Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Sci-Fi Science

Simcity Microwave Power by 2050? 740

Politburo writes "The Drudge Report supplies this interesting Senate testimony. Dr. David Criswell, director of the University of Houston's Institute for Space Systems Operations, proposes that we develop robots to assist in the construction of a lunar solar array. The power from this array would be beamed to recievers on Earth, either directly or via relay satellites. Dr. Criswell predicts that with this project, "the average American income could increase from today's ~$35,000/y-person to more than $150,000/y-person." He also attempts to put to rest the idea that microwave power is unsafe, saying, "Each power beam can be safely received, for example, in an industrially zoned area." I wonder if he's ever played SimCity 2000" And coming soon, Godzilla from a drop-down menu.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Simcity Microwave Power by 2050?

Comments Filter:
  • I hope people know (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 10, 2003 @11:58AM (#7434779)
    That this wasn't invented in SimCity. It's a real idea the game developers thought might be used one day.
  • Better put (Score:5, Funny)

    by bersl2 ( 689221 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @11:58AM (#7434784) Journal
    the fire department on stand-by...
    • by Dukeofshadows ( 607689 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:22PM (#7435016) Journal
      This reminds me of the nuclear debates of the late 1940s. Do we use one of the most efficient energy transmitters conceiveable to power our planet or empower our government? Though it sounds like science fiction, the US army toyed with the idea of using focus solar energy as a weapons system early in the cold war (I've seen the films where they built a prototype complex and incinerated large I-beams of steel as if they were Dreamsicles next to a lighter). The US Army proved that microwave solar technology could be used to relay electricity from extraordinary altitudes in the mid 1960s. In Japan the University of Kyoto is already toying with development of a space-based satellite using an area of 1km^2 to generate solar power then beam it back to earth. The potential for near-limitless energy is especially appealing, though fossil fules would sitll be used in most of our transportation systems for some time to come (no one I know has a mass-market purely-electrical car with over a 150 mile range or better speed than 60 MPH, please send in any info on e-cars that are better).

      My concern is that any nation putting this sort of system into place risks misalignment of the beams and having a solar laser of incredible power strafing across the landscape. It would be extremely tempting for terrorists or rogue governments to either put these is orbit themselves, or more likely sabotage/take over those already in place. We would then be forced to either destroy the satellite or launch military strikes on the offending parties, mandating the development and refinement of rapid-deployment and anti-space missile technology. Granted, this is a dual use system whose benefits far outweigh the detractions, but the military application of such a solar energy system seems so obvious that it must be considered.
      • by Pendersempai ( 625351 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:59PM (#7435362)
        My concern is that any nation putting this sort of system into place risks misalignment of the beams and having a solar laser of incredible power strafing across the landscape.

        This is so preventable that it makes me laugh.

        Make the communication two-way. If the reception dish loses its lock on the power beam or if the transmitter loses its lock on the communication beam, the whole apparatus shuts off until it can be inspected.

        The paranoia around such a non-issue just goes to show how stinkin' awful humans are at gut-feel cost-benefit analysis. You've seen it happen (as a Disaster) in SimCity 2000; therefore, it must be a real risk.

        Ditto for those who are afraid of flying, living near a modern fission plant, or sharing files on KaZaA.

      • by calethix ( 537786 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @01:08PM (#7435435) Homepage
        "My concern is that any nation putting this sort of system into place risks misalignment of the beams and having a solar laser of incredible power strafing across the landscape."

        That's why it should be tested in Florida first. Until the bugs are worked out, we can blame any mishaps on the Xindi.
      • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Monday November 10, 2003 @01:28PM (#7435588) Homepage Journal

        My concern is that any nation putting this sort of system into place risks misalignment of the beams and having a solar laser of incredible power strafing across the landscape.

        That's impossible! When you use microwaves, it's called a MASER.

      • Low beam density makes it a useless weapon.
        The whole concept is that you could make a system with a beam density low enough that the focusing antenna is reasonably small, yet, with the beam density high enough that its not cheaper to just slap down solar cells on the ground.

