New Mars Forums

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,231

Re: Energy Supply in Solar System vs Productive Use

For SpaceNut re #25

Your closing line suggesting (hinting at) using the ISS to test equipment to beam power using electronic beam forming is inspiring!

That makes perfect sense (to me at least).  While the path of the ISS is NOT illuminated constantly as the dawn/dusk polar orbit would be, it ** does ** have the dynamic characteristics that need to be tested.  The path of the ISS with respect to the Earth is predictable.  It is disturbed (slightly) by drag (in one direction) and by anti-drag boosts on the other, but those perturbations are (probably) not sufficient to seriously impact planning for a test of power transmission.

Furthermore (letting your suggestion play out a bit...) ... the social approval of winning a flight to the ISS would be a powerful assist to the overall challenge of selling the concept to the public.

The military will (I suspect) continue their experiments for tactical power support for remote deployments, but they (Army in particular) might become allies in an initiative to build the first Dawn/Dusk polar orbit energy supply system.

I think your hint in favor of thinking higher rather than lower orbits is helpful as well, because the lower altitudes are cluttered with West to East traffic.  Hopefully the amount of cross-traffic at 1000 miles (1620 km) is ** much ** less.

It should be possible to be able to learn what the satellite flux at various altitudes may be, because of military (and civilian?) monitoring to predict collisions.

Help wanted: If there is anyone in the membership who has posting privileges AND who has an idea of how to find out what the flux of satellite traffic may be at various altitudes, please post it.

If there is anyone not currently a member who is inspired to help with this initiative (Dawn/Dusk Polar SPS) please read Recruiting topic Post #2 and apply.

(th)

kbd512

Administrator

Registered: 2015-01-02

Posts: 7,812

Re: Energy Supply in Solar System vs Productive Use

tahanson43206,

You'll need to do some data analysis in Excel, but the data is available:

Satellite Map

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,231

Re: Energy Supply in Solar System vs Productive Use

For kbd512 re #27

Thanks for the link to an impressive display!

The site quotes 19,233 satellites ... that is a number that (hopefully) includes junk bodies as well as working satellites, but I'll learn more.

https://maps.esri.com/rc/sat2/index.html

I'd ** definitely ** be interested in observations/comments by other forum members.

ABOUT
This application was designed and developed by Esri's Applications Prototype Lab in Redlands, California. The application was built using the following technologies:

ArcGIS API for JavaScript (version 4) by Esri
Bootstrap by Twitter Inc
Bootstrap Slider by Kyle J. Kemp
Google Fonts, specifically Orbitron and Oswald
jQuery by the jQuery Foundation Inc.
satellite-js by Shashwat Kandadai and UCSC
Satellite descriptions and ephemeris are sourced from space-tracker.org. The satellite-js JavaScript library is used to convert the TLE for each satellite into a geographic location.

Souce code for this application can be found here.

I was taken aback to find the organization that supports this website is located in Redlands, California!  I had the opportunity to live there for a year or so.  It was a sleepy valley town at that time, although the University seemed respected.

Edit later: The display is updating at a rate of about once per second.  The updates are visible if the view is enlarged to zoom in on the Earth.

(th)

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,428

Re: Energy Supply in Solar System vs Productive Use

Here is another use for solar panels creative method for generating electricity by covering a canal with them.

Mars_B4_Moon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-23

Posts: 9,776

Re: Energy Supply in Solar System vs Productive Use

Parker observes powerful coronal mass ejection 'vacuum up' interplanetary dust

https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Park … t_999.html

Is Space-Based Solar Power Ready for Its Moment in the Sun?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti … n-the-sun/

Around the world, researchers are betting that beamed power from space could be the next big thing for clean energy on Earth

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-09-25 04:21:31)