Imagine 60 square km arrays filled with tiny and
independent solar cells flying in formation like drones
do today beaming unlimited and clean energy
to any place on Earth?

About ten years ago I used to push hard and long
for Space Solar Power for a couple of years
in the various NASA and space ngs without any
success. It was an idea that wasn't ready.

But I think things have changed. Once a business
plan can show a profit in space then blank-check
financing can be obtained, regardless of how expensive.
Such a business plan, if it also requires large
numbers of people in space, could dramatically
expand manned space flight. Much as the satellite
industry filled the skies with their product once
a profit could be demonstrated.

A few potential benefits of SSP.

First it's of course green energy. And power plants
on Earth are generally massive projects that require
equally massive infrastructure such as railroads and
so on. Such large projects typically require nearby
large population centers to justify them. Remote or
thinly populated areas are often left out and
rural growth significantly limited as a result.

But SSP can beam energy to almost anywhere regardless
of how remote, or how small the population. And as
a supplier of energy for such remote areas SSP can
charge more than terrestrial energy. In addition SSP
can supply power to conventional power plants to
supplement their systems during high demand, allowing SSP
to charge far more than normal prices for that as well.

So SSP doesn't have to directly complete with terrestrial
sources with pricing at first. And as SSP supply increases
cost will come down over time. In addition SSP can provide
solar energy 24/7 as opposed to ground based solar or wind
which can't. It perhaps the best of all SSP solves the
seemingly intractable storage problem as well.

Some concepts have even toyed with the idea of powering cars
directly from space someday.

Clean and unlimited energy, anywhere, anytime.

Jeff Bezos says Blue Origin will go to the Moon to save the Earth

Bezos framed the mission as a way to save the Earth, which he
called our “best planet.” Though stressing the need to address
near-term problems like poverty and pollution, Bezos argued
that in the long-term the Earth is in danger of running
out of energy, an idea he has discussed before.

In his speech, Bezos painted a picture of a “bad path” for Earth,
of energy rationing and falling prosperity. But if humanity
moves into the solar system, he said, there could be nearly
unlimited energy from solar power. “This is an easy choice.
We know what we want, we just have to get busy.”

https://qz.com/1615871/jeff-bezos-says-blue-origin-will-go-to-the-moon-to-save-the-earth/

Space-based power stations are turning from an idle dream
into a serious engineering prospect, as scientists hope
they can take renewable energy into orbit.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201126-the-solar-discs-that-could-beam-power-from-space

Solar Power from Space? Caltech’s $100 Million Gambit
Billionaire makes secret donation for electricity
from orbit

NED POTTER 11 AUG 2021

In 1941 Isaac Asimov, the science fiction writer, published a short
story called "Reason." It was a cautionary tale about robotics and
artificial intelligence, but it's also remembered now for its fanciful
setting: A space station that gathered solar energy to send to the
planets via microwave. Ever since, space-based solar power has been an
out-there idea—something with potential to change the world, if we can
ever master the technology, and muster the funds, to do it.

Donald Bren has done his share of reading about solar power, and since
he is one of America's wealthiest real estate developers, he's in a
position to help muster the funds. The California Institute of
Technology has just announced that, since 2013, Bren and his wife
Brigitte have given the school more than US $100 million to help make
photovoltaic power from orbit a reality.

That's a lot of money, and, importantly, the work has been spread out
over a decade. A team at Caltech is aiming for the first launch of a
test array in late 2022 or 2023.

"This is something that's pretty daring," says Ali Hajimiri, a professor
of electrical engineering and a co-director of Caltech's Space Solar
Power Project. The long timeline, he says, "allows you take chances, and
take risks. Sometimes they pay off and sometimes they don't, but when
you do that, in an educated, controlled fashion, you end up with things
that you never expected."

Bren, 89, made most of his fortune—estimated between $15.3 billion and
$16.1 billion—building offices and homes in Orange County, California.
He is majority owner of New York City's iconic MetLife Building. He's
also donated land and money for environmental conservation. He gives few
interviews (he declined to speak for this story), and while Caltech's
Space Solar Power Project has been public, Bren's support of it was a
secret until now.

High Earth orbit is a great place for a solar farm—the sun never sets
and clouds never form. But to generate a meaningful amount of
electricity, most past designs were unrealistically, and unaffordably,
massive. Engineers depicted giant truss structures, usually measured in
kilometers or miles, to which photovoltaic panels or mirrors were
attached, absorbing or concentrating sunlight to convert to direct
current, then transmit it to the ground via laser or microwave beams.
Hundreds of rocket launches might be needed to build a single
installation. It was technology too big to succeed.

"What was really required to make this compelling was to have a paradigm
shift in the technology," says Harry Atwater, the Howard Hughes
Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science at Caltech and a
leader of the project. "Instead of weighing a kilogram per square meter,
we're talking about systems we can make today in the range of 100 to 200
grams per square meter, and we have a roadmap for getting down to the
range of 10 to 20 grams per square meter."

How? Through no single step, but perhaps the biggest change in thinking
has been to make solar arrays that are modular. Lightweight
gallium-arsenide photovoltaic cells would be attached to "tiles"—the
fundamental unit of the Caltech design, each of which might be as small
as 100 square centimeters, the size of a dessert plate.

Each tile—and this is key—would be its own miniature solar station,
complete with photovoltaics, tiny electronic components, and a microwave
transmitter. Tiles would be linked together to form larger "modules" of,
say, 60 square meters, and thousands of modules would form a hexagonal
power station, perhaps 3 km long on a side. But the modules would not
even be physically connected. No heavy support beams, no bundled cables,
much less mass.

"You can think of this as like a school of fish," says Atwater. "It's a
bunch of identical independent elements flying in formation."

Transmission to receivers on the ground would be by phased
array—microwave signals from the tiles synchronized so that they can be
aimed with no moving parts. Atwater says it would be inherently safe:
microwave energy is not ionizing radiation, and the energy density would
be "equal to the power density in sunlight."

Space solar power is probably still years away. Analysts at the
Aerospace Corporation's Center for Space Policy and Strategy caution
that it "will not be a quick, easy, or comprehensive solution." But
there is ferment around the world. JAXA, Japan's space agency, is hard
at work, as is China's. Launch costs are coming down and new spacecraft
are going up, from internet satellites to NASA's moon-to-Mars effort.
The Aerospace Corp. analysts say terrestrial power grids may not be the
first users of solar power satellites. Instead, they say, think of…other
space vehicles, for which a microwave beam from an orbiting solar farm
may be more practical than having their own solar panels.

"Is there a need for a lot of additional work? Yes," says Hajimiri. But
"some of the ingredients that were major showstoppers before, we are
moving in the direction of addressing them."

All of this has the Caltech engineers excited. "It's important for us to
be willing to take chances," Hajimiri continues, "and move forward with
challenging problems that, if successful, would work toward the
betterment of our lives."
https://spectrum.ieee.org/solar-power-from-space-caltechs-100-million-gambit

--
BIG LIE From Wiki - "The German expression was coined by Adolf Hitler
when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, to describe the use of a lie
so *colossal* that no one would believe that someone "could have the
impudence to distort the truth so infamously."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie

I remember The High Frontier by Gerard K. O'Neill. In it, he noted that
solar power from space was perhaps the only possible economic
justification for the early stages of building L5 space colonies of the
type he described.

That is definitely true, but I also tended to suspect that solar power
stations would only become a real possibility once the technology got
to the point where they could be economically launched from Earth,
making L5 colonies unnecessary.

The Artemis project, opening up regular access to the Moon, might
get us out of that predicament, and both make the solar power satellite
a reality sooner, and lead to it contributing further to the development of
space. This would be a good thing - and, indeed, energy rationing could
well lead us down a "bad path" which might ultimately end technological
progress.