        Essentially you are getting more power from the cells in space, so as to offset the transmission and "shipping" (rocket launch) costs.
      • Did you RTA? The article states that:
        The intensity of each power beam is restricted to 20%, or less, of the intensity of noontime sunlight. Each power beam can be safely received, for example, in an industrially zoned area.
        Based on this, even if the lasers did go "strafing across the landscape" the biggest problem would be slightly darker tans or maybe one or two more cases a year of skin cancer :)
      • So will this be the Microwave power from SimCity 2000, or the Ion Cannon from Command and Conquer?

        Aaah, The glory days of mid 1990's gaming.

  • Funding... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by E-Rock ( 84950 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:00PM (#7434793) Homepage
    He should stop telling everyone how safe it is and start telling the military that it could be adapted into a weapon "in times of crisis". He might actually get some funding that way. ;)
  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:00PM (#7434798)
    ...ants and a magnifying glass.
  • by swordboy ( 472941 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:00PM (#7434800) Journal
    Energy Conversion Devices [ovonic.com] has developed a 30 Megawatt solar machine the size of a football field. The device produces nine miles of solar cell at a time. The amorphous solar cells are not great in terms of ultimate conversion efficiency, but they are unique in that they will put out much more power over their life time than the energy used to produce them. They are great on a watt per dollar basis.
  • Average income? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:00PM (#7434803)
    Dr. Criswell predicts that with this project, "the average American income could increase from today's ~$35,000/y-person to more than $150,000/y-person."
    Yeah, right. The "oil billionaires" who buy up the microwave technology and become "microwave billionaires" will be rolling in it, while the rest of us still putz along at $30K/year. Yet thanks to statistics, the "average" income will indeed go up.

    Remember, averages are highly skewed by outliers.
    • What he probably means is that this could make energy costs so cheap, that all of the money spent on energy today (not just your electric bill, but also the amount of money in the goods you buy that go to energy costs, etc.) The buying power of someone earning 35K would be equivalent of someone earning 150K today.

      I think that claim is exagerated. The biggest chunks of anyones income are taxes and housing, not things affected very much by energy costs.
      • Re:Average income? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jefeweiss ( 628594 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:25PM (#7435049)

        The cost of energy is gradually built into pretty much everything in the current economy. It would take some time, but the cost of any consumer good or service you can imagine would come down considerably if the cost of energy drops to near zero. Consider housing manufactured and erected in a zero energy cost environment. Most of the costs of concrete, and anything made of concrete are energy costs. The cost of energy is built in at every level of the construction process. Brick? Basically cooked (with energy) silica. Steel? Melted (again with energy) ore. All the transportation costs? Oil can be made from coal, or shale the reason it isn't done now is that the expense of the energy to do it is higher then the cost of oil. And anyway electrolysis can make perfectly clean hydrogen and oxygen should we choose to go that route.

        The point is that when you are thinking of energy costs you are thinking mostly about your electric or gas bill, which is small compared to your total expenses. But the cost of energy overall to the economy is almost omnipresent. The cost of paper is pretty much the cost of trees + cost of energy to make paper + cost of labor. The cost of trees is cost of labor + cost of energy used by vehicles, machines etc + cost of logging rights. The cost of the vehicles is cost of energy used to make them + labor + capital costs, etc, etc.

        The reason that people don't realize the true expense of energy to the economy is that it is implicit in the cost of everything.

        • Re:Average income? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Grishnakh ( 216268 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @01:17PM (#7435506)
          The cost of energy is gradually built into pretty much everything in the current economy. It would take some time, but the cost of any consumer good or service you can imagine would come down considerably if the cost of energy drops to near zero.

          Yes, consumer goods would become much cheaper with cheaper energy, but the majority of people's paychecks go to pay for housing (and taxes). That's not going to get any cheaper no matter how cheap energy gets, because most of the cost of a house is in the land value (which has nothing to do with energy), and in the labor of building the house. Building materials aren't that expensive, but paying laborers US-scale wages to put them together is. And since land value is dictated by location, location, location, that's not going to change with energy costs either.
  • by ApheX ( 6133 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:01PM (#7434816) Homepage Journal
    "...proposes that we develop robots to assist in the construction of a lunar solar array..."

