The case for an economy in space

[SomeGuy12]

What? solar wind carry away light stuff?

Lol, solar wind is super weak, it may do it with hydrogen or helium atmosphere in billions of years.

First when the moon form was due a collision between a body and the earth, all the light material had more chance to stay in orbit meanwhile the heavy material would come back to earth, then the moon form from all that "surface light material" from the collision. So you dont have many expensive heavy elements in the moon, to search that go to Mercury or Venus (which it has more chance due their volcanoes.

Lol, that is the only thing we need? When we learn to do that, then we can make von neumann probes and conquer the universe. And if we dont take care with the replicating mechanism, we may consume all the matter in the universe (is exponential grow)

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Well I guess my ideas are a lot more realistic, the only that it will need some development is the constellation to push or deorbit sattelites. But I accept critics.

Your idea has limits. There's only so much RF spectrum available for telecommunications. Real time satellite imagery is, due to simple limitations of optics, much lower resolution than cameras located closer to the ground.

What I'm saying it, cell towers, wi-fi hotspots everywhere, and flying drone balloons and copters can and are used to do almost everything you can do with satellites. The satellites are a supplement, a way to handle large geographic areas more cheaply. (as in, instead of building cell phone towers to cover extreme rural areas like the wilds of canada, north dakota, the north pole, the oceans, you use satellites)

Satellite data bandwidth will always be much more expensive - because of the mentioned RF spectrum caps. So it will never be the main method used. And, a fleet of small and cheap satellites ringing the earth is only going to drive so much development. A few dozen falcon 9 launches, basically. I doubt you'll push satellites around - why bother? Docking is expensive and tricky. Why not just install a cheap set of RCS thrusters on every satellite separately? Hall effect or other high ISP thrusters if you want more duration.

Not going to argue lunar composition with you - point is, the resources are there.

Not going to argue your ignorant response to the idea of self replication - we have the factories now, they are just much too large.

[DBowman]

For sure that's the 'end game', even if the self replicating factories are only 'us' - but we need an 'opening game' first.

No we don't. The first time we send astronauts back to the Moon we'll have a self-replicating factory for them to operate. So what if it takes 50 years to get there? It makes technical and economic sense. We absolutely can develop such technology with the raw materials already present on earth. We can send lightweight robot probes to study our solar system in the meantime, and stay in low earth orbit until it makes economic sense to go elsewhere.

A self replicating factory - note there's intermediate versions of it, basically a roomful of 3d printers and CNC machines that need a constant supply of tiny high end parts like ball bearings and microchips - also makes the rockets to do all this a lot cheaper as well.

'stay in LEO until it makes economic sense to go else where' - I guess I'm saying that studies in the 70s and 80s thought that time was now ( then... ) and that they could imagine getting funding / investment for 'delivering electrical power'. I think as time goes by natural tech advances will make the 'self replicating factory' smaller and smaller and cheaper and cheaper. As you say already our economy is basically 'a big self replicating factory' (growing seemingly without limit (a or at least intending to expand to the limits)) and eventually it'll be small enough to imagine shipping one 'up stairs'. But why wait? If there is something in space worth selling now then we don't need independent moon based self replicating factories to have significant economic activity in LEO and on Luna, Mars, etc. Once you get the snowball rolling the deltaV economics & material bounty available off Earth would do the rest.

Have you read Last and First Men? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_and_First_Men) mind blowingly published in 1930 - among other things the guy was imagining things like quantum dots & meta materials.

Lol, that is the only thing we need? When we learn to do that, then we can make von neumann probes and conquer the universe. And if we dont take care with the replicating mechanism, we may consume all the matter in the universe (is exponential grow)

to paraphrase Heisenberg ( BrBa ) "we are the goo"

One other thing I thought of re 'what good is zero gravity'. I don't know much about the real potential contribution to alloying and crystallization / making micro structures - I suspect it's not quite as simple as 'just keep it spinning' and the material will 'think' it's zero G. But maybe one could make very large composite structures in novel ways. Kind of 'spinning' like a spider web carbon fiber & resin composite structures that start out being too weak to support themselves but are built up to the point where they have enough strength and integrity. You might be able to get much better strength per mass from a monolithic 'spun' structure vs something made from molded panels 'glued' together.

