Space-based solar power becoming a reality?

[marshwiggle]

All I know is that by now, we were all supposed to be getting about in flying cars.  I don't know what's worse - all the techno libertarians or the techno utopians.  Must be something in the water at Stanford.  Maybe they can also create a crypto currency to pay for it all - lightly regulated, magic internet money that lives in the cloud, seems to be prone to fraud and people "losing the keys to the wallet"  and is entirely dependent on "the greater fool" theory to be of any value.

I'm nowhere close to a techno utopian. The advances in technology the last 40 years have been extraordinary without needing to think like that.

Here you go with your flying car: https://www.engadget.com/united-airlines-flying-taxi-eve-air-mobility-embrarer-162205301.html

Shucks, I know of at least ten different designs of flying car that actually flew between the 1920s and 1970s.  One, believe it or not, was a flying Ford Pinto, which is scary to think about.  It has long been doable.  Just never practical, or very economically feasible.  And no doubt for the best, given all the trouble we've had from the proliferation of the earth-bound kind.

The biggest problem with flying cars, (and large drones, for that matter), is the danger to people on the ground in the event of crashes. Increased, largely unregulated, air traffic over populated areas is a REALLY bad idea. (For a few niche applications, like sparsely-populated archipelagos, and long rivers with few crossings, flying cars could be a decent solution.)

[jimbogumbo]

Funnily enough, I'm now in the process of reading an old book I found recently that's all about colonies in space.  The whole colonization business was expected to be driven by the need to build giant orbital solar arrays to beam power back to Earth.  The collection points earthside were expected to be miles in diameter, probably built on tapped-out oil and coal fields that had already been ruined for any other use. 

This book is pushing five decades old.  Maybe this time it's different?  Again, I'll believe it when I see it.

What is the book?

[ciao_yall]

I'm cool with agriculture paying. But, while it hasn't stopped raining, that isn't enough for the usage in Arizona and California. Were would the water they pay for come from?

If people want a certain quantity of water for whatever purpose they will pay. If they can't or won't pay a sufficiently high price to obtain that quantity, they'll engage in less water intensive economic activities, or emigrate to the Northeast, where there's plenty of water.

If we wish to help them, we should ship them money, not water.

Most of the water is used by agriculture, not households. The Central Valley in California was a giant desert until someone figured out in the early 1900's that if you brought a lot of water in, the mild climate would make excellent growing conditions. But... no water.

Now they use pretty water intensive methods, like flood irrigation, to grow things like rice (!). They could invest in lower water use methods but that would cost money as well.

Those costs, one way or another, would go on to the consumer and food prices would increase. The region has started mowing over their golf courses to use that water infrastructure for agriculture which is more profitable.

[apl68]

Funnily enough, I'm now in the process of reading an old book I found recently that's all about colonies in space.  The whole colonization business was expected to be driven by the need to build giant orbital solar arrays to beam power back to Earth.  The collection points earthside were expected to be miles in diameter, probably built on tapped-out oil and coal fields that had already been ruined for any other use. 

This book is pushing five decades old.  Maybe this time it's different?  Again, I'll believe it when I see it.

What is the book?

Toward Distant Suns, by T.A. Heppenheimer.  I went through the first several chapters yesterday evening.  I would've loved to have seen this as a kid, back before it became a period piece.

[dismalist]

I'm cool with agriculture paying. But, while it hasn't stopped raining, that isn't enough for the usage in Arizona and California. Were would the water they pay for come from?

If people want a certain quantity of water for whatever purpose they will pay. If they can't or won't pay a sufficiently high price to obtain that quantity, they'll engage in less water intensive economic activities, or emigrate to the Northeast, where there's plenty of water.

If we wish to help them, we should ship them money, not water.

Most of the water is used by agriculture, not households. The Central Valley in California was a giant desert until someone figured out in the early 1900's that if you brought a lot of water in, the mild climate would make excellent growing conditions. But... no water.

Now they use pretty water intensive methods, like flood irrigation, to grow things like rice (!). They could invest in lower water use methods but that would cost money as well.

Those costs, one way or another, would go on to the consumer and food prices would increase. The region has started mowing over their golf courses to use that water infrastructure for agriculture which is more profitable.

Absolutely, Ciao! To keep prices of water intensive food low, import it from regions where water is plentiful, not from deserts.

[jimbogumbo]

I'm interested where that water is. Not the Amazon for sure (drought). In the US the food comes from the Midwest and West coast, along with Florida. Only one of those three hasn't experienced significant water shortages.

And would we really expect that people will pay the higher (much) food costs? Or the less water intensive alternative of less (way less) meat? I'm dubious.

[Juvenal]

More energy, more growth.  What could be better?  Bring it on.