    Yup. We're screwed.
  • by QuackQuack ( 550293 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:01PM (#7434818) Journal
    Will it explode after exactly fifty years like my power plants in Sim City do?
  • Popcorn (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:02PM (#7434820)
    I got an idea, Let's hack it and make it pop massive amounts of popcorn in an evil professor's house!
  • No chance (Score:5, Funny)

    by Krapangor ( 533950 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:02PM (#7434821) Homepage
    the ecofundamentalists will shut this project down because these invisible rays interfere with the morphic field of their crystal beads and their carrots.
  • Great (Score:5, Funny)

    by Zygote-IC- ( 512412 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:02PM (#7434826) Homepage
    Just another weapon for the machines when they rise.
    What, the unstoppable cyborgs sent from the past to kill our future leaders wasn't enough? Controlling our nuclear arsenal not enough?
    Why don't we just send up the robots to build the solar array in a big ass cube and call it a day?
  • Sure, sure (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Erwos ( 553607 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:02PM (#7434828)
    "The average American income could increase from today's ~$35,000/y-person to more than $150,000/y-person."

    Unfortunately, he doesn't exactly say how besides "increased investment opportunities". Uh huh. Ditto for the comment about raising the average third world income to $20k.

    In fact, the entire testimony is rather short on details, and seems to omit such essential items as how much it would take to build the whole system.

    -Erwos
    • Re:Sure, sure (Score:3, Insightful)

      by lowmagnet ( 646428 )

      Of course, when everybody is making $150,000 per annum, the inflation rate will make it seem like $35,000.

      Why the wild claims of increased income? Surely there has to be some OTHER way of justifying this?

    • Re:Sure, sure (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Bastian ( 66383 )
      Or how the hell we're going to build solar cells and gigantic microwave transmitters out of moon rocks.

      Or how we're going to build robots sophisticated enough to figure out how to build solar cells and microwave transmitters out of moon rocks.

      Hell, we're already having a hard enough time making robots that don't walk/roll straight off the table without even slowing down.
      • Dr Criswell (Score:4, Insightful)

        by XNormal ( 8617 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @02:28PM (#7436094) Homepage
        Is the NASA curator of the moon rocks brought back by Apollo. He'd better know what resources are in moon rocks. He also spent the last 20 years figuring out what they can be used to produce using other moon resources such as hard vacuum and plentiful solar energy. Low gravity and having no clouds, dust or wind also helps build lightweight structures and with minimal maintenance.
    • by Bazzargh ( 39195 )
      He could achieve this goal by devaluing the dollar to 1/5 of its current value (or so).

      There's about $0.6 trillion in circulation [amark.com] in the US. Supposing for simplicity's sake that multiplying the available currency by 5 would devalue the currency to 1/5 of its current value, that means we need an additional 2.4 trillion dollars.

      A dollar bill is 66x156mm, so that currency has an area of about 24,710 square km. Now, New Hampshire is roughly 24,000 square km [ucla.edu].

      I think we can safely conclude that his plan involv
  • Inflation (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jmv ( 93421 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:03PM (#7434832) Homepage
    the average American income could increase from today's ~$35,000/y-person to more than $150,000/y-person.

    I'm willing to bet that inflation will have more to do with it than microware power :)
    • Re:Inflation (Score:5, Interesting)

      by in7ane ( 678796 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:18PM (#7434984)
      150 = 35 * (1 + x) ^ 47
      x = 3.14%

      Yep, that's not an unreasonable average rate of inflation over the next half century. So implementing this project will result in wages only matching inflation, not growing along with GDP (about 5% - can't be bothered to lookup). As someone else pointed out - "a few billion apiece for the people who control the power".

      But please, don't give the machines a power source that is solar based...
  • Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)

    by locarecords.com ( 601843 ) <david&locarecords,com> on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:04PM (#7434841) Homepage Journal
    ..

    This is a non-idea if ever I heard one. What is the point of going to all that trouble when we have ample power supplies here on earth (contra to our current moral panic about power supplies). Fair enough to try to build a justification to increasing lunar exploration but this is far too easily shot down.

    I think we need more political imaginaries - if you try to justify most space projects in terms of economic benefits likes this you are liable to look a fool. Space projects are fundamentally state financed projects (due to their horrific costs and risks) and will remain so for the foreseeable future. But we should be seizing the possibility of exploring space as a project for mankind.. dreaming the impossible..