Edited July 27, 2015 by DBowman

[SomeGuy12]

One other thing I thought of re 'what good is zero gravity'. I don't know much about the real potential contribution to alloying and crystallization / making micro structures - I suspect it's not quite as simple as 'just keep it spinning' and the material will 'think' it's zero G. But maybe one could make very large composite structures in novel ways. Kind of 'spinning' like a spider web carbon fiber & resin composite structures that start out being too weak to support themselves but are built up to the point where they have enough strength and integrity. You might be able to get much better strength per mass from a monolithic 'spun' structure vs something made from molded panels 'glued' together.

Obviously, over a period of time, if you rotate a material every direction, the gravity vectors all cancel out. NASA does this to test zero g on plants on earth - they just slowly rotate the plant in a big wheel. Slow enough there's negligible centripetal forces, but the plant is exposed to gravity in every direction, and does almost the same thing as if it were kept in true zero G.

So if you wanted to do the same thing to metal, it would probably work. As I said, at the chemistry level, gravity is such a tiny force to be negligible - electric fields are many many times (billions or trillions of times) stronger.

This isn't a hard concept to understand. Even if there's a tiny advantage to manufacturing in zero-G, is it worth paying thousands of dollars a kilogram? It would have to be an enormous advantage for it to be worth the cost premium, and, as I said, it's unbelievably likely that if something can be made in zero g that is really nice, there is probably a way to make that something on earth in 1 G with the right conditions. (vacuum chambers, electric and magnetic fields, laser light as tweezers to move reactants around, whatever it takes)

Edited July 27, 2015 by SomeGuy12

[DBowman]

I'm most certainly going to have to do some serious research into orbital power generation, if only to see how the numbers work out. Here are the questions I need to answer.

It might be worth finding a copy of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colonies_in_Space that work really started things off in the late 70s. I found this 1997 NASA 're look at orbital solar' http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/1997-Mankins-FreshLookAtSpaceSolarPower.pdf today but have not yet read it.

O'Neill's basic scheme was to minimize the cost of earth launch by maximizing use of Luna material:

• Put some basic mining, refining, smelting, and manufacturing capability on the moon.
  
• He proposed that glass, fibres for fibreglass, aluminium, maybe water, and regolith (for radiation shielding) could be sourced from the Moon.
  
• Use rail guns to launch 'finished material' to assembly points.
  
• Solar satellites are assembled in / placed in high orbits (low night). I think he favoured solar thermal - so hundreds of square kilometres of mirrors driving some kinds of turbines. 'mirror' is cheap & easy to make from Moon stuff and the launch cost is 'just' electricity, PV solar would require much more intricate manufacture => more earth lifting.
  
• This effort would require thousands of people in orbit / on Luna so it requires some 'colonies'.
  
• The Earth receiver is 'very small', I don't remember exactly but like the size of a power station, orders of magnitude smaller than a solar farm on the surface. You put em where ever you like, if you are powering something smaller than a city then use a smaller receiver and transmitter - I've no idea what the lower limit is.
  
• His concept was to use minimal earth source components to 'seed' or 'pump prime' a huge manufacturing enterprise on the Moon and in orbit. It was supposed to be a money making venture.
  

Big picture wise we know that over the next 40 years we need to 10x our power consumption just to catch everyone up to today, so probably 20x. We also know, if you are not a skeptic, that we need to cut our CO2 by 80% - so we need 99% of our power not to be Carbon based - that's bound to do 'something' to power prices. Also orbital solar is at least 4x as efficient as ground based (night, clouds, air - probably 8x) and can provide constant base-load power - which is the 'holy grail' of renewables. So I think there are some powerful forces pointing to orbital solar - but I don't know how well the old economic models really stacked up and how they would today.

What we need is a game that has all the components of potential economies so people can build out their proposals and compare the numbers - not sure if it's be 'fun' though.

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... I said, it's unbelievably likely that if something can be made in zero g that is really nice, there is probably a way to make that something on earth in 1 G with the right conditions. (vacuum chambers, electric and magnetic fields, laser light as tweezers to move reactants around, whatever it takes)

I know what you mean re gravity strength vs brownian motion and such & rotating things.

I was thinking about making large structures that would start out too weak to support themselves, like knitting a space shuttle big orange tank or those LNG tanker tanks (or hulls?). Maybe you could do similar things inside a big mould, but maybe the fibres would tend to 'fall off' / be disturbed by gravity before they could set properly in place. Maybe you could over come that by doing it in big moulds full of fluid so the fibres would be neutrally buoyant. Maybe you'd have a problem with needing hydrophobic and hydrophilic stuff and / or not having somethings dissolve in / react with your gravity fooling fluid. Just thinking that on the scale of the large it might be convenient (cheaper) to construct something in zero G even though you want to use it in full G. Seriously though I'd expect you'd never be able to get em down.

