Speaker 1: Hey, Kelly, do you guys have solar power over there
Speaker 1: at the science farm? We do. We actually pretty recently
Speaker 1: installed solar panels on top of one of our barns.
Speaker 1: And so does it give you like all the energy
Speaker 1: you could ever want? No, not all the energy we
Speaker 1: could ever want. I married a man who would like
Speaker 1: to build a giant laser, and so he's always going
Speaker 1: to be disappointed. But it gives us some power. Well,
Speaker 1: does it give you all the energy you need? I
Speaker 1: mean not quite. It's cloudy where we live, and then
Speaker 1: there's nighttime and the batteries aren't quite up to the task.
Speaker 1: Who needs energy at nighttime? Jeez? Or like in the winter,
Speaker 1: you guys are way too demanding. Yeah, we could just
Speaker 1: put on like five layers of socks. That might get
Speaker 1: hard for Zac to wear socks and sandals, but I'm
Speaker 1: sure he'd persevere. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist,
Speaker 1: and I'm the co host of our podcast, Daniel and
Speaker 1: Jorge Explain the Universe. And I'm Kelly Weener Smith. I'm
Speaker 1: an adjunct professor with Rice University and I study parasites.
Speaker 1: And welcome to the podcast, in which we talk about
Speaker 1: everything out there in the universe, the tiny little particles
Speaker 1: that wiggle around beneath your toes and in your toes,
Speaker 1: and the huge mysteries of the universe, how it began,
Speaker 1: how it will end, how it all works. We talked
Speaker 1: about all that crazy stuff and try to break it
Speaker 1: down and explain it to you. My normal co host,
Speaker 1: Jorge cham the creator PhD Comics, isn't here today, but
Speaker 1: we're very lucky to have our returning regular guest host,
Speaker 1: Kelly Wiener Smith. Kelly, thanks for joining us again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my pleasure. I'm excited to be back. It's a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. Well, we try to have fun, and we
Speaker 1: also try to talk about the science. And we talked
Speaker 1: about the mysteries of the universe. We talked about the
Speaker 1: tiny little particles, but we also like to talk about
Speaker 1: how things work and whether things will work. We'd like
Speaker 1: to explore technologies. We've talked to this podcast about how
Speaker 1: l e Ed's work. We've talked about how solar panels work,
Speaker 1: and we've talked about things like space elevators. And I
Speaker 1: understand Kelly, that you're becoming something of an expert in
Speaker 1: how space technology and space colonization works. Yeah, our upcoming
Speaker 1: book is sort of on that topic. So we've been
Speaker 1: spending a lot of time reading about these sorts of things,
Speaker 1: and soon has had a chapter on space elevators. And
Speaker 1: are you excited to think about this kind of stuff
Speaker 1: because you think like everything in the future will be
Speaker 1: based in space, of space farms and space schools and
Speaker 1: space grocery stores. Well, I have the sense that we
Speaker 1: are maybe a little bit too overly optimistic about how
Speaker 1: great it's going to be to live in space. But
Speaker 1: I do think that at some point we'll have space
Speaker 1: settlements and we'll have lots of cool stuff going on
Speaker 1: in space. And how we're going to power all of
Speaker 1: that and and make this awful environment habitable is a
Speaker 1: very interesting question, I think, because it is kind of
Speaker 1: an awful environment. I think it's amazing that spaces is
Speaker 1: sort of like cool sheen to it, right, and it
Speaker 1: is some out there, it's like part of the universe,
Speaker 1: But it's also kind of awful, right. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: like not a cozy place to be, no. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think you look at a picture of the Moon
Speaker 1: are Mars, and you can sort of imagine places on
Speaker 1: Earth that looks sort of similar and sort of convince
Speaker 1: yourself like, oh, it's not that different, but no, it's
Speaker 1: super different, and it's super unpleasant and it's definitely trying
Speaker 1: to kill you all the time. And that really makes
Speaker 1: us cherish life down here on Earth. You know, we
Speaker 1: are really lucky to get to live in this warm,
Speaker 1: atmospheric little slice of the universe that's wet but not
Speaker 1: too wet and has all the right conditions for our
Speaker 1: kind of life and our cozy lifestyle. And so I
Speaker 1: think another way to look at space is like as
Speaker 1: a resource, a way to support and improve life here
Speaker 1: on Earth, rather than as an alternate for life on Earth.
Speaker 1: And I think there's a lot of enthusiasm about that.
Speaker 1: But I also think there's a lot of reasons why
Speaker 1: getting things from space to Earth is really difficult, and
Speaker 1: those are maybe some of the big things we need
Speaker 1: to overcome so that we can make space improve our
Speaker 1: lives down here. Right, We need like a better highway
Speaker 1: between here and space so we can take better advantage
Speaker 1: of all of its resources, yes, exactly. And also we
Speaker 1: have to be careful about Earth being a gravity well,
Speaker 1: so you don't bring, for example, an asteroid with great
Speaker 1: resources too close and then have a sort of dinosaur
Speaker 1: event happen again. So it's a little sensitive talk about
Speaker 1: cell phones. Right, Oops? Ye, right, whoops, extinction level event.
Speaker 1: My bad. Well, one of the big issues of course
Speaker 1: facing us down here on Earth is energy and how
Speaker 1: to get clean sources of renewable energy that are cheap
Speaker 1: and that are easy to distribute, and that are consistent,
Speaker 1: and that can heat your toes on a cold winter night,
Speaker 1: even on the science farm. So what are some proposals. Well,
Speaker 1: obviously there's been a big surge down here on Earth
Speaker 1: of solar panels and green energies such as wind, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So that's been helping a little bit. But I get
Speaker 1: a little worried when I look at these projections from
Speaker 1: the I p c C about like the various paths
Speaker 1: we're going on if we only use like twenty or
Speaker 1: thirty or fifty renewable energies for the next few years,
Speaker 1: like the nerves for increasing global surface warming temperatures still
Speaker 1: look pretty dire. Yeah, and I'm not super optimistic that
Speaker 1: we'll be able to switch to more climate friendly technologies
Speaker 1: like nuclear because they have sort of other big downsides
Speaker 1: when you've got humans using it. Absolutely and so people
Speaker 1: have been talking about crazy new proposals to supercharge our
Speaker 1: solar power industry, to make it much more efficient, much
Speaker 1: more dramatic, much more available by connecting it to space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what would that look like? How the heck do
Speaker 1: you do that? And that's the topic of today's podcast.
Speaker 1: Today on the program, we're asking the question is space
Speaker 1: based solar power realistic? Because you know, we can talk
Speaker 1: about space based whatever, and you can spend ten billion
Speaker 1: dollars doing some proof of principle or a hundred billion dollars,
Speaker 1: But if we're going to talk about something like delivering
Speaker 1: power to people down here on Earth, it's got to
Speaker 1: be economical, right, It's got to be robust, it's got
Speaker 1: to be actually realistic. We've got to be developing an
Speaker 1: industry people actually want to invest in and work in,
Speaker 1: not just some fancy thing for a nationalistic pride. Totally
Speaker 1: and so okay, So we've got solar panels on Earth,
Speaker 1: and the price of solar panels is plumbing quickly. So,
Speaker 1: like Zach and I've been together for something like fourteen
Speaker 1: years now, and almost every year in our relationship we've
Speaker 1: checked the price of solar panels just because we're both
Speaker 1: excited about renewable energy, and last year we were like,
Speaker 1: we can afford it now, And partly that was because
Speaker 1: of tax credits and stuff, but also it's because the
Speaker 1: price of these panels is going down a lot. And
Speaker 1: so when you can put these cheap panels on your house,
Speaker 1: is why would you bother putting them in space? Right?