  • eh $150,000? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:04PM (#7434844) Homepage Journal
    Details of that new income figure were a little light. Anybody got a more detailed explanation of what he meant by that, or should I chalk it up as "ooo people'll wanna make 150k, I'll get their vote!"

    Can't say I'm terribly worried about mishaps relating to this type of technology. We've been working with Microwaves for a very long time. I'm sure a reasonably safe system can be developed and launched cheaply. I'm more concerned with construction on the moon. Seems like it'd be a PITA to both construct and maintain. Do we really want to put our energy dependency in a very difficult to reach place? What if an angry country figures out a way to fire a missile up there?
  • Only $150,000? (Score:5, Informative)

    by szquirrel ( 140575 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:05PM (#7434849) Homepage
    the average American income could increase from today's ~$35,000/y-person to more than $150,000/y-person

    It better be a lot more than that. By 2050 inflation alone should push a $35,000/year income to $225,000/year (assuming the inflation rates of the last 47 years stay about the same over the next 47).
  • by birder ( 61402 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:05PM (#7434852) Homepage
    The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea.
    They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall
    mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by
    small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is
    clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you.
  • by phorm ( 591458 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:06PM (#7434857) Journal
    For all those that are "too cool" for SimCity... Microwave power was a great way to provide good-level, affordable-cost power to the citizens of your city. An array in space would power your land-bound power-station nicely, but the downside to this was that every so often it would miss the power station (oops) and fry something in your city.

    Maybe if they play Simcity for awhile, they'll realize that this invention might work much better if they do, in fact, build such a power plant with a few fire-stations nearby... but I'd imagine a real-world application would have some form of laser-alignment system that has the array blocked until it's properly aligned with the receiving station.
    • by Spamalamadingdong ( 323207 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @01:25PM (#7435571) Homepage Journal
      Maybe if they play Simcity for awhile, they'll realize that this invention might work much better if they do, in fact, build such a power plant with a few fire-stations nearby... but I'd imagine a real-world application would have some form of laser-alignment system that has the array blocked until it's properly aligned with the receiving station.
      You don't use lasers for the alignment, you use microwaves. Actually, you use microwaves of roughly the same frequency as the transmission to you, and you modulate them with a pseudo-random encrypted stream of phase changes a la Code Division Multiple Access.

      At the power transmitter, the beam from the ground is captured at many points along the array. The pseudo-random phase changes are subtracted, and the result determines the shape of the wavefront as it's arriving from the ground. This wave-front is then reversed, sending a stream of energy directly back to the transmitter which sent the alignment (actually, phase-reference) beam up to the satellite. Safety features:

      1. The system is cryptographically secured against redirecting the beam.
      2. The use of the phase-reference beam automatically compensates for variations in the refractive index of the atmosphere.
      3. If the reference beam is lost, the myriad small emitters which form the power-transmitter phased array go out of coherence and effectively transmit all over space in a half-dipole pattern.
      This addresses all of the major concerns. The real crime is that this was being written about in the late 1970's, and 20 years later people still have no clue about the groundwork. For this, I blame over-simplified games like... Sim City.
  • "That's Gojira, you moron."
  • I hope he's talking real dollars and not inflated dollars when he says the average income will go to $150,000 from $35,000...but then again, who knows?
  • From the article: The intensity of each power beam is restricted to 20%, or less, of the intensity of noontime sunlight.

    Slight chance of tan. No chance of humongous fires and scrolling death rays.

    -T

  • Practical? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cybermace5 ( 446439 ) <g.ryan@macetech.com> on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:07PM (#7434871) Homepage Journal
    Seems to me that the Moon is awfully far away for this to work.

    First of all, you'd have to get all the equipment up there. Not only is that amount of equipment extremely expensive, but putting that much equipment on the moon is mind-bogglingly expensive.

