Thoughts from Brian Wang. Keith Henson has been pushing Skylon for this for some time. As noted in comments, for a project of that scale, it would probably make more sense to use lunar materials than to launch it all from earth.
5 thoughts on “BFR And Space Solar Power”
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“America needs to get serious about its spacefaring future. There needs to be an aggressive political, economic, and military strategy to help transition to space-based sustainable energy to replace fossil fuels.
A fully reusable SpaceX BFR will enable space-based solar power to be a clean energy source that is lower cost than coal.”
I don’t think America needs to do this. China doesn’t need to do this because it still has some coal left to burn. It might be argued that Japan could need to do this, but it seems it would cheaper or better to continue developing an economic means of mining methane hydrates from Ocean.
I think idea of NASA doing SPS is pretty silly and also would distraction for US military or Space Force.
And I think it will require at least 50 years before SPS is possible- assuming things done within these 50 years which would allow it to happen.
For SPS to be viable, one has to be able to make and be able sell electrical power at same price that wholesale electrical power is sold on Earth, which less than $50 per MW hour or one need to able to sell electrical power at 5 cents per kW hour at GEO.
If you buy electrical power at $50 per WM hour at GEO, one the addition cost distributing that energy to the Earth surface. One needs the infrastructure to do this and you have transmission loss of the energy which cost $50 per MW. Or if there is 50% loss of energy by time it gets to the consumer, one is effectively paying $100 per MW at GEO.
One could also say electrical power in GEO is worth more if not selling to Earth surface. Satellite in GEO are current spending many thousands of times more money to get a MW hour of electrical energy. One satellite or 1000 satellites is fairly small market, but if electrical cost were 1/100th the present cost, it create more market demand of electrical power use by satellites. And the electrical used by other activity in space could increase. Or if electrical power was sold at $1000 per MW hour or $1 per kw hour at GEO, such cheap supply could create demand in space.
The advantage of mining lunar water is means of making comparatively cheap chemical energy- chemical rocket fuel. And $1 per Kw hour at GEO is provides a cheap way to make chemical rocket fuel as compared to the higher price of lunar electrical power used to split water and using expensive electrical power to turn it into cryogenic fuel.
But if starting point is cheap electrical price at GEO, one could make LOX from any rock.
Or $1 per Kw hour at GEO has no demand on Earth and lots of potential demand in space.
Now of course the premise is a nation pays for over price electrical power. Or repeats the pattern it is currently doing with solar and wind energy- which globally has wasted more than 1 trillion dollars of tax paying citizens, which has yet to “pay off” for it’s citizens- wasting all money as not made these “alternative” energies economically viable- they still need subsidies and will still need “help” for decades.
So one could ask which nation wants to spend a trillion dollars on SPS, but more importantly does it “need” to do it now.
It seems the best direction is for NASA to spend it’s money it’s getting on the right thing: explore the Moon and than explore Mars.
If there minable lunar water, it will mean it start a market for lunar electrical power at about $75 per kW hour which will larger electrical market than all satellite in Earth orbit, and moon will have high demand for cheaper electricity prices.
And such a situation would effective make SPS cheaper to do- but probably still too expensive.
With Mars exploration and if exploration indicates human settlements on Mars could be viable. And with humans making towns on Mars, this also would effectively make doing SPS cheaper.
So in 50 years, one could bases [governemnts and private] on the Moon. One could tens of thousand of tonnes water mined and made into rocket fuel on the Moon. Towns with hundreds people living there. And space rocks mined. And SPS would be viable.
So with exploration the focus, one does not need to spend more than we are currently spending on NASA, BUT with NASA success, NASA budget could increase faster than other government agencies- which currently NASA is not doing. If Space is more important, NASA will get an increasing budget.
The money spend related to space by citizen could increase a lot.
Global space market at about 250 billion and has yearly growth of about 5%, or people of world are increasing the amount spend on space relate stuff by 5% per year, and they are “profiting” from paying more money per year.
And doing the lunar and Mars exploration may bump it up from 5 to 10% increase per year, so in decades, a lot money spent and lots of profit made [and people getting things which not possible before this they are richer.
There needs to be an aggressive political, economic, and military strategy to help transition to space-based sustainable energy to replace fossil fuels.
No thanks. Our military needs to focus on killing people not get weakened just to make environuts feel better. We already saw Obama do this with the “green” Navy. It was just a stunt to divert resources away from war fighting to subsidize the green industry and to provide a talking point for AGW alarmists, “Even the Navy thinks that global warming is real.” Yeah, the military will follow a lawful order that doesn’t mean the military was doing this on their own.
The aRocket mailing list is very little amateur rocketry (although it’s been pretty quiet recently). It’s roughly equal parts: 1. Keith Henson going on about how Skylon enables beamed solar power. 2. Bill Claybaugh disparaging liquid fueled rockets as needlessly complicated exercises in plumbing. 3) Monroe whipping up some harebrained scheme with a remarkably low SNR.
I thought it would have dawned on people by now that Big Government Agency doing Big Important Project is something that almost never works.
You want SPS? The technology has to develop organically in a private sector driven by market discipline.
At best, you could get government to do trailblazing with small projects that are under the size where political corruption becomes utterly ruinous. Microwave SPS cannot be small, so maybe laser?