Our planet is bathed in sunlight 24 hours a day, but solar power arrays on Earth can only efficiently access useful solar power for less than 8 hours a day. Worse than that, solar power peaks at a time several hours from peak use time for modern human societies. Earth-based solar power is not useless, but it is nothing to hang your hat on. Government mandates to force the use of earth-based solar power actually hurt societies by driving up costs while not providing a substantial amount of useful new energy.
Humans have known about the photovoltaic effect for almost 140 years. Human theorists have contemplated using solar energy from space for over 100 years! Theoretical work toward space-based solar power satellites began in earnest in the 1970s. But only with the coming of SpaceX and cheaper reusable space launch vehicles, is it becoming more realistic to discuss the actual building and placement of large fleets of space-based solar power arrays.
Space-Based Solar Timeline:
- 1887: Photoelectric effect experimentally observed by Heinrich Hertz
- 1905: Albert Einstein publishes theory explaining the photoelectric effect based on quantum physics
- 1913: A solar cell patent is registered with the United States Patent Office
- 1923: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky theorized using mirrors to beam sunlight from orbit
- 1941: Asimov’s “Reason,” featuring society where energy comes from space-based solar, is published
- 1954: The first modern silicon solar cell is invented by Bell Labs
- 1956: Asimov’s “The Last Question” featuring SBS published
- 1957: The Soviet Union successfully launches the first artificial satellite, Sputnik into orbit
- 1958: NASA is founded
- 1964: The rectenna is invented (this is the device that would allow the solar energy in the form of microwaves to be converted to usable electricity for the electrical grid)
- 1968: Space-based solar power is seriously proposed for the first time by Dr. Peter Glasner
- 1969: The U.S. lands a man on the moon
- 1973: A space-based solar power satellite is patented by Dr. Peter Glasner
- 1978: NASA and the Department of Energy perform design and feasibility studies of the SBSP concept
- 1981: NASA launches the Space Shuttle fleet
- 1982: Boeing proposes SBSP concept
- 1995-7: NASA conducts “Fresh Look” study on the viability of SBSP
- 1998: Japan begins work on a SBSP concept
- 1998: International Space Station launched
- 2002: SpaceX founded
- 2011: The Space Shuttle is retired
- 2012: Joint proposal by China and India for a SBSP system
- 2012: John Mankins publishes study about SPS-Alpha, his proposal for an American SBSP system
- 2023: Caltech Space Solar Power Project engineers demonstrated the feasibility of space to Earth power
- 2024: UK startup Space Solar demonstrates 360 transmission of solar power from space
- 2024: US startup Reflect Orbital readies demonstration space mirrors to redirect solar energy from space
- 2024: US startup Virtus Solis plans fleets of photovoltaic arrays in eccentric Molniya orbits
- 2024: South Korean scientists propose large fleet of geosynchronous PV space based power satellites more
Timeline adapted from source via
While solar energy projects have become cheaper and much more efficient in recent years, there are still significant limitations to producing solar power. Solar panels can only produce energy during daylight hours and rely heavily on batteries to store any excess energy to deliver to the grid at night. This means that there is no stable supply of energy provided by solar farms without the use of expensive, high-tech battery storage. Further, the sunlight on the Earth’s surface is far less intense than that at the top of the atmosphere.
The potential for generating far higher levels of solar energy has led scientists worldwide to explore the possibility of space solar power over several decades. Researchers found that if they could access solar power at a high enough orbit, it could provide continuous power from sunlight that could be beamed to stations around the globe. The idea is to transform solar power into electricity using photovoltaic (PV) cells in a geostationary orbit around Earth. This power can then be transmitted wirelessly in the form of microwaves at 2.45 GHz to dedicated receiver stations on Earth, called ‘rectennas’, which convert the energy back into electricity and deliver it to the local grid.
As well as reducing the amount of land required for solar farms, these systems could serve remote parts of the world, providing rural communities with a stable, green energy supply. However, the technology is not yet available to launch such a project, and significant research and development is required to overcome the technical obstacles involved. __ Shalemag
The US based L5 society in the 1970s was very active in the promotion of space-based photovoltaic arrays for beaming microwaves to Earth-based rectenna farms. But the means of launching such significant masses of materials into space affordably did not exist at that time. The appetite of ordinary citizens for massive human activities in space has existed for many decades, without the actual ability to carry such things off.
In the 1970s US, the big concepts of space colonies, solar power satellites, moon-based mining and manufacturing, asteroid mining and colonization, and many other ambitious ideas, were batted about in heady fashion by young engineers, computer scientists, and other nerds — mostly young men. The moon landings were still in recent memory, and the space shuttle was just getting started.
But it wasn’t quite time for those ideas, and many other big ideas of the futurists of the time. What was needed was cheap, affordable space launch, and lots of Earth-based energy to build the things.
The mass for building space colonies and super-massive solar power satellite arrays was to come from the moon and any convenient asteroids that may fly by.
Brian Wang recently featured a story on South Korean efforts to design a geosynchronous space based solar power satellite array. China and Japan have also announced intentions for designing and placing in orbit large solar power satellite arrays for beaming energy to Earth from space.
Al Fin electrical and aerospace engineers say that there are a million ways to do this wrong, and only a few ways to do it efficiently and effectively. If governments or large bureaucracies (eg Boeing) are involved, the needle swings violently toward the wasteful and catastrophically wrong end of the scale.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the wealthiest man on the planet, gave an hour-long presentation yesterday about his plans for humanity’s future living on the moon and in space colonies. It was a bit like watching a monologue from a sci-fi movie in a lot of ways. And now you can finally view the entire presentation online for yourself.
Fellow billionaire Elon Musk generally makes a point of offering a live video stream whenever he announces something important and futuristic like this. __ Source
Elon Musk has proven the ability to alter the landscape of a number of human enterprises. Jeff Bezos has likewise shifted important human economic landscapes. Either or both of them may well contribute to the expansion of the cis-lunar economy — including solar power satellites and lunar mining/manufacturing. Musk may even place a successful human outpost on Mars.
But I suspect that the human future in space will depend upon future, more clear-sighted mavericks who learn to master advanced human technologies and economies/finance. Mavericks who devise ways to bypass and sidestep the avaricious grip of large bureaucracies private and public. Thinkers who can do and doers who can think quickly and decisively.
Nihilist elites are choking the life out of the human future while the proportion of bright and intelligent humans is rapidly dropping in all human populations. And of the bright and intelligent young humans who make it to university and other even better training grounds, too many are falling by the wayside and being indoctrinated into broken DIE-Wokeism.
Hope for the best. Plan for the worst. A future of networked but somewhat isolated islands of competence may be coming, for a time.
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