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Is space-based solar power realistic? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, Kelly, do you guys have solar power over there
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: at the science farm? We do. We actually pretty recently
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: installed solar panels on top of one of our barns.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: And so does it give you like all the energy
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: you could ever want? No, not all the energy we
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: could ever want. I married a man who would like
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: to build a giant laser, and so he's always going
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: to be disappointed. But it gives us some power. Well,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: does it give you all the energy you need? I
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: mean not quite. It's cloudy where we live, and then
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: there's nighttime and the batteries aren't quite up to the task.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Who needs energy at nighttime? Jeez? Or like in the winter,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: you guys are way too demanding. Yeah, we could just
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: put on like five layers of socks. That might get
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: hard for Zac to wear socks and sandals, but I'm
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: sure he'd persevere. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: and I'm the co host of our podcast, Daniel and
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Jorge Explain the Universe. And I'm Kelly Weener Smith. I'm
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: an adjunct professor with Rice University and I study parasites.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: And welcome to the podcast, in which we talk about
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: everything out there in the universe, the tiny little particles
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: that wiggle around beneath your toes and in your toes,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: and the huge mysteries of the universe, how it began,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: how it will end, how it all works. We talked
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: about all that crazy stuff and try to break it
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: down and explain it to you. My normal co host,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Jorge cham the creator PhD Comics, isn't here today, but
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: we're very lucky to have our returning regular guest host,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Kelly Wiener Smith. Kelly, thanks for joining us again. Yeah,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: my pleasure. I'm excited to be back. It's a lot
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: of fun. Well, we try to have fun, and we
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: also try to talk about the science. And we talked
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: about the mysteries of the universe. We talked about the
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: tiny little particles, but we also like to talk about
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: how things work and whether things will work. We'd like
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: to explore technologies. We've talked to this podcast about how
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: l e Ed's work. We've talked about how solar panels work,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: and we've talked about things like space elevators. And I
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: understand Kelly, that you're becoming something of an expert in
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: how space technology and space colonization works. Yeah, our upcoming
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: book is sort of on that topic. So we've been
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: spending a lot of time reading about these sorts of things,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: and soon has had a chapter on space elevators. And
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: are you excited to think about this kind of stuff
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: because you think like everything in the future will be
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: based in space, of space farms and space schools and
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: space grocery stores. Well, I have the sense that we
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: are maybe a little bit too overly optimistic about how
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: great it's going to be to live in space. But
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: I do think that at some point we'll have space
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: settlements and we'll have lots of cool stuff going on
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: in space. And how we're going to power all of
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: that and and make this awful environment habitable is a
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: very interesting question, I think, because it is kind of
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: an awful environment. I think it's amazing that spaces is
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: sort of like cool sheen to it, right, and it
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: is some out there, it's like part of the universe,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: But it's also kind of awful, right. I mean, it's
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: like not a cozy place to be, no. I mean,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: I think you look at a picture of the Moon
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: are Mars, and you can sort of imagine places on
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Earth that looks sort of similar and sort of convince
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: yourself like, oh, it's not that different, but no, it's
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: super different, and it's super unpleasant and it's definitely trying
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: to kill you all the time. And that really makes
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: us cherish life down here on Earth. You know, we
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: are really lucky to get to live in this warm,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: atmospheric little slice of the universe that's wet but not
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: too wet and has all the right conditions for our
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: kind of life and our cozy lifestyle. And so I
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: think another way to look at space is like as
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: a resource, a way to support and improve life here
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: on Earth, rather than as an alternate for life on Earth.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: And I think there's a lot of enthusiasm about that.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: But I also think there's a lot of reasons why
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: getting things from space to Earth is really difficult, and
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: those are maybe some of the big things we need
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: to overcome so that we can make space improve our
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: lives down here. Right, We need like a better highway
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: between here and space so we can take better advantage
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: of all of its resources, yes, exactly. And also we
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: have to be careful about Earth being a gravity well,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: so you don't bring, for example, an asteroid with great
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: resources too close and then have a sort of dinosaur
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: event happen again. So it's a little sensitive talk about
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: cell phones. Right, Oops? Ye, right, whoops, extinction level event.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: My bad. Well, one of the big issues of course
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: facing us down here on Earth is energy and how
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: to get clean sources of renewable energy that are cheap
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: and that are easy to distribute, and that are consistent,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: and that can heat your toes on a cold winter night,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: even on the science farm. So what are some proposals. Well,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: obviously there's been a big surge down here on Earth
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: of solar panels and green energies such as wind, etcetera.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: So that's been helping a little bit. But I get
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: a little worried when I look at these projections from
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: the I p c C about like the various paths
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: we're going on if we only use like twenty or
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: thirty or fifty renewable energies for the next few years,
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: like the nerves for increasing global surface warming temperatures still
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: look pretty dire. Yeah, and I'm not super optimistic that
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: we'll be able to switch to more climate friendly technologies
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: like nuclear because they have sort of other big downsides
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: when you've got humans using it. Absolutely and so people
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: have been talking about crazy new proposals to supercharge our
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: solar power industry, to make it much more efficient, much
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: more dramatic, much more available by connecting it to space. Yeah,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: so what would that look like? How the heck do
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: you do that? And that's the topic of today's podcast.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Today on the program, we're asking the question is space
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: based solar power realistic? Because you know, we can talk
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: about space based whatever, and you can spend ten billion
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: dollars doing some proof of principle or a hundred billion dollars,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: But if we're going to talk about something like delivering
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: power to people down here on Earth, it's got to
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: be economical, right, It's got to be robust, it's got
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: to be actually realistic. We've got to be developing an
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: industry people actually want to invest in and work in,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: not just some fancy thing for a nationalistic pride. Totally
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: and so okay, So we've got solar panels on Earth,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: and the price of solar panels is plumbing quickly. So,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: like Zach and I've been together for something like fourteen
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: years now, and almost every year in our relationship we've
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: checked the price of solar panels just because we're both
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: excited about renewable energy, and last year we were like,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: we can afford it now, And partly that was because
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: of tax credits and stuff, but also it's because the
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: price of these panels is going down a lot. And
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: so when you can put these cheap panels on your house,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: is why would you bother putting them in space? Right?
