april 30,2004space solar power workshop1 welcome to the space solar power track!! space solar power...

April 30,2004 Space Solar Power Workshop 1

Welcome to theSpace Solar Power Track!!

Space Solar Power Workshop, Space Solar Power Institute & Space Solar Power Association

International Space Development Conference, May 26, 2007Dallas, Texas

Darel Preblechair, Space Solar Power Workshop

www.sspi.gatech.edu


Making the Case for Clean Baseload Energy - Space Solar Power

The most relevant & important work in space development today.

International Space Development Conference, May 26, 2007Dallas, TexasDarel Preble

chair, Space Solar Power Workshopwww.sspi.gatech.edu


Space Solar Power can cleanly repower earth and build a highway to the High Frontier…

Integrated Symmetrial Concentrator, Pat Rawlings http://64.40.104.21/sps/large/ISC_in_GEO.lrg.jpg


Space Solar Power

No other energy alternative can so fully, cleanly and directly address so many of the dangerous, complex and intractable threats we face:

I. Peak Fossil Fuels – increasing competition for declining global oil

production; energy cost; energy security; nuclear proliferation; energy-associated terrorism.

II. Escalating climate change – drought, increasing wildfires and hurricanes, famine, flooding. Food or Fuel production dilemma- rising food costs - declining nutrition in our food;

“We truly are standing at the edge of mass extinction” of species. - Co-author Terry Root of Stanford University.

“Things are happening and happening faster than we expected,” - Co-author Patricia Romero Lankao, National Center for

Atmospheric Research. - “Climate report sounds dire warnings - Gobal warming effects could mean hundreds of millions without water” March 10, 2007, Associated Press www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17554963/


The most current and authoritative research predicts global oil production to peak during the 2008 to 2018 timeframe. We will never "run out" of petroleum; "In a worst-case scenario, global oil production may reach its peak in 2008, before starting to decline. In a best-case scenario, this peak would not be reached until 2018. These estimates are made by Fredrik Robelius, whose doctoral dissertation estimates future oil production". –

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070330100802.htm and www.peakoil.net/GiantOilFields.html


The most current and authoritative research predicts global coal production to peak around 2025."Peak coal by 2025 say researchers", by Dr. Werner Zittel and Jörg Schindlerwww.energywatchgroup.org/files/Coalreport.pdf


The supply gap for the US natural gas market alone could reach 10 Trillion Cubic feet/year by 2020[1]. (In Btu equivalent terms, this is nearly twice the amount of oil the U.S. currently imports from the Middle East.) Globally the oil supply gap of 2020 has been projected to be 15 million barrels per day[2]. On this massive scale required, we briefly compare SSP with other alternative energy technologies:

[1] “Playing with Fire - Part II”, http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=1397

[2] “Is There A Painless Way To Fill The Oil Supply Gap?”, by Dr Michael R. Smith, http://www.energyfiles.com/oilsupplygap.html


Mexico’s Super giant field Cantarell is in Decline

Pemex CEO says production will fall without massive help to develop Ku-Maloob-Zaap, a heavy crude and/or Chicontepec with small oil pockets within fractured rock. Developing Chicontepec requires $38 billion to drill 20,000 wells, more than Pemex has drilled in 70 years. (With drilling technology Pemex doesn’t have.) Mexico’s Congress refuses to allow private investment. Production at Cantarell dropped by 12% in 2006, and a 15% decline is expected in 2007. - “Pemex Oil Output to Drop Without Private Investment” March 30 (Bloomberg) http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000086&sid=aiCFqPwH6eo4


“Peaking units”, such as wind or terrestrial solar, may provide power for 25-30% of a good day, (on average). Space Solar Power (SSP), however, is “baseload” available 99% of the year from GeoSynchronous Orbit. (Baseload nuclear or coal plants, typically running 24/7, are actually available only 90% of the year.)

SPS requires no fuel and has no operations personnel – it is an antenna – with farms underneath. SSP is the cleanest source of virtually unlimited baseload energy.


“It will require more than a decade to transition our civilization away from our heavy dependence on oil. Nothing close to the efforts envisaged have yet begun.

- Testimony by Robert Hirsch, SAIC, at the Pentagon and U.S. Congressional Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing, from the "Hirsch Report", commissioned by the Department of Energy -http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/hearings/12072005Hearing1733/hearing.htm and "Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management www.netl.doe.gov/otiic/World_Oil_Issues/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf


Clean? Safe? Reliable? Baseload?