Speaker 1: So let's dig into that in a moment, But first
Speaker 1: I want to ask you, like, what made you pull
Speaker 1: the trigger? Was it really like it's below the threshold
Speaker 1: where we can afford it. We keep looking at this
Speaker 1: and keep thinking, you know what, next year they'll be cheaper.
Speaker 1: If we just wait another year, they'll be cheaper. So
Speaker 1: at what point do you decide, well, they're cheap enough
Speaker 1: and now is the time to buy them. So I
Speaker 1: think the trigger for us was that there was a
Speaker 1: tax break for something like thirty percent where the cost
Speaker 1: of the solar panels you could apply to your taxes,
Speaker 1: and that was set to expire, and so we decided
Speaker 1: we needed to do it right away. And actually a
Speaker 1: bunch of the local solar companies were just way overburdened
Speaker 1: because a bunch of people must have made that same
Speaker 1: calculation just a couple of months before the taxes were
Speaker 1: about to expire, and so for us, it was the
Speaker 1: tax break that made us decide we weren't going to
Speaker 1: wait for the price to go down anymore because we
Speaker 1: thought it would be a while. And also we had
Speaker 1: finally purchased our own house, and this is something we
Speaker 1: had been, you know, dreaming about for a long time,
Speaker 1: so we decided it was time to go for it.
Speaker 1: And it's really interesting to see the evolution of this.
Speaker 1: Twenty or ten years ago, solar panels were really pretty expensive,
Speaker 1: they were hard to make, they didn't last very long.
Speaker 1: We weren't that good, but you know, people were buying them,
Speaker 1: and the industry got started and the government gave it
Speaker 1: some pushes, and now we have this very vibrant solar
Speaker 1: panel industry where the prices are falling rapidly and lots
Speaker 1: of people are buying them, and so it's sort of
Speaker 1: builds on itself. It's sort of like consumer electronics, you know,
Speaker 1: once it gets going and the big marketplace comes in
Speaker 1: with all of his cap at all, than things that
Speaker 1: just get cheaper and cheaper and easier and easier and
Speaker 1: better and better. But one thing that is not getting
Speaker 1: cheaper and cheaper as fast as I think we would
Speaker 1: like is the batteries that go with the solar panels.
Speaker 1: So we live out in the middle of nowhere, and
Speaker 1: we sometimes will lose power for like a week. The
Speaker 1: previous owner at least told us that, and so we
Speaker 1: asked the solar panel company, like, so we should buy batteries, right,
Speaker 1: and we'll store up a week of power and when
Speaker 1: our power goes out in the middle of winter, we'll
Speaker 1: live off of the batteries. And the guy was like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you should still buy a propane power generator because the
Speaker 1: batteries are way too expensive. We're not there yet. That's
Speaker 1: totally not worth it. And so I feel like solar
Speaker 1: isn't going to be a really great solution until you
Speaker 1: can actually be storing the power from the sun even
Speaker 1: when you don't need it. And the things like Tesla
Speaker 1: are helping to drive down the cost of these batteries
Speaker 1: because they're you know, making them more efficient and better
Speaker 1: to put in electric cars. But I think it's still
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases, the technology is still not
Speaker 1: there yet at a reasonable price point. And I think
Speaker 1: you put your finger on what motivates space based solar power,
Speaker 1: which is that you can't get solar power on Earth
Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day, three sixty five days a
Speaker 1: year because it's nighttime sometimes and you know it's cloudy sometimes,
Speaker 1: and so what if you could like beam that power
Speaker 1: from space anytime, any day, no matter how cold it
Speaker 1: is and how overcast it is. But we'll get into
Speaker 1: that in a moment. First, we surveyed our listeners to
Speaker 1: hear what they thought about the prospects of having solar
Speaker 1: power come down from space. So thank you to everybody
Speaker 1: who volunteered to answer random questions on the internet. If
Speaker 1: you're excited to participate and hear your voice speculating baselessly
Speaker 1: in the future, please write to us two questions at
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge dot com. So here's what people had
Speaker 1: to say. I think, yes, maybe not for us on
Speaker 1: the ground, to to the limits of currently available extension codes,
Speaker 1: but definitely important for everyone who is or regis stationed
Speaker 1: in space. I think it is uh something is I'm
Speaker 1: assuming that would be either a dison sphere or a
Speaker 1: the what you call it solar solar sale. I think
Speaker 1: very large scale is impossible. I don't think we have
Speaker 1: enough matter in the Solar system to make a dicen sphere. Um,
Speaker 1: but I think some things can be made of it.
Speaker 1: I guess the problem would be getting the power from
Speaker 1: space down to Earth. Again. Um, I guess it would
Speaker 1: be a good idea to have solar panels outside of
Speaker 1: the Ear's atmosphere because you probably get more power because
Speaker 1: there's no clouds and things. But then you'd have to
Speaker 1: get the power down to the surface. So I don't
Speaker 1: know if you can beam power? Is that too star
Speaker 1: Trek I don't know. Um. Otherwise you could do it
Speaker 1: with batteries, I guess, and then transport it, but that
Speaker 1: would be very expensive. Space based solar power is not
Speaker 1: realistic now because I don't think we know how to
Speaker 1: get the power back to the Earth. If we're going
Speaker 1: to use it on the Earth, I feel like that
Speaker 1: would be a very hard engineering problem. Like we we
Speaker 1: already have trouble sending solar power distances here on Earth.
Speaker 1: So if it's collected in space, that seems logistically like impossible. Well,
Speaker 1: it depends how the technology will evolve, but for now, no,
Speaker 1: But who knows how what we will do in the
Speaker 1: future why not? So what do you think of their answers, Kelly,
Speaker 1: I thought those were super interesting answers, and I thought
Speaker 1: they brought up some important points, like how do you
Speaker 1: get the power back to Earth? So they were well
Speaker 1: thought out answers. What about you. I heard a lot
Speaker 1: of skepticism there, which I think is well motivated. There's
Speaker 1: at least one person who misunderstood the question. I think
Speaker 1: I was talking about like solar sales and whether you
Speaker 1: could sail on photons from stars while you're sort of
Speaker 1: far away from a solar system, which is another totally
Speaker 1: fascinating question and would require like massive lasers to push
Speaker 1: on those solar sales. But I think the question of
Speaker 1: like building solar power in space and beaming it down
Speaker 1: to Earth does seem pretty complicated and problematic. But you know,
Speaker 1: maybe we're is that the early stages of this industry,
Speaker 1: back when solar panels on your roof were expensive and
Speaker 1: flaky and hard to arrange. Maybe we're just sort of
Speaker 1: in the early days and we need to sort of
Speaker 1: get the ball rolling. Anyway, we'll dig into it. So
Speaker 1: you mentioned in the IBCC reports that it just didn't
Speaker 1: seem like renewables were maybe going to be enough to
Speaker 1: deal with the climate change problem, like what is holding
Speaker 1: us back? Why can't we just use renewables for all
Speaker 1: of our energy and you know, stop using things like coal. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think you put your finger on it earlier, which
Speaker 1: is that you don't get sunlight all the time. And
Speaker 1: in some cases there are places where you get like
Speaker 1: a lot of sunlight exactly when you need it. For example,
Speaker 1: if you live in Arizona and you need energy in
Speaker 1: order to cool your house, then you're getting a lot
Speaker 1: of sunlight right when you need to cool the house.
