceship to orbit

Bigelow Aerospace intends to spur development of a commercial space vehicle to take people into Earth orbit by offering to sign a contract worth $760 million with any company that can meet their criteria, company president Robert Bigelow says.

Speaking with New Scientist at the company's headquarters in Las Vegas, Nevada, Bigelow said the offer is meant to head off a crisis over the lack of transportation options available to get people to the large inflatable space stations it plans to launch by early 2010.

[Seeker7]

30. NASA fading to second place behind private companies

It hasn't happened yet, but this Bigelow contract is bigger than NASA's COTS program. Also, Bigelow is offering a services contract, which NASA still isn't guaranteeing to the COTS people, even if they succeed. Instead, NASA is making long-term contracts with the Russians. Someone needs to remind them which country they're part of.

If this goes on, NASA will become increasingly irrelevant to our future in space. In fact, space solar power might be the only thing NASA could do to become relevant to the future. Also, the most popular thing they could do.