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: So let's dig into that in a moment, But first
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: I want to ask you, like, what made you pull
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: the trigger? Was it really like it's below the threshold
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: where we can afford it. We keep looking at this
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: and keep thinking, you know what, next year they'll be cheaper.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: If we just wait another year, they'll be cheaper. So
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: at what point do you decide, well, they're cheap enough
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: and now is the time to buy them. So I
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: think the trigger for us was that there was a
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: tax break for something like thirty percent where the cost
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: of the solar panels you could apply to your taxes,
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: and that was set to expire, and so we decided
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: we needed to do it right away. And actually a
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: bunch of the local solar companies were just way overburdened
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: because a bunch of people must have made that same
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: calculation just a couple of months before the taxes were
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: about to expire, and so for us, it was the
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: tax break that made us decide we weren't going to
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: wait for the price to go down anymore because we
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: thought it would be a while. And also we had
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: finally purchased our own house, and this is something we
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: had been, you know, dreaming about for a long time,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: so we decided it was time to go for it.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: And it's really interesting to see the evolution of this.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Twenty or ten years ago, solar panels were really pretty expensive,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: they were hard to make, they didn't last very long.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: We weren't that good, but you know, people were buying them,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: and the industry got started and the government gave it
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: some pushes, and now we have this very vibrant solar
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: panel industry where the prices are falling rapidly and lots
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: of people are buying them, and so it's sort of
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: builds on itself. It's sort of like consumer electronics, you know,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: once it gets going and the big marketplace comes in
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: with all of his cap at all, than things that
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: just get cheaper and cheaper and easier and easier and
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: better and better. But one thing that is not getting
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: cheaper and cheaper as fast as I think we would
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: like is the batteries that go with the solar panels.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: So we live out in the middle of nowhere, and
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: we sometimes will lose power for like a week. The
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: previous owner at least told us that, and so we
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: asked the solar panel company, like, so we should buy batteries, right,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: and we'll store up a week of power and when
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: our power goes out in the middle of winter, we'll
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: live off of the batteries. And the guy was like, no, no, no,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: you should still buy a propane power generator because the
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: batteries are way too expensive. We're not there yet. That's
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: totally not worth it. And so I feel like solar
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: isn't going to be a really great solution until you
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: can actually be storing the power from the sun even
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: when you don't need it. And the things like Tesla
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: are helping to drive down the cost of these batteries
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: because they're you know, making them more efficient and better
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: to put in electric cars. But I think it's still
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: in a lot of cases, the technology is still not
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: there yet at a reasonable price point. And I think
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: you put your finger on what motivates space based solar power,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: which is that you can't get solar power on Earth
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day, three sixty five days a
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: year because it's nighttime sometimes and you know it's cloudy sometimes,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: and so what if you could like beam that power
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: from space anytime, any day, no matter how cold it
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: is and how overcast it is. But we'll get into
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: that in a moment. First, we surveyed our listeners to
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: hear what they thought about the prospects of having solar
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: power come down from space. So thank you to everybody
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: who volunteered to answer random questions on the internet. If
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: you're excited to participate and hear your voice speculating baselessly
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: in the future, please write to us two questions at
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge dot com. So here's what people had
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: to say. I think, yes, maybe not for us on
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: the ground, to to the limits of currently available extension codes,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: but definitely important for everyone who is or regis stationed
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: in space. I think it is uh something is I'm
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: assuming that would be either a dison sphere or a
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: the what you call it solar solar sale. I think
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: very large scale is impossible. I don't think we have
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: enough matter in the Solar system to make a dicen sphere. Um,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: but I think some things can be made of it.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: I guess the problem would be getting the power from
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: space down to Earth. Again. Um, I guess it would
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: be a good idea to have solar panels outside of
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: the Ear's atmosphere because you probably get more power because
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: there's no clouds and things. But then you'd have to
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: get the power down to the surface. So I don't
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: know if you can beam power? Is that too star
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Trek I don't know. Um. Otherwise you could do it
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: with batteries, I guess, and then transport it, but that
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: would be very expensive. Space based solar power is not
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: realistic now because I don't think we know how to
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: get the power back to the Earth. If we're going
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: to use it on the Earth, I feel like that
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: would be a very hard engineering problem. Like we we
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: already have trouble sending solar power distances here on Earth.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: So if it's collected in space, that seems logistically like impossible. Well,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: it depends how the technology will evolve, but for now, no,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: But who knows how what we will do in the
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: future why not? So what do you think of their answers, Kelly,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: I thought those were super interesting answers, and I thought
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: they brought up some important points, like how do you
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: get the power back to Earth? So they were well
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: thought out answers. What about you. I heard a lot
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: of skepticism there, which I think is well motivated. There's
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: at least one person who misunderstood the question. I think
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: I was talking about like solar sales and whether you
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: could sail on photons from stars while you're sort of
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: far away from a solar system, which is another totally
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: fascinating question and would require like massive lasers to push
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: on those solar sales. But I think the question of
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: like building solar power in space and beaming it down
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: to Earth does seem pretty complicated and problematic. But you know,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: maybe we're is that the early stages of this industry,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: back when solar panels on your roof were expensive and
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: flaky and hard to arrange. Maybe we're just sort of
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: in the early days and we need to sort of
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: get the ball rolling. Anyway, we'll dig into it. So
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: you mentioned in the IBCC reports that it just didn't
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: seem like renewables were maybe going to be enough to
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: deal with the climate change problem, like what is holding
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: us back? Why can't we just use renewables for all
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: of our energy and you know, stop using things like coal. Yeah, well,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: I think you put your finger on it earlier, which
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: is that you don't get sunlight all the time. And
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: in some cases there are places where you get like
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: a lot of sunlight exactly when you need it. For example,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: if you live in Arizona and you need energy in
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: order to cool your house, then you're getting a lot
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: of sunlight right when you need to cool the house.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Sins to the energy production produced by the solar panels
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: are very close to the energy needs where you need
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: it to drive that air conditioning. But that's not always
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: the case. If, for example, you're living in the dark,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: cold northern Scandinavian winter, then you're not getting a lot
