Power From Space?

Originally published in Green Home MegaStore in 2009

Hi there!

As usual, I was reading our RSS feeds (you should too, there’s some interesting stuff there) and this time I ran across an article that discussed the potential of having energy beamed to the Earth’s surface from high Earth orbits.

If you’ve been reading Practical Greenology and/or GHMS for a while, you will probably not be surprised at my reaction. I’m simply amazed! And that’s not because I never thought about it before. Let’s assume that the technical and financial hurdles are overcome, and we have a network of satellites beaming solar energy collected in space to us poor, energy-hungry beings here on the surface of Earth.

Do the logic: The Earth consumes – one way or another – the amount of energy that arrives on the Earth’s surface and radiates a sufficient amount back off the planet to keep us essentially balanced – albeit there are anomalies due to major volcanic eruptions, meteor strikes, plus mankind’s atmospheric and oceanic pollution, etc. In any case, the amount of energy out-of-balance is not a significantly high amount. That’s the base case. For an energy-oriented engineer, that’s a balanced system, Energy In – Energy Out = No Change

Project – case one: We sit here and consume an additional 0,5% (a crass assumption, but we have to receive a large amount of energy to be able to pay for the space systems) compared to the solar energy normally landing on the planet. I don’t claim to have the foggiest idea of what the amount of heating rate that would amount to, but I am reasonably certain that it is considerably more than what is being caused by our pollutionary activities. I can imagine that in less than 100 years, the Earth would be totally unlivable for any creature species living here today! Talk about global warming! The engineer’s equation: Energy In – Energy Out = Change in Status Quo (we put in more energy – ultimately heat – than we remove, and start to cook)

Project – case two: We sit here and watch on TV as one of the radiation-gathering satellites goes haywire from a meteroid hit and the energy stream focus moves away from the receiving station and starts wandering around the countryside – destroying everything it comes near in a science fiction-type nightmare. Hmmm… there’s not really an engineer’s equation for this, but maybe FUBAR is an adequate description: Fouled Up Beyond All Recovery (that’s not the Army version :-) ).

Project – case three: More or less the same as case two, except that the deviation of the energy stream is caused by an attack from a political splinter group, either on the ground station (more likely) or on the satellite itself. Same results as case two, except that they may be able to choose their political or politico-economic target – Manhattan, Washington D.C., Paris, Damascus, Mexico City, Tokyo, Seoul, you name it! FUBAR 2!

To be honest, I don’t like any of these scenarios. Do you?

Space Energy System Misused

Thanks for looking in,

Jimmy Craig
for
Sue & Craig Websites

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Power From Space?

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