Speaker 1: Sins to the energy production produced by the solar panels
Speaker 1: are very close to the energy needs where you need
Speaker 1: it to drive that air conditioning. But that's not always
Speaker 1: the case. If, for example, you're living in the dark,
Speaker 1: cold northern Scandinavian winter, then you're not getting a lot
Speaker 1: of solar power and you need power in the winter
Speaker 1: to stay warm. And so the bottle neck there is,
Speaker 1: as you said earlier, storage and transportation, Like you could
Speaker 1: have a huge solar farm somewhere in the Sahara or
Speaker 1: in the Mojave Desert that produces enough powerful whole country,
Speaker 1: but getting it from there to somewhere else and storing
Speaker 1: it is very, very expensive. Battery technology and transmission losses
Speaker 1: make it essentially totally uneconomical. Okay, so solar panels are
Speaker 1: just never going to take care of some parts of Earth,
Speaker 1: that's right, because they can't get energy twenty four hours
Speaker 1: a day and they can't get energy three sixty five
Speaker 1: days a year. And a similar problem for wind. Right
Speaker 1: wind also directly produces electricity, and electricity is hard to
Speaker 1: store efficiently and hard to transfer efficiently. Is this the
Speaker 1: kind of thing where if we improved our grid dramatically
Speaker 1: things could improve a lot? Or are we limited by
Speaker 1: the physics of transmission loss as you go, even with
Speaker 1: a great grid, we still couldn't get the power to
Speaker 1: place as we need it. Transmission losses are pretty tough,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about you know, across the country or
Speaker 1: across the world when we're talking about storage, and storage
Speaker 1: is pretty expensive. So you know, you can't rule out
Speaker 1: future breakthroughs in battery technology. And actually, we're gonna do
Speaker 1: an episode in a few weeks about electric airplanes, which
Speaker 1: require innovation in batteries to make them lighter and more powerful,
Speaker 1: but current ideas don't have us getting there, and so
Speaker 1: we have this limitation of just sort of producing the
Speaker 1: power at the right time and in the right place
Speaker 1: where it needs to be used. All right, So solar
Speaker 1: power is great, but you've got these problems with trying
Speaker 1: to get it from place to place and problems with
Speaker 1: not having enough of it in some of the places
Speaker 1: that you need it. How does spending the incredible cost
Speaker 1: of putting solar power in space help us overcome these problems. Well,
Speaker 1: the basic idea is that it's always sunny in space,
Speaker 1: So you can have these solar panels up in space
Speaker 1: and they're always seeing the sun. Right, they're gonna be
Speaker 1: a high enough orbit that they're not gonna be in
Speaker 1: the Earth's shadow for very long at all, like a
Speaker 1: very tiny fraction of their time. And of course they're
Speaker 1: above the clouds, and so they have basically continuous generation
Speaker 1: of power. And you know a lot of energy is
Speaker 1: lost when the sunlight passes through the atmosphere. It's like
Speaker 1: reflection and absorption and that kind of stuff. So the
Speaker 1: idea is that you start out collecting much more solar
Speaker 1: power five six, seven, eight times as much as the
Speaker 1: equivalent ground based array, and so that provides you the
Speaker 1: ability to gather more power and also to gather power
Speaker 1: all the time. And because you're in space, you can
Speaker 1: reach anyone who might need that power anywhere? Is that
Speaker 1: the idea? So like you can get those people who
Speaker 1: are living in Norway in the winter. Yeah. So that's
Speaker 1: the other issue is like you generate this power in space,
Speaker 1: then what do you do with it? Right, Because we
Speaker 1: have already solar panels in space, like every satellite that's
Speaker 1: out there, and the I s S has solar panels.
Speaker 1: It's a very well established way to generate power in
Speaker 1: space for use in space. But you want to generate
Speaker 1: power in space and then use it to build you know,
Speaker 1: Zack's big laser or whatever, then you need to get
Speaker 1: it down to Earth. Right. So you might be imagining
Speaker 1: like big wires draped from satellites down to Earth. Obviously
Speaker 1: that's not gonna work, right, huge problems there, and so
Speaker 1: the idea is to beam it down to Earth. So
Speaker 1: you collect the power in space and then you transform
Speaker 1: it into microwaves or lasers and beam that down to
Speaker 1: Earth to some receiver which then picks it up. And
Speaker 1: we have a fair amount of experience with working with
Speaker 1: solar powers and space, right, So you mentioned the I S.
Speaker 1: S has solar panels, solute Skylab mirror. They probably all
Speaker 1: I'm fairly certain they all had solar panels. Also, the
Speaker 1: rovers on Mars have solar panels yep, yep, yep. And
Speaker 1: so we have some information about how solar panels persist
Speaker 1: in a vacuum and how long they survive and how
Speaker 1: well they do as they move in and out of
Speaker 1: the sunlight. So which would mean they're dealing with these
Speaker 1: massive temperature changes as you go in the area where
Speaker 1: you get hit with the sun versus when you go
Speaker 1: in the shadow of the Earth. And so I guess
Speaker 1: we have a fair bit of information about the use
Speaker 1: of solar panels in space. Do you think that's fair
Speaker 1: to say? Yeah, I think we definitely have some experience.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the history of repair is for
Speaker 1: those missions, if they're like constantly repairing and replenishing the
Speaker 1: solar panels on the I. S. S. Because of micromedia,
Speaker 1: it's a radiation damage. So how long have people been
Speaker 1: thinking about this idea? Is this like a brand new
Speaker 1: idea or an idea that's sort of been floating around
Speaker 1: for a while. I was doing a little bit of reading,
Speaker 1: and it turns out this is an idea that's been
Speaker 1: bubbling up for decades. Actually, there was a first paper
Speaker 1: about it by a Russian scientist who the name I
Speaker 1: camp pronounce can pronounce that name, Konstantine Solkovski. There you
Speaker 1: go in the nineteen twenties and sort of speculative idea,
Speaker 1: and then I think it's sort of burst into public
Speaker 1: imagination because of a short story by Isaac Asimov. He
Speaker 1: had this device where he would collect solar power and
Speaker 1: then beam it to various planets, like around the Solar System,
Speaker 1: but you know, that's science fiction. And then it trickled
Speaker 1: back into academia. In the late sixties there was a
Speaker 1: paper by Peter Glazer sort of like trying to take
Speaker 1: this topic seriously and break it down and ask the
Speaker 1: questions about what would work and how much it would cost.
Speaker 1: So it's been bubbling around for you know, several decades,
Speaker 1: and now people are really starting to work on it,
Speaker 1: developing the technologies, thinking about how to beam it down
Speaker 1: to Earth, how to make it economical. The advent of
Speaker 1: cheap launches from companies like SpaceX or bringing like you know,
Speaker 1: into the realm of the possible. All right, So let's
Speaker 1: take a moment to talk more about the fine details
Speaker 1: of what exactly would need to happen in order to
Speaker 1: make this technology work after we take a quick break. Okay,
Speaker 1: So it's a little hard for me to imagine all
Speaker 1: of the details about what will the solar panels look like,
Speaker 1: how much energy will they be creating, do they need
Speaker 1: to be repaired? How do you get the power down
Speaker 1: to Earth? So can you give us some more details
Speaker 1: about how this is all going to come together. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different ideas for how to make
Speaker 1: this work, lots of different sort of conceptions. Some of
Speaker 1: them have, for example, huge mirrors that focus light onto
Speaker 1: a few solar cells and gathered together, so you're like
Speaker 1: capturing sunlight from a large area and then focusing onto
Speaker 1: just a few solar cells. Other ideas are just have
Speaker 1: like massive sheets of solar cells just like you know,
Speaker 1: lots and lots and lots of them to capture the energy.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of different sort of strategies for
Speaker 1: how to build this thing and how to make it work.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk maybe in a little bit about which
Speaker 1: ones are more economical and which ones are more feasible,
Speaker 1: But one of the biggest questions to have to deal
Speaker 1: with is how to get this power down to Earth? Right?
