I'm fucking horny at this shit.
"The project would aim to establish a large collecting area receiving solar energy near constantly, without the atmosphere or seasonal changes affecting energy levels. Converted energy would be then transmitted to Earth via microwaves or lasers. The project would provide large-scale renewable energy and help tackle energy resource scarcity"
Finally some fucking good news in this hellworld.
Let's gooooo :mao-shining: :xi-shining:
It’s not a good idea, geostationary is like 40k km from earth, energy transmission is super-bad at these distances plus they would spend too much energy, it’s more efficient to plop them all over their desert region
Deserts are fragile ecosystems that you'll utterly destroy by just "plopping" large solar facilities down.
https://twitter.com/atomicthumbs/status/1403885110865272833
Obviously there's a push-and-pull here but please rethink deserts as not just empty places for humans to extract energy from.
Yeah, they have systems I’m not implying cover whole desert so it all get shaded, but space is not the answer - energy recapture would still require installations in desert.
It’s not a good idea, geostationary is like 40k km from earth, energy transmission is super-bad at these distances plus they would spend too much energy, it’s more efficient to plop them all over their desert region
They just had a lasers breakthrough actually. It changes a lot of theory on this topic and further advances are expected.
A) That’s not the same as continuous source, b) by necessity it would produce giant dot (eyeballing like 0.5 km), with obvious dodgy implications that it’s mistargeting can blind whole city
Well unironically: it would be guided by transmission channel, security/cryptography fuck ups would be like super not good, and state actors (khm) would like it to fuck up. Idk, seems more aspirational idea than a useful one
It does below geo stationary orbit. As the wire will be stationary, only at geostationary height it will be weightless, near earth it will have full weight, all the rest will be inbetweeny weight. That’s the issue with cosmic lifts as well.
My general issue is they get 3x uptime (cause sun), but lose 50 rocket launches, and giant waste when photovoltaic cell deteriorate, on earth you can fix them at least, and who knows if it’s not cheaper to build 4x capacity on earth than to launch it
Do you think this still has value as a scientific experiment or is there nothing redeeming this project?
Long distance energy transfer is super neat, if we were to survive like next century, a lot of cool stuff to do with moon and space stations.
Idk, small scale I don’t see it as bad experiment. Seriously thinking of making GW in energy in space is very brave
They would decay faster in space, but on the other hand hubble still works :thonk: they lose like 50-70 percent of efficiency though
Cosmic particles and uv kills photocells faster, on earth they are shielded from both. Uv you likely can filter, particles are an issue though. But I’m mainly musing, not super sure :blob-no-thoughts:
:china-stars:
(couldn't find the emote that's China with the troll face on it)
looking forward to all the chud conspiracy theories about chinese space lasers causing forest fires
Hopefully while they're remotely calibrating the laser that's being driven directly by a solar powerplant, they can point it at the piece of shit car Elon put in orbit.
Edit:
China’s Long March rocket series
:mao-wave:
Edit 2:
Next time chuds tell you solar panels don't work at nighttime, tell them under Communism, they will.
Fuckin energy transmission via directed energy? That's incredible, go China
So we're getting the Simcity 2000 microwave power plant for real? Nice