[shynung]

Water in space is virtually valueless - because there's no virtually demand for water in space. (For those of who don't grasp basic economics, something is only worth what somebody will pay you for it.) Not to mention, if you read what I was replying to, the individual specified "on Earth", which implies returning the material to earth.

There is demand for water in space, it's just not very much (the ISS). Plus, water can be cracked into hydrogen and oxygen, which is a common rocket propellant mix, with the right equipment (needless to say, no one is doing or planning to do that in the near future).

It's not entirely valueless, it's just that not much people actually needed water in space.

And it's ludicrous to say that because we've only been looking for materials for scientific reasons that we can't then turn around and compare the value of what we know to be out there against the costs of recovering and transporting it. (Not to mention, Planetary Resources isn't looking for materials - they're looking for mining sites, something they can only do because we already know what materials are out there.)

We can. That I do not dispute. What matters is whether someone actually does it in preparation of actually extracting those materials for profit. For that, we're back to just Planetary Resources.

[AngelLestat]

About Beaming Solar Power from space, the idea will have economics sense if few things are solve..

-We need thin rolls of solar panels, it does not matter if they dont have 47% efficiency as normal PV for space, with 20% it will be ok, they just need to be very thin.. Technology is almost there. They also need to keep the PV under 45 degreess celcius, to do that they just need 1/4 of the PV area as radiators.

-They need to send that energy to earth without big efficiency loses.. That is tricky.. we are not there yet.

Your idea has limits. There's only so much RF spectrum available for telecommunications. .... Real time satellite imagery is, due to simple limitations of optics, much lower resolution than cameras located closer to the ground.

forget about rf spectrum, the space internet is already happen, and is not my idea.. many companies will do it at the same time, google with 4000 sats. They use very different frequencies than normal sats. So is clear that all your critics against space internet have no basis.

Real time satellite imagery is, due to simple limitations of optics, much lower resolution than cameras located closer to the ground

and flying drone balloons and copters can and are used to do almost everything you can do with satellites. The satellites are a supplement, a way to handle large geographic areas more cheaply

Resolution of optic in space? google maps... that is enoght..

The world is a big place to try see it from such low height as ballons or quadcopters, it has 500.000.000 km2, each drone can only take 100km2, so you will need 500.000 drones. You need drone bases on sea too (take care with cargoships).

They can only take 1 user by time, and it will take at least 15 mins by user.

Ballons will not work, they all get cluster by the wind, and if you make them with all the needed to keep position, it will be very expensive, that is why google discard the idea for internet.

You can have 4000 sats with 10 camera each, you can access, take the picture or video and leave, you dont need to reach the place first.

As comunication you can use the same space internet network.

I doubt you'll push satellites around - why bother? Docking is expensive and tricky. Why not just install a cheap set of RCS thrusters on every satellite separately? Hall effect or other high ISP thrusters if you want more duration.

Nobody said nothing about docking, you can push them with lasers (photons generate a force), and between all the costelation they generate a net which can counter any change of momentum.

You can use mirrors to bouce that laser and save power, or graphene sponge which harvester the 100% of the photon energy as momentum releasing electrons.

Not going to argue your ignorant response to the idea of self replication - we have the factories now, they are just much too large.

Is clear that you did not think this very well.

Start to imagine all the machinary that you need plus power plus technology that we dont have..

A basic 3d printer has tons of componds and elements, you have very complex structures as chips..

But you plan to extract all from moon soil? You know all the process to separate each element, then use a 3d printer which can convine all elements (each element needs temperaturr, pressure or different enviroments to stick each other).. It does not exist, all 3d printers only work with 1 element.

And as I said it, if you have such thing.. you can consume the universe in a very finite time if it has not limits. You think is so easy to make a machine that can destroy the universe?

....You might be able to get much better strength per mass from a monolithic 'spun' structure vs something made from molded panels 'glued' together.

Yeah not sure what you want to said.. I never speak on anti gravity.. but I consider that so far as the von neuman machine.

[Nibb31]

First of all, self-replicating/Von Neumann machines are a means to reach an objective, not an objective themselves. They are not a business case themselves, but they can be used as a way to complete an actual business case. The problem is that you still need to figure out what the actual business case is. Building a self replicating factory on the Moon is not going to make anyone any money if the only goal is only to build a self-replicating factory.