John Savard

On 10/3/2021 6:13 PM, Jonathan wrote:
>
> Imagine 60 square km arrays filled with tiny and
> independent solar cells flying in formation like drones
> do today beaming unlimited and clean energy
> to any place on Earth?
>
> About ten years ago I used to push hard and long
> for Space Solar Power for a couple of years
> in the various NASA and space ngs without any
> success. It was an idea that wasn't ready.
>
> But I think things have changed. Once a business
> plan can show a profit in space then blank-check
> financing can be obtained, regardless of how expensive.
> Such a business plan, if it also requires large
> numbers of people in space, could dramatically
> expand manned space flight. Much as the satellite
> industry filled the skies with their product once
> a profit could be demonstrated.
>
> A few potential benefits of SSP.
>
> First it's of course green energy. And power plants
> on Earth are generally massive projects that require
> equally massive infrastructure such as railroads and
> so on. Such large projects typically require nearby
> large population centers to justify them. Remote or
> thinly populated areas are often left out and
> rural growth significantly limited as a result.
>
> But SSP can beam energy to almost anywhere regardless
> of how remote, or how small the population. And as
> a supplier of energy for such remote areas SSP can
> charge more than terrestrial energy. In addition SSP
> can supply power to conventional power plants to
> supplement their systems during high demand, allowing SSP
> to charge far more than normal prices for that as well.
>
> So SSP doesn't have to directly complete with terrestrial
> sources with pricing at first. And as SSP supply increases
> cost will come down over time. In addition SSP can provide
> solar energy 24/7 as opposed to ground based solar or wind
> which can't. It perhaps the best of all SSP solves the
> seemingly intractable storage problem as well.
>
> Some concepts have even toyed with the idea of powering cars
> directly from space someday.
>
> Clean and unlimited energy, anywhere, anytime.
>
>
> Jeff Bezos says Blue Origin will go to the Moon to save the Earth
>
> Bezos framed the mission as a way to save the Earth, which he
> called our “best planet.” Though stressing the need to address
> near-term problems like poverty and pollution, Bezos argued
> that in the long-term the Earth is in danger of running
> out of energy, an idea he has discussed before.
>
> In his speech, Bezos painted a picture of a “bad path” for Earth,
> of energy rationing and falling prosperity. But if humanity
> moves into the solar system, he said, there could be nearly
> unlimited energy from solar power. “This is an easy choice.
> We know what we want, we just have to get busy.”
>
> https://qz.com/1615871/jeff-bezos-says-blue-origin-will-go-to-the-moon-to-save-the-earth/
>
>
>
> Space-based power stations are turning from an idle dream
> into a serious engineering prospect, as scientists hope
> they can take renewable energy into orbit.
> https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201126-the-solar-discs-that-could-beam-power-from-space
>
>
>
> Solar Power from Space? Caltech’s $100 Million Gambit
> Billionaire makes secret donation for electricity
> from orbit
>
> NED POTTER 11 AUG 2021
>
>
> In 1941 Isaac Asimov, the science fiction writer, published a short
> story called "Reason." It was a cautionary tale about robotics and
> artificial intelligence, but it's also remembered now for its fanciful
> setting: A space station that gathered solar energy to send to the
> planets via microwave. Ever since, space-based solar power has been an
> out-there idea—something with potential to change the world, if we can
> ever master the technology, and muster the funds, to do it.
>
> Donald Bren has done his share of reading about solar power, and since
> he is one of America's wealthiest real estate developers, he's in a
> position to help muster the funds. The California Institute of
> Technology has just announced that, since 2013, Bren and his wife
> Brigitte have given the school more than US $100 million to help make
> photovoltaic power from orbit a reality.
>
> That's a lot of money, and, importantly, the work has been spread out
> over a decade. A team at Caltech is aiming for the first launch of a
> test array in late 2022 or 2023.
>
> "This is something that's pretty daring," says Ali Hajimiri, a professor
> of electrical engineering and a co-director of Caltech's Space Solar
> Power Project. The long timeline, he says, "allows you take chances, and
> take risks. Sometimes they pay off and sometimes they don't, but when
> you do that, in an educated, controlled fashion, you end up with things
> that you never expected."
>
> Bren, 89, made most of his fortune—estimated between $15.3 billion and
> $16.1 billion—building offices and homes in Orange County, California.
> He is majority owner of New York City's iconic MetLife Building. He's
> also donated land and money for environmental conservation. He gives few
> interviews (he declined to speak for this story), and while Caltech's
> Space Solar Power Project has been public, Bren's support of it was a
> secret until now.
>
> High Earth orbit is a great place for a solar farm—the sun never sets
> and clouds never form. But to generate a meaningful amount of
> electricity, most past designs were unrealistically, and unaffordably,
> massive. Engineers depicted giant truss structures, usually measured in
> kilometers or miles, to which photovoltaic panels or mirrors were
> attached, absorbing or concentrating sunlight to convert to direct
> current, then transmit it to the ground via laser or microwave beams.
> Hundreds of rocket launches might be needed to build a single
> installation. It was technology too big to succeed.
>
> "What was really required to make this compelling was to have a paradigm
> shift in the technology," says Harry Atwater, the Howard Hughes
> Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science at Caltech and a
> leader of the project. "Instead of weighing a kilogram per square meter,
> we're talking about systems we can make today in the range of 100 to 200
> grams per square meter, and we have a roadmap for getting down to the
> range of 10 to 20 grams per square meter."
>
> How? Through no single step, but perhaps the biggest change in thinking
> has been to make solar arrays that are modular. Lightweight
> gallium-arsenide photovoltaic cells would be attached to "tiles"—the
> fundamental unit of the Caltech design, each of which might be as small
> as 100 square centimeters, the size of a dessert plate.
>
> Each tile—and this is key—would be its own miniature solar station,
> complete with photovoltaics, tiny electronic components, and a microwave
> transmitter. Tiles would be linked together to form larger "modules" of,
> say, 60 square meters, and thousands of modules would form a hexagonal
> power station, perhaps 3 km long on a side. But the modules would not
> even be physically connected. No heavy support beams, no bundled cables,
> much less mass.
>
> "You can think of this as like a school of fish," says Atwater. "It's a
> bunch of identical independent elements flying in formation."
>
> Transmission to receivers on the ground would be by phased
> array—microwave signals from the tiles synchronized so that they can be
> aimed with no moving parts. Atwater says it would be inherently safe:
> microwave energy is not ionizing radiation, and the energy density would
> be "equal to the power density in sunlight."
>
> Space solar power is probably still years away. Analysts at the
> Aerospace Corporation's Center for Space Policy and Strategy caution
> that it "will not be a quick, easy, or comprehensive solution." But
> there is ferment around the world. JAXA, Japan's space agency, is hard
> at work, as is China's. Launch costs are coming down and new spacecraft
> are going up, from internet satellites to NASA's moon-to-Mars effort.
> The Aerospace Corp. analysts say terrestrial power grids may not be the
> first users of solar power satellites. Instead, they say, think of…other
> space vehicles, for which a microwave beam from an orbiting solar farm
> may be more practical than having their own solar panels.
>
>
> "Is there a need for a lot of additional work? Yes," says Hajimiri. But
> "some of the ingredients that were major showstoppers before, we are
> moving in the direction of addressing them."
>
> All of this has the Caltech engineers excited. "It's important for us to
> be willing to take chances," Hajimiri continues, "and move forward with
> challenging problems that, if successful, would work toward the
> betterment of our lives."
> https://spectrum.ieee.org/solar-power-from-space-caltechs-100-million-gambit

