Asteroid Mining

[HopAlongBunny]

ATPG sums it up nicely.

Until you actually use space to its potential you are shooting blanks; if you create in space, you have given birth to something exceptional.

[gaelic cowboy]

Then you don't even need the collector. Just attach solar panels to the equipment in question.

If you remember the original idea was collecting energy for a space elevator sometimes it would be in shadow so it would require IF you wanted 24hr energy more than one harvesting site.

Not feasible. You are now talking about putting giant batteries in space. Battery technology is woefully lacking as well, otherwise a lot of issues regarding power consumption would not exist today. Plus they would be very heavy and cost a ton to ship up there along with the solar panels.

No need for batteries at all ACIN although you could do it by that method if you liked or you could also use microwaves sent to a central collection point or lasers or you could reflect sunlight to a single solar orbiting farm there are lots of possibilities. There is no need to send the energy to earth which I think is where we getting crossed purposes here.

Then you have higher transportation cost and the efficiency of transporting such energy through a beam would go down, because the inverse square law will apply.

I never said it would be highly efficient but it is the only free or at least free-ish source of energy in orbit.

[HopAlongBunny]

I never said it would be highly efficient but it is the only free or at least free-ish source of energy in orbit.

Solar wind? And no, I have no clue where they have managed to get with that idea so far. It just seems that an infinite source of highly charged particles ought to be persuaded to share some of that energy.

[Tellos Athenaios]

It does share Fortunately, we have a magnetosphere and distance to protect ourselves from that: round our parts the Sun's power output is diluted by a factor of 1.5 * 10^9 due to distance alone, diluted further the farther we get from the Sun. Which means within the Earth's magnetosphere it's not at all a useful source for propulsion. To be sure that is better than the alternative, without such protection solar storms could fry the electronics of the craft before it even got going.

[a completely inoffensive name]

If you remember the original idea was collecting energy for a space elevator sometimes it would be in shadow so it would require IF you wanted 24hr energy more than one harvesting site.

A space elevator is going to be one long rail from earth's surface into low/high earth orbit. It is going to look like an orange with a pin sticking out of it. The earth is going to be rotating and thus the space elevator is going to be whipping around 360 degrees every 24 hours. You are not going to have a single solar collector be able to harvest energy and beam it directly to the elevator at all times, I don't think it is possible to maintain the orbits I am imagining in my head. Yeah, I don't think it would be physically possible. You would need at least two such solar collectors, which means at any given point, one is sitting there doing nothing, just being expensive to maintain its orbit.

No need for batteries at all ACIN although you could do it by that method if you liked or you could also use microwaves sent to a central collection point or lasers or you could reflect sunlight to a single solar orbiting farm there are lots of possibilities. There is no need to send the energy to earth which I think is where we getting crossed purposes here.

What I am saying is that all energy harvested by the solar collector(s) must be consumed immediately, otherwise the energy is wasted. Any sort of "collection" or "storage" involves batteries. You need to take what ever energy you are not using and immediately turn it into potential energy somehow or you just lose the energy outright. A storage of potential electrical energy is practically the definition of a battery. So unless we want all excess energy wasted, or we somehow managed to have the space elevator maintain a constant energy usage at all times, we will need batteries up there.

I never said it would be highly efficient but it is the only free or at least free-ish source of energy in orbit.

I don't see anything wrong with what NASA has been doing with its long range space craft for decades. Putting a small-medium size nuclear reactor to power the equipment for decades. Voyager 1 and 2 are still active, albeit with many systems shut down to conserve what it left.

[Vladimir]

There is already a solar collector that collects energy from all visible wavelengths.



It's not all that much more economical than other methods of energy generation. If you are talking about photo voltaic cells then you got some problems. I am not an expert in the technology, but my understanding of it is that if you want a wider range of wavelengths to be absorbed you are going to need compounds that either absorb wider ranges or you are going to need multiple different compounds to each be turning the photons into excited electrons.

Obviously this problem is evident if we are talking about a world where the rare earths are held hostage by china. Also, it says nothing of its economics simply by being able to absorb the spectrum. What will matter is how efficiently it will do the job. Off the top of my head, I think commercial solar panels are...30% efficient? If we had solar panels that were 70-80% efficient that would suit our needs just fine for many applications without trying to branch out the spectrum absorbed.

I can't remember what the percentages were but it was a multi-layered cell. The problem was in getting the hexagonal "pixels" to align perfectly on each layer. That is a reflecting concentrator; different.

I saw Die Another Day again this weekend, maybe we should make it out of diamonds.

[Papewaio]

Meh basic 3D geometry means that something at a sufficient distance from either pole can view the space elevator at all times.

I wouldn't bother as it isn't a stable position. I'd use Lagrange points as main distribution hubs.

I'd look at trading some of the materials from asteroids to pay for components needed in the mining. But the real end game would be using materials in space to create habitats on asteroids, planets, moons and then colony arks to take us into the Oort cloud and beyond.

Right now we are a single cell immobile creature called earth stuck in the petri dish called our solar system.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Meh basic 3D geometry means that something at a sufficient distance from either pole can view the space elevator at all times.

I wouldn't bother as it isn't a stable position. I'd use Lagrange points as main distribution hubs.

I'd look at trading some of the materials from asteroids to pay for components needed in the mining. But the real end game would be using materials in space to create habitats on asteroids, planets, moons and then colony arks to take us into the Oort cloud and beyond.

Right now we are a single cell immobile creature called earth stuck in the petri dish called our solar system.

Wait where are you picturing the space elevator being built? Anywhere between......like the arctic and antarctic circles and the space elevator is going to be blocked from the solar collector by the earth itself as it is rotating.

[Papewaio]

The optimum position for the space elevator would be equatorial. From a purely geometrical not practical point of view you could view the space elevator like the hands of a clock from a polar aligned position in space with a high enough altitude.

I wouldn't bother with a single collector for a number of reasons. I would use a mix of Lagrange points, geostionary and polar orbits with redundancy built in to a series of micro power relays and maser the energy to it. I'd look at using frequencies that would be easily absorbed by the atmosphere to minimize accidents and/or weaponisation.

This way the elevator becomes not only a transport mechanism but a way of increasing energy to earth.