Space-Based Solar Power
fliptop writes:
More than 80 years ago, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov wrote Reason, a story about a solar energy collection station in deep space that delivered high-energy rays to receivers on Earth and Mars. Called space-based solar power (SSP), Asimov's idea didn't start to approach science fact in any meaningful sense until 1968...
...when Peter Glaser, an aerospace engineer with Apollo program experience working for the Arthur D. Little consultancy in Cambridge, MA, published a paper suggesting ways to construct SSP stations with separate solar collecting and giant dish-based microwave transmitters.
However, based on the pre-carbon-fiber, heavy-metal aerospace technologies of the day, studies by Nasa and the U.S. Department of Energy determined that a single solar-receiving satellite would weigh in excess of 80,000 tons, putting launch costs per power station way beyond consideration.
On January 3 2023, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched 114 small payloads, and right now...
...in a sun-synchronous orbit about 525 kilometers overhead, there is a small experimental satellite called the Space Solar Power Demonstrator One (SSPD-1 for short). It was designed and built by a team at the California Institute of Technology, funded by donations from the California real estate developer Donald Bren[.]
"To the best of our knowledge, this would be the first demonstration of actual power transfer in space, of wireless power transfer," says Ali Hajimiri, a professor of electrical engineering at Caltech and a codirector of the program behind SSPD-1, theSpace Solar Power Project.
The Caltech team is waiting for a go-ahead from the operators of a small space tug to which it is attached, providing guidance and attitude control. If all goes well, SSPD-1 will spend at least five to six months testing prototype components of possible future solar stations in space.
[...] If it works out, in 30 years maybe there could be orbiting solar power fleets, adding to the world's energy mix. In other words, as a recent report from [British engineering consultancy] Frazer-Nash concluded, this is "a potential game changer."
SSPD-1 story originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.
Previously: Space-Based Solar Power Hardware Ready for Actual Testing in Space
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