On 10/3/2021 6:13 PM, Jonathan wrote:
>
> Imagine 60 square km arrays filled with tiny and
> independent solar cells flying in formation like drones
> do today beaming unlimited and clean energy
> to any place on Earth?
>
> About ten years ago I used to push hard and long
> for Space Solar Power for a couple of years
> in the various NASA and space ngs without any
> success. It was an idea that wasn't ready.
>
> But I think things have changed. Once a business
> plan can show a profit in space then blank-check
> financing can be obtained, regardless of how expensive.
> Such a business plan, if it also requires large
> numbers of people in space, could dramatically
> expand manned space flight. Much as the satellite
> industry filled the skies with their product once
> a profit could be demonstrated.
>
> A few potential benefits of SSP.
>
> First it's of course green energy. And power plants
> on Earth are generally massive projects that require
> equally massive infrastructure such as railroads and
> so on. Such large projects typically require nearby
> large population centers to justify them. Remote or
> thinly populated areas are often left out and
> rural growth significantly limited as a result.
>
> But SSP can beam energy to almost anywhere regardless
> of how remote, or how small the population. And as
> a supplier of energy for such remote areas SSP can
> charge more than terrestrial energy. In addition SSP
> can supply power to conventional power plants to
> supplement their systems during high demand, allowing SSP
> to charge far more than normal prices for that as well.
>
> So SSP doesn't have to directly complete with terrestrial
> sources with pricing at first. And as SSP supply increases
> cost will come down over time. In addition SSP can provide
> solar energy 24/7 as opposed to ground based solar or wind
> which can't. It perhaps the best of all SSP solves the
> seemingly intractable storage problem as well.
>
> Some concepts have even toyed with the idea of powering cars
> directly from space someday.
>
> Clean and unlimited energy, anywhere, anytime.
>
>
> Jeff Bezos says Blue Origin will go to the Moon to save the Earth
>
> Bezos framed the mission as a way to save the Earth, which he
> called our “best planet.” Though stressing the need to address
> near-term problems like poverty and pollution, Bezos argued
> that in the long-term the Earth is in danger of running
> out of energy, an idea he has discussed before.
>
> In his speech, Bezos painted a picture of a “bad path” for Earth,
> of energy rationing and falling prosperity. But if humanity
> moves into the solar system, he said, there could be nearly
> unlimited energy from solar power. “This is an easy choice.
> We know what we want, we just have to get busy.”
>
> https://qz.com/1615871/jeff-bezos-says-blue-origin-will-go-to-the-moon-to-save-the-earth/
>
>
>
> Space-based power stations are turning from an idle dream
> into a serious engineering prospect, as scientists hope
> they can take renewable energy into orbit.
> https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201126-the-solar-discs-that-could-beam-power-from-space
>
>
>
> Solar Power from Space? Caltech’s $100 Million Gambit
> Billionaire makes secret donation for electricity
> from orbit
>
> NED POTTER 11 AUG 2021
>
>
> In 1941 Isaac Asimov, the science fiction writer, published a short
> story called "Reason." It was a cautionary tale about robotics and
> artificial intelligence, but it's also remembered now for its fanciful
> setting: A space station that gathered solar energy to send to the
> planets via microwave. Ever since, space-based solar power has been an
> out-there idea—something with potential to change the world, if we can
> ever master the technology, and muster the funds, to do it.
>
> Donald Bren has done his share of reading about solar power, and since
> he is one of America's wealthiest real estate developers, he's in a
> position to help muster the funds. The California Institute of
> Technology has just announced that, since 2013, Bren and his wife
> Brigitte have given the school more than US $100 million to help make
> photovoltaic power from orbit a reality.
>
> That's a lot of money, and, importantly, the work has been spread out
> over a decade. A team at Caltech is aiming for the first launch of a
> test array in late 2022 or 2023.
>
> "This is something that's pretty daring," says Ali Hajimiri, a professor
> of electrical engineering and a co-director of Caltech's Space Solar
> Power Project. The long timeline, he says, "allows you take chances, and
> take risks. Sometimes they pay off and sometimes they don't, but when
> you do that, in an educated, controlled fashion, you end up with things
> that you never expected."
>
> Bren, 89, made most of his fortune—estimated between $15.3 billion and
> $16.1 billion—building offices and homes in Orange County, California.
> He is majority owner of New York City's iconic MetLife Building. He's
> also donated land and money for environmental conservation. He gives few
> interviews (he declined to speak for this story), and while Caltech's
> Space Solar Power Project has been public, Bren's support of it was a
> secret until now.
>
> High Earth orbit is a great place for a solar farm—the sun never sets
> and clouds never form. But to generate a meaningful amount of
> electricity, most past designs were unrealistically, and unaffordably,
> massive. Engineers depicted giant truss structures, usually measured in
> kilometers or miles, to which photovoltaic panels or mirrors were
> attached, absorbing or concentrating sunlight to convert to direct
> current, then transmit it to the ground via laser or microwave beams.
> Hundreds of rocket launches might be needed to build a single
> installation. It was technology too big to succeed.
>
> "What was really required to make this compelling was to have a paradigm
> shift in the technology," says Harry Atwater, the Howard Hughes
> Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science at Caltech and a
> leader of the project. "Instead of weighing a kilogram per square meter,
> we're talking about systems we can make today in the range of 100 to 200
> grams per square meter, and we have a roadmap for getting down to the
> range of 10 to 20 grams per square meter."
>
> How? Through no single step, but perhaps the biggest change in thinking
> has been to make solar arrays that are modular. Lightweight
> gallium-arsenide photovoltaic cells would be attached to "tiles"—the
> fundamental unit of the Caltech design, each of which might be as small
> as 100 square centimeters, the size of a dessert plate.
>
> Each tile—and this is key—would be its own miniature solar station,
> complete with photovoltaics, tiny electronic components, and a microwave
> transmitter. Tiles would be linked together to form larger "modules" of,
> say, 60 square meters, and thousands of modules would form a hexagonal
> power station, perhaps 3 km long on a side. But the modules would not
> even be physically connected. No heavy support beams, no bundled cables,
> much less mass.
>
> "You can think of this as like a school of fish," says Atwater. "It's a
> bunch of identical independent elements flying in formation."
>
> Transmission to receivers on the ground would be by phased
> array—microwave signals from the tiles synchronized so that they can be
> aimed with no moving parts. Atwater says it would be inherently safe:
> microwave energy is not ionizing radiation, and the energy density would
> be "equal to the power density in sunlight."
>
> Space solar power is probably still years away. Analysts at the
> Aerospace Corporation's Center for Space Policy and Strategy caution
> that it "will not be a quick, easy, or comprehensive solution." But
> there is ferment around the world. JAXA, Japan's space agency, is hard
> at work, as is China's. Launch costs are coming down and new spacecraft
> are going up, from internet satellites to NASA's moon-to-Mars effort.
> The Aerospace Corp. analysts say terrestrial power grids may not be the
> first users of solar power satellites. Instead, they say, think of…other
> space vehicles, for which a microwave beam from an orbiting solar farm
> may be more practical than having their own solar panels.
>
>
> "Is there a need for a lot of additional work? Yes," says Hajimiri. But
> "some of the ingredients that were major showstoppers before, we are
> moving in the direction of addressing them."
>
> All of this has the Caltech engineers excited. "It's important for us to
> be willing to take chances," Hajimiri continues, "and move forward with
> challenging problems that, if successful, would work toward the
> betterment of our lives."
> https://spectrum.ieee.org/solar-power-from-space-caltechs-100-million-gambit
>
>
One problem with a lot of what you say is how to get it to
precisely where it is needed. Transmission to the ground will require
an extremely narrow, high intensity beam of RF energy. That would
be almost as good as a high power laser if it wandered off of the
receiver. As Lynn said, a miss could fry where it did hit.

On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 1:00:57 AM UTC-4, Quadibloc wrote:
> I remember The High Frontier by Gerard K. O'Neill. In it, he noted that
> solar power from space was perhaps the only possible economic
> justification for the early stages of building L5 space colonies of the
> type he described.

That was 45 years ago. Things have changed.

1. SpaceX looks likely to drop the cost of getting stuff to space by
an order of magnitude or two.

2. PVE panels have crashed in price. in 1977, you paid about $77/watt.
Now its around 0.70/watt, a hundred fold less.

3. The efficiency has also increased, but more modestly, 15% to about 28%

We'll need to to run the spreadsheets again. I'd be surprised if orbital
solar arrays are more cost-effective than ground based solar, even with the
increased amount of arrays needed.

