Category: energy independence

Forbes.com article – SBSP should be a national priority

“Trump Should Make Space-Based Solar Power A National Priority”
by Bruce Dorminey, contributor, Forbes.com

Image Credit: NASA

In a recent Forbes.com article, science journalist and author Bruce Dorminey argues for the current administration to make development and deployment of space-based solar power a national priority. Read the full article here.

If President Trump were to champion space-based solar energy as a means of delivering unlimited, renewable electricity from Earth orbit, it’s arguable that his administration could leave the U.S. and the world at large with a revolutionary new source of energy.

In this advocate’s opinion, one of the most important points Dorminey makes is that ” … the fledgling space-based solar power initiative needs cohesive leadership to actively plot goals and transform it into a workable industry.” The majority of SBSP supporters have thus far focused on engineering challenges, essential to the technical “how is it done” question of space-based solar power. Two other questions, the financial “who pays for it” and the political “who gets the credit or takes the blame” must also be answered for a complete solution.

With most complex problems, the level of difficulty usually increases from the technical solution to the financial solution to the often intractable political solution. A current, complex problem to illustrate this three-pronged approach might be the ongoing battle over national healthcare. (Have even one of the three questions truly been answered yet?)

To jumpstart a U.S.-led space-based power agenda, at least three in-depth proposals for federal legislation have already been put forward:

SunSat Corporation Charter – proposed by the Space Solar Power Institute’s (SSPI) Space Solar Power Workshop, led by Darel Preble at Georgia Tech

Space Review article: Federal Legislation to Jumpstart Space Solar Power – written by Mike Snead, President, the Spacefaring Institute™

D3 Space Solar Proposal – Diplomacy, Development, and Defense (D3) Innovation Summit Pitch Challenge award-winning proposal by a team of scientists led by Dr. Paul Jaffe, spacecraft engineer at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL)

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SBSP – A Solution to the Carbon Crisis

Can space-based solar power solve the carbon crisis? The business model in this video shows how SBSP could be scaled to meet planetary energy needs with zero carbon emissions.

  • The business model presented was developed by Keith Henson.
  • The video was produced by Mafic Studios, Inc.
  • The script was written by Lt. Col. Peter Garretson, Keith Henson, and Kris Holland.
  • Narration was done by Jay Aaseng.

AIAA Atlanta Presents “Space Solar Power – A Strategic Overview”

A friend of mine just sent me a copy of the invitation to the May 22 AIAA Atlanta Dinner Meeting, where Darel Preble, president of the Space Solar Power Institute, is going to present “Space Solar Power – A Strategic Overview”.

Image linked from the Space Solar Power Institute
Space-based solar power receiving antennae (rectenna) absorb wirelessly transmitted energy from space, and allow sunlight and rain to pass through so that the land underneath can still be utilized for farming or ranching.

I hope many of my former co-workers attend the dinner and learn about the potential of space-based solar power to be a game-changing technology in our energy future. In a partnership with Georgia Tech, Lockheed Martin seems like such a good fit for leading the United States in the commercial development of space-based solar power. They build rockets and satellites, do very large scale systems development and integration, conduct research green energy technologies . . . and they like to make money!

Lockheed Martin should be a charter member of the proposed public-private Sunsat Corporation, and lead the way to our energy future. There certainly is precedent for such a venture, e.g. the Railroad Act of 1862 and the Communications Satellite Act of 1962. I sincerely hope we don’t have to wait until 2062 to see a Sunsat Act come to fruition.

The dinner meeting will be at Scalini’s, one of my favorite Atlanta-area Italian restaurants!

An Energy-Independent Future – The Daily Show with Jon Stewart – 06/16/2010 – Video Clip | Comedy Central

While this video from Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show is satirizing the government rhetoric regarding the need for an energy-independent America, it points out a sad trend. For generations, our politicians have paid the topic of energy independence lip service when it has been politically expedient but have done little of any substance to advance towards achieving this critical national goal.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Citizens for Space Based Solar Power Sees 10,000 Visits

Since it’s inception in late 2007, shortly after the release of the National Security Space Office “Space‐Based Solar Power
As an Opportunity for Strategic Security – Phase 0 Interim Assessment Study“, Citizens for Space Based Solar Power has received over 10,000 visits.

I hope this milestone is an indication that more and more citizens are becoming aware of space-based solar power and that we as the United States of America are moving closer to launching a major, multi-generational effort to develop and deploy this game-changing and necessary technology.

Aviation Week Article on SBSP

European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) subsidiary Astrium is seeking to scale up ground based demonstrations by getting public agencies and corporations interested in funding an orbital demonstration project. The company is projecting having a 10-20KW demonstrator in orbit, perhaps on the International Space Station, within five years. Astrium engineers are focusing on using infrared lasers to beam the collected energy back to the surface instead of the more traditional microwave beam approach.

