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John C. Mankins

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The Case for Space Solar Power Kindle Edition

by John Mankins (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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This book makes the Case for Space Solar Power; recounting the history of this fascinating concept and summarizing the many different ways in which it might be accomplished. It describes in detail a highly promising concept – SPS-ALPHA (Solar Power Satellite by means of Arbitrarily Large Phased Array) – and presents a business case comprising applications in space and markets on Earth. The book explains how it is possible to begin now with technologies that are already at hand, while developing the more advanced technologies that will be needed to deliver power economically to markets on Earth. The Case for Space Solar Power concludes by laying out a path forward that is both doable and affordable: within a dozen years or less, the first multi-megawatt pilot plant could be in operation. Getting started could cost less than $10 million over the first 2 years, less than $100 million over the next half dozen years.

Given that Space Solar Power would transform our future in space, and might provide a new source of virtually limitless and sustainable energy to markets across the world, the book poses the question: why wouldn't we pursue Space Solar Power?

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763 pages
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5 January 2014
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ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00HNZ0Z96
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Virginia Edition Publishing; First Edition (5 January 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 8422 KB
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Print length ‏ : ‎ 763 pages

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BruceMc

Excellent report on the leading edge

Reviewed in Australia on 9 January 2015

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Firstly, let me say, I support most space initiatives and I am encouraged by the developments that are now taking place, especially in the commercial space arena. The concept of Space Power Satellites (SPS) have been around for some time, and this book is an excellent source of the history and current state (as at publication) of the developments in this and related areas. The author obviously knows his subject well and the development of the case is well reasoned. However, the impediment to progress is always the unknown, i.e. how government(s) will receive the program and set budgets, whether any of the R&D goals are taken up and how rapidly they are achieved, the lack of progress in key technology areas such as affordable reusable launch vehicles and in-space transportation, and new technologies not now imagined that could leap-frog the need for SPS. The author presents a roadmap that is sufficiently long and cognisant of the difficulties that suggests that an SPS could be in GEO and providing power on the Earth within a dozen years. Given the propensity for projects, especially large ones, to overshoot their schedules and budgets, I suspect this may be optimistic. But for the sake of all, humanity in general as well as space advocates, let us hope that the goals are ultimately achieved.

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Adam D.A. Manning

Timely update and overview of what is a fascinating possibility for our future!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 November 2015

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The Case for Space Solar Power
By John Mankins

Book review by Adam Manning

Space Solar Power has always seemed a tantalisingly attractive concept; harnessing some of the enormous and endless power of the Sun that comes our way and putting it to work here at home. The basic structure consists of large solar power stations in space that receive energy directly from the sun’s rays. This energy is then converted into a form that can be transmitted through the Earth’s atmosphere to receiving stations on the ground and then distributed for use across the power grid. If implemented, Space Solar Power (SSP) could have enormous implications for energy use, for technology and for our geo-political relationships that are driven by the powerful influence of our currently petroleum based economy.

This book is a timely update on SSP with a detailed review of its origin and development, a new proposal for possible implementation and a look at its overall feasibility. The author has had a long career with NASA, including ten years as the manager of its Advanced Concept Studies, and is recognised as a leading figure on SSP at present.

In the 1970s the SSP concept became linked closely with large scale plans for space settlement put forward by Dr Gerard O’Neill and one of the themes of this book is that this wasn’t, in retrospect, helpful to the development of SSP research. The initial conceptions of SSP were very large scale projects, with references to stations, usually positioned in geostationary orbit, several miles in diameter and involving hundreds of launches to establish the necessary hardware in space.

When plans of this scale were produced in the late 1970s, their enormity made them an immediate target for rejection and even ridicule. In his book, Mankins puts this forward as one of the reasons why SSP has never been taken seriously since, despite it’s obvious logical attractiveness. This history of almost scorn has perhaps held back research on the technical issues that need examining if a practical project is to be implemented.

The Case for Solar Power puts forward a detailed account of a new proposal for SSP – the SPS – ALPHA. A beautiful design, it takes older suggestions and updates them for the 21st century. Using a high degree of modularity and the latest in robotics, it is still a very large scale project but the use of modern engineering techniques reduces the eye watering costs of earlier proposals. It is the discussion of the costs involved that takes us to the heart of the SSP issue. It is widely accepted that SSP does not involve any major technological breakthroughs in the same way that fusion power does. Yet the argument has always centred on whether, given the enormous costs of the full implementing SSP, would it be worth it. Would the huge expenditure involved ever be paid for by the sale of the energy SSP would produce?