pt

On 10/4/2021 8:56 AM, Bill Gill wrote:
> On 10/3/2021 6:13 PM, Jonathan wrote:
>>
>> Imagine 60 square km arrays filled with tiny and
>> independent solar cells flying in formation like drones
>> do today beaming unlimited and clean energy
>> to any place on Earth?
>>
>> About ten years ago I used to push hard and long
>> for Space Solar Power for a couple of years
>> in the various NASA and space ngs without any
>> success. It was an idea that wasn't ready.
>>
>> But I think things have changed. Once a business
>> plan can show a profit in space then blank-check
>> financing can be obtained, regardless of how expensive.
>> Such a business plan, if it also requires large
>> numbers of people in space, could dramatically
>> expand manned space flight. Much as the satellite
>> industry filled the skies with their product once
>> a profit could be demonstrated.
>>
>> A few potential benefits of SSP.
>>
>> First it's of course green energy. And power plants
>> on Earth are generally massive projects that require
>> equally massive infrastructure such as railroads and
>> so on. Such large projects typically require nearby
>> large population centers to justify them. Remote or
>> thinly populated areas are often left out and
>> rural growth significantly limited as a result.
>>
>> But SSP can beam energy to almost anywhere regardless
>> of how remote, or how small the population. And as
>> a supplier of energy for such remote areas SSP can
>> charge more than terrestrial energy. In addition SSP
>> can supply power to conventional power plants to
>> supplement their systems during high demand, allowing SSP
>> to charge far more than normal prices for that as well.
>>
>> So SSP doesn't have to directly complete with terrestrial
>> sources with pricing at first. And as SSP supply increases
>> cost will come down over time. In addition SSP can provide
>> solar energy 24/7 as opposed to ground based solar or wind
>> which can't. It perhaps the best of all SSP solves the
>> seemingly intractable storage problem as well.
>>
>> Some concepts have even toyed with the idea of powering cars
>> directly from space someday.
>>
>> Clean and unlimited energy, anywhere, anytime.
>>
>>
>> Jeff Bezos says Blue Origin will go to the Moon to save the Earth
>>
>> Bezos framed the mission as a way to save the Earth, which he
>> called our “best planet.” Though stressing the need to address
>> near-term problems like poverty and pollution, Bezos argued
>> that in the long-term the Earth is in danger of running
>> out of energy, an idea he has discussed before.
>>
>> In his speech, Bezos painted a picture of a “bad path” for Earth,
>> of energy rationing and falling prosperity. But if humanity
>> moves into the solar system, he said, there could be nearly
>> unlimited energy from solar power. “This is an easy choice.
>> We know what we want, we just have to get busy.”
>>
>> https://qz.com/1615871/jeff-bezos-says-blue-origin-will-go-to-the-moon-to-save-the-earth/
>>
>>
>>
>> Space-based power stations are turning from an idle dream
>> into a serious engineering prospect, as scientists hope
>> they can take renewable energy into orbit.
>> https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201126-the-solar-discs-that-could-beam-power-from-space
>>
>>
>>
>> Solar Power from Space? Caltech’s $100 Million Gambit
>> Billionaire makes secret donation for electricity
>> from orbit
>>
>> NED POTTER 11 AUG 2021
>>
>>
>> In 1941 Isaac Asimov, the science fiction writer, published a short
>> story called "Reason." It was a cautionary tale about robotics and
>> artificial intelligence, but it's also remembered now for its fanciful
>> setting: A space station that gathered solar energy to send to the
>> planets via microwave. Ever since, space-based solar power has been an
>> out-there idea—something with potential to change the world, if we can
>> ever master the technology, and muster the funds, to do it.
>>
>> Donald Bren has done his share of reading about solar power, and since
>> he is one of America's wealthiest real estate developers, he's in a
>> position to help muster the funds. The California Institute of
>> Technology has just announced that, since 2013, Bren and his wife
>> Brigitte have given the school more than US $100 million to help make
>> photovoltaic power from orbit a reality.
>>
>> That's a lot of money, and, importantly, the work has been spread out
>> over a decade. A team at Caltech is aiming for the first launch of a
>> test array in late 2022 or 2023.
>>
>> "This is something that's pretty daring," says Ali Hajimiri, a
>> professor of electrical engineering and a co-director of Caltech's
>> Space Solar Power Project. The long timeline, he says, "allows you
>> take chances, and take risks. Sometimes they pay off and sometimes
>> they don't, but when you do that, in an educated, controlled fashion,
>> you end up with things that you never expected."
>>
>> Bren, 89, made most of his fortune—estimated between $15.3 billion and
>> $16.1 billion—building offices and homes in Orange County, California.
>> He is majority owner of New York City's iconic MetLife Building. He's
>> also donated land and money for environmental conservation. He gives
>> few interviews (he declined to speak for this story), and while
>> Caltech's Space Solar Power Project has been public, Bren's support of
>> it was a secret until now.
>>
>> High Earth orbit is a great place for a solar farm—the sun never sets
>> and clouds never form. But to generate a meaningful amount of
>> electricity, most past designs were unrealistically, and unaffordably,
>> massive. Engineers depicted giant truss structures, usually measured
>> in kilometers or miles, to which photovoltaic panels or mirrors were
>> attached, absorbing or concentrating sunlight to convert to direct
>> current, then transmit it to the ground via laser or microwave beams.
>> Hundreds of rocket launches might be needed to build a single
>> installation. It was technology too big to succeed.
>>
>> "What was really required to make this compelling was to have a
>> paradigm shift in the technology," says Harry Atwater, the Howard
>> Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science at Caltech
>> and a leader of the project. "Instead of weighing a kilogram per
>> square meter, we're talking about systems we can make today in the
>> range of 100 to 200 grams per square meter, and we have a roadmap for
>> getting down to the range of 10 to 20 grams per square meter."
>>
>> How? Through no single step, but perhaps the biggest change in
>> thinking has been to make solar arrays that are modular. Lightweight
>> gallium-arsenide photovoltaic cells would be attached to "tiles"—the
>> fundamental unit of the Caltech design, each of which might be as
>> small as 100 square centimeters, the size of a dessert plate.
>>
>> Each tile—and this is key—would be its own miniature solar station,
>> complete with photovoltaics, tiny electronic components, and a
>> microwave transmitter. Tiles would be linked together to form larger
>> "modules" of, say, 60 square meters, and thousands of modules would
>> form a hexagonal power station, perhaps 3 km long on a side. But the
>> modules would not even be physically connected. No heavy support
>> beams, no bundled cables, much less mass.
>>
>> "You can think of this as like a school of fish," says Atwater. "It's
>> a bunch of identical independent elements flying in formation."
>>
>> Transmission to receivers on the ground would be by phased
>> array—microwave signals from the tiles synchronized so that they can
>> be aimed with no moving parts. Atwater says it would be inherently
>> safe: microwave energy is not ionizing radiation, and the energy
>> density would be "equal to the power density in sunlight."
>>
>> Space solar power is probably still years away. Analysts at the
>> Aerospace Corporation's Center for Space Policy and Strategy caution
>> that it "will not be a quick, easy, or comprehensive solution." But
>> there is ferment around the world. JAXA, Japan's space agency, is hard
>> at work, as is China's. Launch costs are coming down and new
>> spacecraft are going up, from internet satellites to NASA's
>> moon-to-Mars effort. The Aerospace Corp. analysts say terrestrial
>> power grids may not be the first users of solar power satellites.
>> Instead, they say, think of…other space vehicles, for which a
>> microwave beam from an orbiting solar farm may be more practical than
>> having their own solar panels.
>>
>>
>> "Is there a need for a lot of additional work? Yes," says Hajimiri.
>> But "some of the ingredients that were major showstoppers before, we
>> are moving in the direction of addressing them."
>>
>> All of this has the Caltech engineers excited. "It's important for us
>> to be willing to take chances," Hajimiri continues, "and move forward
>> with challenging problems that, if successful, would work toward the
>> betterment of our lives."
>> https://spectrum.ieee.org/solar-power-from-space-caltechs-100-million-gambit
>>
>>
> One problem with a lot of what you say is how to get it to
> precisely where it is needed.  Transmission to the ground will require
> an extremely narrow, high intensity beam of RF energy.  That would
> be almost as good as a high power laser if it wandered off of the
> receiver.  As Lynn said, a miss could fry where it did hit.
>
> I recall some science fiction story where there was a tug on the
> transmitter that caused the beam to wander and cause a lot of
> destruction.
>

On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 11:41:33 AM UTC-4, Jonathan wrote:
> On 10/4/2021 8:56 AM, Bill Gill wrote:
> > On 10/3/2021 6:13 PM, Jonathan wrote:
> >>
>
> > One problem with a lot of what you say is how to get it to
> > precisely where it is needed. Transmission to the ground will require
> > an extremely narrow, high intensity beam of RF energy. That would
> > be almost as good as a high power laser if it wandered off of the
> > receiver. As Lynn said, a miss could fry where it did hit.
> >
> > I recall some science fiction story where there was a tug on the
> > transmitter that caused the beam to wander and cause a lot of
> > destruction.
> >
> An airplane could fly through the microwave beam and not notice.
> It has to be designed to be safe.

There's safe in normal use, and safe in the hands of a malicious
operator. They are different.

How would Taiwan, for example, react to Chicom Gigawatt
Masers passing overhead, which *could* be focused down to
a small area? How would the US, for that matter?

'Jewish Space Lasers' may be the fever dream of a braindead GOP legislator,
but this comes close.

Pt

On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 2:58:45 PM UTC+1, pete...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 1:00:57 AM UTC-4, Quadibloc wrote:
> > I remember The High Frontier by Gerard K. O'Neill. In it, he noted that
> > solar power from space was perhaps the only possible economic
> > justification for the early stages of building L5 space colonies of the
> > type he described.
> That was 45 years ago. Things have changed.
>
> 1. SpaceX looks likely to drop the cost of getting stuff to space by
> an order of magnitude or two.
>
> 2. PVE panels have crashed in price. in 1977, you paid about $77/watt.
> Now its around 0.70/watt, a hundred fold less.
>
> 3. The efficiency has also increased, but more modestly, 15% to about 28%
>
> We'll need to to run the spreadsheets again. I'd be surprised if orbital
> solar arrays are more cost-effective than ground based solar, even with the
> increased amount of arrays needed.
>
> pt
For countries that are not also continents, there may be other advantages. From memory, in MacKay's "sustainable energy without the hot air" he reckons that Europe (not having a desert of its own) needs either a connection to huge solar farms in the Sahara or nuclear power to make the sums balance. The catch with huge solar farms in the Sahara is that there is no such thing as a strategic solar energy stockpile, so you need to trust the Sahara not to pull the plug. In fact, during the second most recent UK-France argument the French threatened to pull the plug on the French-UK electricity interconnector, so this is by no means an academic question most of the time (it is more academic at the moment, because just after the most recent UK-France argument it caught fire and capacity will be reduced for a while - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-58570893)

pete...@gmail.com <petertrei@gmail.com> schrieb:
> On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 1:00:57 AM UTC-4, Quadibloc wrote:
>> I remember The High Frontier by Gerard K. O'Neill. In it, he noted that
>> solar power from space was perhaps the only possible economic
>> justification for the early stages of building L5 space colonies of the
>> type he described.
>
> That was 45 years ago. Things have changed.
>
> 1. SpaceX looks likely to drop the cost of getting stuff to space by
> an order of magnitude or two.
>
> 2. PVE panels have crashed in price. in 1977, you paid about $77/watt.
> Now its around 0.70/watt, a hundred fold less.
>
> 3. The efficiency has also increased, but more modestly, 15% to about 28%
>
> We'll need to to run the spreadsheets again. I'd be surprised if orbital
> solar arrays are more cost-effective than ground based solar, even with the
> increased amount of arrays needed.

