The scene: An area-based solar energy station known as the Converter being commissioned a while within the Future. The characters: Two astronauts, Powell and Donovan, and a robotic named QT-1 (“Cutie” to its human associates). The plot: The astronauts are coaching Cutie to take over the station’s operations, which contain accumulating photo voltaic vitality in area after which directing it as intense beams of microwaves all the way down to Earth.
That is the backdrop for Isaac Asimov’s 1941 brief story “Cause.” Many of the story facilities round Asimov’s Three Legal guidelines of Robotics and the people’ relationship with the robotic. However the station itself is value a re-examination. It’s fairly clear Asimov had no concept how a system just like the Converter would really work, besides in essentially the most primary phrases. Right here’s how Powell tries to elucidate it to Cutie:
“Our beams feed these worlds vitality drawn from a kind of large incandescent globes that occurs to be close to us. We name that globe the Solar and it’s on the opposite aspect of the station the place you’ll be able to’t see it.”
Harnessing the facility of the solar in area is definitely an attractive concept. A decade in the past we featured a mission on the Japan Aerospace Exploration Company that aimed to launch a 1-gigawatt photo voltaic station by 2031. As a step in that route, JAXA says it can display a small satellite tv for pc transmitting 1 kilowatt of energy to Earth from an altitude of 400 kilometers subsequent 12 months. We’ve additionally reported on Caltech’s SSPD-1 demonstrator mission and the US $100 million from a billionaire donor who funds it.
An area photo voltaic mission would “waste capital that may very well be higher spent enhancing much less dangerous methods to shore up renewable vitality, equivalent to batteries, hydrogen, and grid enhancements.”
And but, space-based solar energy stays extra science fiction than science truth, as Henri Barde writes in “Castles within the Sky?” Barde ought to know: He not too long ago retired from the European Area Company, the place amongst different issues he evaluated area energy methods. As Barde’s article makes abundantly clear, this clear vitality would come at an infinite price, if it may be accomplished in any respect, “[wasting] capital that may very well be higher spent enhancing much less dangerous methods to shore up renewable vitality, equivalent to batteries, hydrogen, and grid enhancements.”
For instance, U.Okay.-based Area Photo voltaic estimates it can want 68 (!) SpaceX Starship launches to loft all of the belongings crucial to construct one 1.7-km-long photo voltaic array in orbit. Nevermind that SpaceX hasn’t but efficiently launched a Starship into orbit and introduced it again in a single piece. Even when the corporate can finally get the value all the way down to $10 million per launch, we’re nonetheless speaking tons of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in launch prices alone. We additionally don’t have real-life Cuties to construct such a station. And the bottom stations and rectennas crucial for receiving the beamed energy and placing it on the grid are nonetheless simply distant dots on a street map in somebody’s multimillion greenback analysis proposal.
Engineers are sometimes impressed by science fiction. However inspiration solely will get you to this point. Area-based solar energy will stay sci-fi fodder for the foreseeable future. For the monumental job of electrifying the whole lot whereas lowering greenhouse gasoline emissions, it’s higher to deal with options primarily based on know-how already in hand, like typical geothermal, nuclear, wind, and Earth-based photo voltaic, reasonably than losing time, brainpower, and cash on a fantasy.
This text seems within the June 2024 print problem as “The Chasm Between Creativeness and Feasibility.”
