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Orbital Solar Power: Going to the Source |
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Dr. Samuel Says -
Weirdness
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Thursday, 22 May 2008 |
Clicking around, looking for various solar powered gadgets (they make lovely gifts during the wedding season), it occurred to me that one could easily operate an entire retail store offering only solar powered equipment. I figured I ought to google this up before jumping into another hastily-considered entrepreneurial project. Good thing I did, as several dozen such stores already exist, most in the Southwest, predictably.
 There go my retirement plans. At any rate, solar shopping is a lot of
fun. You can find hundreds of very fun and/or highly dubious solar
powered gadgets on the market. For instance, the solar-powered rain
sensor. This is ridiculous on a number of levels, of course. For
instance, I suspect that -- with a little effort -- one can detect rain
without a sensor of any variety. (As Mr. Zimmerman said, you don't need
a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.). Then there's the
solar-powered self-cooling pith helmet.
In other solar power news, I'm heartened to see that the international
scientific community is rallying around the concept of orbital solar
panels. The U.S. has been dragging its feet on this one forever. The
concept of collecting solar energy from space has been around since the
1960s. According to reports from the valiant folks at Space.Com, NASA
still spends around $22 million annually on research in this very area.
There's even talk of building large array solar "farms" on the moon.
Understandably, it's the matter of transmitting the energy back to
Earth which is making people nervous. According to one proposed test
program, microwave receptor sites on the ground would range from one to
five square kilometers. The healthy skeptic may wish to ponder the
effect of a satellite transmission knocked off target -- picture a
giant 5-km microwave beam cutting a wide swath through, say, Cleveland.
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