Secondly, self replicating machines are still science fiction at this stage. Any complex device these days is made from a variety of materials and complex components: While you can 3D-print some of the basic structural parts, it is still impractical or impossible to make things like electronic components, PCBs, solder, solvents, springs, fasteners, washers, conductors, insulants, fluids, seals, fabrics, filters, lubricants, magnets, etc... Extracting all those materials from regolith would be like building a Toyota Prius (as well as a Toyota Prius factory) by extracting the materials from seawater. It might be possible (because most of the basic elements exist in a certain amount in seawater), but it would be an immensely long, complex and inefficient process.

- - - Updated - - -

As for the solar power thing, it will require more energy to build and maintain an orbital power plant and the associated ground stations than to build a solar farm on Earth. If a solar array in orbit has twice the efficiency of a solar array on the ground, then why not just build a bigger solar array on the ground. There is no shortage of real-estate. It will still be 100 times cheaper than to build a half-size one that you send to orbit, plus a microwave ground station.

In addition, large scale microwave energy transmission has never been demonstrated. We have no idea what the impact might be on the ionosphere, the ozone layer, or the wildlife. For all we know, it might be more catastrophic for the environment than gas or coal plants.

Edited July 27, 2015 by Nibb31

[justidutch]

It seems to me that, instead of searching for a reason to begin an economy in space, we have to create the reason. Think of one of those crazy cults in Texas, where the dude who invents the religion creates some sort of plausible (to the weak-minded) explanation as to why you should give all your money to him and then you'll be saved.

So, outside of the real (although quite minimal) risk of an extinction-level event happening soon, perhaps we need to convince the public at large that creating colonies in space, or on other planetary bodies, is not just a good idea but a necessity. Then everything becomes economically feasible, resource mining and self-replicating factories included.

How we create this demand, I don't know. I'm not one for religion, let alone cults. Perhaps, though, we could play on the fear of a rogue asteroid or something that will "definitely hit the Earth… soon… "

Edit: Seems like a good basis for a trashy novel though: a cultist-space-odyssey...

Edited July 27, 2015 by justidutch

[Nibb31]

Relying on the stupidity of your customers is a good way to start a fad (like VG's space tourism thing), but it isn't a very sound way to build a sustainable business model.

[justidutch]

Maybe not sustainable, but perhaps a viable get-rich-quick scheme? Okay, I'll stop hijacking this thread now!

Edit: hmmm, I just thought of a great example of creating a phantom and unwarranted market where none existed. Nike. not the god, but the shoe company. Maybe I'm getting too caught up in the barefoot running 'craze', but have our feet evolved to the point where it is actually better for you to run on padded spongey footwear? Absolutely not. The facts are out there (I'll find them if you really want me to) that running with $200 running shoes is actually bad for you and will cause way more damage in most people than strapping old scrap pieces of rubber tyres to your feet. Nike, through some very clever marketing, basically invented the belief that you couldn't be a serious runner unless you bought their top-of-the-line footwear.

We can do the same!

Okay, I really will stop now, I apologize!

Edited July 27, 2015 by justidutch

[SomeGuy12]

Extracting all those materials from regolith would be like building a Toyota Prius (as well as a Toyota Prius factory) by extracting the materials from seawater. It might be possible (because most of the basic elements exist in a certain amount in seawater), but it would be an immensely long, complex and inefficient process.

I agree with you in that making all the materials in a "toyota prius factory" would take an immense plant far larger than a toyota plant. But it can be done - somewhere on the planet there's a plant that makes everything you named. And, if you think about it, there's probably a lot of commonalities. A lot of shared processes and shared components between all these plants, which means there is a way to shrink it immensely. That is, if you first build such a "omni-plant", you might notice that hundreds of separate processes all use a series of common elements, and you could make the plant an order of magnitude smaller by making separate processes use upgraded versions of "common" machines.

It's an immense project, don't get me wrong. And, I am perhaps missing things. For one thing, there's finite demand for manufactured goods - other needs would essentially become the bottleneck if we could somehow make manufactured goods so cheap they'd be nearly free.