Speaker 1: And it seems a little weird, like you collect the
Speaker 1: power up in space and then you need to beam
Speaker 1: it down to Earth. It's a little counterintuitive because it
Speaker 1: was already sort of getting beamed down to Earth, Like
Speaker 1: the Sun is already beaming it's power to Earth, right,
Speaker 1: So like why do you need to capture it and
Speaker 1: then like beaming down to Earth. I was thinking initially,
Speaker 1: maybe it's more energetic, maybe they're like focusing, so the
Speaker 1: beam of power from the space array of solar panels
Speaker 1: is like more intense than sunlight. But that's not actually
Speaker 1: the case, and that would actually be quite dangerous because
Speaker 1: that's basically building like a huge space weapon and shooting
Speaker 1: it at the Earth. And so there's this limitation where
Speaker 1: you basically can't beam down energy at higher intensity than
Speaker 1: natural sunlight. So when I hear that, my first thought is, well,
Speaker 1: then obviously it's not worth it. So what am I
Speaker 1: not understanding? No, that's a very reasonable reaction, because you
Speaker 1: have to like build this space array to capture the
Speaker 1: energy and then beaming down to Earth and then you
Speaker 1: still need to build on array on Earth that's you know,
Speaker 1: about the same size, because if you want to capture
Speaker 1: this energy on Earth, you need to build something that's
Speaker 1: going to grab it. And for example, if you're using microwaves,
Speaker 1: microwaves have a really long wavelength, and so you might
Speaker 1: need for example, like a rays on Earth that are
Speaker 1: one to three kilometers wide just to capture this energy.
Speaker 1: And if that energy doesn't have more intensity than sunlight,
Speaker 1: you might as well just have built a ground based
Speaker 1: solar panel right there. Right, why capture in terms of
Speaker 1: microwaves from space instead of just like a natural sunlight
Speaker 1: falling on the Earth. And the answer is that the
Speaker 1: source of light from space should be more constant, right Like,
Speaker 1: if you're on Earth and you're just lying on sunlight,
Speaker 1: then you're not going to be getting it at nighttime,
Speaker 1: and you're not gonna be getting when it's cloudy. And
Speaker 1: people who don't live in southern California like I do,
Speaker 1: know that they don't get more than a few hours
Speaker 1: of like really equivalent solid sunlight on an average day.
Speaker 1: So the difference is that it should be constant, that
Speaker 1: you should be always getting this microwave power beamed down
Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day, sixty five days a year.
Speaker 1: So the power we get sent to some giant station
Speaker 1: that collects it, and then it would be sent through
Speaker 1: the grid to our houses. And you could have several
Speaker 1: stations scattered all around, and the solar panels in space
Speaker 1: could direct the energy where it's needed, so it's not
Speaker 1: like linked up necessarily for all time. Between one set
Speaker 1: of solar panels in space and a receiving station on Earth,
Speaker 1: you could decide, oh, Australia needs more power, or oh
Speaker 1: we need more power in Scandinavia, and you could redirect
Speaker 1: this power as needed. Because you're just pointing it from space.
Speaker 1: It's like you're shooting it from space down to the
Speaker 1: receiver on Earth and that would be sent as microwaves.
Speaker 1: So there are two sort of technologies people are considering.
Speaker 1: One is marcro waves and the other is lasers. Micro Waves,
Speaker 1: you know, are just photons. There's just another kind of light,
Speaker 1: but it's light with a very specific wavelength. It's the
Speaker 1: same kind of radiation, same kind of light that exists
Speaker 1: in your microwave oven to heat up your food. So
Speaker 1: you know, if you beam microwaves at something, you will
Speaker 1: heat it up. They contain power, and the microwave is
Speaker 1: just tell you, like roughly what the wavelength is of
Speaker 1: the light. And so we're talking about centimeter length wavelengths,
Speaker 1: which is not actually that small, you know, compared to
Speaker 1: like visible light, but it's micro compared to you know,
Speaker 1: like much longer wavelengths radio light. And so these are
Speaker 1: great because they can pass through clouds. For example, so
Speaker 1: you shoot a microwave, it's basically clouds are invisible to it.
Speaker 1: The clouds are totally transparent, and so that's pretty nice.
Speaker 1: And these things could be like up really far away
Speaker 1: in sort of middle Earth orbit or geosynchronous orbit, like
Speaker 1: thirty five kilometers above the Earth, and they could beam
Speaker 1: the light down in terms of microwaves, and then on
Speaker 1: the Earth surface you just need some sort of like
Speaker 1: microwave antenna which is just like a big chain link
Speaker 1: fence essentially to capture these microwaves. So this might be
Speaker 1: a silly question, and but so I wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: be in my microwave. That would be a bad place
Speaker 1: to be. Do you have to worry about, like if
Speaker 1: a plane passes underneath the microwaves that are getting sent
Speaker 1: down to the power stations on Earth. Would that be
Speaker 1: a problem or or not. It's not a sarily question
Speaker 1: at all. I don't want to be in a microwave either,
Speaker 1: especially a space based microwave. They could like track me
Speaker 1: and shoot me wherever I go. The idea is to
Speaker 1: limit the intensity to the intensity of normal sunlight, so
Speaker 1: you don't get any problems like that because you don't
Speaker 1: just have to worry about airplanes. What about like birds.
Speaker 1: You don't want to create like a death zone where
Speaker 1: you have like a column of birds that are like
Speaker 1: constantly dying and falling onto your microwave array because you're
Speaker 1: killing them more insects or anything else, right, you don't
Speaker 1: want to be changing the weather. So that's why they
Speaker 1: limited to the roughly the intensity of natural life. But
Speaker 1: that is definitely an experiment. When we talked once on
Speaker 1: this program about five G, which operates in the same
Speaker 1: sort of wavelengths, we don't have sort of knowledge about
Speaker 1: what it's like to live under low intensity constant sources
Speaker 1: of micro way of radiation because people haven't done it before.
Speaker 1: So we might discover some bad news, some bad consequences
Speaker 1: of this if you live near the station. But current
Speaker 1: understanding of physics and biology, is that that wouldn't be
Speaker 1: dangerous to humans, Okay? And then different questions. So you
Speaker 1: had mentioned that the solar panels would be in geosynchronous orbit,
Speaker 1: and geosynchronous orbit is like really high up. So the
Speaker 1: International Space Station is in low Earth orbit. Geosynchronous orbit,
Speaker 1: as I understand it is really high up, and that's
Speaker 1: where you need it to make sure that an object
Speaker 1: stays over the same spot in Earth all the time.
Speaker 1: And so if you are super far away, like farther
Speaker 1: than where a lot of those satellites, you know starlink
Speaker 1: for example, is do you lose power on the way
Speaker 1: and is that a problem or do microwaves not sort
Speaker 1: of dissipate over distance. You definitely lose power and that's
Speaker 1: definitely a problem, and when we talk about the economics
Speaker 1: of it, that's definitely an issue. You can't transmit energy
Speaker 1: efficiently basically, ever, and if you're beaming power over long distances,
Speaker 1: you're also going to lose some power. They're hoping for
Speaker 1: efficiencies of like fifty to eighty percent. They actually have
Speaker 1: done some tests they beamed power using microwaves. This is
Speaker 1: the test they did in Hawaii and went for a
Speaker 1: hundred miles and they're able to get reasonable efficiency, but
Speaker 1: it's definitely an issue at every stage you're gonna be
Speaker 1: losing some energy. You know, converting the sunlight into electricity
Speaker 1: is like maybe thirty efficient if you think very optimistically,
Speaker 1: and then transforming that into microwaves is not gonna be
Speaker 1: hundredsent efficient. And then the transmission down to Earth that's
Speaker 1: not going to be hundredsent efficient, and then the conversion
Speaker 1: from microwaves back to electricity is not going to be
Speaker 1: a hundred percent efficient. And so you multiply all these
Speaker 1: numbers together and starts to get smaller and smaller. So
Speaker 1: this whole question of whether it's feasible relies on balancing
Speaker 1: this like a multiplier factor of your getting more power
Speaker 1: consistently with the expense factor of you've got more steps
Speaker 1: in the chain where you're gonna lose efficiency. And also
Speaker 1: it's pretty expensive chain to build. I mean, this thing
Speaker 1: is going to be in space. That all sounds super complicated.