    Second, you have to get the power here. Now, it's all well and good to say "Let's just beam it with microwave" but the moon is a few hundred thousand miles away. Even a concentrated laser beam will diverge to a diameter of a mile or so over that distance; microwave will be even worse. You just diluted your power density a whole lot: is it still a higher power per unit area than simply placing your solar cells directly on Earth's surface?
    • Re:Practical? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Gaijin42 ( 317411 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @01:32PM (#7435622)
      Uh, we bounce lasers from earth to the moon, all day long, every day. They are measuring the distance to the moon, using the speed of light. It doesn't diverge any practical distance at all.

      Read here [nasa.gov]

      We are hitting a reflectr 46cm^2 thats A LOT less than a mile deviation. the 46cm is just for things like vibration, and aiming issues.

      BTW, this laster tells us the moon is drifting away from the earth, at 3.8cm per year!
  • I'm not addressing his basic idea here, but he says:
    The average annual per capita income of Developing Nations can increase from today's $2,500 to ~$20,000.


    The average American income could increase from today's ~$35,000/y-person to more than $150,000/y-person.
    But increasing everyone's salary proportionately doesn't make anyone richer. It just makes the dollar worth proportionately less.
  • by TheSHAD0W ( 258774 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:09PM (#7434892) Homepage
    Interesting... The proposals I've seen for solar power satellites require a "rectenna farm" of several square miles. This would be nice for several reasons, including a low beam intensity; if the beam strayed, it wouldn't flash-cook anything it touched. To try and erect such a large contiguous antenna array over an industrial area would be an enormous challenge. I suspect they're basing it on using a greater beam density, which could cause all sorts of problems; even assuming the beam could never go off target, there might be quite a bit of radiation around the fringes of the receiver.

    Compared to this, I think a plain ordinary nuclear reactor would be lots safer.
  • Economics (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Bastian ( 66383 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:09PM (#7434893)
    If we all make an average of $150,000 (which we probably will in 2050), will we really be any richer, or is it just going to be inflation?

    I just fail to see where that huge amount of money comes from. I know that I'm not spending enough money on electricity to jump my spendable cash from $30,000 to $150,000 should electricity become mind-bogglingly cheap or even free - my annual income is in the $20s, and I can afford to pay for electricity. What is the USA filled with rich bastards I haven't met who somehow succeed in finding wasy to jack their annual electricity bills up to $120,000 a year?
  • by avdi ( 66548 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:11PM (#7434908) Homepage
    ...is how this is superior to putting a network of power generation satellites in earth orbit. What's the benefit of taking them all the way to the moon?
  • by joelparker ( 586428 ) <joel@school.net> on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:11PM (#7434909) Homepage
    Space.com article about Criswell,
    including some commentary here [space.com]

    Excerpts:

    Not everyone is ready to hook up to Criswell's lunar power supply, however.

    "My own feeling is that he may well be right, but the idea is downstream," said Bryan Erb, president of the Sunsat Energy Council, based in Houston, Texas. The group backs a first-things-first approach, namely the building of satellite power stations in Earth orbit.

    "It takes a big investment to get back to the moon," Erb said. "I just don't see a graceful migration path to get to a lunar power system without a massive up-front investment," he said.

    Taking a wait-and-see attitude is Paul Werbos, program director for control networks and computational intelligence at the National Science Foundation. He recently co-sponsored with NASA a workshop that looked over the Criswell plan, among other space-research issues.

    Werbos said that a critical aspect of Criswell's idea is use of tele-autonomy, that is, how to coordinate human beings on Earth with on-the-job robots stationed on the moon.

    "That's the key concept in my mind in order to build any kind of large-scale space power system -- on the Earth or on the moon," he said. "How do you get robots smart enough to do their job under a kind of loose supervision arrangement?"

  • by HarveyBirdman ( 627248 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:14PM (#7434935) Journal
    Realtive to the Earth's surface, that is.

    I remember the early ideas for solar power sats way back when, and they almost always involved geosynchronous satellites so you don't have to aim at a moving target. Not as optimal as an LEO, but I believe for a focused beam most of your losses are in the atmosphere anyway, so another 20,000 miles or so of space is a good trade for the issues of aiming or relaying.

    Now in the past few years we keep seeing these wacky plans to put the arrays on the moon (very far away and down in another gravity well making servicing a really big issue, robots or not), and beam the energy around via realy satellites. It just seems so wastetful. The only advantage I can think of is that the lunar array could *maybe* be built so large that the transmission losses don't matter.

