Space-based solar power could help Europe reach net-zero by 2050 by reducing the need for land-based renewable energy.
  • ExLisperAEnglish
    15·
    8 days ago

    I think climate change mitigation can be the next scam after AI. Once AI bubble bursts they will start looking for new investments and I think climate change is ready to start generating profits. People are desperate enough to start investing money in things that will limit effect of climate change. Who will profit? Corporation that will work on those projects. Anything space related (solar panels in space, geoengineering) will require Space X/Blue Origin. Google, Microsoft and Amazon are already invested in nuclear fusion and modular reactors. Tesla is an energy provider. Any CO2 sequestration projects will require new startups, obviously backed by the same corporations. My guess is very soon we will see governments paying those companies to solve the problem they created. Even more money will be pumped to the 1%. It went form “climate change isn’t real”, to “climate change isn’t caused by humans”, to “it is caused by humans but nothing can be done about it”. Next step will be “we can fix it if you pay us”.

  • bitjunkie@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    7 days ago

    So could a fucking Dyson sphere. This article is PopMech-tier speculative trash. A flying car in every driveway, any day now since the 1960s…

  • drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    11·
    7 days ago

    This is an idea from the 1960s back when they thought solar panels would be like computer chips and remain super expensive in terms of area but become exponentially better at the amount of sunlight they could convert into electricity.

    It makes absolutely zero sense to spend billions of dollars putting solar panels in space and beaming the power back to earth now that they are so cheap per unit area. The one thing you could argue a space based solar array could do would be to stretch out the day length so you need less storage, but that’s easier to accomplish using long electrical cables.

  • Kissaki@feddit.orgEnglish
    11·
    8 days ago

    This energy would then be transmitted to one or more stations on Earth. It is then converted to electricity and delivered to the energy grid or batteries for storage.

    How is the energy transmitted to Earth?

    • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
      8·
      8 days ago

      Yeah this article is severely lacking in any concrete details.

      I’d also like to know how exactly it is that they plan to deploy massive arrays of solar panels to space. Most earth-based solar farms are huge and take up entire fields, some are a few kilometres across in size. That’s many orders of magnitude more massive than anything we’ve previously ever launched.

      Plus whatever power transmission system they come up with would have to be powerful to be of any use but if it’s that powerful would present an active danger and would effectively constitute a space-based weapon system.

      It’s a cool sci-fi idea but it is all pie in the sky.

      • Cort@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        8 days ago

        Back of the napkin math:

        Largest solar sail (much lighter than panels, but doesn’t produce electricity) 2000 sq meters

        200w/sq meter

        400kwp

        Also iirc the space solar farms plans I’ve seen call for re radiating the energy back via microwaves to dedicated receiving towers on the ground

        • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
          3·
          7 days ago

          Yeah I’ve seen that. Microwave power beaming would work in theory it’s just electromagnetic radiation after all. But the vast majority of it is going to get absorbed by water molecules, because that’s what microwave radiation does, that’s why it cooks your food.

          They’re probably going to bake a lot of seagulls as well.