I didn’t give much details, I merely wanted to point out what the problem was with solar power [Peak solar hours at best 6 hours of 24 hour day].
So if could double the hours, it might be useful electrical power.
To bounce significant light energy around like that (reflecting over thousands of miles, using much smaller than astronomical [i.e., practical] sized mirrors) would be impossible. Due to the quick divergence, post reflection, of the heterogeneous-frequency light received from the sun, too little energy, effectively zero, would arrive at the destination — unless that light energy is first converted to laser light at the orbiting solar power station, prior to being relayed elsewhere.
For a square km solar farm on Earth surface, you need slightly more than a square km of reflecting mirror.
One could call some thing more than square km in orbit, astronomical.
This would be from 10,000 km high orbit, and it would look like tiny sun, if you were in the solar farm- and you would not see it otherwise.
Sunlight is direct light, it doesn’t diminish much over 1 million km distance, and one would adding, 10,000 km to it’s distance- therefore why it’s slightly bigger to be same amount as noon day sun on Earth surface [it’s slightly magnified] while solar farm getting a much weaker, 8 to 9 am or 5 to 6 pm sunlight.
One could also increase the solar farms sunlight during it’s peak solar [3 hours before and 3 hour after noon- but panels would get more sunlight and be a lot hotter- you would have cool them to get better efficiency and longer lifetime for the solar panels.
So just giving sunlight to their “off hours” would not over heat the solar panels, though the second way gives them a hotter environment.
Giving them sunlight at night, could be done- but harder to do.
As ol’ Joe would say, two words: Starship and Super Heavy….
SpaceX launches 54 Starlink more satellites, lands rocket in 100th mission from Florida pad
By Elizabeth Howell
published about 13 hours ago
Thursday’s launch was SpaceX’s 48th orbital mission of the year so far. https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-group-4-36-satellites-launch
I wondering number of subscriber, this older news:
“Some decline in service is perhaps expected with increasing subscriber numbers, and SpaceX’s VP of Commercial Sales, Jonathan Hofeller, reportedly told the audience at a recent event that the Starlink service now has 700,000 subscribers. This figure is up from the 400,000 reported in May, and just 145,000 at the start of the year.”
– Fri 23 Sep 2022
I was thinking it could as much a 1 million before the end of the year.
It also said:
“In Europe, Starlink’s service also outperformed the median download speeds achieved by fixed broadband services in 16 countries during Q2 2022, and even reached download speeds of over 100Mbps in 10 countries. In contrast, fixed broadband services were only able to achieve median download speeds of over 100Mbps in six countries during Q2 2022, these being Romania, Spain, Portugal, France, Hungary, and the Netherlands, according to Ookla.” https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/23/starlink_broadband_speeds_slow/
Musk is getting paid to do rural US, but wonder where there going to be the most subscribers, Europe??
Southeast Asia??
I must be dumb. I don’t undertstand how any engineered solution is greener than nuclear power. Or anything else for that matter.
Why would anyone that could build a space power platform beam the power back to Earth?
Ummmm… just spitballing here.
To get a return on their investment?
You mean use lightweight mylar and reflect sunlight to useless solar panels, or use solar panels in space and convert electrical power into lasers or microwave which are beamed to Earth surface?
In terms of latter, it seems you could send communication signal and small amount microwave energy which could small amount electrical, like 10 watt per meter of the collecting disk area.
So it could be for mobile use and/or say get 80 watts to your house and internet for house.
Or you send lots of power to huge receiving collector area and put power into an electrical grid.
In shorter terms I thought, you could make Earth surface solar farms closer to being viable:
https://judithcurry.com/2022/10/03/the-penetration-problem-part-i-wind-and-solar-the-more-you-do-the-harder-it-gets/#comment-981055
I didn’t give much details, I merely wanted to point out what the problem was with solar power [Peak solar hours at best 6 hours of 24 hour day].
So if could double the hours, it might be useful electrical power.
To bounce significant light energy around like that (reflecting over thousands of miles, using much smaller than astronomical [i.e., practical] sized mirrors) would be impossible. Due to the quick divergence, post reflection, of the heterogeneous-frequency light received from the sun, too little energy, effectively zero, would arrive at the destination — unless that light energy is first converted to laser light at the orbiting solar power station, prior to being relayed elsewhere.
For a square km solar farm on Earth surface, you need slightly more than a square km of reflecting mirror.
One could call some thing more than square km in orbit, astronomical.
This would be from 10,000 km high orbit, and it would look like tiny sun, if you were in the solar farm- and you would not see it otherwise.
Sunlight is direct light, it doesn’t diminish much over 1 million km distance, and one would adding, 10,000 km to it’s distance- therefore why it’s slightly bigger to be same amount as noon day sun on Earth surface [it’s slightly magnified] while solar farm getting a much weaker, 8 to 9 am or 5 to 6 pm sunlight.
One could also increase the solar farms sunlight during it’s peak solar [3 hours before and 3 hour after noon- but panels would get more sunlight and be a lot hotter- you would have cool them to get better efficiency and longer lifetime for the solar panels.
So just giving sunlight to their “off hours” would not over heat the solar panels, though the second way gives them a hotter environment.
Giving them sunlight at night, could be done- but harder to do.
As ol’ Joe would say, two words: Starship and Super Heavy….
SpaceX launches 54 Starlink more satellites, lands rocket in 100th mission from Florida pad
By Elizabeth Howell
published about 13 hours ago
Thursday’s launch was SpaceX’s 48th orbital mission of the year so far.
https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-group-4-36-satellites-launch
I wondering number of subscriber, this older news:
“Some decline in service is perhaps expected with increasing subscriber numbers, and SpaceX’s VP of Commercial Sales, Jonathan Hofeller, reportedly told the audience at a recent event that the Starlink service now has 700,000 subscribers. This figure is up from the 400,000 reported in May, and just 145,000 at the start of the year.”
– Fri 23 Sep 2022
I was thinking it could as much a 1 million before the end of the year.
It also said:
“In Europe, Starlink’s service also outperformed the median download speeds achieved by fixed broadband services in 16 countries during Q2 2022, and even reached download speeds of over 100Mbps in 10 countries. In contrast, fixed broadband services were only able to achieve median download speeds of over 100Mbps in six countries during Q2 2022, these being Romania, Spain, Portugal, France, Hungary, and the Netherlands, according to Ookla.”
https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/23/starlink_broadband_speeds_slow/
Musk is getting paid to do rural US, but wonder where there going to be the most subscribers, Europe??
Southeast Asia??
I must be dumb. I don’t undertstand how any engineered solution is greener than nuclear power. Or anything else for that matter.
Why would anyone that could build a space power platform beam the power back to Earth?
Ummmm… just spitballing here.
To get a return on their investment?
You mean use lightweight mylar and reflect sunlight to useless solar panels, or use solar panels in space and convert electrical power into lasers or microwave which are beamed to Earth surface?
In terms of latter, it seems you could send communication signal and small amount microwave energy which could small amount electrical, like 10 watt per meter of the collecting disk area.
So it could be for mobile use and/or say get 80 watts to your house and internet for house.
Or you send lots of power to huge receiving collector area and put power into an electrical grid.