    It just seems like geosync is such a better solution, though. You could incorporate the next generation of communication satellites into the power arrays.

  • Woo (Score:5, Funny)

    by rf0 ( 159958 ) <rghf@fsck.me.uk> on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:24PM (#7435033) Homepage
    Now I can heat my food by just holding it out the window

    Rus
  • America's Moon (Score:4, Interesting)

    by handy_vandal ( 606174 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:32PM (#7435122) Homepage Journal
    Dr. Criswell predicts that with this project, "the average American income could increase from today's ~$35,000/y-person to more than $150,000/y-person."

    As an American, I'm happy to imagine my income going from "most affluent nation on the planet" to "even more affluent".

    But as a human being I have to ask: what about the rest of humanity? Do they get a share?
  • by TheVampire ( 686474 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @12:57PM (#7435342) Homepage
    And when the dead birds, bats, and butterflies ( etc. ) start piling up around the reception point, ( not to mention the random idiot in an aircraft that just happens to forget about "restricted airspace" ) what do we do then?

    Oh, and lets not forget the satellites and other spacecraft that might fly through the beam while orbiting the earth.

    TheVampire
    • Insightful? RTFA (Score:3, Informative)

      by malakai ( 136531 ) *
      I know, I know.. it's slashdot. 99% don't read the articles. But come on...

      Each terrestrial receiver can accept power directly from the Moon or indirectly, via relay satellites, when the receiver cannot view the Moon. The intensity of each power beam is restricted to 20%, or less, of the intensity of noontime sunlight. Each power beam can be safely received, for example, in an industrially zoned area.

      Even if a bird HOVERED over the area for hours it wouldn't be harmed.

      Hell, they can probably put out c

  • by retro128 ( 318602 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @01:04PM (#7435397)
    I'm already seeing several problems with this.

    First of all, the moon is not geosynchronous. Since the moon does not stay in a fixed position over the surface of Earth, how are you going to be able to have a centralized power station receive this energy? Oh you could build hundreds of them, but everyone would have to take their turn. And besides that this sounds like an "American" project. I'd love to hear about how they plan on getting power when the moon happens to be on the other side of the planet.

    Relay satellites will not work. Yes, I read the bit about the relay satellites, but that's ridiculous. They would work fine for radio, which only needs miniscule amounts of current in order to work, but if you want to generate enough electricity to power even a lightbulb, you are talking about an enormous amount of radio power. There are only two ways a radio beam can be "bent": Either you bounce it off of something, or you have a station repeat the signal. In the case of power generation, the latter will not work...How are you going to regenerate that much power in a tiny satellite? And if you could, what would be the point of having the lunar base to begin with? Using the satellite as a passive relay would cause enormous power loss.

    Besides all this, there's just too much complexity here. Every time you convert from one kind of energy to another there is always some loss involved. So what this guy's proposing is that you have a solar array on the moon, which converts sunlight to electricity at about 20% efficiency, which then converts this electricity to microwaves, which is then beamed down to earth, but never to a fixed location because the moon doesn't stay in one place relative to the surface of the earth, so then you could possibly go though relay satellites which would cause insane power loss. When the beam gets to earth, probably about 4% of its original strength, it's then converted to electricty again and might be able to power some blinky LED's, if you're lucky.

    Wouldn't it be easier just to build a massive solar array HERE ON EARTH??
    • Relay satellites will not work. Yes, I read the bit about the relay satellites, but that's ridiculous.

      The relay satellites are microwave mirrors. They just need to be steered to the correct angle to reflect the beam to the receiver. The surface of such a mirror can be 99% vacuum - a mesh with holes smaller than the wavelength.

      Wouldn't it be easier just to build a massive solar array HERE ON EARTH??

      To meet global power requirements you'll need to cover a significant portion of the Earth's surface and
  • by Twillerror ( 536681 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @01:19PM (#7435525) Homepage Journal
    Once again someone is going about feeding a huge number of consumers ( the human population ) with centralized sources. Although this is convient it does not scale.

    Why not put solar panels on everyones house. Or on the top of building and have them feed battery array.