Speaker 1: So you had mentioned they could do microwaves or lasers.
Speaker 1: Do lasers make any of those equations play a little
Speaker 1: bit more nicely? So microwaves and lasers the two ideas
Speaker 1: lasers are a different idea, and the goal here is
Speaker 1: to make smaller devices because lasers can be more focused
Speaker 1: and they can be narrower beams just because the frequency
Speaker 1: of the light is higher and so it doesn't like
Speaker 1: disperse as much as it comes down to Earth. And
Speaker 1: so for example, you can have like a two meter
Speaker 1: wide beam instead of a one kilometer wide beam, so
Speaker 1: you can have like smaller stations where you're capturing this energy.
Speaker 1: You don't need to have like a massive area on
Speaker 1: the Earth. It's like a more intense, narrow focused beam.
Speaker 1: And the idea there is that also the lasers could
Speaker 1: be closer, like they don't need to be as far away,
Speaker 1: so you can have like a larger number of smaller
Speaker 1: satellites beaming the energy down with lasers instead of microwaves.
Speaker 1: But of course, you know there's some dangers. They're like
Speaker 1: you're talking about more intensity in your beam. You talk
Speaker 1: about literally shooting lasers at the Earth from space. That
Speaker 1: gives me the Heabie gps, so it gives me the
Speaker 1: hebe gep is too. But like microwaves, is it the
Speaker 1: case that you would just have to make sure that
Speaker 1: you never are generating more power than the sun, Like,
Speaker 1: are these just gonna be super weak lasers? Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: you need to not be creating death rays from space,
Speaker 1: so they would have to be pretty weak lasers, and
Speaker 1: that limits the power there, right, So I think these
Speaker 1: days microwaves are sort of on the ascendants when it
Speaker 1: comes to space based solar power because you have this
Speaker 1: limit on the intensity, which means that in order to
Speaker 1: get enough power, you would still need a very large
Speaker 1: receiving array, so you just need lots of lasers, and
Speaker 1: so it might be that you would need like a
Speaker 1: huge number of these lasers. The other problem with lasers
Speaker 1: is that clouds aren't as transparent to lasers as they
Speaker 1: are too microwaves. Microwaves can mostly pass through the atmosphere
Speaker 1: in the clouds without losing energy, but not true for lasers,
Speaker 1: Like clouds can block lasers much more efficiently than they
Speaker 1: can block microwave beams. That sounds like a pretty big
Speaker 1: problem problem exactly. So I wonder if there's a geopolitical
Speaker 1: problem here too, So you know, when you create this system,
Speaker 1: you make sure that you're not blasting the Earth with
Speaker 1: lasers that are super powerful. But like, for example, would
Speaker 1: we feel comfortable with North Korea saying we have a
Speaker 1: power problem and we want to use space based solar power,
Speaker 1: you know, to generate power. So is this the kind
Speaker 1: of thing where you might be able to say the
Speaker 1: international community is okay with, for example, the United States
Speaker 1: having this power because we think they'll follow our rules,
Speaker 1: but we won't let North Korea anyway there. Do you
Speaker 1: think there's geopolitical issues that might come to play here? Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are, and I'm not up to speed
Speaker 1: on like what the treaties are about how we use
Speaker 1: space and what the rules are up there who's allowed
Speaker 1: to launch these things? I think it's essentially there are
Speaker 1: no rules, right. We certainly haven't been able to like
Speaker 1: limit North Korea from launching satellites or missiles or anything
Speaker 1: like that. So as we move into an era where
Speaker 1: space is a international resource and one where they're competing interests,
Speaker 1: will definitely have to figure all this stuff out. Maybe
Speaker 1: a model for this is, you know, how we handle
Speaker 1: international sea waters or Arctica or stuff like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've been talking to some space lawyers and it seems like,
Speaker 1: if nothing else, it's a very interesting time to be
Speaker 1: a space layer. With our space lawyers Are they lawyers
Speaker 1: in space or are they lawyers about space? Or what's
Speaker 1: the deal with a space lawyer. There's a job that
Speaker 1: will always seem fake to me. It will always seem
Speaker 1: like something that belongs in a sci fi novel. But no,
Speaker 1: those are lawyers working on questions related to space, and
Speaker 1: it's a super active field, and I think they've got
Speaker 1: tons of work to do right now as space gets cheaper,
Speaker 1: and so what do they think is going to happen to,
Speaker 1: like how we handle these competing claims and interests in space.
Speaker 1: It depends on what topic you're referring to in particular.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of debate right now on topics
Speaker 1: like our countries allowed to go to the Moon and
Speaker 1: extract their resources and use them, and the Outer Space
Speaker 1: Treaty has some sort of vague language about how you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to be able to like take stuff, and
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be for everyone. Everyone is supposed to benefit.
Speaker 1: But the US is sort of interpreting right now that
Speaker 1: we can go up there and if we extra resources,
Speaker 1: our companies can then sell them, and that's not the
Speaker 1: same as claiming sovereignty. So the big thing the Outer
Speaker 1: Space treaty says is that you can't claim sovereignty of
Speaker 1: any part of space, and so they would be saying,
Speaker 1: but we're not claiming sovereignty. We're just extracting resources and
Speaker 1: selling those resources. We're not saying we own the land
Speaker 1: where we did the extractions. So space lawyers are sort
Speaker 1: of trying to figure out what to do about those
Speaker 1: claims and how sound those claims are. And I don't
Speaker 1: know how that would relate to things like are you
Speaker 1: allowed to put space based solar power up when it
Speaker 1: has the potential to be used as a weapon, So
Speaker 1: you're not allowed to put you know, for example, weapons
Speaker 1: of mass destruction up in space. But there's this problem
Speaker 1: with dual use where there's things that you can say like, well, no,
Speaker 1: I'm just doing this for power. I'm trying to, you know,
Speaker 1: make sure my people stay warm, but it can also
Speaker 1: be used as a weapon, and so it becomes hard
Speaker 1: to categorize. And so you know, space lawyers are working
Speaker 1: on questions like that. It definitely sounds very space lawyery,
Speaker 1: like we're not claiming we own it, We're just taking
Speaker 1: stuff out of it and selling it for money. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not claiming sovereignty over your house, but I'm taking
Speaker 1: your flat screen TV and selling it on eBay and
Speaker 1: keeping the cash. It gets very complicated, it sounds like
Speaker 1: it does. And I think that's kind of the lesson
Speaker 1: here is like everything in space is complicated, not just
Speaker 1: from a legal point of view, but from a logistical
Speaker 1: point of view. You know, one big problem I have
Speaker 1: with space based solar power is that it's really inaccessible. Like,
Speaker 1: if you build a solar power array on your roof,
Speaker 1: it's hard enough to get up there to pick something,
Speaker 1: or you gotta get a ladder and maybe break your
Speaker 1: neck getting up there. But like if we're talking about
Speaker 1: building something and putting it in space, right, like you
Speaker 1: got to repair that thing. It's a huge problem. Remember
Speaker 1: when they built the Hubble and it had an issue
Speaker 1: and you know, one of the lenses was fuzzy. They
Speaker 1: had to like send astronauts up there in the Space
Speaker 1: Shuttle to go and repair that thing. And like, if
Speaker 1: you've waited a long time to get your cable provider
Speaker 1: to come by and fix something, imagine waiting on massive
Speaker 1: lawn schedule, right, and we don't you know, the Space
Speaker 1: Shuttle was a more versatile vehicle than the things that
Speaker 1: we have now that bring us to the International Space
Speaker 1: Station and DOC and then come back down again, and
Speaker 1: so well, I don't know what it would actually take
Speaker 1: if you wanted to have a human go to repair
Speaker 1: your space based solar panel. I don't know that we
Speaker 1: have good technology available currently for that sort of delicate,
Speaker 1: like going to a very particular spot in space kind
Speaker 1: of job. And so we'll talk in the next segment
Speaker 1: about the idea of how to do these kinds of
Speaker 1: repairs and what might entail and what's going on with
Speaker 1: the economics when we talk to an expert who was
Speaker 1: really excited about the prospects of it. But before we
Speaker 1: talk about that, I want to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about something that you mentioned earlier, which is sort
Speaker 1: of the hostile environment. Right If you have solar panels
Speaker 1: in your backyard, obviously you know it's gonna be rain
Speaker 1: and snow and hail, all these things you have to
Speaker 1: deal with. But they have the benefit of the protection
Speaker 1: of the Earth's atmosphere. But if you're out there in space,
Speaker 1: right then you're susceptible to rocks and debris and radiation
Speaker 1: and all sorts of stuff. It's a very hostile environment.