Space has the advantage that the sun always shines there (there's this
pesky planet that gets in the way, plus these things that look white
from above and dark from below... clouds, I think).

However, I haven't seen even a start of an explanation of how to get
the power down to Earth.

On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 11:55:45 AM UTC-6, Thomas Koenig wrote:

> However, I haven't seen even a start of an explanation of how to get
> the power down to Earth.

Well, the power would be in the form of electricity. Whether it was made by
silicon solar cells, or by steam engines.

Turning electricity into radio waves - specifically, microwave lasers, or
masers - is simple enough, so not a lot of space has been spent on
explaining that.

And supposedly turning the radio waves into electricity is really simple, using
"rectenna" farms, which would take up much less space than solar panel farms
for a given amount of electricity. I'm not exactly sure what a rectenna might
be like, but I suppose that a tuned antenna connected to diodes - which are
proven technology - might be what is meant.

John Savard

On 04.10.21 20:01, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 11:55:45 AM UTC-6, Thomas Koenig wrote:
>
>> However, I haven't seen even a start of an explanation of how to get
>> the power down to Earth.
>
> Well, the power would be in the form of electricity. Whether it was made by
> silicon solar cells, or by steam engines.
>
> Turning electricity into radio waves - specifically, microwave lasers, or
> masers - is simple enough, so not a lot of space has been spent on
> explaining that.
>
> And supposedly turning the radio waves into electricity is really simple, using
> "rectenna" farms, which would take up much less space than solar panel farms
> for a given amount of electricity. I'm not exactly sure what a rectenna might
> be like, but I suppose that a tuned antenna connected to diodes - which are
> proven technology - might be what is meant.
>
> John Savard
>
Getting microwaved from space by high intensity radiowaves
is quite unhealthy.
Those beams can even set fire to whole citys.
Like being inside a huge micowave oven.

On 2021-10-04, Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:

> And supposedly turning the radio waves into electricity is really simple, using
> "rectenna" farms, which would take up much less space than solar panel farms
> for a given amount of electricity. I'm not exactly sure what a rectenna might
> be like, but I suppose that a tuned antenna connected to diodes - which are
> proven technology - might be what is meant.

When I read wireless power transmission, I think "efficiency?".
And I wonder where those pesky n percent of lossage go. "They just
radiate away", says the power engineer. Exactly. So how many
(kilo-, mega-) watts of radio jamming are we talking about?

Bizarrely, the reason we have nice things like Wi-Fi is that the
2.4 GHz frequency band was considered useless garbage for serious
radio applications, since microwave ovens operate there as powerful
jammers.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

On 2021-10-04, Sjouke Burry <burrynulnulfour@ppllaanneett.nnll> wrote:

> Getting microwaved from space by high intensity radiowaves
> is quite unhealthy.
> Those beams can even set fire to whole citys.
> Like being inside a huge micowave oven.

I'd like to see numbers.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

On 10/4/2021 12:37 PM, pete...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 11:41:33 AM UTC-4, Jonathan wrote:
>> On 10/4/2021 8:56 AM, Bill Gill wrote:
>>> On 10/3/2021 6:13 PM, Jonathan wrote:
>>>>
>>
>>> One problem with a lot of what you say is how to get it to
>>> precisely where it is needed. Transmission to the ground will require
>>> an extremely narrow, high intensity beam of RF energy. That would
>>> be almost as good as a high power laser if it wandered off of the
>>> receiver. As Lynn said, a miss could fry where it did hit.
>>>
>>> I recall some science fiction story where there was a tug on the
>>> transmitter that caused the beam to wander and cause a lot of
>>> destruction.
>>>
>> An airplane could fly through the microwave beam and not notice.
>> It has to be designed to be safe.
>
> There's safe in normal use, and safe in the hands of a malicious
> operator. They are different.
>
> How would Taiwan, for example, react to Chicom Gigawatt
> Masers passing overhead, which *could* be focused down to
> a small area? How would the US, for that matter?
>
> 'Jewish Space Lasers' may be the fever dream of a braindead GOP legislator,
> but this comes close.
>

Oh ya mean like this right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMxVBY70dPU&ab_channel=BobGlickstein

> Pt
>

--
BIG LIE From Wiki - "The German expression was coined by Adolf Hitler
when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, to describe the use of a lie
so *colossal* that no one would believe that someone "could have the
impudence to distort the truth so infamously."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie

On Mon, 4 Oct 2021 06:58:41 -0700 (PDT), "pete...@gmail.com"
<petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 1:00:57 AM UTC-4, Quadibloc wrote:
>> I remember The High Frontier by Gerard K. O'Neill. In it, he noted that
>> solar power from space was perhaps the only possible economic
>> justification for the early stages of building L5 space colonies of the
>> type he described.
>
>That was 45 years ago. Things have changed.
>
>1. SpaceX looks likely to drop the cost of getting stuff to space by
>an order of magnitude or two.

O'Neill was assuming that NASA was going to achieve $500/lb.
Correcting for inflation Falcon 9 is _there_.

>2. PVE panels have crashed in price. in 1977, you paid about $77/watt.
>Now its around 0.70/watt, a hundred fold less.

Price of the panels is only part of the cost.

>3. The efficiency has also increased, but more modestly, 15% to about 28%

But do you get that 28% out of the .70/watt panels?

>We'll need to to run the spreadsheets again. I'd be surprised if orbital
>solar arrays are more cost-effective than ground based solar, even with the
>increased amount of arrays needed.

Orbital eliminates the storage problem. They work at night. That's
where the big cost saving comes.

On Mon, 4 Oct 2021 20:10:30 -0000 (UTC), Christian Weisgerber
<naddy@mips.inka.de> wrote:

>On 2021-10-04, Sjouke Burry <burrynulnulfour@ppllaanneett.nnll> wrote:
>
>> Getting microwaved from space by high intensity radiowaves
>> is quite unhealthy.
>> Those beams can even set fire to whole citys.
>> Like being inside a huge micowave oven.
>
>I'd like to see numbers.

The thing is, the powersats aren't going to be using "high intensity
microwaves".

On Mon, 4 Oct 2021 07:56:20 -0500, Bill Gill <billnews2@cox.net>
wrote:

