Category Archives: Space

Economics, Space

Space Power Beaming Concept Proof

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On p.38 of this presentation, there’s a breakdown of the contributions to the cost of Space Solar Power (SSP). Not surprisingly, the installation is more than half of the cost and another 20% is manufacturing cost of the solar array.

If we extract out the solar generation from SSP and instead of an antenna, have a passive microwave reflector, we can potentially get the cost of the reflector down to less than $1 billion. Let’s say it’s a flat spinning <8 gram per square meter perforated mylar single-mission heavy payload to GEO straw man. If we spend $1 billion on a ground-based microwave antenna and another $1 billion on a rectenna, we have a 1 GW system that can function as transmission for a 40-year straight-line cost of 1.5 cents/kwh which is about 30% of the cost of SSP per watt with the viable scale of capital needed much smaller. (If you need a VC return, the price must be closer to ten cents per kwh.) The reflector would not be at capacity so additional transmission can be achieved for 2/3 of that. 1 GW beaming for $3 billion would be a pretty satisfying proof of concept. There's plenty of power on the ground to beam to space that's cheap so the proof of concept can be economically viable at this scale. At Hawaii's buy price of more than $0.30/kwh and New Mexico's sell price of less than $0.10/kwh it would pay for itself pretty fast. Space power beaming would therefore be shown to be economically viable without the space generation and thus be valuable as a proof of concept for transmission alone.

Political Commentary, Space, Space and Campaign 2008

Obama’s Space Pro-Activity

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The Obama campaign seems to have gotten way out front of the McCain campaign on space. The problem is that, like its domestic policy in general, McCain doesn’t seem to have a coherent policy with regard to civil space. He’s going to freeze discretionary, which includes NASA, and whether NASA will be exempt seems to depend on which campaign aide you ask. And regardless of how much money is spent, the campaign is equally vague on how it is spent, and what the near-term and long-term goals of the expenditure are. On top of that, the McCain campaign has lumped in the new Obama proposal to increase the NASA budget by two billion with a lot of so-called liberal spending proposals. As Jeff Foust notes, it’s a little mind blowing, politically.

Obama, after having gotten off on the wrong foot with the initial idiotic proposal to delay Constellation to provide funds for education, seems to have actually gotten inside McCain’s OODA loop on this issue. The McCain campaign really needs a smart political adviser in this area (as Obama apparently has now with Lori Garver, who seems to successfully jumped ship from Hillary’s campaign), but there’s no evidence that they’ve come up with one yet.

Of course, it’s not an issue on which the election will hang, probably not even in Florida.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s a little more at NASA Watch. It seems to be a disconnect between the McCain campaign and the RNC. Which, of course, doesn’t make it any better, or excuse it.

[Another update a few minutes later]

Well, this would seem to clarify the McCain position:

Perhaps more important were McCain’s remarks on Wednesday that only the Pentagon and veterans would see a budget increase in his administration because of the high price the proposed economic bail out. Everything else – including, presumably, NASA — will be frozen or cut. Several space advocates in Florida and Washington DC expect the worst.

As I said, it isn’t clear that space will be a key issue, even in Florida. But if the McCain campaign position is that the budget is going to be frozen, they should at least put forth a description of how they expect, and will require, NASA’s priorities to change to accommodate it. So far, there’s zero evidence that they’ve even given the matter any thought.

Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

Seven Apollos

Alan Boyle has come up with a new set of science-project-based monetary units to get our heads around the costs of the bailout.

This sort of thing provides support for the politically naive argument for more money for one’s pet project, e.g., “we could do seven Apollos for the cost of one Iraq war–surely we can afford at least one.” But federal budget dollars aren’t fungible, and the political importance of various choices isn’t necessarily consistent, either, due to the vagaries of how these decisions are made. Note also that, at the time, getting to the moon in a hurry was important for reasons having little or nothing do to with space. It’s unreasonable to expect those particular political stars to align again.

Not to mention the fact that because we were in a hurry, we chose an architecture and path that was economically and politically unsustainable. Just as NASA’s current path is, which is no surprise, considering that they chose to recapitulate Apollo, rather than building an incremental affordable infrastructure that would provide the basis for true spacefaring.