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: of solar power and you need power in the winter
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: to stay warm. And so the bottle neck there is,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: as you said earlier, storage and transportation, Like you could
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: have a huge solar farm somewhere in the Sahara or
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: in the Mojave Desert that produces enough powerful whole country,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: but getting it from there to somewhere else and storing
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: it is very, very expensive. Battery technology and transmission losses
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: make it essentially totally uneconomical. Okay, so solar panels are
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: just never going to take care of some parts of Earth,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: that's right, because they can't get energy twenty four hours
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: a day and they can't get energy three sixty five
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: days a year. And a similar problem for wind. Right
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: wind also directly produces electricity, and electricity is hard to
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: store efficiently and hard to transfer efficiently. Is this the
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: kind of thing where if we improved our grid dramatically
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: things could improve a lot? Or are we limited by
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: the physics of transmission loss as you go, even with
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: a great grid, we still couldn't get the power to
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: place as we need it. Transmission losses are pretty tough,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: and we're talking about you know, across the country or
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: across the world when we're talking about storage, and storage
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: is pretty expensive. So you know, you can't rule out
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: future breakthroughs in battery technology. And actually, we're gonna do
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: an episode in a few weeks about electric airplanes, which
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: require innovation in batteries to make them lighter and more powerful,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: but current ideas don't have us getting there, and so
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: we have this limitation of just sort of producing the
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: power at the right time and in the right place
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: where it needs to be used. All right, So solar
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: power is great, but you've got these problems with trying
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: to get it from place to place and problems with
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: not having enough of it in some of the places
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: that you need it. How does spending the incredible cost
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: of putting solar power in space help us overcome these problems. Well,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: the basic idea is that it's always sunny in space,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: So you can have these solar panels up in space
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: and they're always seeing the sun. Right, they're gonna be
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: a high enough orbit that they're not gonna be in
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: the Earth's shadow for very long at all, like a
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: very tiny fraction of their time. And of course they're
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: above the clouds, and so they have basically continuous generation
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: of power. And you know a lot of energy is
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: lost when the sunlight passes through the atmosphere. It's like
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: reflection and absorption and that kind of stuff. So the
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: idea is that you start out collecting much more solar
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: power five six, seven, eight times as much as the
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: equivalent ground based array, and so that provides you the
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: ability to gather more power and also to gather power
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: all the time. And because you're in space, you can
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: reach anyone who might need that power anywhere? Is that
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: the idea? So like you can get those people who
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: are living in Norway in the winter. Yeah. So that's
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: the other issue is like you generate this power in space,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: then what do you do with it? Right, Because we
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: have already solar panels in space, like every satellite that's
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: out there, and the I s S has solar panels.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: It's a very well established way to generate power in
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: space for use in space. But you want to generate
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: power in space and then use it to build you know,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: Zack's big laser or whatever, then you need to get
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: it down to Earth. Right. So you might be imagining
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: like big wires draped from satellites down to Earth. Obviously
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: that's not gonna work, right, huge problems there, and so
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: the idea is to beam it down to Earth. So
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: you collect the power in space and then you transform
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: it into microwaves or lasers and beam that down to
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Earth to some receiver which then picks it up. And
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: we have a fair amount of experience with working with
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: solar powers and space, right, So you mentioned the I S.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: S has solar panels, solute Skylab mirror. They probably all
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: I'm fairly certain they all had solar panels. Also, the
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: rovers on Mars have solar panels yep, yep, yep. And
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: so we have some information about how solar panels persist
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: in a vacuum and how long they survive and how
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: well they do as they move in and out of
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: the sunlight. So which would mean they're dealing with these
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: massive temperature changes as you go in the area where
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: you get hit with the sun versus when you go
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: in the shadow of the Earth. And so I guess
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: we have a fair bit of information about the use
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: of solar panels in space. Do you think that's fair
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: to say? Yeah, I think we definitely have some experience.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know what the history of repair is for
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: those missions, if they're like constantly repairing and replenishing the
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: solar panels on the I. S. S. Because of micromedia,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: it's a radiation damage. So how long have people been
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: thinking about this idea? Is this like a brand new
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: idea or an idea that's sort of been floating around
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: for a while. I was doing a little bit of reading,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: and it turns out this is an idea that's been
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: bubbling up for decades. Actually, there was a first paper
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: about it by a Russian scientist who the name I
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: camp pronounce can pronounce that name, Konstantine Solkovski. There you
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: go in the nineteen twenties and sort of speculative idea,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: and then I think it's sort of burst into public
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: imagination because of a short story by Isaac Asimov. He
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: had this device where he would collect solar power and
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: then beam it to various planets, like around the Solar System,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: but you know, that's science fiction. And then it trickled
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: back into academia. In the late sixties there was a
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: paper by Peter Glazer sort of like trying to take
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: this topic seriously and break it down and ask the
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: questions about what would work and how much it would cost.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: So it's been bubbling around for you know, several decades,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: and now people are really starting to work on it,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: developing the technologies, thinking about how to beam it down
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: to Earth, how to make it economical. The advent of
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: cheap launches from companies like SpaceX or bringing like you know,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: into the realm of the possible. All right, So let's
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: take a moment to talk more about the fine details
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: of what exactly would need to happen in order to
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: make this technology work after we take a quick break. Okay,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: So it's a little hard for me to imagine all
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: of the details about what will the solar panels look like,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: how much energy will they be creating, do they need
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: to be repaired? How do you get the power down
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: to Earth? So can you give us some more details
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: about how this is all going to come together. So
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of different ideas for how to make
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: this work, lots of different sort of conceptions. Some of
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: them have, for example, huge mirrors that focus light onto
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: a few solar cells and gathered together, so you're like
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: capturing sunlight from a large area and then focusing onto
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: just a few solar cells. Other ideas are just have
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: like massive sheets of solar cells just like you know,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: lots and lots and lots of them to capture the energy.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: So there's a lot of different sort of strategies for
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: how to build this thing and how to make it work.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: And we'll talk maybe in a little bit about which
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: ones are more economical and which ones are more feasible,
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: But one of the biggest questions to have to deal
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: with is how to get this power down to Earth? Right?
