Sunday, September 20, 2009
Solar Power Sats
I've written a few times before about space solar power, and I was pleased to see a post about developments in this area on Friday's Cosmic Log. After reading Alan Boyle's post entitled "making space power pay," I wondered if anyone had yet created an Orbiter add-on to model a solar power satellite. Orbiter add-on developers have simulated many futuristic systems such as space elevators and the Stanford Torus space colony, and solar power satellites are probably a better bet for the next 20 years (Orbiter add-on developers tend to favor manned spacecraft, but there are many examples of historic, current, and futuristic unmanned spacecraft as well).
So I checked on Orbit Hangar and did a Google search. I didn't find a powersat add-on, but I found a request for one in an Orbiter-forum post back in May. The requester was William Maness of PowerSat Corp., whom Alan Boyle quotes in his blog post. Maness was looking to contract an Orbiter add-on developer to create a powersat model for Orbiter that could be used in some visualizations and simulations of their proposed powersat system (a very cool deployable/inflatable concept). There was some interest and a lively discussion, though wasn't clear from the forum discussion whether he got someone to do it. But based on this video from PowerSat, it looks like they did, at least for visual purposes. Some parts of this video really look to me like Orbiter scenes (from 0:31 to 0:57 - probably enhanced with video editing mainly to show the microwaves beaming down to Earth). Maness mentioned in the post that he hoped to simulate a launch to LEO on a SpaceX Falcon 9 as well as more specific technical aspects such as sun tracking and continuous thrust engines (presumably electric ion engines) to gradually boost the powersat from LEO to to its operational GEO orbit. Orbiter can do that sort of thing with some clever custom add-on programming.
There are obviously many challenges to developing and deploying solar powersats, but it's pretty exciting to be seeing even such early commercial development, and to think that Orbiter may have a small role to play in developing and promoting these systems.
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8 comments:
For power satellites to be a contender to replace fossil fuels, the cost of lifting parts to GEO has to come down by 100-200 times. That's far beyond what optimistic people think can be done just to LEO. The problem is the rocket equation.
But there are approaches where the rocket equation does not apply (mag lev launchers, space elevator, launch loop) and the possibility of going to much higher exhaust velocity than you can get with chemical fuels--laser ablation being the best for relatively high accelerations.
There is a discussion of a mixed chemical/laser system here http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5485
Keith Henson
You may be right, and I have not analyzed PowerSat's plans in any detail, but a lot depends on what a "powersat" is. I skimmed through your "lifting with rockets" article and you mention "a 10,000 ton powersat." In some discussions, powersats are assumed to be huge and massive, but from reading through PowerSat Corp.'s web site, it's clear that they aim to use newer technology to make the powersats quite large but quite light - use of thin film solar cells, inflatable/deployable structures, composites. They also propose ganging together a number of smaller powersats and using a technique they are patenting to combine the microwave beams from multiple sats and beam them to the same rectenna array.
Their other key point is only using rockets to get to LEO, then using ion engines driven by the electricity from the solar array to spiral slowly up to GEO. Presumably these same ion engines can be used for station keeping to keep the p'sats from drifting away from their assigned GEO slots.
So you may be right, but a lot depends on how much mass a powersat has to have to create a given amount of power. I don't know what the minimum kg per kW would be, but it's clear that there are a lot of factors that go into it, including tyhe efficiency of the cells and the clever use of deployables and such.
Space based solar power is an unrealistic solution. Not just because of the complexity and funding, but because so much energy and resources are required, compared to what you get back. We also need solutions today, not 20-50 years in the future. By then, there won't be much of a world left.
http://www.selfdestructivebastards.com/2009/09/space-based-solar-power.html
I believe that solar power is tthe future
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