Fossil Fuel No Yes Decades remaining Yes

Nuclear No Yes Fuel very limited Yes

Wind Power Yes Yes No, intermittent No

Ground Solar Yes Yes No, intermittent No

Hydro Yes Yes No; drought; complex scheduling

Bio-fuels Yes Yes Very limited quantities - competes directly with food production. *

SSP Yes Yes Yes Yes


"75,000 Mexicans stood up in Mexico City’s giant Zocalo plaza to denounce the rising price of tortillas...

“Calderon stole the elections, and now he’s stealing the tortillas!” screamed a banner...

“If all the corn produced in America in 2005 were dedicated to ethanol production it would reduce U.S. demand for gasoline by, at most, 12 percent...

- “A bumper crop of unintended consequences”, February 3, 2007 http://news.bostonherald.com/editorial/view.bg?articleid=180746


"We are in the beginning stages of major changes to agricultural markets caused by rapidly expanding production of bio-fuels.“

– Credit Suisse Group, in “Corn Is Booming as Ethanol Heats Up”, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116260858542413472.html

Although that is only one-seventh the quantity President Bush foresees for 2015, that demand has pushed corn to near-record prices. “If all the corn produced in America in 2005 were dedicated to ethanol production it would reduce U.S. demand for gasoline by, at most, 12 percent...

– “A bumper crop of unintended consequences”, http://news.bostonherald.com/editorial/view.bg?articleid=180746


To reach Bush’s 20 percent goal, corn production must grow to 167 percent of its 2005 levels, and every kernel must go into ethanol. Kiss your corn pudding goodbye.

Corn is also the major feed/ingredient for chickens, pigs, cattle; milk, cheese, eggs, hamburger, Coke, Pepsi, Jack Daniels, etc., ...

(By weight, a McDonald’s hamburger is 52% corn.)


“The 111 ethanol refineries now in operation, the 75 under construction or expansion, and others still being planned, would be able to use 10 billion bushels of corn a year by 2009 — about the same as the entire 2006 crop. The price of pig feed has gone up 25 per cent since the US summer, he said, "and it's not the price so much as the fact that it's just not available“ - Dave Warner, National Pork Producers Council.

"The days of the United States meat industry in its current state appear to be numbered. The gates are down. The lights are flashing. Does anyone see the train coming?" - " David Nelson,

agribusiness analyst for Credit Suisse Group. - “Ethanol fuels concern of US farmers“ http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/ethanol-fuels-concern-of-us-farmers/2007/01/28/1169919212154.html


The "warnings could not be more alarming," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Climate Change, "but this report also gives much reason for hope. We know what we need to do to protect the planet. The only question is whether we have the wisdom to do so in

time to make a difference." - “Climate Plan Arms World for Key

Talks”, Associated Press, By Michael Casey, May 4, 2007 www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/05/04/ap3688144.html


"If we continue doing what we are doing now, we are in deep trouble," said Ogunlade Davidson, co-chairman of IPCC Working Group III that produced the report. The document says the world has the technology and wealth now to act decisively in time to avoid a sharp rise in temperatures that scientists say would wipe out species, raise ocean levels, trigger droughts in some places and

flooding in others, and wreak economic havoc. - “Changes in lifestyle can slow warming, scientists say”, Keay Davidson, SF Chronicle Science Writer May 5, 2007 www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/05/05/MNGCRPLTJT1.DTL


Increasing levels of CO2 are

impacting all

ecosystems.


Using Free-Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment (FACE) experiments to create doubled CO2 environments, impact on plants can be measured and predicted accurately :

Harshaw Experimental Forest near Rhinelander, Wisconsin http://oden.nrri.umn.edu/factsii/


Plant-available nitrogen decreases 40 to 50 % under elevated carbon dioxide ...

Resulting in reduced nutrition from forage and grasses grown under doubled CO2 .


Ruminants, including cattle, sheep, oxen, buffalo, deer, etc., are the source of nearly all the milk and half the meat the world eats. They will gain weight more slowly under under doubled CO2 »» Kansas State University

http://spuds.agron.ksu.edu/gainco2.gif


Rice and wheat, the top grains in the world, both decline in nutritional value based on testing under elevated CO2.

Wheat grown at doubled CO2 declines in protein content by 9-13%. Wheat grown at high CO2 produces poorer dough of lower extensibility and decreased loaf volume. Hence, for bread making, the quality of flour, produced from wheat grain developed at high temperatures and in elevated CO2, degrades.

Nutrition from grains drops - wheat


“The nutritive value of rice was also changed at high CO2 due to a reduction in grain nitrogen and, therefore, protein concentration.” The protein content of rice declines under combined increases of temperature and CO2.

Iron and zinc concentrations in rice, important for human nutrition, would be lower.