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: And it seems a little weird, like you collect the
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: power up in space and then you need to beam
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: it down to Earth. It's a little counterintuitive because it
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: was already sort of getting beamed down to Earth, Like
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: the Sun is already beaming it's power to Earth, right,
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: So like why do you need to capture it and
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: then like beaming down to Earth. I was thinking initially,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: maybe it's more energetic, maybe they're like focusing, so the
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: beam of power from the space array of solar panels
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: is like more intense than sunlight. But that's not actually
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: the case, and that would actually be quite dangerous because
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: that's basically building like a huge space weapon and shooting
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: it at the Earth. And so there's this limitation where
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: you basically can't beam down energy at higher intensity than
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: natural sunlight. So when I hear that, my first thought is, well,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: then obviously it's not worth it. So what am I
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: not understanding? No, that's a very reasonable reaction, because you
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: have to like build this space array to capture the
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: energy and then beaming down to Earth and then you
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: still need to build on array on Earth that's you know,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: about the same size, because if you want to capture
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: this energy on Earth, you need to build something that's
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: going to grab it. And for example, if you're using microwaves,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: microwaves have a really long wavelength, and so you might
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: need for example, like a rays on Earth that are
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: one to three kilometers wide just to capture this energy.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: And if that energy doesn't have more intensity than sunlight,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: you might as well just have built a ground based
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: solar panel right there. Right, why capture in terms of
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: microwaves from space instead of just like a natural sunlight
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: falling on the Earth. And the answer is that the
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: source of light from space should be more constant, right Like,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: if you're on Earth and you're just lying on sunlight,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: then you're not going to be getting it at nighttime,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: and you're not gonna be getting when it's cloudy. And
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: people who don't live in southern California like I do,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: know that they don't get more than a few hours
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: of like really equivalent solid sunlight on an average day.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: So the difference is that it should be constant, that
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: you should be always getting this microwave power beamed down
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day, sixty five days a year.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: So the power we get sent to some giant station
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: that collects it, and then it would be sent through
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: the grid to our houses. And you could have several
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: stations scattered all around, and the solar panels in space
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: could direct the energy where it's needed, so it's not
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: like linked up necessarily for all time. Between one set
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: of solar panels in space and a receiving station on Earth,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: you could decide, oh, Australia needs more power, or oh
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: we need more power in Scandinavia, and you could redirect
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: this power as needed. Because you're just pointing it from space.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: It's like you're shooting it from space down to the
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: receiver on Earth and that would be sent as microwaves.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: So there are two sort of technologies people are considering.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: One is marcro waves and the other is lasers. Micro Waves,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: you know, are just photons. There's just another kind of light,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: but it's light with a very specific wavelength. It's the
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: same kind of radiation, same kind of light that exists
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: in your microwave oven to heat up your food. So
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: you know, if you beam microwaves at something, you will
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: heat it up. They contain power, and the microwave is
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: just tell you, like roughly what the wavelength is of
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: the light. And so we're talking about centimeter length wavelengths,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: which is not actually that small, you know, compared to
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: like visible light, but it's micro compared to you know,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: like much longer wavelengths radio light. And so these are
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: great because they can pass through clouds. For example, so
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: you shoot a microwave, it's basically clouds are invisible to it.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: The clouds are totally transparent, and so that's pretty nice.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: And these things could be like up really far away
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: in sort of middle Earth orbit or geosynchronous orbit, like
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: thirty five kilometers above the Earth, and they could beam
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: the light down in terms of microwaves, and then on
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: the Earth surface you just need some sort of like
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: microwave antenna which is just like a big chain link
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: fence essentially to capture these microwaves. So this might be
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: a silly question, and but so I wouldn't want to
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: be in my microwave. That would be a bad place
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: to be. Do you have to worry about, like if
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: a plane passes underneath the microwaves that are getting sent
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: down to the power stations on Earth. Would that be
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: a problem or or not. It's not a sarily question
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: at all. I don't want to be in a microwave either,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: especially a space based microwave. They could like track me
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: and shoot me wherever I go. The idea is to
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: limit the intensity to the intensity of normal sunlight, so
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: you don't get any problems like that because you don't
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: just have to worry about airplanes. What about like birds.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: You don't want to create like a death zone where
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: you have like a column of birds that are like
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: constantly dying and falling onto your microwave array because you're
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: killing them more insects or anything else, right, you don't
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: want to be changing the weather. So that's why they
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: limited to the roughly the intensity of natural life. But
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: that is definitely an experiment. When we talked once on
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: this program about five G, which operates in the same
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: sort of wavelengths, we don't have sort of knowledge about
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: what it's like to live under low intensity constant sources
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: of micro way of radiation because people haven't done it before.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: So we might discover some bad news, some bad consequences
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: of this if you live near the station. But current
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: understanding of physics and biology, is that that wouldn't be
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: dangerous to humans, Okay? And then different questions. So you
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: had mentioned that the solar panels would be in geosynchronous orbit,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: and geosynchronous orbit is like really high up. So the
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: International Space Station is in low Earth orbit. Geosynchronous orbit,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: as I understand it is really high up, and that's
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: where you need it to make sure that an object
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: stays over the same spot in Earth all the time.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: And so if you are super far away, like farther
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: than where a lot of those satellites, you know starlink
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: for example, is do you lose power on the way
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: and is that a problem or do microwaves not sort
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: of dissipate over distance. You definitely lose power and that's
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: definitely a problem, and when we talk about the economics
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: of it, that's definitely an issue. You can't transmit energy
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: efficiently basically, ever, and if you're beaming power over long distances,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: you're also going to lose some power. They're hoping for
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: efficiencies of like fifty to eighty percent. They actually have
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: done some tests they beamed power using microwaves. This is
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: the test they did in Hawaii and went for a
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: hundred miles and they're able to get reasonable efficiency, but
