{"id":700,"date":"2007-08-14T19:07:42","date_gmt":"2007-08-15T00:07:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=700"},"modified":"2007-08-14T19:15:10","modified_gmt":"2007-08-15T00:15:10","slug":"energy-from-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=700","title":{"rendered":"Energy from Space"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"200\" src=\"\/media\/tn_SPS.abo.fi.jpg\"  height=\"150\" style=\"width: 200px; height: 150px\" \/>Longtime readers know that I am very interested in how Solar Power Satellites (SPS) might become a viable option\u00a0for providing clean energy from space.\u00a0 According to the calculations <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=622\">I&#8217;ve done<\/a>, it doesn&#8217;t seem like a realistic possibility.\u00a0 The sheer scale of the problem (i.e., how much electricity humanity consumes) means that SPS won&#8217;t be more than a minor player on the scene until the efficiencies of Solar-2-Electric conversion get better by at least an order of magnitude (or more).<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" width=\"166\" src=\"\/media\/MarshallInstituteLogo.jpg\"  height=\"63\" style=\"width: 166px; height: 63px\" \/>But I still try and follow developments in this field, hoping for some new breakthrough (or hoping that I&#8217;ve misplaced a decimal point somewhere).\u00a0 In a recent issue of Marc Boucher&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spaceref.com\/\">SpaceRef Daily<\/a>, he points out a presentation which was given at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marshall.org\/\">George C. Marshall Institute<\/a> titled <em>&#8220;Energy from Space: Examining the Potential of Space to Provide Energy for Earth<\/em>&#8220;.\u00a0 Although I didn&#8217;t attend this, the slides from the two presentations are on the Marshall Institute website (and are available <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marshall.org\/pdf\/materials\/550.pdf\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marshall.org\/pdf\/materials\/552.pdf\">here<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>Space Elevator fans might take note of slide number 13 from Dr. Hoffert&#8217;s presentation.\u00a0 He uses a comparison from Ivan Bekey&#8217;s <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Advanced-Space-System-Concepts-Technologies\/dp\/1884989128\/ref=sr_1_1\/105-2511910-8148400?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1187136793&amp;sr=8-1\">Advanced Space System Concepts and Technologies<\/a><\/em> showing\u00a0an earth-based Space Elevator operating &#8220;40-50 years out&#8221; and it&#8217;s launch cost as $2\/kg (vs. $20,000\/kg using a Shuttle today).\u00a0 He also makes the case that SPS could eventually\u00a0be cheaper than earth based Solar power because of the increased efficiencies.<\/p>\n<p>Neither presentation, unfortunately,\u00a0deflates the argument I made earlier; that because of the sheer size of the problem, SPS will not be a major contributor to earth&#8217;s power usage unless and until efficiencies get a whole let better.<\/p>\n<p>Interesting presentations nonetheless&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Longtime readers know that I am very interested in how Solar Power Satellites (SPS) might become a viable option\u00a0for providing clean energy from space.\u00a0 According to the calculations I&#8217;ve done, it doesn&#8217;t seem like a realistic possibility.\u00a0 The sheer scale of the problem (i.e., how much electricity humanity consumes) means that SPS won&#8217;t be more [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}