Speaker 1: It's not a nice place to be for humans or
Speaker 1: four solar panels. Yeah, I know, the radiation is super
Speaker 1: intense and it definitely breaks things down. And then in
Speaker 1: addition to the radiation, the dramatic temperature changes are problems.
Speaker 1: So on the International Space Station you can hear the
Speaker 1: station creaking as it goes from areas where it's in
Speaker 1: the sun to areas where it's in the dark. And
Speaker 1: if you've got things that are in the shadow of
Speaker 1: the Earth, every once in a while they're expanding and
Speaker 1: contracting as they get superheated by the sun, and then
Speaker 1: they get super cold in the vacuum of space when
Speaker 1: there's no sunlight, they contract again, and that's not good
Speaker 1: for materials over long periods of time. So between the
Speaker 1: intense radiation and the dramatic temperature changes, that's a lot
Speaker 1: to ask your materials to handle. Yeah, that's like station
Speaker 1: quakes right Like, it literally is like shaking and creaking
Speaker 1: as it expands and contracts. That's amazing. And then in
Speaker 1: addition to those problems, you have micro meteorites out there
Speaker 1: which are traveling incredibly fast and could easily be poking
Speaker 1: holes into your solar panels and their space debris. Space
Speaker 1: debris is a problem that becomes harder every single year,
Speaker 1: and it becomes harder the more silly humans do silly
Speaker 1: human things. And so I think it was two thousand
Speaker 1: seven China wanted to prove that they could shoot a
Speaker 1: satellite in space, just as a way of being like,
Speaker 1: look at how precise we are in our ability to
Speaker 1: shoot at things in space. US has done that, Rush
Speaker 1: has done that, India has done that. It's not just China,
Speaker 1: but anyway, they picked a satellite that was still high
Speaker 1: enough in orbit that it generated thousands I think of
Speaker 1: pieces of debris. I wish I could remember the number
Speaker 1: that are still floating around in space. And over time,
Speaker 1: you know, we leave satellites and we don't decay them
Speaker 1: and have them go down into the atmosphere. There's just
Speaker 1: more and more stuff up there that could run into
Speaker 1: your space based solar panels. And so this is a
Speaker 1: problem that becomes harder over time. And if you have
Speaker 1: a giant array, you've got essentially a giant target to
Speaker 1: get hit by space debris. And for important things satellites,
Speaker 1: the International Space Station, they have the ability to move
Speaker 1: out of the way, but that requires you know, some
Speaker 1: fuel to be able to move when you know that
Speaker 1: something is coming your way. So these solar panels might
Speaker 1: also need to be mobile to stay out of the way.
Speaker 1: And one way or another, they're probably still getting hit
Speaker 1: with stuff because we can't track the super tiny stuff
Speaker 1: with our sensors. No, you're absolutely right, and they might
Speaker 1: not just be a target of as to brethe that
Speaker 1: might be a source of space debris. Right. If they
Speaker 1: break and stuff falls off of them, and you're talking
Speaker 1: about like replacing components, they're going to be contributing to
Speaker 1: space debris. And this problem becomes as a crescendo. Right,
Speaker 1: the more space debris you have, the more junk you
Speaker 1: create as it collides into other stuff, and then you
Speaker 1: get this cascading effect where basically all of spaces just
Speaker 1: filled with junk and becomes unusable. I think that's called
Speaker 1: the Kessler syndrome. Exactly. It's just sort of like your office,
Speaker 1: you know, you can't get any work done when your
Speaker 1: desk is just like so covered in things you need
Speaker 1: to do that you're like frozen. You're like can't use
Speaker 1: it anymore. Yeah, and that would be horrible for us
Speaker 1: in so many different ways because of all the ways
Speaker 1: our lives rely on satellites at this point. So, in
Speaker 1: the proposals that you've looked at for space based solar power,
Speaker 1: do they propose like regular repair missions or do they
Speaker 1: just plan on these not being up there for so long?
Speaker 1: What do you do about this problem? Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: asked an expert about this, and he basically just accepts
Speaker 1: that you're going to have some losses and that you're
Speaker 1: gonna go up there every year and spend a certain
Speaker 1: amount of money repairing it. And he tries to factor
Speaker 1: that into his accounting, like there's a lot of factors
Speaker 1: to keep track of. There are a lot of factors
Speaker 1: to keep track of, and those factories are probably hard
Speaker 1: to estimate now. And so you know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of lively debate about whether these estimates for the cost
Speaker 1: of maintenance of space based solar power are reasonable or
Speaker 1: wildly optimistic. And that sounds like an exciting topic for
Speaker 1: after our break. So you mentioned that Solkowski, who was
Speaker 1: a Russian guy, was excited about space based solar power
Speaker 1: and the idea has sort of gotten people excited in
Speaker 1: the US. Are those the only countries that are excited
Speaker 1: about this or is this idea taking off in other places?
Speaker 1: It's taking off all around the world. There's a project
Speaker 1: in China called Omega that is aiming to be like
Speaker 1: operational by twenty fifty, which sounds crazy futuristic, but then
Speaker 1: also sounds crazy futuristic, so it's not should have far away.
Speaker 1: And they want to be able to supply two gigawatts
Speaker 1: of power into the Earth's grid, which is not a
Speaker 1: small amount, right to make that much solar power on Earth,
Speaker 1: you did like six million solar panels. So they have
Speaker 1: this project to like actually implement this and I sort
Speaker 1: of like be on the cutting edge of space based
Speaker 1: solar power. And is this a government funded project or
Speaker 1: is this just sort of an idea at the moment. No,
Speaker 1: it's a government funded project, and like you know, all
Speaker 1: the ideas in China, all the research in China is
Speaker 1: funded by the government. And it's a funny system the
Speaker 1: way they organize everything over there, but it's definitely government
Speaker 1: funded and it's a project. And you know, the cool
Speaker 1: thing about projects in China is that they can make
Speaker 1: plans for twenty forty years and keep them because they
Speaker 1: don't have a change in government every two four or
Speaker 1: six years where they're changing direction, like throwing up their
Speaker 1: political opponents plans and tearing them up. So one advantage
Speaker 1: of an autocracy is that you can make long read
Speaker 1: science plans and you can stick to them. So that's
Speaker 1: something cool that China can do silver lining. Exactly. They've
Speaker 1: been doing good job of keeping up with their plans
Speaker 1: for like getting humans in space and putting up their
Speaker 1: space stations. They have actually been fairly consistent in their timelines.
