The article is extremely light on details, and I'm highly skeptical of the economics, though I do think its cool that they seem to be actively planning a demonstration mission. If nothing else, it would be neat to see the concept demonstrated in a real spacecraft.
I listened to a podcast[1] a few months ago which proposed the (IMHO) more innovative idea of using giant, ultra-light foil mirrors in space to sell sunlight to existing solar farms at night. Aetherflux seems to be using the more traditional solar panels + IR laser approach, which seems harder to justify the cost of compared to batteries.
Found a rather... skeptical take (I'd argue it's more of a takedown)[0]. A bit crazy how far off the math is from viability, for a company that someone actually invested money in. Impressive salesmanship though.
Yeah that looks pretty bad. I'm trying to figure out if something got lost in translation or if Reflect Orbital is just running an outright scam. It's pretty clear a 10m X 10m square can't transmit 200W/sqm to a 3km area. So either those figures were for a different version of the product (like maybe an array of hundreds or thousands of these cubesats all working in concert?) or he's just flat out lying about some very important figures.
> I listened to a podcast[1] a few months ago which proposed the (IMHO) more innovative idea of using giant, ultra-light foil mirrors in space to sell sunlight to existing solar farms at night.
What would that look like from Earth? I can't imagine star-gazing with a giant mirror shining down on me.
I think the idea is it would look a bit like daylight, but only if you're in the area being lit (e.g. standing next to the solar farm), otherwise you wouldn't see it at all. But in practice, I'm not sure. I could imagine light leakage being an issue.
You write large orbital mirror for redirecting sunlight to solar farms I read space-based magnifying glass to cook any spot on the ground. Without running the numbers I'm not sure my intuition holds, does it?
I'll keep saying this until I'm blue in the face: solar power is the future. It is the only form of power generation that directly genreates power rather than turning a turbine. As such it has no moving parts (apart from, maybe, an array that gets tilted to face the Sun for higher efficiency but that's optional) and has no emissions.
The cost of solar power has plummetted in the last 2 decades and nobody is quite sure where this will bottom out.
Now obviously sometimes it's night time and sometimes it's just cloudy. You have a number of options for this, in increasing level of engineering and technological difficulty:
1. Do nothing. Just take power when it is available. This works surprisingly well for a lot of our power usage. Power usage peaks in daylight hours so solar reduces your baseload requirements. Sometimes you can simply do things when the weather doesn't permit (eg data centers).
2. Store excess power in another form. This could be batteries but it could also be things like sequestering carbon from the air into a hydrocarbon form you can later burn for power. This is carbon neutral by definition. This method currently isn't economic. In some cases that doesn't matter (eg in cold climates where current batteries aren't particularly effective).
3. Power satellites that bean down power. A solar collector in space would produce ~7 times as much power as a terrestrial collector because there's no day/night or weather interruptions nor atmospheric loss. It is technically feasible to beam down power.
4. Build an orbital ring. Attach solar collectors to it. Run cables to the ground. Obviously this is more far future.
I think there probably is an actual niche for space-based solar, depending on how retarget-able it is. Imagine being able to beam 24/7 power to remote mining or military installations, or if you could really steer it, beaming it the receiving station with the highest power prices. If it's competing with diesel that needs to be flown in (or trucked through hazardous terrain), it would be much easier for it to be competitive.
So you would build a solar array in space at enormous cost and then need to truck or fly in a receiver, and build it. Versus trucking and building a solar plant with batteries on site. I still don’t think that it’s ever going to make sense.
Don't hold your breath on this one. I expect it to take a lot longer, but not for technical reasons. The truth is that however you do this you are developing weapons. At best, your allies will be on your side but your enemies will play this up, discussing how versions of whatever you do can be used against them. And even if exaggerated (and boy will it be), there will be grains of truth. These are the hardest lies to fight because they're half lies.
The problem always lies in how you get that energy down to Earth. There's no way to do this that can't also be used in a way that can be destructive. Even this proposal at 1kW you can do some damage. They're doing IR because this is fairly transmissible through the atmosphere but it can still be damaging. These range from a directed energy weapon (likely aimed at electronics) to a more denial of service attack (you'd need higher energy than 1kW). There's another proposal about just redirecting light[0] and I think it is easier to imagine how this is a weapon. Could you imagine someone just making you, in your house (or worse, it follows you around), always live in daylight? It would drive you crazy. I know the Nords, Alaskans, Canadians, and others will tell you there's challenges to living in perpetual daylight. But you can destabilize crops, which need night, insects and wildlife, and I'll let your imagination run wild. But this is also true for IR light, you just won't see it with your eyes. That still affects many insects, snakes, fish, and other animals, not to mention plants. IR is heat, and it doesn't take much heat to disrupt things.