    Or create lots of small fuel cells instead of one big coal power generator.

    Or have our new cars charge themselves and then the power grid with solar/fuel cell combos.

    Microwaves power is such a cool, but stupid idea. Kind of line nuclear power. Lets create a really expensive solution that leave nuclear waste for our kids to deal with, great....think outside the box people.

  • by Lonath ( 249354 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @01:47PM (#7435755)
    [starwars.com]
    Been tried before. Probably still not a good idea.
  • We're doing it! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by wildmage ( 163526 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @02:46PM (#7436268) Homepage
    My research lab is working on a project to do just this. We're developing a system to assemble structures in space using an array of distributed self-reconfigurable robots. You can view the project at this website: SOLAR [isi.edu]
  • by xxTYBALTxx ( 721636 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @02:53PM (#7436341)
    look, the actual -numbers- don't matter in this debate. what the dipshit scientist probably meant was that people would make 'the equivilant' of 150k/year. what does that mean? it means that a person working in a typical wage paying job would be able to buy nicer washing machines, a nicer computer, a new car more often (or a nicer car just as often as before, or a really nice car less often than before). you could get nicer silverware. maybe nicer warm clothes. maybe McDonald's would become a more luxurious restaurant - the equivilant of your local 'nice' burger place, while your local burger place becomes just that much better. the country clubs could use kobe beef in their burgers. just look at the past and your questions will be answered. throughout the past century, we had some of the largest innovations in the history of man. at the beginning of the century, people lived in slummy apartments or on rotting farms (we're talking in the US here, btw). by mid-century, people all had their own car and lived in their own little houses or bigger/nicer apartments (i am talking about changes in the middle class, of course). it was as if every class got "bumped up" a notch. poor people (at or below $20k) now buy cars. you must realize that 100 years ago, even 70 years ago, that was inconcievable - for the poorest class of full-time workers to afford their own car. what the doctor in this article is referring to are changes in people's consumption abilities; being able to buy nicer things. he does not mean that everyone will suddenly be freed of their wage-slave lives, only that they will be able to buy more cool stuff with that money. for the cost of a 1950's record player, telephone, and big TV set (or what passed for a big TV set in those days), we get a cheap computer, color tv, CD player, and cell phone. people used to put fans and wood-burning stoves in their houses, now we have air conditioning and electric heating (and, of course, the wood-burning stoves are still pretty nice).
  • by Ugmo ( 36922 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @03:37PM (#7436756)
    In reading the original article, the Space.com article and some of the other posts I have seen some people say that we should use Orbital Power satellites instead of Moon based ones.

    I would agree, but as we see in the ISS, it is very expensive to build such massive projects. The Space.com article mentions that the Moon based project could be built in stages and in pieces.

    This gave me an idea. What if small orbital power satellites were built. I mean small, less than a square foot in area. The solar array on them would be hexagonal and they would be designed to plug into other copies on either side.

    Then, everytime anyone launches anything you stick a couple of these in any free space in the launch module. NASA launches would require you to add one to each launch as a cost of doing business or in return for a tax break or other incentive.

    Each unit would have a small booster on them and they would fly slowly up to a predefined location and hook up with their brothers into a larger array, maybe built around a prelaunched rectenna unit. Maybe the booster would be an ion rocket powered by the solar array. If you are patient you would only need to get them to LEO.

    If the Xbox prize guys come through they could go into a side business of launching these units also, maybe get a % of any money generated by selling the resulting electricity.

    The big advantage is that if any unit fails or gets blown up during launch you're not out a lot of money. If they are mass produced and optimized they should be cheaper than one large station and maybe more than one company could make them.

    Slowly, eventually a huge array would be built.
  • by renoX ( 11677 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @06:25PM (#7438760)
    I think that all these proposal to increase the amount of energy avoid a potential problem: the corresponding increase of heat generated..

    Eventually all this energy will turn into heat, so it is quite possible that this will eventually raise earth's temperature..
    I think that it may be wiser to increase the efficiency usage of energy than to increase the amount of energy used, well unless of course we need to warm up the earth..

If I want your opinion, I'll ask you to fill out the necessary form.

Working...