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: it's definitely an issue at every stage you're gonna be
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: losing some energy. You know, converting the sunlight into electricity
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: is like maybe thirty efficient if you think very optimistically,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: and then transforming that into microwaves is not gonna be
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: hundredsent efficient. And then the transmission down to Earth that's
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: not going to be hundredsent efficient, and then the conversion
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: from microwaves back to electricity is not going to be
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: a hundred percent efficient. And so you multiply all these
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: numbers together and starts to get smaller and smaller. So
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: this whole question of whether it's feasible relies on balancing
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: this like a multiplier factor of your getting more power
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: consistently with the expense factor of you've got more steps
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: in the chain where you're gonna lose efficiency. And also
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: it's pretty expensive chain to build. I mean, this thing
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: is going to be in space. That all sounds super complicated.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: So you had mentioned they could do microwaves or lasers.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: Do lasers make any of those equations play a little
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: bit more nicely? So microwaves and lasers the two ideas
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: lasers are a different idea, and the goal here is
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: to make smaller devices because lasers can be more focused
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: and they can be narrower beams just because the frequency
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: of the light is higher and so it doesn't like
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: disperse as much as it comes down to Earth. And
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: so for example, you can have like a two meter
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: wide beam instead of a one kilometer wide beam, so
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: you can have like smaller stations where you're capturing this energy.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: You don't need to have like a massive area on
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: the Earth. It's like a more intense, narrow focused beam.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: And the idea there is that also the lasers could
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: be closer, like they don't need to be as far away,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: so you can have like a larger number of smaller
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: satellites beaming the energy down with lasers instead of microwaves.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: But of course, you know there's some dangers. They're like
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: you're talking about more intensity in your beam. You talk
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: about literally shooting lasers at the Earth from space. That
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: gives me the Heabie gps, so it gives me the
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: hebe gep is too. But like microwaves, is it the
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: case that you would just have to make sure that
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: you never are generating more power than the sun, Like,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: are these just gonna be super weak lasers? Yeah, exactly,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: you need to not be creating death rays from space,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: so they would have to be pretty weak lasers, and
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: that limits the power there, right, So I think these
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: days microwaves are sort of on the ascendants when it
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: comes to space based solar power because you have this
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: limit on the intensity, which means that in order to
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: get enough power, you would still need a very large
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: receiving array, so you just need lots of lasers, and
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: so it might be that you would need like a
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: huge number of these lasers. The other problem with lasers
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: is that clouds aren't as transparent to lasers as they
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: are too microwaves. Microwaves can mostly pass through the atmosphere
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: in the clouds without losing energy, but not true for lasers,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Like clouds can block lasers much more efficiently than they
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: can block microwave beams. That sounds like a pretty big
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: problem problem exactly. So I wonder if there's a geopolitical
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: problem here too, So you know, when you create this system,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: you make sure that you're not blasting the Earth with
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: lasers that are super powerful. But like, for example, would
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: we feel comfortable with North Korea saying we have a
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: power problem and we want to use space based solar power,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: you know, to generate power. So is this the kind
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: of thing where you might be able to say the
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: international community is okay with, for example, the United States
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: having this power because we think they'll follow our rules,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: but we won't let North Korea anyway there. Do you
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: think there's geopolitical issues that might come to play here? Oh,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: I'm sure there are, and I'm not up to speed
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: on like what the treaties are about how we use
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: space and what the rules are up there who's allowed
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: to launch these things? I think it's essentially there are
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: no rules, right. We certainly haven't been able to like
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: limit North Korea from launching satellites or missiles or anything
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: like that. So as we move into an era where
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: space is a international resource and one where they're competing interests,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: will definitely have to figure all this stuff out. Maybe
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: a model for this is, you know, how we handle
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: international sea waters or Arctica or stuff like that. Yeah.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: I've been talking to some space lawyers and it seems like,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: if nothing else, it's a very interesting time to be
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: a space layer. With our space lawyers Are they lawyers
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: in space or are they lawyers about space? Or what's
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: the deal with a space lawyer. There's a job that
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: will always seem fake to me. It will always seem
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: like something that belongs in a sci fi novel. But no,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: those are lawyers working on questions related to space, and
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: it's a super active field, and I think they've got
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: tons of work to do right now as space gets cheaper,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: and so what do they think is going to happen to,
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: like how we handle these competing claims and interests in space.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: It depends on what topic you're referring to in particular.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: So there's a lot of debate right now on topics
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: like our countries allowed to go to the Moon and
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: extract their resources and use them, and the Outer Space
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Treaty has some sort of vague language about how you're
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: not supposed to be able to like take stuff, and
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: it's supposed to be for everyone. Everyone is supposed to benefit.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: But the US is sort of interpreting right now that
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: we can go up there and if we extra resources,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: our companies can then sell them, and that's not the
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: same as claiming sovereignty. So the big thing the Outer
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Space treaty says is that you can't claim sovereignty of
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: any part of space, and so they would be saying,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: but we're not claiming sovereignty. We're just extracting resources and
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: selling those resources. We're not saying we own the land
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: where we did the extractions. So space lawyers are sort
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: of trying to figure out what to do about those
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: claims and how sound those claims are. And I don't
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: know how that would relate to things like are you
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: allowed to put space based solar power up when it
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: has the potential to be used as a weapon, So
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: you're not allowed to put you know, for example, weapons
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: of mass destruction up in space. But there's this problem
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: with dual use where there's things that you can say like, well, no,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: I'm just doing this for power. I'm trying to, you know,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: make sure my people stay warm, but it can also
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: be used as a weapon, and so it becomes hard
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: to categorize. And so you know, space lawyers are working
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: on questions like that. It definitely sounds very space lawyery,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: like we're not claiming we own it, We're just taking
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: stuff out of it and selling it for money. You know,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: I'm not claiming sovereignty over your house, but I'm taking
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: your flat screen TV and selling it on eBay and
