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Posted on 06/29/2007 5:50:52 AM PDT by Uncledave
Stanley Theodore HYDERABAD, June 28: India is working intensely on having a solar power generation station in space to meet the nation’s ever growing energy requirements.
The “hyperplane,” which needs to transport the infrastructure into space, will make a demonstrative flight at the 2008 end.
“India’s hypersonic air and space transport activity are now sharp focussed on energy production through space solar power by having solar power stations in orbit. The era of expendable launch vehicles should end and reusable launch vehicles (RLV) are needed”, Defence Research and Development Organisation’s chief controller, R&D, Mr VK Saraswath said.
On how best the scientific community and industry will meet this challenge will be the focus on the two-day conference on hypersonic technology for trans-atmospheric air and space transportation, which will be inaugurated by President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam on Friday.
Mr Saraswath said RLVs are needed to make this mission cost effective. The hypersonic technology demonstrator vehicle (HTDV) is basically a fast transport vehicle into space. DRDO is making the HTDV, while Isro is making the RLV. Interestingly, the scram jets needed for these vehicles to work are currently being tested in Hyderabad. Former chairman of Bharat Dynamic Ltd Mr Gopalaswamy, who made pioneering work in this field, is widely regarded as a “missionary” for solar energy. “The era of conventional fuels is ending. The sun’s intensity in space is nearly twice what we feel here on the Earth’s surface. On Earth, there is sunlight fit for power generation for six to eight hours a day. In space, it’s 24 hours.We need to have our own solar power station in orbit,” he said.
“Even if one per cent of our nation’s land area is utilised for solar energy, we could have nearly 1,000 giga watts of electric power. Consider this as the projected demand in 2030 is 400 GW and the current consumption is 120 GW,” he said to drive home the need to have solar power station in space. He also gave a possible collaboration scenario. For instance India, Brazil and South Africa have very good relations. They could collaborate on the technologies, infrastructure and expertise.
(Interesting the author didn't postulate how the power would back get to earth)
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Microwave transmission. One catch, tho - the beam gets out of alignment with the receiving station, and you get lots of cooked stuff down below. The technology required to operate such an orbital construct is not exactly ‘off the shelf’.
“how the power would back get to earth”
A low power density microwave beam, tuned away from the strong water peaks. The reciever is a large array of small rectifying antennas (rectenna array).
If the beam wanders off, the low power density does not cause (much) damage.
It requires a large rectenna, but if you use a very concentrated beam, the consequences of a beam steering accident goes up. Rectennas are simpler than solar cells and can be worked into building structures.
Ambitious and forward-thinking. We’ve had shuttles for how long now? And what do we do with them?
This SF has been going around since the '70's.
If the beam wanders off, the low power density does not cause (much) damage
How much damage does it cause? Minor sunburn, toasted pop-tarts? Inquiring minds want to know.
One man’s space-based power station is another man’s directed energy weapon.
Hmmm, it could easily be turned into a weapon ( sounds like a James Bond movie ). Better not piss off Apu when talking to him on tech support. "Now Mr. American. I see on my monitor that your GPS is ......You have been berry, berry rude to me. Have a nice day !! "
Exactly. Pakistan ain't gonna be happy with this.
So if you really want to know, look for those reports. Mid 80’s, maybe? Microwave power from space, microwave power in space, should get the reports.
It’s sad to see what we had planned back then, compared to what we are doing now. Now, India, China, and Japan are all considering permanent space presence including beamed power and a permanent space infrastructure. Somewhere along the way we abandoned space.
Space ping
The sunlight that the solar power satellite turns into microwaves would have fallen on Earth anyway. Thanks to losses through the conversion process, the solar power satellite actually reduces the total heat absorbed by the atmosphere somewhat.
The microwave beam as contemplated would pose no danger to people or animals; its total power would be spread over many, many square kilometers of surface, reducing the microwave flux at any given location within the footprint to a small amount. One simple method of easing people’s nervousness over this non-problem would be to build the rectenna at sea, the way we build offshore windpower platforms now. The buoy-sized receiving elements could be built cheaply on land and towed to their anchor positions, then connected by underea cables to form a large array.
Good on yer India.