Mankins admirably takes into account not just the SSP system itself but also analyses the costs of the huge number of launches that such a system would require. Launch capacity is an important issue for SSP and The Case for Solar Power considers future reusable launch vehicles and the role they would play in transferring the SPS – ALPHA system to GEO.

I’m not going to reveal the author’s overall conclusions – please read the book for that! The book reinforced my view that more basic research into wireless power transmission needs to be carried out as this will help make the answers to these issues clearer and The Case for Solar Power does provide details of recent studies on this, especially those carried out in Japan.

In the original plans from the 1970s, SSP and the huge space habitats proposed by Dr O’Neill formed an almost parasitical relationship with each other – the one justifying the existence of the other. The more modern view set out in The Case for Solar Power suggests this is no longer the case and SSP can be independent of any large scale space settlement, although it is likely that a much more substantial orbital infrastructure will have to arise as a result of the construction of a project the size of SPS - ALPHA. If proponents of O’Neillian scale space habitats are justifying them with the benefits of SSP, Mankins’ book does not provide a clear foundation for that justification. Nevertheless, Mankins’ vision is of a much greater extension of human activity into space, with SSP playing an important role.

A particularly useful element of the book is a consideration of how SSP might fit with other means of energy production, especially fitting with renewal energy and the markets that might have a use for it. This more practical approach is to be welcomed after the long period of only viewing it in global energy terms.

On a more global scale though Mankins notes how SSP could play an important role in a system of energy production that seeks to mitigate global climate change. If SSP could fulfil this function, there is an urgent need to investigate it in more detail with a view to its practical implementation.

This readable and well set out book is to be greatly welcomed as an update of the concept and is highly recommended to anyone with an interest in the subject.

Robert S Wegeng

Space Solar Power is an important future energy resource for the Earth

Reviewed in the United States on 10 February 2014

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This book presents the argument for an exciting method of accessing renewable energy from our neighbor, the Sun. The approach presented by the author, John Mankins, a visionary technologist and former NASA manager, leverages and builds upon the investments of government, and more recently, private industry, in space technologies and infrastructure, and advances in microelectronics and robotics, with the goal of establishing orbiting satellites that efficiently and affordably collect and beam energy from the Sun to receiving stations on the Earth.

Fossil energy fueled the Industrial Revolution, a period of enormous economic growth and improvements in living standards, providing substantial benefits to the developed nations during the 19th and 20th centuries. However, in the 21st century, as other nations seek to emulate the economic success of their neighbors, attempting to provide a means to reduce poverty and achieve economic growth, it is becoming abundantly clear that the fossil energy approach is unsustainable. We simply must develop alternative, renewable energy resources if our civilization is to continue to flourish.

Terrestrial solar and wind will become important energy sources, but they are unfortunately intermittent. Space Solar Power can deliver energy 24 hours per day. Mankins' book puts forth a viable plan for how we can establish Space Solar Power as a viable cornerstone for our renewable energy future.

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John Walker

Rethinking space solar power satellites for the 21st century

Reviewed in the United States on 3 October 2019

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As world population continues to grow and people in the developing world improve their standard of living toward the level of residents of industrialised nations, demand for energy will increase enormously. Even taking into account anticipated progress in energy conservation and forecasts that world population will reach a mid-century peak and then stabilise, the demand for electricity alone is forecasted to quadruple in the century from 2000 to 2100. If electric vehicles shift a substantial part of the energy consumed for transportation from hydrocarbon fuels to electricity, the demand for electric power will be greater still.

Providing this electricity in an affordable, sustainable way is a tremendous challenge. Most electricity today is produced by burning fuels such as coal, natural gas, and petroleum; by nuclear fission reactors; and by hydroelectric power generated by dams. Quadrupling electric power generation by any of these means poses serious problems. Fossil fuels may be subject to depletion, pose environmental consequences both in extraction and release of combustion products into the atmosphere, and are distributed unevenly around the world, leading to geopolitical tensions between have and have-not countries. Uranium fission is a technology with few environmental drawbacks, but operating it in a safe manner is very demanding and requires continuous vigilance over the decades-long lifespan of a power station. Further, the risk exists that nuclear material can be diverted for weapons use, especially if nuclear power stations proliferate into areas which are politically unstable. Hydroelectric power is clean, generally reliable (except in the case of extreme droughts), and inexhaustible, but unfortunately most rivers which are suitable for its generation have already been dammed, and potential projects which might be developed are insufficient to meet the demand.