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: keeping the cash. It gets very complicated, it sounds like
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: it does. And I think that's kind of the lesson
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: here is like everything in space is complicated, not just
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: from a legal point of view, but from a logistical
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: point of view. You know, one big problem I have
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: with space based solar power is that it's really inaccessible. Like,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: if you build a solar power array on your roof,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: it's hard enough to get up there to pick something,
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: or you gotta get a ladder and maybe break your
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: neck getting up there. But like if we're talking about
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: building something and putting it in space, right, like you
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: got to repair that thing. It's a huge problem. Remember
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: when they built the Hubble and it had an issue
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: and you know, one of the lenses was fuzzy. They
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: had to like send astronauts up there in the Space
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Shuttle to go and repair that thing. And like, if
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: you've waited a long time to get your cable provider
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: to come by and fix something, imagine waiting on massive
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: lawn schedule, right, and we don't you know, the Space
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: Shuttle was a more versatile vehicle than the things that
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: we have now that bring us to the International Space
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: Station and DOC and then come back down again, and
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: so well, I don't know what it would actually take
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: if you wanted to have a human go to repair
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: your space based solar panel. I don't know that we
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: have good technology available currently for that sort of delicate,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: like going to a very particular spot in space kind
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: of job. And so we'll talk in the next segment
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: about the idea of how to do these kinds of
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: repairs and what might entail and what's going on with
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: the economics when we talk to an expert who was
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: really excited about the prospects of it. But before we
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: talk about that, I want to talk a little bit
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: more about something that you mentioned earlier, which is sort
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: of the hostile environment. Right If you have solar panels
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: in your backyard, obviously you know it's gonna be rain
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: and snow and hail, all these things you have to
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: deal with. But they have the benefit of the protection
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: of the Earth's atmosphere. But if you're out there in space,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: right then you're susceptible to rocks and debris and radiation
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: and all sorts of stuff. It's a very hostile environment.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: It's not a nice place to be for humans or
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: four solar panels. Yeah, I know, the radiation is super
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: intense and it definitely breaks things down. And then in
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: addition to the radiation, the dramatic temperature changes are problems.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: So on the International Space Station you can hear the
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: station creaking as it goes from areas where it's in
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: the sun to areas where it's in the dark. And
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: if you've got things that are in the shadow of
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: the Earth, every once in a while they're expanding and
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: contracting as they get superheated by the sun, and then
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: they get super cold in the vacuum of space when
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: there's no sunlight, they contract again, and that's not good
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: for materials over long periods of time. So between the
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: intense radiation and the dramatic temperature changes, that's a lot
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: to ask your materials to handle. Yeah, that's like station
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: quakes right Like, it literally is like shaking and creaking
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: as it expands and contracts. That's amazing. And then in
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: addition to those problems, you have micro meteorites out there
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: which are traveling incredibly fast and could easily be poking
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: holes into your solar panels and their space debris. Space
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: debris is a problem that becomes harder every single year,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: and it becomes harder the more silly humans do silly
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: human things. And so I think it was two thousand
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: seven China wanted to prove that they could shoot a
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: satellite in space, just as a way of being like,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: look at how precise we are in our ability to
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: shoot at things in space. US has done that, Rush
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: has done that, India has done that. It's not just China,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: but anyway, they picked a satellite that was still high
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: enough in orbit that it generated thousands I think of
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: pieces of debris. I wish I could remember the number
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: that are still floating around in space. And over time,
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: you know, we leave satellites and we don't decay them
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: and have them go down into the atmosphere. There's just
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: more and more stuff up there that could run into
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: your space based solar panels. And so this is a
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: problem that becomes harder over time. And if you have
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: a giant array, you've got essentially a giant target to
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: get hit by space debris. And for important things satellites,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: the International Space Station, they have the ability to move
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: out of the way, but that requires you know, some
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: fuel to be able to move when you know that
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: something is coming your way. So these solar panels might
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: also need to be mobile to stay out of the way.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: And one way or another, they're probably still getting hit
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: with stuff because we can't track the super tiny stuff
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: with our sensors. No, you're absolutely right, and they might
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: not just be a target of as to brethe that
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: might be a source of space debris. Right. If they
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: break and stuff falls off of them, and you're talking
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: about like replacing components, they're going to be contributing to
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: space debris. And this problem becomes as a crescendo. Right,
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: the more space debris you have, the more junk you
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: create as it collides into other stuff, and then you
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: get this cascading effect where basically all of spaces just
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: filled with junk and becomes unusable. I think that's called
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: the Kessler syndrome. Exactly. It's just sort of like your office,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: you know, you can't get any work done when your
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: desk is just like so covered in things you need
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: to do that you're like frozen. You're like can't use
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: it anymore. Yeah, and that would be horrible for us
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: in so many different ways because of all the ways
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: our lives rely on satellites at this point. So, in
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: the proposals that you've looked at for space based solar power,
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: do they propose like regular repair missions or do they
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: just plan on these not being up there for so long?
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: What do you do about this problem? Yeah, so I
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: asked an expert about this, and he basically just accepts
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: that you're going to have some losses and that you're
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: gonna go up there every year and spend a certain
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: amount of money repairing it. And he tries to factor
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: that into his accounting, like there's a lot of factors
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: to keep track of. There are a lot of factors
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: to keep track of, and those factories are probably hard
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: to estimate now. And so you know, there's a lot
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: of lively debate about whether these estimates for the cost
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: of maintenance of space based solar power are reasonable or
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: wildly optimistic. And that sounds like an exciting topic for
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: after our break. So you mentioned that Solkowski, who was
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: a Russian guy, was excited about space based solar power
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: and the idea has sort of gotten people excited in
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: the US. Are those the only countries that are excited
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: about this or is this idea taking off in other places?