Space, Technology and Society

Friday Space Power Technology Session

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Here’s where I’ll be picking up from yesterday, and blogging today’s session, as I get time.

The first speaker this morning is Jay Penn of Aerospace (again) talking about laser power beaming demonstrators. He’s describing the same apps as yesterday for the military, but also talking about space-to-space beaming for other spacecraft. Reviewing yesterday’s talk with concept that can put 2.5 MW into the grid per satellite. Two solar panels, two laser transmitter panels on a deployable backbone. Providing more of a description of the “halo” orbits than yesterday, but I still don’t understand it from an orbital mechanics standpoint. I’ll have to read the paper or talk to Jay later.

He’s showing several charts that demonstrate how inserting technology into the laser system can dramatically increase the power available per EELV flight (not sure how relevant this is, other than as a benchmark, because it’s very unlikely that an economically viable system is going to go up on EELVs). Also shows that you don’t save much money by scaling down the system to smaller power levels–R&D dominates the costs. His bottom line is that we could do a 125kW demonstrator on an EELV, that could scale up to 200kW with technology insertion. Laser appears to be the only practical means to provide acceptable small spot beams from GEO. Laswers have 10,000 times smaller spot for the same range and aperture compared to microwaves. In response to a question, he notes that the individual lasers are not phased, and they don’t need to be. There is a question about maintenance/repair. They hadn’t looked in detail but a quick look suggested that degradation wasn’t a major issue. he makes one other point–the system was self-lifting from LEO to GEO using ion propulsion, to save mass.

Now another talk by Jordin Kare, on laser diode power beaming. Talking about the NASA beamed power Centennial Challenge. While it’s about elevator climbers, it is essentially a contest to build a beamed-power system. Prize has almost been won, but not quite, and is now at $500K. None of the teams are using lasers. Laser-Motive (his company) was formed to develop laser power beaming technology, but the current focus is on winning the prize. Their concept uses a fixed set of laser diodes and optics, with a steering mirror below the climber. Operating on a shoestring. They are estimating 10% efficiency, but actually getting more like 13%. They have eight kW of laser power to deliver a kilowatt to the climber. Got good price on “seconds” for the lasers (a little less than $10/watt so about $80K) Didn’t care about beam profile, as long as they got the power on target. Didn’t do custom optics–used float-glass and amateur telescope mirrors, with old HP stepper motors to drive them. Lasers share (more expensive) parabolic mirrors. Bought some 50% efficiency cells that can operate at ten suns, with help from Boeing. Unfortunately they had some final integration issues (smoking a power supply) that prevented them from winning, but no on else won either.

The 2008 contest is a kilometer climb up a rope hung from a helicopter (the faster the climb, the more the money)–lasers are the only option. DILAS is offering to build a custom system ($35,000 for 2.5kW), and will set a new radiance standard. Can go to much more range with bigger optics and more power. deliver tens of kilowatts at tens of kilometers with this technology.

Laser-Motive is ready to build these kinds of systems tomorrow. Could be used for ground to aircraft or ground vehicles of mirrors on aerostats, or air to ground to simulate space-to-ground. ISS to ground is also a possibility. Next steps: higher radiance, coherent systems (e.g., fiber lasers), lightweight low-cost optics, and then operational systems.

Space, Technology and Society

Thursday Afternoon At The Space Power Tech Workshop

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OK, it’s after lunch, and we’re about to watch a video about what the Army hopes it will be doing in space in the year 2035. We’re being told it’s not classified in any way. Nor does it discuss cost or difficulty of what we’re about to see…

It seems to be a CGI movie depicting rapid redeployments of advanced satellites (using something that looks a lot like QuickReach). It shows convoy routes planning a “virtual corrider.” Mobile user ground stations are deflecting attempts at GPS jamming. A “near-space platform” geolocates a terrorist unit. Noncombatants are identified, the house is surrounded, and the perps captured. The space vehicles depicted are dirty and gritty like the tanks. Like Serenity, in fact. Showing overhead imaging for battle damage assessment. “Understand First.” “Act First.” In other words, get inside their OODA loop.