Well, what about those “sustainable energy” projects the environmentalists are always babbling about: solar panels, eagle shredders (wind turbines), and the like? They do generate energy without fuel, but they are not the solution to the problem. In order to understand why, we need to look into the nature of the market for electricity, which is segmented into two components, even though the current flows through the same wires. The first is “base load” power. The demand for electricity varies during the day, from day to day, and seasonally (for example, electricity for air conditioning peaks during the mid-day hours of summer). The base load is the electricity demand which is always present, regardless of these changes in demand. If you look at a long-term plot of electricity demand and draw a line through the troughs in the curve, everything below that line is base load power and everything above it is “peak” power. Base load power is typically provided by the sources discussed in the previous paragraph: hydrocarbon, nuclear, and hydroelectric. Because there is a continuous demand for the power they generate, these plants are designed to run non-stop (with excess capacity to cover stand-downs for maintenance), and may be complicated to start up or shut down. In Switzerland, for example, 56% of base load power is produced from hydroelectric plants and 39% from nuclear fission reactors.

The balance of electrical demand, peak power, is usually generated by smaller power plants which can be brought on-line and shut down quickly as demand varies. Peaking plants sell their power onto the grid at prices substantially higher than base load plants, which compensates for their less efficient operation and higher capital costs for intermittent operation. In Switzerland, most peak energy is generated by thermal plants which can burn either natural gas or oil.

Now the problem with “alternative energy” sources such as solar panels and windmills becomes apparent: they produce neither base load nor peak power. Solar panels produce electricity only during the day, and when the Sun is not obscured by clouds. Windmills, obviously, only generate when the wind is blowing. Since there is no way to efficiently store large quantities of energy (all existing storage technologies raise the cost of electricity to uneconomic levels), these technologies cannot be used for base load power, since they cannot be relied upon to continuously furnish power to the grid. Neither can they be used for peak power generation, since the times at which they are producing power may not coincide with times of peak demand. That isn't to say these energy sources cannot be useful. For example, solar panels on the roofs of buildings in the American southwest make a tremendous amount of sense since they tend to produce power at precisely the times the demand for air conditioning is greatest. This can smooth out, but not replace, the need for peak power generation on the grid.

If we wish to dramatically expand electricity generation without relying on fossil fuels for base load power, there are remarkably few potential technologies. Geothermal power is reliable and inexpensive, but is only available in a limited number of areas and cannot come close to meeting the demand. Nuclear fission, especially modern, modular designs is feasible, but faces formidable opposition from the fear-based community. If nuclear fusion ever becomes practical, we will have a limitless, mostly clean energy source, but after sixty years of research we are still decades away from an operational power plant, and it is entirely possible the entire effort may fail. The liquid fluoride thorium reactor, a technology demonstrated in the 1960s, could provide centuries of energy without the nuclear waste or weapons diversion risks of uranium-based nuclear power, but even if it were developed to industrial scale it's still a “nuclear reactor” and can be expected to stimulate the same hysteria as existing nuclear technology.

This book explores an entirely different alternative. Think about it: once you get above the Earth's atmosphere and sufficiently far from the Earth to avoid its shadow, the Sun provides a steady 1.368 kilowatts per square metre, and will continue to do so, non-stop, for billions of years into the future (actually, the Sun is gradually brightening, so on the scale of hundreds of millions of years this figure will increase). If this energy could be harvested and delivered efficiently to Earth, the electricity needs of a global technological civilisation could be met with a negligible impact on the Earth's environment. With present-day photovoltaic cells, we can convert 40% of incident sunlight to electricity, and wireless power transmission in the microwave band (to which the Earth's atmosphere is transparent, even in the presence of clouds and precipitation) has been demonstrated at 40% efficiency, with 60% end-to-end efficiency expected for future systems.