>On 10/3/2021 6:13 PM, Jonathan wrote:
>>
>> Imagine 60 square km arrays filled with tiny and
>> independent solar cells flying in formation like drones
>> do today beaming unlimited and clean energy
>> to any place on Earth?
>>
>> About ten years ago I used to push hard and long
>> for Space Solar Power for a couple of years
>> in the various NASA and space ngs without any
>> success. It was an idea that wasn't ready.
>>
>> But I think things have changed. Once a business
>> plan can show a profit in space then blank-check
>> financing can be obtained, regardless of how expensive.
>> Such a business plan, if it also requires large
>> numbers of people in space, could dramatically
>> expand manned space flight. Much as the satellite
>> industry filled the skies with their product once
>> a profit could be demonstrated.
>>
>> A few potential benefits of SSP.
>>
>> First it's of course green energy. And power plants
>> on Earth are generally massive projects that require
>> equally massive infrastructure such as railroads and
>> so on. Such large projects typically require nearby
>> large population centers to justify them. Remote or
>> thinly populated areas are often left out and
>> rural growth significantly limited as a result.
>>
>> But SSP can beam energy to almost anywhere regardless
>> of how remote, or how small the population. And as
>> a supplier of energy for such remote areas SSP can
>> charge more than terrestrial energy. In addition SSP
>> can supply power to conventional power plants to
>> supplement their systems during high demand, allowing SSP
>> to charge far more than normal prices for that as well.
>>
>> So SSP doesn't have to directly complete with terrestrial
>> sources with pricing at first. And as SSP supply increases
>> cost will come down over time. In addition SSP can provide
>> solar energy 24/7 as opposed to ground based solar or wind
>> which can't. It perhaps the best of all SSP solves the
>> seemingly intractable storage problem as well.
>>
>> Some concepts have even toyed with the idea of powering cars
>> directly from space someday.
>>
>> Clean and unlimited energy, anywhere, anytime.
>>
>>
>> Jeff Bezos says Blue Origin will go to the Moon to save the Earth
>>
>> Bezos framed the mission as a way to save the Earth, which he
>> called our “best planet.” Though stressing the need to address
>> near-term problems like poverty and pollution, Bezos argued
>> that in the long-term the Earth is in danger of running
>> out of energy, an idea he has discussed before.
>>
>> In his speech, Bezos painted a picture of a “bad path” for Earth,
>> of energy rationing and falling prosperity. But if humanity
>> moves into the solar system, he said, there could be nearly
>> unlimited energy from solar power. “This is an easy choice.
>> We know what we want, we just have to get busy.”
>>
>> https://qz.com/1615871/jeff-bezos-says-blue-origin-will-go-to-the-moon-to-save-the-earth/
>>
>>
>>
>> Space-based power stations are turning from an idle dream
>> into a serious engineering prospect, as scientists hope
>> they can take renewable energy into orbit.
>> https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201126-the-solar-discs-that-could-beam-power-from-space
>>
>>
>>
>> Solar Power from Space? Caltech’s $100 Million Gambit
>> Billionaire makes secret donation for electricity
>> from orbit
>>
>> NED POTTER 11 AUG 2021
>>
>>
>> In 1941 Isaac Asimov, the science fiction writer, published a short
>> story called "Reason." It was a cautionary tale about robotics and
>> artificial intelligence, but it's also remembered now for its fanciful
>> setting: A space station that gathered solar energy to send to the
>> planets via microwave. Ever since, space-based solar power has been an
>> out-there idea—something with potential to change the world, if we can
>> ever master the technology, and muster the funds, to do it.
>>
>> Donald Bren has done his share of reading about solar power, and since
>> he is one of America's wealthiest real estate developers, he's in a
>> position to help muster the funds. The California Institute of
>> Technology has just announced that, since 2013, Bren and his wife
>> Brigitte have given the school more than US $100 million to help make
>> photovoltaic power from orbit a reality.
>>
>> That's a lot of money, and, importantly, the work has been spread out
>> over a decade. A team at Caltech is aiming for the first launch of a
>> test array in late 2022 or 2023.
>>
>> "This is something that's pretty daring," says Ali Hajimiri, a professor
>> of electrical engineering and a co-director of Caltech's Space Solar
>> Power Project. The long timeline, he says, "allows you take chances, and
>> take risks. Sometimes they pay off and sometimes they don't, but when
>> you do that, in an educated, controlled fashion, you end up with things
>> that you never expected."
>>
>> Bren, 89, made most of his fortune—estimated between $15.3 billion and
>> $16.1 billion—building offices and homes in Orange County, California.
>> He is majority owner of New York City's iconic MetLife Building. He's
>> also donated land and money for environmental conservation. He gives few
>> interviews (he declined to speak for this story), and while Caltech's
>> Space Solar Power Project has been public, Bren's support of it was a
>> secret until now.
>>
>> High Earth orbit is a great place for a solar farm—the sun never sets
>> and clouds never form. But to generate a meaningful amount of
>> electricity, most past designs were unrealistically, and unaffordably,
>> massive. Engineers depicted giant truss structures, usually measured in
>> kilometers or miles, to which photovoltaic panels or mirrors were
>> attached, absorbing or concentrating sunlight to convert to direct
>> current, then transmit it to the ground via laser or microwave beams.
>> Hundreds of rocket launches might be needed to build a single
>> installation. It was technology too big to succeed.
>>
>> "What was really required to make this compelling was to have a paradigm
>> shift in the technology," says Harry Atwater, the Howard Hughes
>> Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science at Caltech and a
>> leader of the project. "Instead of weighing a kilogram per square meter,
>> we're talking about systems we can make today in the range of 100 to 200
>> grams per square meter, and we have a roadmap for getting down to the
>> range of 10 to 20 grams per square meter."
>>
>> How? Through no single step, but perhaps the biggest change in thinking
>> has been to make solar arrays that are modular. Lightweight
>> gallium-arsenide photovoltaic cells would be attached to "tiles"—the
>> fundamental unit of the Caltech design, each of which might be as small
>> as 100 square centimeters, the size of a dessert plate.
>>
>> Each tile—and this is key—would be its own miniature solar station,
>> complete with photovoltaics, tiny electronic components, and a microwave
>> transmitter. Tiles would be linked together to form larger "modules" of,
>> say, 60 square meters, and thousands of modules would form a hexagonal
>> power station, perhaps 3 km long on a side. But the modules would not
>> even be physically connected. No heavy support beams, no bundled cables,
>> much less mass.
>>
>> "You can think of this as like a school of fish," says Atwater. "It's a
>> bunch of identical independent elements flying in formation."
>>
>> Transmission to receivers on the ground would be by phased
>> array—microwave signals from the tiles synchronized so that they can be
>> aimed with no moving parts. Atwater says it would be inherently safe:
>> microwave energy is not ionizing radiation, and the energy density would
>> be "equal to the power density in sunlight."
>>
>> Space solar power is probably still years away. Analysts at the
>> Aerospace Corporation's Center for Space Policy and Strategy caution
>> that it "will not be a quick, easy, or comprehensive solution." But
>> there is ferment around the world. JAXA, Japan's space agency, is hard
>> at work, as is China's. Launch costs are coming down and new spacecraft
>> are going up, from internet satellites to NASA's moon-to-Mars effort.
>> The Aerospace Corp. analysts say terrestrial power grids may not be the
>> first users of solar power satellites. Instead, they say, think of…other
>> space vehicles, for which a microwave beam from an orbiting solar farm
>> may be more practical than having their own solar panels.
>>
>>
>> "Is there a need for a lot of additional work? Yes," says Hajimiri. But
>> "some of the ingredients that were major showstoppers before, we are
>> moving in the direction of addressing them."
>>
>> All of this has the Caltech engineers excited. "It's important for us to
>> be willing to take chances," Hajimiri continues, "and move forward with
>> challenging problems that, if successful, would work toward the
>> betterment of our lives."
>> https://spectrum.ieee.org/solar-power-from-space-caltechs-100-million-gambit
>>
>>
>One problem with a lot of what you say is how to get it to
>precisely where it is needed. Transmission to the ground will require
>an extremely narrow, high intensity beam of RF energy. That would
>be almost as good as a high power laser if it wandered off of the
>receiver. As Lynn said, a miss could fry where it did hit.
>
>I recall some science fiction story where there was a tug on the
>transmitter that caused the beam to wander and cause a lot of
>destruction.

On Mon, 4 Oct 2021 09:37:55 -0700 (PDT), "pete...@gmail.com"
<petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 11:41:33 AM UTC-4, Jonathan wrote:
>> On 10/4/2021 8:56 AM, Bill Gill wrote:
>> > On 10/3/2021 6:13 PM, Jonathan wrote:
>> >>
>>
>> > One problem with a lot of what you say is how to get it to
>> > precisely where it is needed. Transmission to the ground will require
>> > an extremely narrow, high intensity beam of RF energy. That would
>> > be almost as good as a high power laser if it wandered off of the
>> > receiver. As Lynn said, a miss could fry where it did hit.
>> >
>> > I recall some science fiction story where there was a tug on the
>> > transmitter that caused the beam to wander and cause a lot of
>> > destruction.
>> >
>> An airplane could fly through the microwave beam and not notice.
>> It has to be designed to be safe.
>
>There's safe in normal use, and safe in the hands of a malicious
>operator. They are different.
>
>How would Taiwan, for example, react to Chicom Gigawatt
>Masers passing overhead, which *could* be focused down to
>a small area? How would the US, for that matter?

Very simply. If the antenna size is such that they *could* be focused
down to a small area, blow them up. They're easy targets.

Hint--there is a hard-physics relationship between wavelength,
aperture, and beam divergence.

>'Jewish Space Lasers' may be the fever dream of a braindead GOP legislator,
>but this comes close.
>
>Pt

Christian Weisgerber <naddy@mips.inka.de> wrote in
news:slrnslmnri.h5a.naddy@lorvorc.mips.inka.de:

> On 2021-10-04, Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>
>> And supposedly turning the radio waves into electricity is
>> really simple, using "rectenna" farms, which would take up much
>> less space than solar panel farms for a given amount of
>> electricity. I'm not exactly sure what a rectenna might be
>> like, but I suppose that a tuned antenna connected to diodes -
>> which are proven technology - might be what is meant.
>
> When I read wireless power transmission, I think "efficiency?".
> And I wonder where those pesky n percent of lossage go. "They
> just radiate away", says the power engineer. Exactly. So how
> many (kilo-, mega-) watts of radio jamming are we talking about?

And ultimately, it all ends up as heat. And a good deal of that heat
will be atmospheric heat.

--
Terry Austin

Proof that Alan Baker is a liar and a fool, and even stupider than
Lynn:
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration
(May 2019 total for people arrested for entering the United States
illegally is over 132,000 for just the southwest border.)

Vacation photos from Iceland:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/QaXQkB

"pete...@gmail.com" <petertrei@gmail.com> wrote in
news:c3375126-7bc3-40ec-947f-3396af61b807n@googlegroups.com:

> 'Jewish Space Lasers' may be the fever dream of a braindead GOP
> legislator, but this comes close.