Still, imagine what you could do if the factories to make things were nearly free. (they'd be nearly free because not only would the factories self replicate, they'd be able to make the mining equipment and power generators needed to run them). Food? You'd make factory grow modules like these and robots to tend them. Transportation? With no limit to manufacturing, you'd make roadway segments in a factory and personal rapid transit cars. (so the roadway segments would be these premade blocks made of lightweight forms of concrete, and steel, and festooned with countless redundant sensors and integrated solar panels. This would make automated cars practical because the road itself would tell all of the cars on that road about all of the other cars on the road, and would also guide them). You'd make homes the same way - big mountainous piles of premade luxury apartments with every possible amenity built in. (and efficiency upgrade - every light would use permanently installed LEDs, the showers would recycle water through filters, all the climate control would be heat pumps and efficient A/Cs, the modules would be super-insulated, every surface would be a hard non porous material and there would be built in rails for cleaning robots). Clothing, ditto. Medical supplies and hospitals, ditto. The limiting factor would be services - people would still need doctors and lawyers and engineers to stay alive.

You could probably do all the above with just manufacturing based on earth, though. No need for the Moon. The Moon is when you start needing enough material resources to build starships.

[Nibb31]

So your huge plant is going to magically build itself from regolith for free. Sorry, but that is still science fiction.

And your premise is still wrong. You consider that building a city on the Moon with self-replicating machines will generate revenue, which is not true. Building a city is an expense that is necessary to support a population. The population only comes is there is work. Which means that you still need to find the actual business plan that will generate enough wealth on the Moon to justify the expense of building a city with self-replicating machines.

Why would your self replicating factory even need workers if it has an infinite supply of infinitely complex robotic systems? Building an economy is space is already hard enough. Building one where a manned presence is necessary is unrealistic.

Edited July 27, 2015 by Nibb31

[SomeGuy12]

So your huge plant is going to magically build itself from regolith. Sorry, but that is still science fiction.

And your premise is still wrong. You consider that building a city on the Moon with self-replicating machines will generate revenue, which is not true. Building a city is an expense that is necessary to support a population. The population only comes is there is work. Which means that you still need to find the actual business plan that will generate enough wealth on the Moon to justify the expense of building a city with self-replicating machines.

I'm a little unclear what you mean by that. Are you saying that the Moon doesn't have mineral deposits that would presumably let you build mines at those locations and exact the materials you need? I think you're saying that regolith in a random spot is like trying to mine dirt in a random spot on earth - most of the earth, the mineral concentration of the rocks is not enough to be economically viable. Presumably this would be true for the Moon - I'm shortcutting when I imply you can land a factory anywhere. A "base factory" would probably have to be landed at the poles and then mines set up at enough places to get all of the needed minerals.

And I am implicitly assuming purification methods we don't use today. There actually are methods that would actually work on seawater like the thing you mentioned above, it just wouldn't be very energy efficient. You would use totally unshielded, no safety mechanism nuclear reactors on the Moon for power, though, so not sure how much efficiency would matter... (nuclear would be cheap and easy if you tended it with robots in a vacuum and had no need for safety... reactor cores would be tiny, a fraction of the size of plants today. smaller than even the reactors on submarines. All their components would be exposed and easy to work on)

[shynung]

I'm a little unclear what you mean by that. Are you saying that the Moon doesn't have mineral deposits that would presumably let you build mines at those locations and exact the materials you need? I think you're saying that regolith in a random spot is like trying to mine dirt in a random spot on earth - most of the earth, the mineral concentration of the rocks is not enough to be economically viable. Presumably this would be true for the Moon - I'm shortcutting when I imply you can land a factory anywhere. A "base factory" would probably have to be landed at the poles and then mines set up at enough places to get all of the needed minerals.

Suppose you build mines all over the Moon. What will you do for the materials so acquired? Making things like bases or cities needs more than just regolith, water, and raw ores. Those needs to be processed, which means machines, which means costs. How would you plan to cover the costs to do all that? If by selling regolith/water/ores, sell it to whom?

Edited July 27, 2015 by shynung

[Nibb31]

I'm a little unclear what you mean by that. Are you saying that the Moon doesn't have mineral deposits that would presumably let you build mines at those locations and exact the materials you need? I think you're saying that regolith in a random spot is like trying to mine dirt in a random spot on earth - most of the earth, the mineral concentration of the rocks is not enough to be economically viable. Presumably this would be true for the Moon - I'm shortcutting when I imply you can land a factory anywhere. A "base factory" would probably have to be landed at the poles and then mines set up at enough places to get all of the needed minerals.

