Solar farms in space could be renewable energy's next frontier

[NNadir]

4. The thermal output of power plants is trivial compared to the solar flux.

This "satellite based microwave" scheme is as old as the hills. It's been under discussion since the early 1970's and was often evoked in this country as a selling point for NASA funding.

None of it will stand up to an LCA (Life Cycle Analysis) calculation, if only for consideration of the launch requirements. I note that perchlorate contamination is just one factor connected with many launch vehicles, or there's fun stuff like hydrazines.

The "electric car" evocation was pure sarcasm. The magical thinking about a solar nirvana is often coupled to magical thinking about electric cars.

It occurs to me that people are willing to endure any amount of destruction to the environment to make their solar scheme work, but none of it has worked, none of it is working, and none of it will work. To the extent it's practiced it is rapidly becoming yet another environmental disaster, ignored, but a disaster just the same; adding to the burden of electronic waste.

It's a matter of scale.

I have calculated that if a human being lived at twice the continuous average power consumption, 5000 watts, vs 2500 watts, in one's lifetime, one would need, should one live to be 100 years old, about 200 grams of plutonium over their entire lifetime. (157 GJ per person per year.) A nuclear reactor can be constructed that is designed to last well more than half a century. Hell, some built in the 1950's did just that.

At high thermal efficiency, using far more advanced technology that was available in the 1950's, a single reactor can produce all the energy for millions of people lasting over their lifetimes.

Spaceships? Have we demonstrated this on the same kind of scale as say, 1950's nuclear reactors?

What do you suppose would be the mass of rockets and spacecraft required for this science fiction scheme?

You say you need electricity. If we are to eliminate poverty, we all do, everywhere on this planet. Me too. Suppose an asteroid comes by, smashes one of these grand solar microwaves for the planet to pieces, assuming we don't destroy everything just trying to get them up there, and the scattered debris becomes projectiles aimed at all the others, establishing a chain reaction of destruction. Who gets to leave the lights on? Me? You? Someone in Nigeria? Paraguay?

We are already concerned about orbital debris, just for weather, communications and scientific satellites. Now we want to put it up there on a vastly larger industrial scale because uninformed airheads are concerned about so called "nuclear waste?"

This tired crap, repeated year after year, decade after decade was garbage in 1970 and it remains garbage in 2019. In 1970, at least, we could have been excused for not knowing better, but not now. There is no excuse for this kind of thinking in modern times in my view.

All the fucking Band-Aids in the world, all the magical thinking, all the endless dreams without any consideration of the environmental cost has not made solar energy or any of the other absurd so called "renewable energy" schemes work. They soak trillions upon trillions of dollars on a planet where two billion people lack anything even approaching, remotely, a toilet bowl, and we still don't get it.

This mornings weekly average carbon dioxide concentration was over 412 ppm.

Up-to-date weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa

Week beginning on March 10, 2019: 412.16 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 409.02 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 388.71 ppm
Last updated: March 17, 2019

In 1970, this figure was around 325.6 ppm.

You have the figures for world energy production before you. Are things getting better or worse while we wait?

By what logic do we all sit around and wait for magical spaceships to save us because so called "renewable energy" is the "New Frontier."

Do we not give a shit about the future, except inasmuch as we can watch reruns of "2001, A Space Odyssey" with our Netflix subscription?

We really need to stop daydreaming and get practical. There are practical solutions. They are here, they've been tested, and they are well known. It would take a tremendous investment and effort, to be sure, and a surrender of tired notions, but if we care, we might still save what is left to be saved.