Thus, no scientific breakthrough of any kind is required to harvest abundant solar energy which presently streams past the Earth and deliver it to receiving stations on the ground which feed it into the power grid. Since the solar power satellites would generate energy 99.5% of the time (with short outages when passing through the Earth's shadow near the equinoxes, at which time another satellite at a different longitude could pick up the load), this would be base load power, with no fuel source required. It's “just a matter of engineering” to calculate what would be required to build the collector satellite, launch it into geostationary orbit (where it would stay above the same point on Earth), and build the receiver station on the ground to collect the energy beamed down by the satellite. Then, given a proposed design, one can calculate the capital cost to bring such a system into production, its operating cost, the price of power it would deliver to the grid, and the time to recover the investment in the system.

Solar power satellites are not a new idea. In 1968, Peter Glaser published a description of a system with photovoltaic electricity generation and microwave power transmission to an antenna on Earth; in 1973 he was granted U.S. patent 3,781,647 for the system. In the 1970s NASA and the Department of Energy conducted a detailed study of the concept, publishing a reference design in 1979 which envisioned a platform in geostationary orbit with solar arrays measuring 5 by 25 kilometres and requiring a monstrous space shuttle with payload of 250 metric tons and space factories to assemble the platforms. Design was entirely conventional, using much the same technologies as were later used in the International Space Station (ISS) (but for a structure twenty times its size). Given that the ISS has a cost estimated at US$ 150 billion, NASA's 1979 estimate that a complete, operational solar power satellite system comprising 60 power generation platforms and Earth-based infrastructure would cost (in 2014 dollars) between 2.9 and 8.7 trillion might be considered optimistic. Back then, a trillion dollars was a lot of money, and this study pretty much put an end to serious consideration of solar power satellites in the U.S.for almost two decades. In the late 1990s, NASA, realising that much progress has been made in many of the enabling technologies for space solar power, commissioned a “Fresh Look Study”, which concluded that the state of the art was still insufficiently advanced to make power satellites economically feasible.

In this book, the author, after a 25-year career at NASA, recounts the history of solar power satellites to date and presents a radically new design, SPS-ALPHA (Solar Power Satellite by means of Arbitrarily Large Phased Array), which he argues is congruent with 21st century manufacturing technology. There are two fundamental reasons previous cost estimates for solar power satellites have come up with such forbidding figures. First, space hardware is hideously expensive to develop and manufacture. Measured in US$ per kilogram, a laptop computer is around $200/kg, a Boeing 747 $1400/kg, and a smart phone $1800/kg. By comparison, the Space Shuttle Orbiter cost $86,000/kg and the International Space Station around $110,000/kg. Most of the exorbitant cost of space hardware has little to do with the space environment, but is due to its being essentially hand-built in small numbers, and thus never having the benefit of moving down the learning curve as a product is put into mass production nor of automation in manufacturing (which isn't cost-effective when you're only making a few of a product). Second, once you've paid that enormous cost per kilogram for the space hardware, you have launch it from the Earth into space and transport it to the orbit in which it will operate. For communication satellites which, like solar power satellites, operate in geostationary orbit, current launchers cost around US$ 50,000 per kilogram delivered there. New entrants into the market may substantially reduce this cost, but without a breakthrough such as full reusability of the launcher, it will stay at an elevated level.

SPS-ALPHA tackles the high cost of space hardware by adopting a “hyper modular” design, in which the power satellite is composed of huge numbers of identical modules of just eight different types. Each of these modules is on a scale which permits prototypes to be fabricated in facilities no more sophisticated than university laboratories and light enough they fall into the “smallsat” category, permitting inexpensive tests in the space environment as required. A production power satellite, designed to deliver 2 gigawatts of electricity to Earth, will have almost four hundred thousand of each of three types of these modules, assembled in space by 4,888 robot arm modules, using more than two million interconnect modules. These are numbers where mass production economies kick in: once the module design has been tested and certified you can put it out for bids for serial production. And a factory which invests in making these modules inexpensively can be assured of follow-on business if the initial power satellite is a success, since there will a demand for dozens or hundreds more once its practicality is demonstrated. None of these modules is remotely as complicated as an iPhone, and once they are made in comparable quantities shouldn't cost any more. What would an iPhone cost if they only made five of them?

Modularity also requires the design to be distributed and redundant. There is no single-point failure mode in the system. The propulsion and attitude control module is replicated 200 times in the full design. As modules fail, for whatever cause, they will have minimal impact on the performance of the satellite and can be swapped out as part of routine maintenance. The author estimates than on an ongoing basis, around 3% of modules will be replaced per year.