And I am implicitly assuming purification methods we don't use today. There actually are methods that would actually work on seawater like the thing you mentioned above, it just wouldn't be very energy efficient. You would use totally unshielded, no safety mechanism nuclear reactors on the Moon for power, though, so not sure how much efficiency would matter... (nuclear would be cheap and easy if you tended it with robots in a vacuum and had no need for safety... reactor cores would be tiny, a fraction of the size of plants today. smaller than even the reactors on submarines. All their components would be exposed and easy to work on)

So your business case is mining the Moon. The self-replicating factories and colony-cities are simply one far-fetched way of doing it. There are plenty of others, but never mind.

The problem is still finding customers to buy your Moon-mined minerals. There is no demand from customers to buy Moon stuff, thus this does create an economy in space as requested by the OP.

The start an economy, you need supply and demand. The technical solutions for creating supply are not the problem, which is why most people here are wrong in focusing on the those technical points. If there is demand for a product, then entrepreneurs will always find a way to purvey that product.

The crucial problem is in creating demand. "Build it and they will come" seldom works in real-life.

[AngelLestat]

The start an economy, you need supply and demand. The technical solutions for creating supply are not the problem, which is why most people here are wrong in focusing on the those technical points. If there is demand for a product, then entrepreneurs will always find a way to purvey that product.

The crucial problem is in creating demand. "Build it and they will come" seldom works in real-life.

Really? so if you mine platinum at a lower cost than on earth.. nobody will buy your product??

And I am not saying that you can get a lower cost right now, just saying that sooner or later with launch cost droping and each time is harder and costly to find platinum in earth, that inflection point will come.

I made also some examples how you can sale a product on space with real time orbit camera or a net of sats to manage all orbital speed of all sats and clean the debris.

Or the scientific telescope case with tons of small sats.

And there is a demand for all that.. but the launch cost is not yet there.

[DBowman]

As for the solar power thing, it will require more energy to build and maintain an orbital power plant and the associated ground stations than to build a solar farm on Earth. If a solar array in orbit has twice the efficiency of a solar array on the ground, then why not just build a bigger solar array on the ground. There is no shortage of real-estate. It will still be 100 times cheaper than to build a half-size one that you send to orbit, plus a microwave ground station.

In addition, large scale microwave energy transmission has never been demonstrated. We have no idea what the impact might be on the ionosphere, the ozone layer, or the wildlife. For all we know, it might be more catastrophic for the environment than gas or coal plants.

I guess the guys that did the NASA study http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/1997-Mankins-FreshLookAtSpaceSolarPower.pdf in 1997 disagree with you re the economic analysis.

The paper has two main proposals each of which makes Billions / tens of Billions selling electrical power. Their Sun Disk proposal has 25-100 km^2 arrays delivering 2-20GW. Caveat: they might have have relied on as yet un-built but 'looks doable' launchers' to reduce launch cost to 10-20% of current. Also they tried to minimize 'cost to first Watt' not 'cost over 20-30 years', maybe this is okay since it gets the ball rolling and $$ 'flowing from space'. That assumption excluded O'Neill kinds of space industry ( ), but if the cheap launchers were not available / practical that would force things back to an O'Neill-ish program.

I know what you mean re 'why not just make it bigger on Earth to counter the space efficiencies'. For the same sun -> electricity tech orbital gets 'doublings' for: no atmosphere, no night, no high latitude = more air, no high latitude self shadowing = more land needed, no time of day angle/tracking. It can supply peak power when it's dark in a European winter. Maybe the easy access to 'very cold shadows' opens up a more efficient sun -> electricity tech. So we are talking 800-1600-3200 km^2 arrays on Earth to compete.

The Earth side costs include: land is not 'free', land may be taxed, there may be undesirable environmental impacts from shadowing large areas of land, communities might fight an array near them, land near populations is often used for things and thus expensive, land far from cities mean more transmission losses. Earth-side roof top solar implies lots of repetition for power rectifiers etc.

I've listed here more than 10 factors where orbital has a distinct advantage, it's not unbelievable that 10 multipliers can make up 100x. We know two factors are doublings, so eight more with a 50% advantage over Earthside gets to 100x.

I don't know that the real factors multiply up, and I've not even seen the economic modeling that the paper above did - but you can see that depending on the details the $$ could stack up, the paper authors certainly thought so. We'd need the details to say either way.

[55delta]

I took a look at the NASA study, From it I gathered the following numbers.