This isn’t the first time Aviation Week & Space Technology has reported on space-based solar power, but it is the first time in a while and it may signify an up-tick in activities around the world.

Read the Aviation Week article by Michael A. Taverna published in the January 25, 2010 issue here.

I’ll make my plea once again … U.S. government agencies and private corporations must get on the space-based solar power development path soon or we will be left playing catch-up once again. It seems to me that Lockheed Martin Corporation is the perfect United States’ answer to EADS-Astrium’s efforts on the European continent.

Solar Power Satellites Issue – Online Journal of Space Communication

This Issue #16 – Solar Power Satellites is the most comprehensive set of articles I have seen in one place addressing all aspects of space-based solar power.

“In this issue, the Journal advances the proposition that the next generation of satellite services will be to gather sun’s energy in space and to deliver it to earth as a clean and sustainable source of electrical power. In the 21st century, the need for alternatives to the burning of fossil fuels to generate electricity has become so great that space is now a real option.”

Ralph Nansen, author of ENERGY CRISIS: Solutions from Space, and former Manager of the Solar Power Satellite Program for The Boeing Company is the guest editor for this edition of the Online Journal of Space Communication.

Hot, Flat and Crowded

I received Thomas L. Friedman’s book Hot, Flat and Crowded for Christmas. I am about half way through it and one particular paragraph prompted me to post the following comment on his website under the topic Making Clean Energy Work:

Tom,

I am on pages 186-187 of Hot, Flat and Crowded in the section Clean Electrons. Your most powerful paragraph in the book so far begins with the sentence “No single solution would defuse more of the Energy-Climate Era’s problems at once than the invention of a source of abundant, clean, reliable, and cheap electrons.” You go on to list many of the currently intractable global problems that a source of abundant, clean, reliable, and cheap electrons would solve. In the next paragraph, you state that “no one has yet come up with a source of electrons that meets all four criteria: abundant, clean, reliable and cheap.”

As a self-appointed advocate, I believe that space-based solar power has the potential to meet all four of the criteria you set out. Space-based solar power is the 24/7/365 collection of solar power by satellites in geosynchronous orbit which convert and beam it to receiving antennas (rectennas) anywhere on the face of the planet to be distributed to end users by either the existing electrical grid or by wireless power transmission. On a large enough scale, such a system would give humankind direct access to unlimited clean, reliable and ultimately cheap electrons.

The idea of space-based solar power, patented by Dr. Peter Glaser in the 1960’s, was last reviewed in depth in a 2007 study sponsored by the Pentagon’s National Security Space Office. Most recently, the Space Frontier Foundation submitted a white paper to the Obama Transition Team which was subsequently posted by them for public comment.

Here are some sources where you and your readers can learn more about the potential game-changing technology of space-based solar power:

Space Based Solar Power – a public discussion

Citizens for Space Based Solar Power

Space Solar Power (SSP) – A Solution for Energy Independence & Climate Change – (Obama Transition Team website)

I invite you and your readers to learn more about Space Based Solar Power and, if you reach the same conclusions about its tremendous potential that I have, become advocates to have this potentially game-changing technology added to America’s system of solutions for a clean energy future for the entire planet.

Best regards,

Rob Mahan: Citizens for Space Based Solar Power

George Friedman on SBSP During “The Next 100 Years”

George Friedman, founder of the private intelligence firm Stratfor, has written a book titled The Next 100 Years. In the following video summary of the book at about the 1:50 mark, Friedman predicts that space-based solar power will be one of two dominate forces that will shape global warming. He also predicts that the United States will become the major source of energy for the entire world.

Obama Transition Team Requests SBSP Public Input

On June 17, 2008, Citizens for Space Based Solar Power submitted a Letter to Senator Obama, with the intent of making him aware of Space Based Solar Power and asking him to carefully consider making this technology a key aspect of his proposal for a clean energy future …

I THINK THEY HEARD US … along with your combined voices and those from the Space-Based Solar Power study group and the Space Frontier Foundation, which submitted a white paper titled Space Solar Power (SSP) — A Solution for Energy Independence & Climate Change to the Obama Transition Team. A few days ago, this white paper was posted to the Change.gov website for public input, where it has already received over three hundred comments from both supporters and skeptics.

From its inception, one of the main goals of Citizens for Space Based Solar Power has been:

  • Elevate SBSP to the level of national discussion and influence government and industry leaders in the development and deployment of this potentially game-changing technology.

Now is the chance for your voice to be heard in the national conversation about Space Based Solar Power! Whether you are a supporter or a skeptic, now is your chance to be heard by the people who have it in their power to start Space Based Solar Power down the path to reality.