The problem of launch cost is addressed indirectly by the modular design. Since no module masses more than 600 kg (the propulsion module) and none of the others exceed 100 kg, they do not require a heavy lift launcher. Modules can simply be apportioned out among a large number of flights of the most economical launchers available. Construction of a full scale solar power satellite will require between 500 and 1000 launches per year of a launcher with a capacity in the 10 to 20 metric ton range. This dwarfs the entire global launch industry, and will provide motivation to fund the development of new, reusable, launcher designs and the volume of business to push their cost down the learning curve, with a goal of reducing cost for launch to low Earth orbit to US$ 300–500 per kilogram. Note that the SpaceX Falcon Heavy is already priced around US$ 1600/kg with reusability of the three core stages.

The author lays out five “Design Reference Missions” which progress from small-scale tests of a few modules in low Earth orbit to a full production power satellite delivering 2 gigawatts to the electrical grid. He estimates a cost of around US$ 5 billion to the pilot plant demonstrator and 20 billion to the first full scale power satellite. This is not a small sum of money, but is comparable to the approximately US$ 26 billion cost of the Three Gorges Dam in China. Once power satellites start to come on line, each feeding power into the grid with no cost for fuel and modest maintenance expenses (comparable to those for a hydroelectric dam), the initial investment does not take long to be recovered. Further, the power satellite effort will bootstrap the infrastructure for routine, inexpensive access to space, and the power satellite modules can also be used in other space applications (for example, very high power communication satellites).

The most frequently raised objection when power satellites are mentioned is fear that they could be used as a “death ray”. This is, quite simply, nonsense. The microwave power beam arriving at the Earth's surface will have an intensity between 10–20% of summer sunlight, so a mirror reflecting the Sun would be a more effective death ray. Extensive tests were done to determine if the beam would affect birds, insects, and aircraft flying through it and all concluded there was no risk. A power satellite which beamed down its power with a laser could be weaponised, but nobody is proposing that, since it would have problems with atmospheric conditions and cost more than microwave transmission.

This book provides a comprehensive examination of the history of the concept of solar power from space, the various designs proposed over the years and studies conducted of them, and an in-depth presentation of the technology and economic rationale for the SPS-ALPHA system. It presents an energy future which is very different from that which most people envision, provides a way to bring the benefits of electrification to developing regions without any environmental consequences whatever, and ensure a secure supply of electricity for the foreseeable future.

This is a rewarding, but rather tedious read. Perhaps it's due to the author's 25 years at NASA, but the text is cluttered with acronyms—there are fourteen pages of them defined in a glossary at the end of the book—and busy charts, some of which are difficult to read as reproduced in the Kindle edition. Copy editing is so-so: I noted 28 errors, and I wasn't especially looking for them.

Kindle Customer

Brilliant and persuasive!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 May 2014

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This book should be compulsory reading for all those interested in the survival of humankind, including our politicians in particular, in the face of rapidly depleting and increasingly less affordable non-renewable fossil fuel resources upon which civilization is entirely dependent today. It is a brilliant and insightful approach to what must be the highest priority issue for the future of our civilization...

Jeff&I

Could have been great, but author wasn't so good.

Reviewed in the United States on 1 September 2015

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I had high hopes for this book, as it seemed like it would be similar in concept to the way Robert Zubrin described his idea for Mars Direct. Unfortunately, the author of this book, while technically literate, is just not a great writer. The chapters are repetitive and extremely dense. Far too many piles of details with no broad picture (Do I need to compare endless tables and graphs regarding the diameters of struts?). Ultimately, I just couldn't get through this book, which is really rare for me. I did learn of a few interesting factors of SPS design (for example, that the solar collection isn't the hard part, or why receiver stations must be so large, or why we can't just reflect sunlight directly to earth). But the 3x boost in received sunlight doesn't seem to justify an expense approaching a nuclear reactor: Ultimately, I think the costs are so high that SPS will only be a part of the NEXT phase of solar power, namely, AFTER we've already covered a lot of the earth with cheap solar panels, but have exceeded their net output and desperately need even more energy.

Note to author - I see you want to promote SPS - consider teaming up with another author to make a more enjoyable version of the book.

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