[apl68]

This may belong on the "What Have You Been Reading" thread, but since we're talking about it here:


Toward Distant Suns, by T.A. Heppenheimer.  In the 1970s there was a good deal of techno-utopianism surrounding the ideas of space colonization advocate Gerard O'Neill.  Heppenheimer here argues that building massive solar powersats to supply our future energy needs would be a perfect way to get the whole space colonization thing under way.  Building the powersats would require lunar mining colonies (to mine materials and shoot them to Earth orbit via mass driver) and orbital quarters for several thousand orbital construction workers and support staff.  The colony would probably be a kind of well-ordered company town, like the old Panama Canal Zone.  Note the contrast between this view of a space colony and the more popular idea that it would be a libertarian paradise where independent spirits could finally escape all those pesky rules and regulations.  Given that high-rise condominiums have been known to collapse because their collective owners couldn't agree to invest in badly-needed repairs, I'd give a libertarian colony in space less than a generation before it imploded, due to a lack of people willing to do and pay for the unglamorous grunt work of making sure all those complicated life-support systems stayed viable....

Anyway, by the time the powersats were all built out, space tourists would have begun coming to the space colony.  Once word about the delights of great views from orbit, low-g sports, and zero-g sex got out, they wouldn't be able to beat the hordes of eager visitors off with a stick.  Since telecommuting to work from anywhere would be a thing by the 21st century (well, there's one prediction right on the nose), there would be a real-estate rush to buy dwellings in the space colony.  There would be a real danger of a major real estate bubble to be on guard against.

So new space colonies would be born.  They would get bigger and bigger and develop a self-sustaining economy built around power supply and asteroid mining.  Eventually there would be independent space-dwelling nations.  And then Earth could start either engineering grand projects to communicate with aliens or, assuming there probably weren't any out there--Heppenheimer suspects it's the latter--start sending out star ships to seek out new life and new civilizations, etc.  Earth's people would be to the galaxy what the Western Europeans were to Earth--the progressive force that brought civilization and knit the disparate parts together.

Uh...yeah.  It's easy to imagine how well that last part would go down now with many people.  And you can't really blame them.  Space exploration's frequent identification with exploration and colonization have left it in very bad odor with the sorts of commentators who tend to be called "woke."  There are big flame wars going on in the sci-fi fan community between admirers of older writers like Heinlein, and newer fans who believe that these should be run out of the canon to make way for writers who use sci-fi as a further club with which to beat the drum for revolution.

Another thing that dates this book--besides the simple fact that hardly any of this stuff has come to pass over the past four decades plus--is the treatment of global climate change.  Heppenheimer was aware of it.  He speaks of it as if the jury was still out regarding its effects.  Fair enough, since it would not be until around 1990 that the scientific consensus on climate change was sufficiently well-developed to sound the alarm.  Assuming that human-caused climate change really does turn out to be a problem, Heppenheimer points out that his powersats would be a splendid solution to the problem.  Which brings us to this thread.  We're still waiting.

[jimbogumbo]

Thanks apl!

I certainly don't want more growth (well, at least not unlimited). I just hope we can develop a source at scale that is far less polluting and renewable.

[marshwiggle]

Thanks apl!

I certainly don't want more growth (well, at least not unlimited). I just hope we can develop a source at scale that is far less polluting and renewable.

There's your problem. Better solution: change building codes to require 5% of the cost of new home construction in some sort of renewable technology (solar panels, batteries, etc. ) Even without solar exposure, a battery bank would help with time-based metering, so the system can charge from the grid when power is cheap, and run from batteries (or even sell to the grid) when the price is high.
This reduces the load on the grid and centralized production, and lets people see more of how they can adjust their own usage to their own resources.

[jimbogumbo]

I want that also. However, I don't see switching the grid from coal and natural gas produced electricity without something better being developed. That's the end I'm worried about. Am I wrong in that?

[marshwiggle]

I want that also. However, I don't see switching the grid from coal and natural gas produced electricity without something better being developed. That's the end I'm worried about. Am I wrong in that?

A big part of the problem is that grid-scale renewable energy, (other than *nuclear), requires grid-scale storage. Generation is the easy part. By moving toward distributed storage, it becomes much more manageable, and distributed production simplifies it even more.

*As many analysts have pointed out, nuclear is the most viable backstop to intermittent renewable energy in many places.
I own an off-grid cabin, so I'm all in favour of renewables, but the storage challenges are very real.

[Anselm]

Can we first get restaurant tables that don't rock back and forth?  Then maybe someone can design computer printers which easily connect with my computer with a few mouse clicks. 

We can have plenty of energy if we just had good urban planning and mass transit.

[jimbogumbo]

Here's the info on nuclear in the US. I understand the storage issue, but still haven't seen the pollution and non-renewable facets discussed other than nuclear. I quite frankly don't see the US building enough new fission plants to replace current coal and natural gas generation of electricity. Color me dubious at best.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/nuclear/us-nuclear-industry.php

[Juvenal]

The color of "dubious" is... "beige"?

Here's the info on nuclear in the US. I understand the storage issue, but still haven't seen the pollution and non-renewable facets discussed other than nuclear. I quite frankly don't see the US building enough new fission plants to replace current coal and natural gas generation of electricity. Color me dubious at best.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/nuclear/us-nuclear-industry.php