Speaker 1: I'm sure a U S official at NASA would be
Speaker 1: envious of China's ability to stick to their schedule. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: the trains run on time. But then there are also
Speaker 1: plans involving some folks here in the in the United
Speaker 1: States to build a system that works in Australia. They
Speaker 1: see Australia as a potential good test case. And this
Speaker 1: is a project pioneered by John Minkin, who has spent
Speaker 1: a long time working at NASA and at JPL, and
Speaker 1: he's very excited about the idea of space based solar power.
Speaker 1: And I had a conversation with him about the prospects
Speaker 1: and how he sees this working and the challenges involved
Speaker 1: in building this kind of system. Yeah. So one of
Speaker 1: the things I think is interesting about his proposal is
Speaker 1: that earlier in the show, we were talking about maybe
Speaker 1: having like, you know, a giant panel or giant mirror
Speaker 1: that focuses things onto a big panel, and this proposal
Speaker 1: is for lots of tiny pieces, which I think does
Speaker 1: a better job of dealing with the fact that you're
Speaker 1: gonna get damage to them from radiation and micro meteorites.
Speaker 1: It makes it easier to switch them out. What do
Speaker 1: you think about the proposal of using lots of smaller pieces.
Speaker 1: I think it makes a lot of sense. I think
Speaker 1: he's trying to move away from the concept of like,
Speaker 1: let's spend a hundred billion dollars building one Rolls Royce,
Speaker 1: but instead, let's build up the industry to manufacture these
Speaker 1: things and get the economics of scale. And if we
Speaker 1: can produce lots and lots of these things, we can
Speaker 1: get these factories pumping them out, then we can build
Speaker 1: a large system out of small, modular components. So I'm
Speaker 1: impressed that he's actually thinking about, you know, how we
Speaker 1: can get industry connected and drive the prices down to
Speaker 1: make this thing economically feasible. So I think that sounds
Speaker 1: a lot more promising than you know, building one big,
Speaker 1: expensive one which is going to cost a lot of
Speaker 1: money and then need a lot of sort of boutique repairs.
Speaker 1: I was listening to John Mancin's interviewed on The Space
Speaker 1: Show the other night, and he was saying that he
Speaker 1: envisions at some time in the for future will have
Speaker 1: these lots of tiny panels and rather than when one
Speaker 1: gets broken, just kind of throwing it out and being
Speaker 1: done with it. You know, it's made of materials that
Speaker 1: if you had a space settlement you might like to
Speaker 1: use again, and so you would go out there and
Speaker 1: you'd sort of just like legos, take out one piece
Speaker 1: and put in another piece. But then you'd take the
Speaker 1: piece you're not using anymore and then break it down
Speaker 1: and use it for something else in your space settlement.
Speaker 1: And you know, that is a super far off idea,
Speaker 1: but I do sort of like the idea of starting
Speaker 1: to think about how we can recycle the stuff that
Speaker 1: we're using in space. I thought that was fun. I
Speaker 1: always get excited when I hear him interviewed because he's
Speaker 1: so enthusiastic, and he makes me enthusiastic. Yeah, he's very
Speaker 1: enthusiastic and I like the idea of space recycling, but
Speaker 1: you know, we haven't even figured out like aluminium recycling
Speaker 1: down here on Earth, so like, where can I recycle
Speaker 1: my aluminium can up in space? It seems like a
Speaker 1: much harder problem. But you know, I do like the
Speaker 1: forward looking nature, the imagining that this is gonna be
Speaker 1: like a whole space based ecosystem in which this concept
Speaker 1: could fit and it can support it and provide it.
Speaker 1: But as with all these things, it's a bit of
Speaker 1: a chicken and egg problem, right. You know, you could
Speaker 1: support these things and if you had all these other elements,
Speaker 1: but then you need, you know, space power to get
Speaker 1: those ments. And so somebody's got to be out there
Speaker 1: advocating for this thing, making it happen, pushing it forward
Speaker 1: so that it does build up that momentum. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: had a fun conversation with John and I asked him
Speaker 1: what he thought was the most promising architecture, how he
Speaker 1: would build this if he was going to build this
Speaker 1: thing today. Here's what John had to say. The architectural
Speaker 1: approach that I think is most promising is one that
Speaker 1: involves a very large number of identical modular system elements,
Speaker 1: probably about ten or twelve different families of these system elements.
Speaker 1: And so the Solar Power satellite, rather than looking like
Speaker 1: a huge conventional spacecraft or like the International Space Station
Speaker 1: or something, instead would very much resemble almost a living organism.
Speaker 1: So like a coral reef comprises trillions of individual coral
Speaker 1: and those of course extraordinarily tiny, but then there are
Speaker 1: all so various fish and an enemies and so on,
Speaker 1: and all of these species cooperate to make what is
Speaker 1: essentially a miniature biosphere out in the midst of the ocean. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you can hear that, Kelly, how he's describing his
Speaker 1: like swarm of little mini pieces that build up a
Speaker 1: large space farm. I think that's probably a better design
Speaker 1: than the big space solar panel that we talked about
Speaker 1: earlier in the show. Yeah, I think that makes a
Speaker 1: lot more sense. I don't really want somebody building like
Speaker 1: a huge mirror to focus energy and that could be
Speaker 1: potentially used as a weapon. Yeah, no, I agree, We're
Speaker 1: on the same page. So did you ask John, like
Speaker 1: how long you think it would take for this technology
Speaker 1: to mature? So, I know we know a little bit
Speaker 1: about solar panels on the International Space Station, but there's
Speaker 1: probably still a lot of things that we would need
Speaker 1: to figure out to make this all work. Yeah, I did.
Speaker 1: And so I asked him if he thought this is
Speaker 1: like something in the far future that he's laying the
Speaker 1: groundwork for, or something he was going to be like
Speaker 1: alive to actually see in operation. Here's what he had
Speaker 1: to say. The time to develop a modular solar power
Speaker 1: satellite do the first demonstration is like thirty six months.
Speaker 1: The time to develop the first operating pilot plant it's
Speaker 1: like five years. The time to have the first full
Speaker 1: scale solar power satellite delivering thousands of megawatts to the
Speaker 1: ground is like eight or ten years. And it's because
Speaker 1: the pieces are the size of a three or six
Speaker 1: you cubes at There's just a lot of them, and
Speaker 1: it's not this colossus. One single thing is just legos.
Speaker 1: You're just making the moral equivalent of tinker toy pieces
Speaker 1: or lego pieces, and you're plugging them together in space.
Speaker 1: So what do you think about that, Kelly? You think
Speaker 1: this thing is actually gonna be up there in space
Speaker 1: beaming power to Australia in ten years? Well, I have
Speaker 1: a couple. It was the one I don't feel like
Speaker 1: there's enough public push for this technology yet that it's
Speaker 1: going to get enough momentum to happen in years. It
Speaker 1: would be cool if I was wrong. I also think
Speaker 1: the geopolitical stuff might need to be dealt with a
Speaker 1: little bit more carefully and that could flow this technology
Speaker 1: down to So I guess I'm not super optimistic about
Speaker 1: the ten year time point, but it would be great
Speaker 1: if I was wrong. What do you think. I think
Speaker 1: you've got to be aspirational and nobody really believes these projections.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you look at like every single space
Speaker 1: project we've ever launched, it's always had, like, you know,
Speaker 1: a target date well in the past, you know, like
Speaker 1: the James Web Space Telescope, or like look at the
Speaker 1: development of the Space Shuttle. All of these things are
Speaker 1: always like ten thirty years behind. But in order to
Speaker 1: make them happen, you have to sort of push them right.
Speaker 1: You have to say we're aiming for ten years from now,
Speaker 1: and then no, in the back of your mind it's
Speaker 1: going to slip a decade or two. If you say,
Speaker 1: you know, this is going to happen in fifty years,
Speaker 1: then it's just sort of hard to get it organized.