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: It's taking off all around the world. There's a project
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: in China called Omega that is aiming to be like
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: operational by twenty fifty, which sounds crazy futuristic, but then
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: also sounds crazy futuristic, so it's not should have far away.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: And they want to be able to supply two gigawatts
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: of power into the Earth's grid, which is not a
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: small amount, right to make that much solar power on Earth,
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: you did like six million solar panels. So they have
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: this project to like actually implement this and I sort
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: of like be on the cutting edge of space based
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: solar power. And is this a government funded project or
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: is this just sort of an idea at the moment. No,
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: it's a government funded project, and like you know, all
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: the ideas in China, all the research in China is
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: funded by the government. And it's a funny system the
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: way they organize everything over there, but it's definitely government
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: funded and it's a project. And you know, the cool
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: thing about projects in China is that they can make
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: plans for twenty forty years and keep them because they
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: don't have a change in government every two four or
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: six years where they're changing direction, like throwing up their
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: political opponents plans and tearing them up. So one advantage
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: of an autocracy is that you can make long read
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: science plans and you can stick to them. So that's
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: something cool that China can do silver lining. Exactly. They've
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: been doing good job of keeping up with their plans
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: for like getting humans in space and putting up their
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: space stations. They have actually been fairly consistent in their timelines.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: I'm sure a U S official at NASA would be
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: envious of China's ability to stick to their schedule. Yeah, exactly,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: the trains run on time. But then there are also
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: plans involving some folks here in the in the United
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: States to build a system that works in Australia. They
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: see Australia as a potential good test case. And this
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: is a project pioneered by John Minkin, who has spent
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: a long time working at NASA and at JPL, and
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: he's very excited about the idea of space based solar power.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: And I had a conversation with him about the prospects
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: and how he sees this working and the challenges involved
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: in building this kind of system. Yeah. So one of
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: the things I think is interesting about his proposal is
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: that earlier in the show, we were talking about maybe
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: having like, you know, a giant panel or giant mirror
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: that focuses things onto a big panel, and this proposal
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: is for lots of tiny pieces, which I think does
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: a better job of dealing with the fact that you're
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: gonna get damage to them from radiation and micro meteorites.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: It makes it easier to switch them out. What do
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: you think about the proposal of using lots of smaller pieces.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: I think it makes a lot of sense. I think
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: he's trying to move away from the concept of like,
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: let's spend a hundred billion dollars building one Rolls Royce,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: but instead, let's build up the industry to manufacture these
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: things and get the economics of scale. And if we
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: can produce lots and lots of these things, we can
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: get these factories pumping them out, then we can build
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: a large system out of small, modular components. So I'm
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: impressed that he's actually thinking about, you know, how we
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: can get industry connected and drive the prices down to
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: make this thing economically feasible. So I think that sounds
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: a lot more promising than you know, building one big,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: expensive one which is going to cost a lot of
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: money and then need a lot of sort of boutique repairs.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: I was listening to John Mancin's interviewed on The Space
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: Show the other night, and he was saying that he
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: envisions at some time in the for future will have
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: these lots of tiny panels and rather than when one
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: gets broken, just kind of throwing it out and being
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: done with it. You know, it's made of materials that
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: if you had a space settlement you might like to
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: use again, and so you would go out there and
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: you'd sort of just like legos, take out one piece
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: and put in another piece. But then you'd take the
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: piece you're not using anymore and then break it down
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: and use it for something else in your space settlement.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: And you know, that is a super far off idea,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: but I do sort of like the idea of starting
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: to think about how we can recycle the stuff that
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: we're using in space. I thought that was fun. I
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: always get excited when I hear him interviewed because he's
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: so enthusiastic, and he makes me enthusiastic. Yeah, he's very
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: enthusiastic and I like the idea of space recycling, but
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: you know, we haven't even figured out like aluminium recycling
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: down here on Earth, so like, where can I recycle
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: my aluminium can up in space? It seems like a
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: much harder problem. But you know, I do like the
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: forward looking nature, the imagining that this is gonna be
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: like a whole space based ecosystem in which this concept
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: could fit and it can support it and provide it.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: But as with all these things, it's a bit of
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: a chicken and egg problem, right. You know, you could
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: support these things and if you had all these other elements,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: but then you need, you know, space power to get
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: those ments. And so somebody's got to be out there
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: advocating for this thing, making it happen, pushing it forward
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: so that it does build up that momentum. Anyway, I
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: had a fun conversation with John and I asked him
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: what he thought was the most promising architecture, how he
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: would build this if he was going to build this
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: thing today. Here's what John had to say. The architectural
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: approach that I think is most promising is one that
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: involves a very large number of identical modular system elements,
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: probably about ten or twelve different families of these system elements.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: And so the Solar Power satellite, rather than looking like
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: a huge conventional spacecraft or like the International Space Station
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: or something, instead would very much resemble almost a living organism.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: So like a coral reef comprises trillions of individual coral
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: and those of course extraordinarily tiny, but then there are
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: all so various fish and an enemies and so on,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: and all of these species cooperate to make what is
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: essentially a miniature biosphere out in the midst of the ocean. Yeah.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: So you can hear that, Kelly, how he's describing his
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: like swarm of little mini pieces that build up a
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: large space farm. I think that's probably a better design
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: than the big space solar panel that we talked about
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: earlier in the show. Yeah, I think that makes a
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: lot more sense. I don't really want somebody building like
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: a huge mirror to focus energy and that could be
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: potentially used as a weapon. Yeah, no, I agree, We're
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: on the same page. So did you ask John, like
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: how long you think it would take for this technology
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: to mature? So, I know we know a little bit
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: about solar panels on the International Space Station, but there's
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: probably still a lot of things that we would need
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: to figure out to make this all work. Yeah, I did.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: And so I asked him if he thought this is
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: like something in the far future that he's laying the
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: groundwork for, or something he was going to be like
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: alive to actually see in operation. Here's what he had
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: to say. The time to develop a modular solar power
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: satellite do the first demonstration is like thirty six months.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: The time to develop the first operating pilot plant it's
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: like five years. The time to have the first full
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: scale solar power satellite delivering thousands of megawatts to the
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: ground is like eight or ten years. And it's because
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: the pieces are the size of a three or six
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: you cubes at There's just a lot of them, and
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: it's not this colossus. One single thing is just legos.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: You're just making the moral equivalent of tinker toy pieces
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: or lego pieces, and you're plugging them together in space.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: So what do you think about that, Kelly? You think
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: this thing is actually gonna be up there in space
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: beaming power to Australia in ten years? Well, I have
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: a couple. It was the one I don't feel like
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: there's enough public push for this technology yet that it's
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: going to get enough momentum to happen in years. It
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: would be cool if I was wrong. I also think
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: the geopolitical stuff might need to be dealt with a
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: little bit more carefully and that could flow this technology
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: down to So I guess I'm not super optimistic about
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: the ten year time point, but it would be great
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: if I was wrong. What do you think. I think
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: you've got to be aspirational and nobody really believes these projections.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you look at like every single space
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: project we've ever launched, it's always had, like, you know,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: a target date well in the past, you know, like
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: the James Web Space Telescope, or like look at the
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: development of the Space Shuttle. All of these things are
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: always like ten thirty years behind. But in order to
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: make them happen, you have to sort of push them right.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: You have to say we're aiming for ten years from now,
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: and then no, in the back of your mind it's
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: going to slip a decade or two. If you say,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: you know, this is going to happen in fifty years,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: then it's just sort of hard to get it organized.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: It seems like the next generation two problems. Yes, fair enough.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: So I asked John about the economics of it also
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: because I was curious, like, how do you think this
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: is going to happen? Who's going to pay for this?
