New Mars Forums

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,356

Large Ship Power Supply Solar Nuclear Other

Large Ship Prime is: Large scale colonization ship by RobertDyck

This topic is offered as a way to consolidate posts about power supply design in the Large Ship.

Posts entered into this topic will (hopefully) remain on topic, so that a future Large Ship planner can focus upon the topic.

It should be noted that this topic is intended to cover both the design unique to Large Ship (Prime) and other designs.

In both cases, what I am looking for are contributions that will be useful and hopefully valuable to future builders.

It is to be expected that all designs will be built and extensively tested on Earth before anyone floats inside on orbit.

***
This new topic is inspired by a post of kbd512, in the Large Ship (Prime) topic.

While the Large Ship (Prime) may be entirely powered by solar power, no other variation will be so limited.

Nuclear fission is a reasonable choice of reliable power supply for a vessel traveling far from Earth, in a hostile environment.

Solar power is a reasonable choice for secondary power supply, so I would expect all designs to study Large Ship (Prime) for a model of that system.

(th)

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,356

Re: Large Ship Power Supply Solar Nuclear Other

Mars_B4_Moon just posted a link to news of an improved solar cell for space use.

Such a solar cell might be of interest to designers of Large Ships.

https://interestingengineering.com/spac … -panels-33

The statement adds that, "the IMM-β is also a radiation-hard cell with a power remaining factor of 87% after exposure to 1-MeV electrons at a fluence of 1E15 e/cm2 or equivalent of about 15 years life in GEO."

I note the projected 15 year lifetime in GEO.... Large Ship will be operating in the equivalent of GEO for most of it's service life, so solar cells chosen to support life aboard the ship must be chosen to survive deep space radiation for an extended period.

(th)

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,431

Re: Large Ship Power Supply Solar Nuclear Other

First off the panels are 33.3% efficient but the real deal closer is that they are 40% lighter and since we need about 3 times as many to provide the same energy as 1 panel does we are getting closer to being able to use solar from the mass reduction and energy efficiency improvement.

As far as Nasa and Nuclear goes that is the current status quo of not being able to have them in space.