Speaker 1: It seems like the next generation two problems. Yes, fair enough.
Speaker 1: So I asked John about the economics of it also
Speaker 1: because I was curious, like, how do you think this
Speaker 1: is going to happen? Who's going to pay for this?
Speaker 1: How do you cut down the cost of getting They're
Speaker 1: like having to launch out there in this space to
Speaker 1: actually build these things. And so you can hear John's
Speaker 1: enthusiasm in his response, everybody's got a rocket company, but
Speaker 1: almost nobody is building new kinds of satellites because it's
Speaker 1: just not what they're investing it. We actually think that
Speaker 1: this will be like a snowball. Once this gets going,
Speaker 1: We think lots of people will want to have a play,
Speaker 1: as it's called in space solar power. But we need
Speaker 1: that catalyst. We need a catalyst to do the initial prototyping,
Speaker 1: build these modules, put them together, validate that they work
Speaker 1: the way that they have to work. There's no magic
Speaker 1: in the engineering, but people are gonna want to see
Speaker 1: it once that happens. We see these power plants as
Speaker 1: being developed and deployed through a mixture of more or
Speaker 1: less conventional private sector investment, where private entities invest maybe
Speaker 1: in a new power plant and the rest of your debt.
Speaker 1: The Golden gate Bridge was paid for by It was
Speaker 1: secured by the then newly formed Bank of America. Debt
Speaker 1: helped pay for the big Big in Boston. For the
Speaker 1: full scale systems, it'll be a mix of debt and
Speaker 1: more conventional large scale investors who want to own a
Speaker 1: share of selling two gigawatts per twenty four hours per
Speaker 1: three sixty five days a year forever. So you can
Speaker 1: hear his enthusiasm there, Kelly, He's like hoping that these
Speaker 1: costs are really going to come down, that people are
Speaker 1: going to be developing cheaper launches, and that it's gonna
Speaker 1: be so like the next Gold Rush. And I hope
Speaker 1: he's right. I worry that the cost of solar panels
Speaker 1: going down is going to make this stuff even less likely,
Speaker 1: because it will be easier and easier for more of
Speaker 1: us to put solar panels on our house. And I
Speaker 1: know that doesn't solve the problem about nighttime or clouds.
Speaker 1: But as battery technology gets better too, I wonder if
Speaker 1: we'll be less and less inclined to invest tons of
Speaker 1: money in putting this stuff in space. But again, it
Speaker 1: would be super cool if I was wrong, it would
Speaker 1: be super cool. And I think it's sort of awesome
Speaker 1: to have competing strategies here, right, Like we're pushing on
Speaker 1: space based solar power, but at the same time, you know,
Speaker 1: we are, as you say, trying to make batteries and
Speaker 1: transmission more effective down here on Earth. So who knows
Speaker 1: which technology is gonna win, but definitely humanity is gonna win. Right.
Speaker 1: If either of these things come out being cheaper and
Speaker 1: more robust and more reliable, then we're fine, right. I
Speaker 1: think it would be sort of cooler to have based
Speaker 1: based technology, but I'm a little skeptical of it. I
Speaker 1: read an analysis of John's proposal from another JPO guy,
Speaker 1: Casey Hammer, and he was, to say politely, completely skeptical.
Speaker 1: He was not believing that this thing is ever going
Speaker 1: to be a thing. And his number one problem is
Speaker 1: that he feels like John consistently makes optimistic estimates of
Speaker 1: construction and launch costs by at least an order of
Speaker 1: magnitude beyond current best industry standards. And I think that's
Speaker 1: really the key. And in a conversation I had with John,
Speaker 1: he agreed that the launch costs are probably the most
Speaker 1: expensive part of their system. You've got to go up
Speaker 1: there every year in order to repair this stuff, or
Speaker 1: even just to like send new robots up there to
Speaker 1: repair it. John estimates that would be three percent of
Speaker 1: the cost of the system. So if you have a
Speaker 1: ten billion dollar cost or your Australian system, that you're
Speaker 1: gonna be paying essentially another ten billion dollars over the
Speaker 1: next ten years to maintain this thing. And according to John,
Speaker 1: the economics workout and you're still making money and you're
Speaker 1: gonna pay off your investors, and so you can attract
Speaker 1: interest from investors because it's gonna be positive cash flow
Speaker 1: in the future. But I think that relies in really
Speaker 1: great detail on those launch costs coming down so quickly,
Speaker 1: and they are coming down pretty quickly. And I'd be
Speaker 1: interested to hear how that three percent in operation cost
Speaker 1: compares to operation costs for the upkeep of like a
Speaker 1: coal power power plant or something. Presumably it's much lower,
Speaker 1: but boy, I need to learn more about power. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's definitely much lower. I mean, the price of coal
Speaker 1: is ridiculously low. You know, you can buy like a
Speaker 1: ton of coal for tens of dollars. You can build
Speaker 1: a coal fired power plant very very cheaply. But then
Speaker 1: you know, then you've got to keep paying for the
Speaker 1: fuel all year. And the nice thing about the fuel
Speaker 1: for your solar power plant is it's free. It just
Speaker 1: comes from the sun. But of course then you've got
Speaker 1: to get into space to repair these things. So I
Speaker 1: think what we're looking at here is sort of a
Speaker 1: race between like bringing down the cost of the launches
Speaker 1: to get up there and to maintain these things, and
Speaker 1: improving solar panels here on Earth. So, Kelly, in the end,
Speaker 1: are you more or less skeptical about the prospects for
Speaker 1: space based solar power? Well, I think the more that
Speaker 1: we talked about the physics, the more concerned I got
Speaker 1: about the equation for balancing it all out. I remain
Speaker 1: hopeful that I'm wrong, and I've actually had so in
Speaker 1: soon ish we wrote a little section about how we
Speaker 1: thought space based solar power was probably not going to
Speaker 1: pan out, and so many nice people have written me
Speaker 1: to be like, no, no, no, you have to be wrong.
Speaker 1: I love this community like it's a bunch of nice
Speaker 1: people who are trying to make the world a better place.
Speaker 1: And I'm still not totally sure about the equations, but
Speaker 1: I do hope that I'm wrong. What do you think
Speaker 1: I'm also skeptical, but I've been skeptical before, and you know,
Speaker 1: there's no limit to human ingenuity, and what it takes
Speaker 1: to it over those problems is believing that it's possible
Speaker 1: and saying, let's work hard on them. Let's figure out
Speaker 1: which part of this problem is the hardest, and let's
Speaker 1: get cracking on it. And I think that's the first step.
Speaker 1: So I'm skeptical little ever happen, but I'm hopeful that
Speaker 1: maybe it might. Well. This community has a lot of
Speaker 1: hard working believers, so if anyone can make it happen,
Speaker 1: I think these people can make it happen. So I
Speaker 1: guess we'll see. But I'm not investing in any of
Speaker 1: these projects personally, so that maybe that tells you a
Speaker 1: more personal level whether I believe it's actually gonna work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: same here. All right, Well, thanks for listening to us
Speaker 1: talk about space based solar power. You know, I think
Speaker 1: the humanity does have a future out there in space,
Speaker 1: but there's definitely a lot of horror problems to solve
Speaker 1: along the way. Amen, and thanks again to Kelly for
Speaker 1: joining us. Thanks again for the invitation. I had a
Speaker 1: blast as always. All Right, everybody out there, so stay curious,
Speaker 1: keep asking questions, and if you'd like us to talk
Speaker 1: about some other crazy futuristic technology and how the physics
Speaker 1: of it might work and whether they're gonna be building
Speaker 1: death rays to shoot into your bedroom, ease right to
Speaker 1: us two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Tune
Speaker 1: in next time. Bye, thanks for listening, and remember that
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of
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