Offered without comment:

https://www.concordaerospace.com/products/jewish-space-laser-
activation-panel

https://tinyurl.com/y2cfcemb

--
Terry Austin

Proof that Alan Baker is a liar and a fool, and even stupider than
Lynn:
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration
(May 2019 total for people arrested for entering the United States
illegally is over 132,000 for just the southwest border.)

Vacation photos from Iceland:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/QaXQkB

J. Clarke <jclarke.873638@gmail.com> wrote in
news:gjvmlg1li56dp4ot18afqjuufuc3ll8das@4ax.com:

> On Mon, 4 Oct 2021 06:58:41 -0700 (PDT), "pete...@gmail.com"
> <petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 1:00:57 AM UTC-4, Quadibloc wrote:
>>> I remember The High Frontier by Gerard K. O'Neill. In it, he
>>> noted that solar power from space was perhaps the only
>>> possible economic justification for the early stages of
>>> building L5 space colonies of the type he described.
>>
>>That was 45 years ago. Things have changed.
>>
>>1. SpaceX looks likely to drop the cost of getting stuff to
>>space by an order of magnitude or two.
>
> O'Neill was assuming that NASA was going to achieve $500/lb.
> Correcting for inflation Falcon 9 is _there_.
>
>>2. PVE panels have crashed in price. in 1977, you paid about
>>$77/watt. Now its around 0.70/watt, a hundred fold less.
>
> Price of the panels is only part of the cost.
>
>>3. The efficiency has also increased, but more modestly, 15% to
>>about 28%
>
> But do you get that 28% out of the .70/watt panels?
>
>>We'll need to to run the spreadsheets again. I'd be surprised if
>>orbital solar arrays are more cost-effective than ground based
>>solar, even with the increased amount of arrays needed.
>
> Orbital eliminates the storage problem. They work at night.
> That's where the big cost saving comes.
>
Without some kind of storage, you have at least one single point of
failure.

--
Terry Austin

Proof that Alan Baker is a liar and a fool, and even stupider than
Lynn:
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration
(May 2019 total for people arrested for entering the United States
illegally is over 132,000 for just the southwest border.)

Vacation photos from Iceland:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/QaXQkB

On 10/4/2021 6:33 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
> On Mon, 4 Oct 2021 07:56:20 -0500, Bill Gill <billnews2@cox.net>
> wrote:
>
>> On 10/3/2021 6:13 PM, Jonathan wrote:
>>>
>>> Imagine 60 square km arrays filled with tiny and
>>> independent solar cells flying in formation like drones
>>> do today beaming unlimited and clean energy
>>> to any place on Earth?
>>>
>>> About ten years ago I used to push hard and long
>>> for Space Solar Power for a couple of years
>>> in the various NASA and space ngs without any
>>> success. It was an idea that wasn't ready.
>>>
>>> But I think things have changed. Once a business
>>> plan can show a profit in space then blank-check
>>> financing can be obtained, regardless of how expensive.
>>> Such a business plan, if it also requires large
>>> numbers of people in space, could dramatically
>>> expand manned space flight. Much as the satellite
>>> industry filled the skies with their product once
>>> a profit could be demonstrated.
>>>
>>> A few potential benefits of SSP.
>>>
>>> First it's of course green energy. And power plants
>>> on Earth are generally massive projects that require
>>> equally massive infrastructure such as railroads and
>>> so on. Such large projects typically require nearby
>>> large population centers to justify them. Remote or
>>> thinly populated areas are often left out and
>>> rural growth significantly limited as a result.
>>>
>>> But SSP can beam energy to almost anywhere regardless
>>> of how remote, or how small the population. And as
>>> a supplier of energy for such remote areas SSP can
>>> charge more than terrestrial energy. In addition SSP
>>> can supply power to conventional power plants to
>>> supplement their systems during high demand, allowing SSP
>>> to charge far more than normal prices for that as well.
>>>
>>> So SSP doesn't have to directly complete with terrestrial
>>> sources with pricing at first. And as SSP supply increases
>>> cost will come down over time. In addition SSP can provide
>>> solar energy 24/7 as opposed to ground based solar or wind
>>> which can't. It perhaps the best of all SSP solves the
>>> seemingly intractable storage problem as well.
>>>
>>> Some concepts have even toyed with the idea of powering cars
>>> directly from space someday.
>>>
>>> Clean and unlimited energy, anywhere, anytime.
>>>
>>>
>>> Jeff Bezos says Blue Origin will go to the Moon to save the Earth
>>>
>>> Bezos framed the mission as a way to save the Earth, which he
>>> called our “best planet.” Though stressing the need to address
>>> near-term problems like poverty and pollution, Bezos argued
>>> that in the long-term the Earth is in danger of running
>>> out of energy, an idea he has discussed before.
>>>
>>> In his speech, Bezos painted a picture of a “bad path” for Earth,
>>> of energy rationing and falling prosperity. But if humanity
>>> moves into the solar system, he said, there could be nearly
>>> unlimited energy from solar power. “This is an easy choice.
>>> We know what we want, we just have to get busy.”
>>>
>>> https://qz.com/1615871/jeff-bezos-says-blue-origin-will-go-to-the-moon-to-save-the-earth/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Space-based power stations are turning from an idle dream
>>> into a serious engineering prospect, as scientists hope
>>> they can take renewable energy into orbit.
>>> https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201126-the-solar-discs-that-could-beam-power-from-space
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Solar Power from Space? Caltech’s $100 Million Gambit
>>> Billionaire makes secret donation for electricity
>>> from orbit
>>>
>>> NED POTTER 11 AUG 2021
>>>
>>>
>>> In 1941 Isaac Asimov, the science fiction writer, published a short
>>> story called "Reason." It was a cautionary tale about robotics and
>>> artificial intelligence, but it's also remembered now for its fanciful
>>> setting: A space station that gathered solar energy to send to the
>>> planets via microwave. Ever since, space-based solar power has been an
>>> out-there idea—something with potential to change the world, if we can
>>> ever master the technology, and muster the funds, to do it.
>>>
>>> Donald Bren has done his share of reading about solar power, and since
>>> he is one of America's wealthiest real estate developers, he's in a
>>> position to help muster the funds. The California Institute of
>>> Technology has just announced that, since 2013, Bren and his wife
>>> Brigitte have given the school more than US $100 million to help make
>>> photovoltaic power from orbit a reality.
>>>
>>> That's a lot of money, and, importantly, the work has been spread out
>>> over a decade. A team at Caltech is aiming for the first launch of a
>>> test array in late 2022 or 2023.
>>>
>>> "This is something that's pretty daring," says Ali Hajimiri, a professor
>>> of electrical engineering and a co-director of Caltech's Space Solar
>>> Power Project. The long timeline, he says, "allows you take chances, and
>>> take risks. Sometimes they pay off and sometimes they don't, but when
>>> you do that, in an educated, controlled fashion, you end up with things
>>> that you never expected."
>>>
>>> Bren, 89, made most of his fortune—estimated between $15.3 billion and
>>> $16.1 billion—building offices and homes in Orange County, California.
>>> He is majority owner of New York City's iconic MetLife Building. He's
>>> also donated land and money for environmental conservation. He gives few
>>> interviews (he declined to speak for this story), and while Caltech's
>>> Space Solar Power Project has been public, Bren's support of it was a
>>> secret until now.
>>>
>>> High Earth orbit is a great place for a solar farm—the sun never sets
>>> and clouds never form. But to generate a meaningful amount of
>>> electricity, most past designs were unrealistically, and unaffordably,
>>> massive. Engineers depicted giant truss structures, usually measured in
>>> kilometers or miles, to which photovoltaic panels or mirrors were
>>> attached, absorbing or concentrating sunlight to convert to direct
>>> current, then transmit it to the ground via laser or microwave beams.
>>> Hundreds of rocket launches might be needed to build a single
>>> installation. It was technology too big to succeed.
>>>
>>> "What was really required to make this compelling was to have a paradigm
>>> shift in the technology," says Harry Atwater, the Howard Hughes
>>> Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science at Caltech and a
>>> leader of the project. "Instead of weighing a kilogram per square meter,
>>> we're talking about systems we can make today in the range of 100 to 200
>>> grams per square meter, and we have a roadmap for getting down to the
>>> range of 10 to 20 grams per square meter."
>>>
>>> How? Through no single step, but perhaps the biggest change in thinking
>>> has been to make solar arrays that are modular. Lightweight
>>> gallium-arsenide photovoltaic cells would be attached to "tiles"—the
>>> fundamental unit of the Caltech design, each of which might be as small
>>> as 100 square centimeters, the size of a dessert plate.
>>>
>>> Each tile—and this is key—would be its own miniature solar station,
>>> complete with photovoltaics, tiny electronic components, and a microwave
>>> transmitter. Tiles would be linked together to form larger "modules" of,
>>> say, 60 square meters, and thousands of modules would form a hexagonal
>>> power station, perhaps 3 km long on a side. But the modules would not
>>> even be physically connected. No heavy support beams, no bundled cables,
>>> much less mass.
>>>
>>> "You can think of this as like a school of fish," says Atwater. "It's a
>>> bunch of identical independent elements flying in formation."
>>>
>>> Transmission to receivers on the ground would be by phased
>>> array—microwave signals from the tiles synchronized so that they can be
>>> aimed with no moving parts. Atwater says it would be inherently safe:
>>> microwave energy is not ionizing radiation, and the energy density would
>>> be "equal to the power density in sunlight."
>>>
>>> Space solar power is probably still years away. Analysts at the
>>> Aerospace Corporation's Center for Space Policy and Strategy caution
>>> that it "will not be a quick, easy, or comprehensive solution." But
>>> there is ferment around the world. JAXA, Japan's space agency, is hard
>>> at work, as is China's. Launch costs are coming down and new spacecraft
>>> are going up, from internet satellites to NASA's moon-to-Mars effort.
>>> The Aerospace Corp. analysts say terrestrial power grids may not be the
>>> first users of solar power satellites. Instead, they say, think of…other
>>> space vehicles, for which a microwave beam from an orbiting solar farm
>>> may be more practical than having their own solar panels.
>>>
>>>
>>> "Is there a need for a lot of additional work? Yes," says Hajimiri. But
>>> "some of the ingredients that were major showstoppers before, we are
>>> moving in the direction of addressing them."
>>>
>>> All of this has the Caltech engineers excited. "It's important for us to
>>> be willing to take chances," Hajimiri continues, "and move forward with
>>> challenging problems that, if successful, would work toward the
>>> betterment of our lives."
>>> https://spectrum.ieee.org/solar-power-from-space-caltechs-100-million-gambit
>>>
>>>
>> One problem with a lot of what you say is how to get it to
>> precisely where it is needed. Transmission to the ground will require
>> an extremely narrow, high intensity beam of RF energy. That would
>> be almost as good as a high power laser if it wandered off of the
>> receiver. As Lynn said, a miss could fry where it did hit.
>>
>> I recall some science fiction story where there was a tug on the
>> transmitter that caused the beam to wander and cause a lot of
>> destruction.
>
> Why do you think "an extremely narrow, high intensity beam of RF
> energy" is needed? That is not what O'Neill proposed.
>>
>> Bill