On a different point:
> told me he wants to reinvent the idea of space-based solar power beginning with a relatively small investment—likely a bit north of $10 million
> That physicist is Baiju Bhatt, who co-founded the electronic trading platform Robinhood in 2013
He's asking for $10m? Why? Can someone help me with this? Forbes has him at $1.7bn net worth[1]. $10m is nothing to this guy, right? Even if he doesn't have that cash liquid it should be very easy for him to get a very low interest rate loan where the maturity is upon death that will give him access to this level of money. So why does he need the investment? What am I missing?
You're not wrong, but that doesn't mean you understood my point.
It seems you aren't aware that space is not controlled by a single country. It's ruled by international agreements. Do you really think everyone sitting at that table is going to be using that power to make laws based purely on the merit of the technology and it's safety? Or do you think they're going to be bullshit arguments that are reaching at best? We both know the answer to that. Predicting what they will argue is not the same thing as saying their points will be valid. But you also can't just pretend that bullshit won't exist.
Readit News
I listened to a podcast[1] a few months ago which proposed the (IMHO) more innovative idea of using giant, ultra-light foil mirrors in space to sell sunlight to existing solar farms at night. Aetherflux seems to be using the more traditional solar panels + IR laser approach, which seems harder to justify the cost of compared to batteries.
[1]: https://firstprinciples.fm/episodes/8-ben-nowack-selling-sun...
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkjyeI0ykGM
What would that look like from Earth? I can't imagine star-gazing with a giant mirror shining down on me.
The cost of solar power has plummetted in the last 2 decades and nobody is quite sure where this will bottom out.
Now obviously sometimes it's night time and sometimes it's just cloudy. You have a number of options for this, in increasing level of engineering and technological difficulty:
1. Do nothing. Just take power when it is available. This works surprisingly well for a lot of our power usage. Power usage peaks in daylight hours so solar reduces your baseload requirements. Sometimes you can simply do things when the weather doesn't permit (eg data centers).
2. Store excess power in another form. This could be batteries but it could also be things like sequestering carbon from the air into a hydrocarbon form you can later burn for power. This is carbon neutral by definition. This method currently isn't economic. In some cases that doesn't matter (eg in cold climates where current batteries aren't particularly effective).
3. Power satellites that bean down power. A solar collector in space would produce ~7 times as much power as a terrestrial collector because there's no day/night or weather interruptions nor atmospheric loss. It is technically feasible to beam down power.
4. Build an orbital ring. Attach solar collectors to it. Run cables to the ground. Obviously this is more far future.
More [1].
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBCbdThIJNE
Narrator: It will not happen.
The only place space based solar makes sense is on things that are in space.
[1] https://simcity.fandom.com/wiki/Microwave_Power_Plant
The problem always lies in how you get that energy down to Earth. There's no way to do this that can't also be used in a way that can be destructive. Even this proposal at 1kW you can do some damage. They're doing IR because this is fairly transmissible through the atmosphere but it can still be damaging. These range from a directed energy weapon (likely aimed at electronics) to a more denial of service attack (you'd need higher energy than 1kW). There's another proposal about just redirecting light[0] and I think it is easier to imagine how this is a weapon. Could you imagine someone just making you, in your house (or worse, it follows you around), always live in daylight? It would drive you crazy. I know the Nords, Alaskans, Canadians, and others will tell you there's challenges to living in perpetual daylight. But you can destabilize crops, which need night, insects and wildlife, and I'll let your imagination run wild. But this is also true for IR light, you just won't see it with your eyes. That still affects many insects, snakes, fish, and other animals, not to mention plants. IR is heat, and it doesn't take much heat to disrupt things.
On a different point:
He's asking for $10m? Why? Can someone help me with this? Forbes has him at $1.7bn net worth[1]. $10m is nothing to this guy, right? Even if he doesn't have that cash liquid it should be very easy for him to get a very low interest rate loan where the maturity is upon death that will give him access to this level of money. So why does he need the investment? What am I missing?[0] https://x.com/colecallinan/status/1826683972207661499
[1] https://www.forbes.com/profile/baiju-bhatt/
It seems you aren't aware that space is not controlled by a single country. It's ruled by international agreements. Do you really think everyone sitting at that table is going to be using that power to make laws based purely on the merit of the technology and it's safety? Or do you think they're going to be bullshit arguments that are reaching at best? We both know the answer to that. Predicting what they will argue is not the same thing as saying their points will be valid. But you also can't just pretend that bullshit won't exist.