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

[progree]

5. I know you got my point. Nice deflection anyway. Let's try it again

Last edited Sun Mar 17, 2019, 07:08 PM - Edit history (1)

Change the solar flux by increasing area. ... In the worst case, by increasing the absorption area of the solar flux and focusing it on the planet, it will further fry the atmosphere.

Further fry the atmosphere. Sheesh.

We either produce electricity by the solar satellite scheme or by some other way:

If by solar satellite, the satellite captures solar energy and sends say a GWH to earth as microwave energy over the course of some period of time.

Or we produce the electricity by some other way, say conventional land-based nuclear where to produce the GWH of electricity, we convert some amount of uranium into a GWH of electricity and 2 GWH of waste heat.

Which sounds to you like it might heat up the planet most? (Although both would result in trivial heating even if all the world's electricity was produced by either of these ways. Far far far far less than the amount of heat trapped by the excess greenhouse gas problem that we have)

As I said before, I'm not a fan of solar satellites -- almost certainly too expensive, and the space junk problem. And as you say, in order to make a real difference, we'd have to have a gazillion launches and the percolates fuel and all that.

What I was objecting to is trying to make this out to be some extra source of planetary heating without considering that the alternatives to producing the electricity heats up the planet at least as much.

Edited to add:

None of it will stand up to an LCA (Life Cycle Analysis) calculation, if only for consideration of the launch requirements

When I first read it, I thought you were talking about cost. But if you mean GHG -- who knows, it may well be that producing the rockets and the fuel and burning the fuel in the atmosphere may tip it to make the solar satellite option more earth-heating than the nuclear option (although today's commercial nuclear power plants do have a small GHG component mostly in the electricity to enrich the fuel). But the amount of extra solar energy sent to earth in the satellite scheme is trivial, and less than the amount of heat released in fission.