On 10/4/2021 1:55 PM, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> pete...@gmail.com <petertrei@gmail.com> schrieb:
>> On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 1:00:57 AM UTC-4, Quadibloc wrote:
>>> I remember The High Frontier by Gerard K. O'Neill. In it, he noted that
>>> solar power from space was perhaps the only possible economic
>>> justification for the early stages of building L5 space colonies of the
>>> type he described.
>>
>> That was 45 years ago. Things have changed.
>>
>> 1. SpaceX looks likely to drop the cost of getting stuff to space by
>> an order of magnitude or two.
>>
>> 2. PVE panels have crashed in price. in 1977, you paid about $77/watt.
>> Now its around 0.70/watt, a hundred fold less.
>>
>> 3. The efficiency has also increased, but more modestly, 15% to about 28%
>>
>> We'll need to to run the spreadsheets again. I'd be surprised if orbital
>> solar arrays are more cost-effective than ground based solar, even with the
>> increased amount of arrays needed.
>
> Space has the advantage that the sun always shines there (there's this
> pesky planet that gets in the way, plus these things that look white
> from above and dark from below... clouds, I think).
>
> However, I haven't seen even a start of an explanation of how to get
> the power down to Earth.
>

It would be microwaved down, with the beam no more intense
that the midday sun. And collected by very simple, but very
large rectennas. You could grow crops beneath such a large
rectenna, which are very simple dipole antennas like an
old TV antenna. Like laying down a huge net. It would be
converted from dc to ac and then connected to any grid.

One huge advantage is such a rectenna can be placed
in rural or low population areas where massive
power plants aren't practical.

So SSP doesn't have to directly compete with terrestrial
power costs as it's filling niches standard ground power
sources can't. And SSP can be transmitted 24/7 rain or
shine.

--
BIG LIE From Wiki - "The German expression was coined by Adolf Hitler
when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, to describe the use of a lie
so *colossal* that no one would believe that someone "could have the
impudence to distort the truth so infamously."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie

On 10/4/2021 4:10 PM, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> On 2021-10-04, Sjouke Burry <burrynulnulfour@ppllaanneett.nnll> wrote:
>
>> Getting microwaved from space by high intensity radiowaves
>> is quite unhealthy.
>> Those beams can even set fire to whole citys.
>> Like being inside a huge micowave oven.
>
> I'd like to see numbers.
>

Diagrams at the link

JAXA Research and Development

Research on Microwave Wireless Power Transmission Technology

Microwaves are a form of electromagnetic waves in a wavelength range
often used for communications, 0.1 mm to 10 cm (frequencies between 0.1
and 100 GHz). Antenna arrays composed of numerous antenna elements can
be used to transmit electric power from space to the ground in microwave
form. By controlling and synchronizing the phases and amplitudes of the
microwaves sent from each antenna element of the array, a desired beam
shape can be produced and a precisely focused beam can be directed
(transmitted) in any direction. Using these unique properties, the
microwave-based SSPS (M-SSPS) is a space system that converts sunlight
energy into beamed microwave energy, transmits the microwave energy to
power receiving site on Earth, and converts them back into direct
current electricity.

Advantages of microwaves power transmission

Microwaves (operated at frequencies less than 10 GHz) can penetrate
cloud cover and rainfall.
Microwaves have lower energy density than lasers, which makes them safer

The SSPS Research Team has been intensively researching a technology to
steer a beam of microwaves in the direction of any target with very high
accuracy. A large-scale SSPS capable of supplying 1 GW (1 million kW) of
output power to the ground site from geostationary orbit (GEO) 36,000
kilometers above the Earth’s surface would require a microwave
beam-pointing with an extremely high accuracy. If a pointing accuracy of
0.001 degrees (i.e., a pointing deviation of several hundred meters) can
be obtained, it will be possible to safely and efficiently transmit the
microwave energy over the 36,000 km distance from the kilometer-sized
orbital huge phased array antenna to a terrestrial power receiving
antenna site with an estimated diameter of 2 kilometers.

A software retrodirective system is used to allow for applications to
future space programs that require high-accuracy beam pointing control
technology. In the system we envision, a pilot-signal-transmitting
antenna mounted on the terrestrial-power-receiving antenna panel
transmits the pilot signal to pilot-signal-receiving antennas mounted on
the orbital-power-transmitting antenna panels to let the power
transmitting antenna array know the direction in which to send the
microwave. The angle between the direction in which the signal arrives
and the normal to the array can be detected accurately by the amplitude
monopulse method, and the phase of the microwaves is adjusted to point
the microwave beam in the right direction. To ensure that the maximum
power can reach the terrestrial power receiving antenna, the phase of
the microwaves on each power transmitting antenna panel is further
adjusted by a Rotating-Element Electric-Field Vector (REV) method based
on the beam intensity data received. We have been researching and
developing a unique microwave beam control method and control algorithm
that incorporate the combined effects of the amplitude monopulse and REV
methods.

Several technological tasks lie ahead of us in our work to develop
microwave wireless power transmission technology.

Enhance the accuracy of the microwave beam-pointing-control.
Increase the conversion efficiency from DC power to microwaves (in space)
Increased the conversion efficiency from microwave to DC power (on the
ground)
Reduce the size and weight of the electronic modules

https://www.kenkai.jaxa.jp/eng/research/ssps/ssps-mssps.html

--
BIG LIE From Wiki - "The German expression was coined by Adolf Hitler
when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, to describe the use of a lie
so *colossal* that no one would believe that someone "could have the
impudence to distort the truth so infamously."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie

On Mon, 04 Oct 2021 21:05:29 +0200, Sjouke Burry
<burrynulnulfour@ppllaanneett.nnll> wrote:

>Getting microwaved from space by high intensity radiowaves
>is quite unhealthy.
>Those beams can even set fire to whole citys.
>Like being inside a huge micowave oven.

Jerry Pournelle wrote extensively in various publications in the 80s
(Byte magazine among others which is where I found him) on satellite
based solar power based on assembly in orbit based on materials sent
from mass drivers on the moon.

He was estimating cost at about 5% of 80s era power rates and
discussing what a society based on REALLY cheap electric power might
be like.

Again - I'm talking 40 years ago - used to read his columns in the
university library back in the day and later in my local public
library - I don't think I ever subscribed to Byte though I did then
have my Apple II with my 1200 baud internal modem....