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Power in Spaaaaaace!
Jun. 25th, 2008 08:20 pmThe Japanese are making a start on space-based solar power, working towards a 1GW prototype station in twenty years or so. I am fat with grins at this news.
Space-based solar power (SBSP) and nuclear fusion are both Big Future Tech approaches to making a metric fuckton of clean electricity. The difference is this: fusion requires fundamental physics advances (notably, now that a fusing plasma can be created, research needs to be done into how to keep it fusing away happily - the analogue of flame physics for combustion). SBSP is just engineering.
A wise person will observe that the greatest of engineering projects can be solved by hurling enough cash, resources and manpower at it. SBSP is amenable to an Energy Manhattan Project in a way that fusion is currently not. There are obstacles, sure, but surmountable ones.
A cautious person might ask just why exactly we're giving anyone an Orbital Deth Lazor. Good news: we're not. The power density is actually far too low to bake the flesh from your crispy human bones, and under normal operation there'd be a stack of cutouts to kill the beam if it wandered off track. Keeping the beam - a microwave laser in most plans - on track is just optics and computing power, and the Japanese can do those in their sleep. Most of the objections you're thinking of right now have already been talked out by a boffin think-tank last year (web 2.0 saves the world?).
Space-based solar power (SBSP) and nuclear fusion are both Big Future Tech approaches to making a metric fuckton of clean electricity. The difference is this: fusion requires fundamental physics advances (notably, now that a fusing plasma can be created, research needs to be done into how to keep it fusing away happily - the analogue of flame physics for combustion). SBSP is just engineering.
A wise person will observe that the greatest of engineering projects can be solved by hurling enough cash, resources and manpower at it. SBSP is amenable to an Energy Manhattan Project in a way that fusion is currently not. There are obstacles, sure, but surmountable ones.
A cautious person might ask just why exactly we're giving anyone an Orbital Deth Lazor. Good news: we're not. The power density is actually far too low to bake the flesh from your crispy human bones, and under normal operation there'd be a stack of cutouts to kill the beam if it wandered off track. Keeping the beam - a microwave laser in most plans - on track is just optics and computing power, and the Japanese can do those in their sleep. Most of the objections you're thinking of right now have already been talked out by a boffin think-tank last year (web 2.0 saves the world?).