Pretty cool.

Anyway, Jay Penn is up now, describing five different powersat concepts that Aerospace has been working on. This was work done for Joe Howell at Marshall and John Mankins at NASA. It consisted of a lot of system/subsystem level trades for comparisons and as inputs to technology roadmaps.

Showing several different concepts, the most different of which is called a “Halo”, which has a central transmitter surrounded by what seem to be mirrors for light concentration. But he’s going too fast for me to follow. A flurry of charts showing trade analyses and relative costs.

Some of these concepts imply flight rates of 5000/year. Notes that 40% of the global economy is energy. The best costs they could get to for kW-hrs was about eight cents, which isn’t bad. One of their concepts is a laser system that is very scalable (480 satellites for 1.2 GW). It uses a layered approach, with pump-laser diodes, microoptics, and a radiator on the back. Output beam is about a thousand nanometer wavelength. He thinks it the most promising architecture of those considered.

Now Paul Jaffe is reporting on a study on space-based power that was performed by the Navy Research Lab. In the beginning, they encountered a lot of skepticism within the lab. Their approach was to look at it in the context of providing Navy/Marine power needs. Study looked at military applications only. They supported the AFRL requirements workshop in July, and are working with NASA on the ISS demo.

They had three findings. First, the concepts are technically feasible, they seem relevant to military needs, and safe power beaming is restricted to large immobile sites. Wireless power transfer is necessary for SBSP, but it’s a research area in its own right. No consensus among experts as to best concept. Economics and political priorities will be important, but this wasn’t examined by NRL.

They also found that NRL has some key capabilities in many of the technologies (I’m shocked, shocked…).

The third was that different operational scenarios will require different technologies. Large-area applications can use microwave, but applications requiring higher power density will need lasers. Delivery of energy directly to individual end users, vehicles or small widely-scattered nodes isn’t currently practical.

They recommended continued NRL funding, but got the impression when they briefed the director that he still considers other energy areas more promising until more of the risk is retired.

A question from the audience brings up the point that DoE seems to be missing in action, considering that they’re supposed to be interesting in, you know…energy. There needs to be more of an outreach from other agencies to them to get them involved, particularly if DoE is supposed to be putting together new positions for an incoming administrations.

Another speaker from NRL, Michael Brown, follows with a talk on space structures issues. We have a long way to go from seventy meters (the current longest structure) to kilometeres in scale. Showing examples of ultralight space deployable beams.

Sorry, my eyes are glazing over (also a little sleepy after lunch). Structural analysis is not my bag. Showing concepts for trusses. Showing concepts for automated orbital assembly.

A break, a break, my kingdom for a break…

[Update after the break]

I’m not paying much attention to the current talk which is about wireless power in a deployed base in environment. The speaker said, perfectly deadpan (and he was probably quite serious), “we can’t introduce anything into a war environment that is unsafe.”

“Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here. This is the War Room.”

Jordin Kare (formerly of Livermore) is giving a talk on various space applications for lasers, some in space, some ground based with space relays. Optics are cheap, don’t generate much heat, don’t weigh much, none of which are the case for lasers, so keep lasers on the ground and put the optics in space.

Thinks that GEO is still the best place, for relay optics so that no tracking of moving satellites is necessary. Also less gravity gradient. But GEO implies big optics. He prefers diffractive optics, using thin sheets of materials with vacuum vapor deposition of metals to make a fresnel lens. It is insensitive to out-of-plane displacements, while mirrors are orders of magnitude more so. They can be lightweight, rolled up, folded. Shows a five-meter example made of panes of glass built at Livermore a few years ago. he thinks that a twenty-meter lens can fit on a Delta IV. Thinks that he could get by with six tons in GEO with relay system as opposed to thirty tons if the laser is place in orbit. Notes that NASA has looked at a similar system with a relay in L1 for powering a lunar surface base from the earth. Talking about using such systems to power electric propulsion vehicles, so they don’t have to carry the mass of their power supply, both for earth orbit and earth escape missions. Agrees with Jay Penn on approach of using laser modules, if you really want the lasers themselves in orbit.

[Friday morning update]

I’ve continue here.