Nutrition from grains drops - rice


Wild Bees And The Flowers They Pollinate Are Disappearing Together

An international team of researchers from the UK, the Netherlands and Germany compiled biodiversity records for 100s of sites, and found that bee diversity fell in almost 80% of them. Over the last 25 years, many bee species are declining or have become extinct. Plant declines closely mirrored those of their pollinators.

Researchers were shocked by decline in plants as well as bees. If this pattern is replicated elsewhere, the 'pollinator services' we take for granted could be at risk.“, said Dr Koos Biesmeijer, Univ of Leeds.

The economic value of crop pollination worldwide is between £20 and 50 billion each year. - Science, 21 July 2006, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/07/060721200158.htm

Field scabious (Photo: Gérard Minet)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/07/060721200158.htm


Macro Global Climate Change

Large scale climate changes:

• drought heat waves • floods severe storms

are immense problems to forecast or model. Where does “regular weather” end and climate changed weather begin?“Abrupt climate change” is a growing and poorly understood concern.


Global Ocean Slowing – Temporary or Increasing?

Much of the ocean water in the high latitudes of the Northand South Atlantic has grown fresher over the last fifty years, as tropical Atlantic waters became dramatically saltier. These were due to evaporation rates over the tropical Atlantic increasing by 5% - 10 over the last 40 yrs.

“The ocean current that gives western Europe its relatively balmy climate is stuttering, raising fears that it might fail entirely and plunge the continent into a mini ice age. A study of ocean circulation in the North Atlantic found a 30% reduction in the warm currents that carry water north from the Gulf Stream.” - "Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age" by Fred Pearce, Nature (vol 438, p 655)

www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8398 See also www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/viewArticle.do?id=9206 www.mbl.edu/inside/what/news/press_releases/2006_pr_08_24.html


More Bigger Hurricanes

The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes worldwide has doubled over the past 36 years, even though the total number of hurricanes has dropped since the 1990s. The only region in the world experiencing more hurricanes and tropical cyclones overall is the North Atlantic, where they have become more numerous and longer-lasting, especially since 1995. The shift occurred as global sea surface temperatures have increased over the same period. – “Changes in Tropical Cyclone Number, Duration, and Intensity in a Warming Environment”, by P. J. Webster, G. J. Holland, J. A. Curry, H.-R. Chang, Science, 16 September 2005: Vol. 309. no. 5742, pp. 1844 – 1846 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/309/5742/1844 and www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2005/hurricanestudy.shtml also http://www.gatech.edu/news-room/release.php?id=898


“Human activities are increasingly altering the Earth's climate. Scientific evidence strongly indicates that natural influences cannot explain the rapid increase in global near-surface temperatures observed during the second half of the 20th century. Research indicates that increased levels of carbon dioxide will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years. ...

“Scientific research provides a basis for mitigating the harmful effects of global climate change through decreased human influences, technological advancement, ...

- adopted by the Council, American Geophysical Union, December, 2003


“The costs of natural disasters, aggravated by global warming, threaten to spiral out of control, forcing the human race into a catastrophe of its own making”. The economic costs of such disasters threaten to double to $150 billion a year in 10 years, hitting insurers with $30-40 billion in claims, or the equivalent of one World Trade Centre attack annually.

"There is a danger that human intervention will accelerate and intensify natural climate changes to such a point that it will become impossible to adapt our socio-economic systems in time. The human race can lead itself into this climatic catastrophe -- or it can avert it.”

- World's second-largest reinsurer, Swiss Re,

Geneva (Reuters) March 3, 2004


“2005 was marked by record losses from hurricanes in the North Atlantic, with insured losses exceeding US$ 83 billion and about $350 billion dollars of uninsured economic loss, e.g., including lost profits, lost business opportunities, etc.

Florida’s largest property insurer, State Farm Insurance, raised their average hurricane rates from $1,733 to $3,101 this year.

- “Hurricanes – More intense, more frequent, more expensive Insurance in a time of changing risks” Munich Re and American Re, (The 2005 hurricane season) April 2006, page 18, http://www.munichre.com/publications/302-04891_en.pdf?rdm=1825


“Things are happening and happening faster than we expected,” said Patricia Romero Lankao of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., one of the many co-authors of the new IPCC report.

“Climate report: Droughts, starvation, disease - Global warming effects could mean hundreds of millions without water”, March 10, 2007 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17554963/


Global oil usage is inefficient, producing more waste heat and injecting more CO2 into the atmosphere per Btu than any other fossil fuel. The Air-CarRuns on compressed air. Top speed 68 mph. Range ~250 km. 4 models.Recharges in 3 minutes at acost of 1.5 Euros. Compressor “exhaust” is clean cold air – it runs the air conditioner: www.theaircar.com www.gizmag.com/go/7000/

Conservation & better technology can help


2002 2005 What should be America’s Goal in Space?

