The scene: An area-based solar energy station referred to 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 buddies). The plot: The astronauts are coaching Cutie to take over the station’s operations, which contain amassing photo voltaic vitality in house after which directing it as intense beams of microwaves all the way down to Earth.
That is the backdrop for Isaac Asimov’s 1941 quick story “Cause.” A lot 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 truly work, besides in probably 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 big incandescent globes that occurs to be close to us. We name that globe the Solar and it’s on the opposite facet of the station the place you’ll be able to’t see it.”
Harnessing the facility of the solar in house is definitely an attractive concept. A decade in the past we featured a challenge on the Japan Aerospace Exploration Company that aimed to launch a 1-gigawatt photo voltaic station by 2031. As a step in that course, JAXA says it can exhibit a small satellite tv for pc transmitting 1 kilowatt of energy to Earth from an altitude of 400 kilometers subsequent yr. We’ve additionally reported on Caltech’s SSPD-1 demonstrator challenge and the US $100 million from a billionaire donor who funds it.
An area photo voltaic challenge would “waste capital that might be higher spent enhancing much less dangerous methods to shore up renewable vitality, akin to batteries, hydrogen, and grid enhancements.”
And but, space-based solar energy stays extra science fiction than science reality, as Henri Barde writes in “Castles within the Sky?” Barde ought to know: He just lately retired from the European House Company, the place amongst different issues he evaluated house energy techniques. As Barde’s article makes abundantly clear, this clear vitality would come at an infinite price, if it may be finished in any respect, “[wasting] capital that might be higher spent enhancing much less dangerous methods to shore up renewable vitality, akin to batteries, hydrogen, and grid enhancements.”
For instance, U.Okay.-based House Photo voltaic estimates it can want 68 (!) SpaceX Starship launches to loft all of the belongings essential 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 ultimately get the value all the way down to $10 million per launch, we’re nonetheless speaking tons of of tens of millions 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 essential for receiving the beamed energy and placing it on the grid are nonetheless simply distant dots on a highway map in somebody’s multimillion greenback analysis proposal.
Engineers are sometimes impressed by science fiction. However inspiration solely will get you thus far. House-based solar energy will stay sci-fi fodder for the foreseeable future. For the monumental activity of electrifying every little thing whereas lowering greenhouse gasoline emissions, it’s higher to concentrate on options primarily based on expertise already in hand, like standard geothermal, nuclear, wind, and Earth-based photo voltaic, moderately than losing time, brainpower, and cash on a fantasy.
This text seems within the June 2024 print difficulty as “The Chasm Between Creativeness and Feasibility.”
