Space Elevator Journal

The Right Way to Get to Space

Space Elevator ROI (Excerpt III) Updated

The 3rd in a series of excerpts of my article in;

Liftport: The Space Elevator: Opening Space To Everyone
edited by Michael J Laine, Tom Nugent, Bill Fawcett
Published 2006 - 308 pages

Limited preview - Table of Contents - About this book

[Links to previous/following excerpts are at the bottom of this post]

Solar Power Satellites (SPS’s) concentrate the Sun’s energy and beam it to Earth using microwaves or lasers. Unlike terrestrial solar power, SPS’s generate electricity 24 hours a day from sunlight unfiltered by Earth’s atmosphere.

According to Larry Kazmerski, technology manager for solar energy technologies at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, rocket launch costs are birth control for an SPS industry that has would-be participants already lined up in the waiting room.

“2004 is the fiftieth anniversary of the Bell invention of the solar cell. One solar cell we had back then was five milliwatts of power,” says Kazmerski. “Last year the industry shipped out something like three-quarters of a gigawatt, something like nine billion cells. Most of that progress has been in the last 10 – 15 years. So, if you look 10 – 15 years ahead, technological progress tends to compress in time.

“Some people think even one SPS up there would be a business", he adds with a laugh.

“I actually served for three years on a NASA panel that looked at the future of space power. They have experts looking at SPS’s for Earth still because they said ‘eventually we’re going to have this.’

“Probably the primary thing right now is delivering those things up to space. The SE does attack a critical showstopper,” states Kazmerski. “If you can get this stuff up there cheap, all of a sudden space solar power becomes feasible.

“I actually served for three years on a NASA panel that looked at the future of space power. They have experts looking at SPS’s for Earth still because they said ‘eventually we’re going to have this.’

“Probably the primary thing right now is delivering those things up to space. The SE does attack a critical showstopper,” states Kazmerski. “If you can get this stuff up there cheap, all of a sudden space solar power becomes feasible.

“If you go up [in space] now every near-earth satellite uses dual or triple-junction solar power devices that are on the order of 28% efficient [in zero air mass]. They are not at their limits yet. They could still probably be optimized by adding a 4^th junction to bring them up to 40 or 50% efficiency.

“I think right now, if the delivery system were sufficient, [current solar power technologies] would be good enough to start us. [But], right now, it would be difficult to deliver a square mile of photovoltaics up into space.”

--PB--

Space Elevator (Excerpt I)

Space Elevator (Excerpt II)

Labels: "Space Elevator" "Solar Power Satellite"