32% 35% Build satellites in Earth orbit to collect solar energy to beam to utilities on Earth

23% 17% Develop the technology to deflect asteroids or comets that might destroy the Earth

13% 10% No Opinion

4% 10% Send humans to Mars

2% 7% Search for life on other planets

6% 7% Build a human colony in space

3% 6% Develop a passenger rocket to send tourists into space

5% 4% Build a base on the moon for humans to use for moon exploration

11% 2% None of the above, we should stop spending money on space

1% 2% None of the above

- Thomas Matula and Karen Loveland, " Public Attitudes toward Different Space Goals: Building Public Support for the Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) “, Proceedings of Space 2006: 10th International Conference on Engineering, Construction, and Operations in Space, Houston, TX, March 5-8, 2006.


No company(s) or agency(s), however, is prepared to assume the immense financial risk of initiating construction of an SSPS.

There are simply too many engineering, financial, regulatory and managerial risks for any group we have been able to identify to undertake SSP today.

But this road has been well traveled by America before ...


There is a tried and true vehicle, that could initiate SSP construction today.

A private Congressionally chartered corporation has all the requisite advantages. Comsat Corp., chartered in 1962, opened space for communication satellites - when we knew little about space, rockets or space communications. Communications satellites are now a $100 Billion industry per year. The “Sunsat Act” would accomplish the same task, creating a space solar power industry of much greater size.


Trans-Continental Railroad “Cape Horn at The Head of The Great American Canon”,

…- Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, April 27, 1878


Congress chartered Comsat Corp.in 1962 to build communications satellites. Comsat Corp. opened space to the diverse $100+ Billion per year communications satellite business of today. Congress should charter a new corporation, Sunsat Corp. to build power satellites. Draft legislation for Sunsat, very much like Comsat, would have all the requisite advantages. We recommend that congress charter Sunsat Corp.


This legislation would provide a launch “subsidy” to new private or public/ private businesses, such as SunSat Corp, which are contracting for space transportation. This subsidy would be in the form of stock transfers and loan guarantees.

Sunsat Corp. is aiming for 42,000 flights per year, nominally. Prices would quickly fall below current levels once subsidies established such a market volume.


Many studies have shown the synergy between SSP and high flight rates


Prices drop as flight rate increases

The red dots below are Elon Musk, SpaceX, $1300/lb and Sandia National Laboratories $20/lb - “Space Sunshade Might Be Feasible”, Nov. 3, 2006, http://uanews.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/UANews.woa/wa/MainStoryDetails?ArticleID=13269

http://uanews.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/UANews.woa/wa/MainStoryDetails?ArticleID=13269


• 2006 world PV production up 30 percent to 2.1 GW

• About 0.03% of worldwide electricity is generated from photovoltaic power.


PV Performance Breakthoughs

Boeing-Spectrolab created a solar cell with 40.7% conversion efficiency - "the highest efficiency level any photovoltaic device has ever achieved“. - “Solar cell breakthrough claimed”, Thomas Claburn, www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196602149

•


Since space transportation is expensive we want to find high performance photovoltaic cells – to increase the power output for the same weight carried to orbit.

Space qualified thin-film solar cells in the pipeline today can provide 2000 Watts/Kg. These are adequate specifications to begin SSP design and/or construction now.

We anticipate doubling that performance within 3-5 years, using current laboratory planning.

April 30,2004 Space Solar Power Workshop 48Source: Ken Zweibel, NREL


SSP would revitalize America by showing that a multitude of space-development-related-educational-fields, from telerobotics to wireless power transfer and environmental sciences, are vitally relevant to these great problems.

Greatly reduced launch costs, the key enabler, will provide unprecedented access to space and space operations including products we can merely dream of today, beginning with SSP - promising to provide reliable power delivery and global energy security at greatly reduced environmental impact.

Choosing to charter an SSP corporation would be “a small step for man, a giant leap for mankind.”


SkyWorker an autononous robot for multi-kilometer size space structures

Credit – Red Whitaker, CMU Robotics, http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/projects/skyworker/temp/skyworker2.mpg


FOR MORE INFO...

Draft legislation for the Sunsat Act is available at www.sspi.gatech.edu/sunsat-how.pdf

Learn more at www.sspi.gatech.edu

Email: [email protected] Or [email protected]

april 30,2004space solar power workshop1 welcome to the space solar power track!! space solar power...

Documents

space solar power workshopwww

thespace solar power

future oil production

oil supply gap

global coal production

peak coal

energy alternative

peak fossil fuels