"Reinventing the Solar Power Satellite" paper

For any of you with an interest in Solar Power Satellite (SPS, or SSPS)
concepts, I finally received NASA Technical Memorandum copies of my
papers "Reinventing the Solar Power Satellite" and "Peak Power Markets
for Satellite Solar Power" from the Houston IAF Congress. (actually,
they arrived in February, but I was out of town until now). It's NASA
TM-2004-212743

If anybody wants a copy, let me know and I'll drop one in the mail.

Geoffrey A. Landis wrote:
For any of you with an interest in Solar Power Satellite (SPS, or SSPS)
concepts, I finally received NASA Technical Memorandum copies of my
papers "Reinventing the Solar Power Satellite" and "Peak Power Markets
for Satellite Solar Power" from the Houston IAF Congress... NASA
TM-2004-212743

Or, for those who prefer electrons, I realized it's available on the
Glenn server as a PDF file: http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/GLTRS/
browse.pl?2004/TM-2004-212743.html


--
Geoffrey A. Landis
http://www.sff.net/people/geoffrey.landis

Geoffrey A. Landis wrote:
Geoffrey A. Landis wrote:
For any of you with an interest in Solar Power Satellite (SPS, or SSPS)
concepts, I finally received NASA Technical Memorandum copies of my
papers "Reinventing the Solar Power Satellite" and "Peak Power Markets
for Satellite Solar Power" from the Houston IAF Congress... NASA
TM-2004-212743

Or, for those who prefer electrons, I realized it's available on the
Glenn server as a PDF file: http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/GLTRS/
browse.pl?2004/TM-2004-212743.html

As I understand it, your SPS plan is predicated on ground solar cells
supplementing around local noon the SPS's peak power generating times
at 0900 and 1600. The SPS transmits its power to the ground solar
installation, which also would have rectennas to capture the microwave
beamed energy.

That's an interesting idea, but perhaps I'm missing something. Why beam
microwaves at all? You have a perfectly good ground solar installation,
and according to Henry Spencer PV cells are fairly efficient (~50%) if
the wavelength is well matched to the type of cell, so a space-based
dichroic mirror array might be an equally valid form of power beaming
to the ground while reducing terrestrial heating as compared to a
simple mirror. The design would likely look like the dihedral array
in figure 9, albeit with the dihedral pointing in the opposite direction
to bounce light to the ground installation.

Eliminating the microwave transmitters would reduce orbital mass while
reducing ground-based cost by doing away with rectennas, not to mention
calming public fears about RF leakage outside the ground receptors.

Comments?


Francois.

Geoffrey A. Landis wrote:
For any of you with an interest in Solar Power Satellite (SPS, or SSPS)
concepts, I finally received NASA Technical Memorandum copies of my
papers "Reinventing the Solar Power Satellite" and "Peak Power Markets
for Satellite Solar Power" from the Houston IAF Congress. (actually,
they arrived in February, but I was out of town until now). It's NASA
TM-2004-212743

If anybody wants a copy, let me know and I'll drop one in the mail.


I'd like copies. Spacing out my e-mail, hoping to thwart spam-bots:

h o p d @ c u n e w s . i n f o

Hope you will put these papers on the web as you have some of your other
papers.

--
Hop David
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html

If anybody wants a copy, let me know and I'll drop one in the mail.



Put me on the list, please.

GEA

I was wondering if you worked out how high the price of oil has to be in
order for an SPS project to be profitable.


"Geoffrey A. Landis"
wrote in message ...
For any of you with an interest in Solar Power Satellite (SPS, or SSPS)
concepts, I finally received NASA Technical Memorandum copies of my
papers "Reinventing the Solar Power Satellite" and "Peak Power Markets
for Satellite Solar Power" from the Houston IAF Congress. (actually,
they arrived in February, but I was out of town until now). It's NASA
TM-2004-212743

If anybody wants a copy, let me know and I'll drop one in the mail.

Robert Lee wrote:
I was wondering if you worked out how high the price of oil has to be in
order for an SPS project to be profitable.

This is going to be as contraversial as the Drake equation.
There are so many possible variables.
What do you pick for launch cost?
Is it $6000/Kg, or $30/Kg launched by some sort of tether.
Are you using near-term 200W/Kg solar panels, or are you assuming
thin-film manufacturing breakthroughs, solar-dynamic, or...

What is the size of the recieving arrays, how close are they
together, how big are they, can you use the land under them, do you
need to keep aeroplanes out, ......

All of these are variables.
It's quite easy to generate numbers that vary by a factor of at least
a thousand.

Ian Stirling wrote in message ...
Robert Lee wrote:
I was wondering if you worked out how high the price of oil has to be in
order for an SPS project to be profitable.

This is going to be as contraversial as the Drake equation.
There are so many possible variables.
What do you pick for launch cost?
Is it $6000/Kg, or $30/Kg launched by some sort of tether.
Are you using near-term 200W/Kg solar panels, or are you assuming
thin-film manufacturing breakthroughs, solar-dynamic, or...

What is the size of the recieving arrays, how close are they
together, how big are they, can you use the land under them, do you
need to keep aeroplanes out, ......

All of these are variables.
It's quite easy to generate numbers that vary by a factor of at least
a thousand.

Do we use direct space launch, which would be the cheapest for a few
GW, or do we go and capture NEOs, which would be much cheaper for a
few Terawatts?

"Robert Lee" wrote in message .. .
I was wondering if you worked out how high the price of oil has to be in
order for an SPS project to be profitable.


Over what timeframe?

"Robert Lee" wrote in message .. .
I was wondering if you worked out how high the price of oil has to be in
order for an SPS project to be profitable.


Good question, because the price of oil is artificially low right now,
even at $40/barrel.

First, could somebody please compute a "realistic" price for oil,
which includes the following factors:

- cost of military to assure access to oil supplies

- economic cost of vast balance of trade deficit

If we generalize to all fossil fuels, including coal as well as oil,
then there are other hidden costs:

- cost of Mercury pollution to seafood

- future cost of introducing emission controls for Mercury, Sulphur
et al (presently blocked by the polluters)

- healthcare cost and reduced life expectancy due to particulate air
pollution and chemical air pollution

- future cost of proposed CO2 remediation systems (e.g. underground
CO2 storage and intercontinental network of pipelines)

- future collateral cost of global warming

Those are some of the biggies.

I have never seen anybody present a holistic per barrel cost for oil.
It is difficult for SPS to compete against the present phony price
structure of fossil fuels whose prices are kept artificially low, and
real costs hidden.