“Now, India, China, and Japan are all considering permanent space presence including beamed power and a permanent space infrastructure.”
I say good luck to them on getting the spaceplane built and operational. It’s not impossible for them to make it work but that is a very challenging technology to implement. Should be interesting to watch.
“Good on yer India.”
Yup,I agree. We could have done this ourselves, with huge rectennas in “wasteland” areas like Nevada Test Site and NYC. We chickened out.
Funny how the Greenies protest any attempt to get out from under imported oil.
Case in point, the Soviet shuttle was designed for remote operation and ours was deliberately designed so that an awake aware and healthy person must be at the controls for takeoff and landing. A political decision to require MANNED spaceflight.
Plus, the Soviet shuttle had far more hauling capacity because they didn’t put huge engines in the structure.
Yes, the technology is difficult but USA and CCCP showed that it can be done. You don’t need to be an American to go into space.
Interesting weapon potential. Reminds me of the reflective beam in Jason and the Argonauts...
“A political decision to require MANNED spaceflight.”
‘It’s either us or the monkey’. Remember that one from The Right Stuff? This argument has been going on since day one. The Soviets always had almost no on-board human control from day one, that was their philosophy and still is. In reality it makes more operational sense.
“Yes, the technology is difficult but USA and CCCP showed that it can be done.”
They have lots of smart people in India but they don’t have legacy designs and experience to build on. They can’t do it quickly without some input from us or the Russians IMHO.
This has been possible for 1/4 century. India will not make it pay unless they combine it with two other things:
1. Put energy intensive industry in space;
2. Initiate space mining.
Space mining is effectively prohibited by the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty, which makes the program unfeasible. All this was discussed in detail when the L-5 Society was active long ago. India has had a grassroots interest in space development stronger than any other country, but they haven’t been paying attention.
The space-based solar panels would be positioned between the Earth and sun so the panels can collect 24/7.
The system would beam the collected energy down to a stationary antenna on the Earth’s surface...
While the Earth is spinning?
I wondered the same thing. Unless he’s talking about putting the collectors so far out they’re out of earth’s shadow.
I remember reading a few years ago that the receiver on the surface of the earth would have to be huge - 100 miles in diameter. Maybe technology has changed since that was written.
Maybe they plan to have multiple panel systems (4?) in space at different angles that would hand off to each other based on the Earth’s rotation?
Why add the expense of that? I presume the energy loss from being an extra several thousand kilometers away wouldn't be that steep. If you're going to spend money to add more equipment up there, make additional collectors and not "hand-offers"
Disclaimer -- I don't know what I'm talking about.
The problem of transmitting power to ground should not exist because all the energy should be used in space. About 1/3 of the power of the present power grid is used by industry, and that industry should be in space.
The futurist, Alvin Topfler, claims in a recent book that if we were to send the space shuttle to the moon, we could load it with enough helium to power the USA for a year. Anybody know if that sounds right?
The Toflers are not right if they claim that about He3. It is astonishing how these folktales seem to live on long after they are debunked. Tofler is okay, though, even if his Waves are simplistic. Just right for China.
Little, tiny parachutes.
Now if most of these countries could harness energy from BO, they would have all they needed.
Yeah; and if every nation follows suit, by 2050 the sun will be the equivalent of a 100 watt lightbulb and we’ll all freeze to death.
He thinks that there is harvestable He3, and assumes that if we had lots we’d be able to figure out helium fusion (He3 is much more “fusable” than hydrogen or tritium).
He assumes a landing/takeoff system to get a crew or robot down to the moon and back up with the He3.
Other than a dozen more unfounded assumptions, he’s dead on, once we have a fusion power plant burning He3 on Earth, a lunar trip could fuel it if there’s helium-3 available on the moon.
Cool. Reducing the world’s dependency of oil is a worthy goal. The more different ideas about how to accomplish that goal, the better.
It’s called a geosynchronous orbit. Meaning that its position is always the same relative to the Earth’s surface, which coincidentally makes satellite like this much harder to use as a weapon since you can’t move it anywhere. You could however “point” to almost any location in a particular hemisphere of the Earth. This has the trade off of increasing the distance which the energy must travel also decreasing its effectiveness as a weapon since there will be energy loss do to that travel.
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