Power from Space: Come Fry With Me…

By Si Dunn

CNN recently has trumpeted a plan by an Indian engineer with Space Island Group to gather solar power from a gigantic orbiting satellite and beam it down to Earth to provide cheap electricity to rural villages in India.

According to CNN, “American scientist Peter Glaser introduced the idea of space solar power in 1968.” Since then, the concept has been studied several times by several agencies and shelved each time mainly because of potentially massive costs.

But the Space Frontier Foundation, “a group promoting public access to space,” thinks this latest scheme to draw electric power from space basically is peachy keen, CNN adds.

Not to sound like a Luddite here, but there is one fundamental problem with this grand plan, which the CNN article makes sound so simple: “The satellites would electromagnetically beam gigawatts of solar energy back to ground-based receivers, where it would then be converted to electricity and transferred to power grids.”

Here’s the problem. The only way you can “electromagnetically beam gigawatts of solar energy” anywhere is via a microwave radio signal or something even higher in frequency, such as a laser beam. And, no matter how narrowly you try to focus an electromagnetic beam, you’re going to get signal spreading and side lobes of energy--maybe only a few gigawatts or so--shooting down at Earth and hitting people, places, animals and random things outside the energy capture areas.

Hey, and what if your giant energy satellite gets hit by a space rock big enough to knock it slightly off course. Then the main beam will shine down on people, places, animals and random things rather than on the intended capture area. And what if radio communications to the errant satellite are lost and it just starts shooting the energy beam randomly at points on Earth until it can be taken out with nuclear missiles or restored to equilibrium by astronauts?

Gigawatts of power hitting you directly from space probably might be a bit more intense than sticking your head inside a microwave oven for the TV-dinner cycle. But even mere megawatts passing through you over long periods of time possibly could have some very serious medical consequences. People are advised to not stand in front of radar antennas for a reason: The antennas radiate brief pulses of microwave radio power measured in gigawatts, and the pulses can cook you or kill you. A similar technique would have to be used to send energy down from space orbit.

Hey, Jack, need some power for your isolated village? Here, have a couple of minutes of brain-frying microwave radio signals. They were supposed to be received only via the special antennas a hundred miles east of you. But the beast is loose, so the power is free. Capture all you can before the satellite wobbles a bit more and cooks the next village, too.

Instead of spending trillions to put more junk into space, why don't we just spend billions on learning how to live with lower energy consumption and route the saved energy to the rural villages that don't have enough power?

#