'Suntower' SSP, Installation cost: $35-40 billion, Cost-to-power: $6-8 billion, Combined output: 3.5-4 GW

'SolarDisc' SSP, Installation cost: $150 billion, Cost-to-power: $30-40 billion, Combine output: 30 GW

I did an hour-long search on the internet. I found most of my (rather rough) numbers through these links.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz_Solar_Farm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Star

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gansu_Wind_Farm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alta_Wind_Energy_Center

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browns_Ferry_Nuclear_Power_Plant

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catawba_Nuclear_Station

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itaipu_Dam

Solar

Topaz Solar Farm, Construction cost: $2.5 billion, Combined output: 0.55 GW

Solar Star, Construction cost: Unknown, Combined output: 0.579 GW

Wind

Gansu Wind Farm, Construction cost: 120 billion yuan, Planned Combined output: 20 GW

Alta Wind Energy Center, Construction cost: possibly $1.2 billion, Combined output: 1.32 GW

Nuclear

Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant, Construction cost: Unknown, Combined output: 3.297 GW

Catawba Nuclear Station, Construction cost: $6.594 billion, Combined output: 2.258 GW

Hydroelectric

Three Gorges Dam, Construction cost: $28 billion, Combined output: 22.5 GW

Itaipu Dam, Construction cost: $19.6 billion, Combined output: 14 GW

[DBowman]

nice work 55delta

I think we should exclude Hdro since the sites are limited and it can never scale up.

Can you check my math on Topaz vs SolarDisk? (http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/1997-Mankins-FreshLookAtSpaceSolarPower.pdf)

Topaz has a 'name plate' of 0.55GW but from the wikipedia article thats it's peak output - I assume at mid day in on mid summer with no cloud. There is only a year of history and it produced 1,000,000 MWh in an actual year of operation. 8760 hours per year => achieved a power generation rate of 114 MW each hour. It does look like it's still ramping up - but it's not clear to me how high it would go - so I've just used it's achieved generation capacity.

SolarDisk set of 6 satellites was rated at 30GW = 30,000 MW = 263 Topaz installations.

SolarDisk all up cost = [30-40 B USD] oops 200 B USD

vs

263 * Topaz 2.5 B = 657 B USD

so Topaz is [16] oops 3 times as expensive as SolarDisk?

edit: - including inflation 1.00 1997 USD = 1.47 2015 USD => Topaz is twice as expensive as SolarDisk

Edited July 28, 2015 by DBowman
oops - thought the numbers looked way too good

[AngelLestat]

The paper has two main proposals each of which makes Billions / tens of Billions selling electrical power. Their Sun Disk proposal has 25-100 km^2 arrays delivering 2-20GW. Caveat: they might have have relied on as yet un-built but 'looks doable' launchers' to reduce launch cost to 10-20% of current. Also they tried to minimize 'cost to first Watt' not 'cost over 20-30 years', maybe this is okay since it gets the ball rolling and $$ 'flowing from space'. That assumption excluded O'Neill kinds of space industry ( ), but if the cheap launchers were not available / practical that would force things back to an O'Neill-ish program.

I don't know that the real factors multiply up, and I've not even seen the economic modeling that the paper above did - but you can see that depending on the details the $$ could stack up, the paper authors certainly thought so. We'd need the details to say either way.

One advice.. when you are dealing with PV cost and launch cost.. try to find a study with less than 2 years.. in fact 2 years for solar means 40% cost reduction.

But as I mention before, this still needs a bit of extra development for thin PV without high decrease in efficiency or increase in cost, and you need that to save weight and be able to transport it rolls, so with if rotates, it will be deploy by centrifugal force, and it does not need structure.

I will said 2 to 4 years more (you need to fight also with lifetime).

Then the most tricky.. how do you sent that power to ground... there is nothing yet that can solve that without huge efficiency lose and costs.

Wind

Gansu Wind Farm, Construction cost: 19 billion dollars, Planned Combined output: 20 GW (from yuan to dollar)

Nuclear

Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant, Construction cost: Unknown, Combined output: 3.3 GW (it does not need 3 decimals)

Catawba Nuclear Station, Construction cost: $6.594 billion, Combined output: 2.5 GW (same here)

some clarifications. Edited July 28, 2015 by AngelLestat

[SomeGuy12]

Angel, the problem is you're always chasing your tail. Make solar better and the inverters better, which would in principle make the space satellite cost less, and the same panel on the ground is more cost effective still. One big problem is you lose a huge amount of energy in the microwave link - that negates most of the advantage of having more sun insolation in geosync.

[Rakaydos]

As for the solar power thing, it will require more energy to build and maintain an orbital power plant and the associated ground stations than to build a solar farm on Earth. If a solar array in orbit has twice the efficiency of a solar array on the ground, then why not just build a bigger solar array on the ground. There is no shortage of real-estate. It will still be 100 times cheaper than to build a half-size one that you send to orbit, plus a microwave ground station.

