A Game Changer in the Fight Against Climate Change

[LunaSea]

Snip-

In his recent Starship update, Musk trotted out some pretty mind-blowing numbers. To meet his goals of eventually building a city on Mars, the iconoclastic entrepreneur is building the largest and most powerful rocket ever constructed, with an ability to launch 100 metric tons to orbit in a single launch, for just $10 million a launch. To understand what this means, it's necessary to grasp that it currently costs $2,350 to put a kilogram of matter into orbit. Musk's project would drop that price to an astounding $100 per kilogram.

All this matters a great deal, not least for environmentalists because it will make the concept of Space Solar Power both technically and economically feasible.

Designs for individual solar power satellite (such as NASA's SPS-ALPHA) weigh in at about 8,000 metric tons, and—once deployed—will deliver about 2 gigawatts of energy back to Earth. And unlike terrestrial solar generation, which is intermittent, Space Solar Power Satellites can deliver constant power appropriate to the 24 hour needs of cities and industry and will be able to compete directly with coal and nuclear.

Moreover, even after accounting for the carbon needed to manufacture a satellite, the entire launcher fleet and all the fuel necessary to launch it, these satellites represent a net positive. Over a 15-year lifecycle, each system will avoid creating more than 500 times the carbon it took to build and launch. And since Musk's plan to build a Starship fleet capable of launching a million metric tons a year could build not just one, but over 70 such systems every year, it would result in a net carbon avoidance of 1.2 gigatons per year.


That is no minor dent. The entire fossil fuel system puts out 34 gigatons of CO2 annually. Having a system that can retire close to 4 percent of that in a single year would represent a game changer.

More-
https://www.newsweek.com/game-changer-fight-against-climate-change-opinion-1693929

[Chainfire]

1. It sounds like a good idea. But, I am old enough to know that all that glitters is not gold.

I am certainly not a physicists, but harvesting all of that extra energy and microwaving it back to earth, where a good part of it is then converted to heat, directly or indirectly, is a good thing or a bad thing? Is it swapping one way of raising the temperature of the atmosphere for another? No matter how you figure it, it is adding heat to the planet. What I am ignorant of is how much of a difference, if any, would it actually make? Would alternatives that harvest energy from domestic resources be a better solution? Converting wind energy to electricity does not add to the total heat of the earth...I don't know so my questions must be rather simplistic.

Assuming that that the program is highly successful and there are eventually hundreds of these things in space, does that create an impenetrable beams of microwave energy for airplanes to dodge? Could these microwave generators be easily converted to weapons? Could they be redirected to beam that energy into a city center?

It reminds me of the old Dustin Hoffman movie; "Is it safe?" Or, is it just convenient?

[DavidDvorkin]

2. That heat would reach the planet anyway

These satellites would intercept some of it and send it on in a different form.

In fact, some of it would be radiated away into space instead, because the conversion would not be 100% efficient, so the net effect would be cooling, although very slight.

[hunter]

3. Or we could implement a fully developed seventy year old technology...

... and build more nuclear power plants.

If we sit around on our asses waiting for fantastical unproven technologies to replace fossil fuels we are toast.

[NNadir]

4. Musk is such an asshole. n/t.