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: How do you cut down the cost of getting They're
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: like having to launch out there in this space to
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: actually build these things. And so you can hear John's
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: enthusiasm in his response, everybody's got a rocket company, but
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: almost nobody is building new kinds of satellites because it's
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: just not what they're investing it. We actually think that
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: this will be like a snowball. Once this gets going,
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: We think lots of people will want to have a play,
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: as it's called in space solar power. But we need
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: that catalyst. We need a catalyst to do the initial prototyping,
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: build these modules, put them together, validate that they work
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: the way that they have to work. There's no magic
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: in the engineering, but people are gonna want to see
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: it once that happens. We see these power plants as
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: being developed and deployed through a mixture of more or
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: less conventional private sector investment, where private entities invest maybe
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: in a new power plant and the rest of your debt.
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: The Golden gate Bridge was paid for by It was
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: secured by the then newly formed Bank of America. Debt
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: helped pay for the big Big in Boston. For the
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: full scale systems, it'll be a mix of debt and
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: more conventional large scale investors who want to own a
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: share of selling two gigawatts per twenty four hours per
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: three sixty five days a year forever. So you can
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: hear his enthusiasm there, Kelly, He's like hoping that these
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: costs are really going to come down, that people are
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: going to be developing cheaper launches, and that it's gonna
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: be so like the next Gold Rush. And I hope
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: he's right. I worry that the cost of solar panels
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: going down is going to make this stuff even less likely,
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: because it will be easier and easier for more of
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: us to put solar panels on our house. And I
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: know that doesn't solve the problem about nighttime or clouds.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: But as battery technology gets better too, I wonder if
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: we'll be less and less inclined to invest tons of
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: money in putting this stuff in space. But again, it
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: would be super cool if I was wrong, it would
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: be super cool. And I think it's sort of awesome
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: to have competing strategies here, right, Like we're pushing on
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: space based solar power, but at the same time, you know,
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: we are, as you say, trying to make batteries and
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: transmission more effective down here on Earth. So who knows
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: which technology is gonna win, but definitely humanity is gonna win. Right.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: If either of these things come out being cheaper and
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: more robust and more reliable, then we're fine, right. I
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: think it would be sort of cooler to have based
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: based technology, but I'm a little skeptical of it. I
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: read an analysis of John's proposal from another JPO guy,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: Casey Hammer, and he was, to say politely, completely skeptical.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: He was not believing that this thing is ever going
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: to be a thing. And his number one problem is
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: that he feels like John consistently makes optimistic estimates of
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: construction and launch costs by at least an order of
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: magnitude beyond current best industry standards. And I think that's
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: really the key. And in a conversation I had with John,
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: he agreed that the launch costs are probably the most
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: expensive part of their system. You've got to go up
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: there every year in order to repair this stuff, or
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: even just to like send new robots up there to
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: repair it. John estimates that would be three percent of
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: the cost of the system. So if you have a
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: ten billion dollar cost or your Australian system, that you're
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: gonna be paying essentially another ten billion dollars over the
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: next ten years to maintain this thing. And according to John,
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: the economics workout and you're still making money and you're
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: gonna pay off your investors, and so you can attract
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: interest from investors because it's gonna be positive cash flow
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: in the future. But I think that relies in really
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: great detail on those launch costs coming down so quickly,
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: and they are coming down pretty quickly. And I'd be
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: interested to hear how that three percent in operation cost
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: compares to operation costs for the upkeep of like a
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: coal power power plant or something. Presumably it's much lower,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: but boy, I need to learn more about power. Yeah,
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: it's definitely much lower. I mean, the price of coal
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: is ridiculously low. You know, you can buy like a
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: ton of coal for tens of dollars. You can build
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: a coal fired power plant very very cheaply. But then
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: you know, then you've got to keep paying for the
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: fuel all year. And the nice thing about the fuel
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: for your solar power plant is it's free. It just
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: comes from the sun. But of course then you've got
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: to get into space to repair these things. So I
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: think what we're looking at here is sort of a
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: race between like bringing down the cost of the launches
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: to get up there and to maintain these things, and
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: improving solar panels here on Earth. So, Kelly, in the end,
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: are you more or less skeptical about the prospects for
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: space based solar power? Well, I think the more that
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: we talked about the physics, the more concerned I got
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: about the equation for balancing it all out. I remain
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: hopeful that I'm wrong, and I've actually had so in
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: soon ish we wrote a little section about how we
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: thought space based solar power was probably not going to
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: pan out, and so many nice people have written me
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: to be like, no, no, no, you have to be wrong.
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: I love this community like it's a bunch of nice
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: people who are trying to make the world a better place.
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: And I'm still not totally sure about the equations, but
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: I do hope that I'm wrong. What do you think
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: I'm also skeptical, but I've been skeptical before, and you know,
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: there's no limit to human ingenuity, and what it takes
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: to it over those problems is believing that it's possible
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: and saying, let's work hard on them. Let's figure out
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: which part of this problem is the hardest, and let's
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: get cracking on it. And I think that's the first step.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: So I'm skeptical little ever happen, but I'm hopeful that
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: maybe it might. Well. This community has a lot of
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: hard working believers, so if anyone can make it happen,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: I think these people can make it happen. So I
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: guess we'll see. But I'm not investing in any of
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: these projects personally, so that maybe that tells you a
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: more personal level whether I believe it's actually gonna work. Yeah,
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: same here. All right, Well, thanks for listening to us
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: talk about space based solar power. You know, I think
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: the humanity does have a future out there in space,
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: but there's definitely a lot of horror problems to solve
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: along the way. Amen, and thanks again to Kelly for
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: joining us. Thanks again for the invitation. I had a
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: blast as always. All Right, everybody out there, so stay curious,
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: keep asking questions, and if you'd like us to talk
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: about some other crazy futuristic technology and how the physics
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: of it might work and whether they're gonna be building
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: death rays to shoot into your bedroom, ease right to
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: us two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Tune
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: in next time. Bye, thanks for listening, and remember that
• 51:14
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