Except, of course, in places were there IS a shortage of real estate and power. At one point Japan was looking into an orbital solar farm transmitting to an artificial island just outside Tokyo, because they couldd generate more power from that one island (minimally disrupting sea trffic) with a more consistant bse load, than ground based solar.

[DBowman]

One advice.. when you are dealing with PV cost and launch cost.. try to find a study with less than 2 years.. in fact 2 years for solar means 40% cost reduction.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you talking about manufacture of PV solar cells is continually getting cheaper and the resulting PV cells more efficient?

[Nibb31]

Really? so if you mine platinum at a lower cost than on earth.. nobody will buy your product??

Platinum is a poor example, because the biggest market for platinum is catalyst converters for the automotive industry, which implies petrol-powered internal combustion engines. We can all agree that this market is not going to be expanding in a huge way over the next decades. The second biggest market for platinum is jewellery, for which the rarity is what creates the appeal. If platinum was common and cheap, there would be no demand for platinum jewellery. Some of it is turned into ingots and used for commodity investment. Other industrial applications are marginal in terms of volume.

So if you increase the amount of platinum on the market without increasing the demand, then you crash the prices and you don't benefit from the venture. And of course, there is the cost of mining the platinum and delivering it to Earth. Again, you'll be better off extracting it from seawater or recycling it.

- - - Updated - - -

Except, of course, in places were there IS a shortage of real estate and power. At one point Japan was looking into an orbital solar farm transmitting to an artificial island just outside Tokyo, because they couldd generate more power from that one island (minimally disrupting sea trffic) with a more consistant bse load, than ground based solar.

Yes, and building an artificial island, or floating barges covered with solar panels is still cheaper than boosting half of those solar panels to 27000 km/h and building an artificial island covered with microwave receivers.

Edited July 28, 2015 by Nibb31

[AngelLestat]

I assume at mid day in on mid summer with no cloud. There is only a year of history and it produced 1,000,000 MWh in an actual year of operation. 8760 hours per year => achieved a power generation rate of 114 MW each hour.

You dont need to assume nothing, in the wiki said that the average anual production expected is 1100GW, the value that you have for the 2014 is maybe because the farm was not completed, this one was finished the same year.

Sun Disk set of 6 satellites was rated at 30GW = 30,000 MW = 263 Topaz installations.

What is Sun disk? I found nothing in internet.. I am almost sure that this estimation is wrong, but I need to know what are you specific talking about first.

Angel, the problem is you're always chasing your tail. Make solar better and the inverters better, which would in principle make the space satellite cost less, and the same panel on the ground is more cost effective still. One big problem is you lose a huge amount of energy in the microwave link - that negates most of the advantage of having more sun insolation in geosync.

You are answering to someone else, because I am saying almost exactly that in my 4 previous post.

With the inverter exception, in solar farms, the inverter is a very low % of the farm cost.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you talking about manufacture of PV solar cells is continually getting cheaper and the resulting PV cells more efficient?

You choose an study from 1997 if I dont remember wrong.. that is almost pointless taking into account how prices change.

Platinum is a poor example, because the biggest market for platinum is catalyst converters for the automotive industry, which implies petrol-powered internal combustion engines. We can all agree that this market is not going to be expanding in a huge way over the next decades.

Heh, sorry, but you can agree with just yourself there. Scientist are trying to make "magic" to find remplacements for platinum due its high cost.

You dont do that if there is not platinum demand

To pollute less, cars just use grams of platinum combined with rhobidium and paradium (which are more cheap) in different cycles to save platinum.

Platinum has thousands of uses where is very difficult to remplace it.

A fuel cell or electrolysis for home or cars will use many kilograms of that, they not only increase a lot the efficiency, they also have more lifetime.

Not to mention industrial fuel cell or electrolysis, where you might need tones.

Thermal plants with turbines will be pointless if you can make cheap fuel cells.

If your energy or gas production will be big, then choose platinum for electrolysis or fuel cells is justified even at today cost.

But you can not mass produce, because it will increase the platinum cost due limit production on platinum mining.

So to not increase platinum cost you need to find a different reserve.

And if you not only manage to keep the cost but you also drop the cost, then a lot of new products and makets will rise, because there is thousands of things very profit to do with platinum.

So you can expect that platinum cost never will drop much.