Europe's Largest Space Corp to launch Solar Power Satellite

Infrared laser transmission?


European space company wants solar power plant in space
January 21, 2010 by Lin Edwards


"PhysOrg.com) -- EADS Astrium, Europe's biggest space company,
plans to put a solar power satellite in orbit to demonstrate the
collection of solar power in space and its transmission via
infrared laser to provide electricity on Earth."

http://www.physorg.com/news183278937.html

I've never quite understood the way this can work. Unless you can diffuse
the output over a large area, you are going to cause atmospheric heating. If
you do use large area collection, the its going to be very expensive in the
ground station department and even at low density is going to have to be no
go areas for aviation. Presumably, you would need a site where no cloud
cover ever occurs, which presumably means high?
Brian

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"Jonathan" wrote in message
...

Infrared laser transmission?


European space company wants solar power plant in space
January 21, 2010 by Lin Edwards

"PhysOrg.com) -- EADS Astrium, Europe's biggest space company, plans to
put a solar power satellite in orbit to demonstrate the collection of
solar power in space and its transmission via infrared laser to provide
electricity on Earth."

http://www.physorg.com/news183278937.html

On a sunny day (Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:12:52 -0500) it happened "Jonathan"
wrote in :


Infrared laser transmission?


European space company wants solar power plant in space
January 21, 2010 by Lin Edwards


"PhysOrg.com) -- EADS Astrium, Europe's biggest space company,
plans to put a solar power satellite in orbit to demonstrate the
collection of solar power in space and its transmission via
infrared laser to provide electricity on Earth."

http://www.physorg.com/news183278937.html

Infrared, what wavelength?
Very long?
Heat?
Why not beam the sun with a mirror to heat up a boiler to make steam to
drive a generator to power the computer thatt then prints these press releases?
Seems simpler then lasers?
Not April one yet.

And you will be burned by IR just as well as by microwaves if it is pointed at you,
just as well as by focussed sunlight,
B.S
For BULL ****.

On 3/12/2010 1:46 AM, Brian Gaff wrote:
Presumably, you would need a site where no cloud
cover ever occurs, which presumably means high?

The beam might just cut its way through any intervening clouds by
heating the water vapor in them back up over its condensation point.

Pat

If you do that you are losing energy in heating the water though.

I'd have thought a frequency more akin to microwaves would have been better
for that.

Of course if they want to use focussed beams they need to unearth the stuff
done in the 70s and 80s by the US Defense department on the attempted use
of lasers as weapons. The problem was that the turbulance created by the
beam defocussed it just like we see with starlight.

I doubt adaptive optics could help you there.

Brian

--
Brian Gaff -
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!
"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
lephone...
On 3/12/2010 1:46 AM, Brian Gaff wrote:
Presumably, you would need a site where no cloud
cover ever occurs, which presumably means high?

The beam might just cut its way through any intervening clouds by heating
the water vapor in them back up over its condensation point.

Pat

On 3/12/2010 1:39 PM, Brian Gaff wrote:
If you do that you are losing energy in heating the water though.

I'd have thought a frequency more akin to microwaves would have been better
for that.

So would I; this is the first time I've heard lasers floated as a
serious proposal rather than microwaves, although the laser concept has
been discussed from time-to-time.
It's clumsy though, as it works like this: Sunlight electrical power
laser generation laser reception steam turbine electrical power.
Whereas the microwave one works like this:
Sunlight electrical power conversion into microwaves reconversion
into electricity.
Your adding a whole extra step by turning the sunlight into a
electricity and then back into light again, and that's not good from a
total efficiency point of view.
The best of all would just be to reflect the sunlight down to the
Earth's surface where it would fall onto a solar power plant's arrays
and illuminate them at night to the same degree they are lit up in
daylight, while doubling their power output during the daylight hours.
Far cheaper than either alternative is simply to build a larger solar
power plant on the Earth's surface and skip the very expensive
space-based part of the equation.
If they ever come up with superconducting power transmission cables the
whole equation shifts markedly, as then the whole world can be
electrically interconnected with power being transferred from the day
half to the night half as needed.


Of course if they want to use focussed beams they need to unearth the stuff
done in the 70s and 80s by the US Defense department on the attempted use
of lasers as weapons. The problem was that the turbulance created by the
beam defocussed it just like we see with starlight.


The blooming of the beam only occurred when it heated the air up into
plasma, I don't think they have that high of energy flux in mind for
this project.
Consider for a second what would happen if you made a conductive plasma
path clean through the Earth's atmosphere, connecting the charged
ionosphere to the surface, like shorting out a giant capacitor.
Because I suspect it would make a lightning storm look pretty mild by
comparison.

Pat

On Mar 11, 7:12*pm, "Jonathan" wrote:
Infrared laser transmission?

European space company wants solar power plant in space
January 21, 2010 by Lin Edwards *

"PhysOrg.com) -- EADS Astrium, Europe's biggest space company,
plans to put a solar power satellite in orbit to demonstrate the
collection of solar power in space and its transmission via
infrared laser to provide electricity on Earth."

http://www.physorg.com/news183278937.html

Ah physorg.com, I love/hate that site, I love it because you can
download the article as either a pdf or text file.
I hate because every article has 5 related articles and those articles
have 5 related articles.... ;^)

Just my $0.02

Keith W of St Louis AKA Space Cadet

Pat Flannery writes:
Your adding a whole extra step by turning the sunlight into a electricity
and then back into light again, and that's not good from a total efficiency
point of view.

Bingo...

Far cheaper than either alternative is simply to build a larger solar power
plant on the Earth's surface and skip the very expensive space-based part of
the equation.

Which is the crux of the cost problem for all the space-based systems, solar
electric or solar thermal.

Dave