This PowerPoint explorers the reasons why we should consider and develop solar power outside our atmosphere (space based) and transmit the collected power to earth-based antennas. It describes the limitations of earth-based green energy and its lack of ability to replace fossil fuels because of cost and lack of energy output.

1. Space Based Energy Energy & Spacepower from the last frontier Presentation Visualizations Courtesy Right Hemisphere George w. Earle NSBE-AE Space SIG

2. The next 100 years What we know to be true Everyone wants to be Free? Energy Need Background My grandkids are 95 Future value of solving this now We can’t get there from here Energy Use Background Energy Supply Background What we must learn What we must do Sustainable leaps Note: superscript references refer to the Appendix Reference

3. What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know.It's what we know for sure that just ain't so. Mark Twain At current rates of global consumption, there are sufficient oil and gas supplies to last well into the next century21. Our Man-Made Energy Crisis, Wall St. Journal, 3/2011

5. Inconvenient Truth, © 2006

6. 20% of the worlds oil comes from only 14 giant oilfields that are 50 years old

8. Freedom’s Energy Issues The primary issues are therefore: Too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and A dearth of storable, renewable energy. Atmospheric Goals The human world could irrevocably affect its coasts and economic sustainability ignoring CO2 growth and habitat elimination pulling the atmospheric CO2 level from today's 379 ppm down to 350 ppm (a level which would probably stabilize Greenland and Antarctica) requires the net capture of about 230 billion tons of carbon dioxide20 Renewable Energy Goals The world will bankrupt itself trying to provide US – equivalent power to 10 billion people to solve the greenhouse problem, the fuels must be able to deliver sufficient energy to the user to replace what we'd otherwise require from fossil fuels20 And it must grow linearly with the needs of a large human population Therefore either pull increasing CO2from the air or stop creating it in the first place, or both.

9. Premise The world’s energy needs will double by 2050. Total energy from all terrestrial carbon based and terrestrial solar power now is only half this number. We will not be able to generate this level of energy from all nonrenewal energy. Power output must be maintained indefinitely. Conventional power systems are too expensive for the Developing Nations. Six kilowatts of thermal power now costs 50% of their average per capita income18. NASA is losing interest from the public because it is only interested in scientific pursuits. NASA could change the public interest level by building a case for national energy policy changes using space-based solar power, specifically on the moon1,3,4,11.

10. My grandkids are 95 Future value of solving this now If all works out, my grandkids will be 95 in 2115. that is close enough to care about. All our economic oil scenarios stop at 2050. Why? Oil depletion from a 20-model average shows22: Peak Oil: 94-mbd in 2022 Post-peak production Avg Decline Rate to 2050: 0.7%/yr The year 50% of URR/EUR has been extracted: 2031 The year flow breaches below today's (2010) 86-mbd: 2040

12. USA burns about 23 Quads of gas & diesel in vehicles

13. Replacing all fossil fuel energy in the US only with Biomass would take 80 Quads

14. 80 Quads of Biomass is about 400 million (M) acres over what we have now

15. In 1997, only had 331M Acres of Farmland26

16. We would have to DOUBLE the farmland in the US alone

17. Can we make more land?Need this much again Biomass farmland BioMass Answer?Where do we find this much farm land?

19. Current Uranium use about 68,000 tU/yr. World's resource (5.4 Mt) enough to last for about 80 years24

20. To replace fossil fuel, 20X more nuclear plants must be built ( US only!)

21. Therefore we’d run out of fuel 20x faster. Can’t make more Uranium.

22. Risks: radioactive iodine, -- half-life of eight days. soil with strontium-90 and caesium-137, half-lives of about 30 yearsNuclear Answer?Is it enough?Safe enough?

23. What we must learnSpace Based Solar Power Energy needs will double by 2050. Total energy from terrestrial carbon and terrestrial solar power now is only ½ this number. But intriguingly, every day, the moon receives 1000 times this amount (~13,000 TW) 2. Are we ostriches?

25. Synthetic-aperture radars on the Space Shuttle demonstrated multibeam transmission of pulsed power directed to Earth from orbit18

26. But, Power beams are considered esoteric and a technology of the distant future.We need to be able to simply demonstrate its feasibility.

28. Each lunar power base would be augmented by fields of solar converters located on the back side of the moon28

29. Solar cells collect sunlight, and buried electrical wires carry the solar energy as electric power to microwave generators28.

32. The moon is ideal for solar arrays:

33. There is no air or water to degrade large area thin film devices

34. The high cost of transportation to and from the moon is cancelled out by sending machines and small factories to the moon

36. Power Transmission Research Projects

37. Sustainable leaps Power Beam demo Uses same frequency as Moon to Earth link Power 12V electronic circuit Efficiency about equal to coal plant in only the demo! (30%) SpaceX.com 10 to 100X lower cost in LEO launch cost than governmental organizations16 Solar technologies benefit from Moore’s Law34 Other energy companies don’t benefit from semiconductor material science and equipment improvements

38. Terrestrial Solar

39. Energy & Spacepower from the last frontier

40. Appendix APower Plant Types Typical coal plant power and output 600 MW for $1.5 billion http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34746.pdf CO2emitted -- 209 pounds CO2per MMBtu Coal Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle plant 600 MW for $2B CO2emitted -- 209 pounds CO2per MMBtu Natural Gas plant 500 MW for $0.5B CO2emitted – 117 pounds CO2per MMBtu Nuclear plant 2200 MW for $10B Wind plant 200 MW for $0.350B Geothermal plant 35 MW for $0.120B Terrestrial Solar Thermal plant 300 MW for $1B Terrestrial Solar Photovoltaic plant 14MW for $0.1B

42. Current fossil fuel US electric generation output = 3000 billion kilowatt-hours or 10 Quads

43. There are about 5,400 power plants in the United States.

44. USA burns about 17 quads of gasoline in vehicles

45. Replacing all fossil fuel energy in the US only with Biomass would take about 400 million acres over what we have now

46. In 2003, only about 380 million acres for all crops were planted in the entire USA!

47. CO2 problem

48. stop the increase of atmospheric CO2, we need to cut emissions on the order of 80%

50. Appendix DReferences http://www.nss.org/resources/library/spacepolicy/HSF_Cmte_FinalReport.pdf http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/04/020416073334.htm http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/is-space-exploration-worth-the-cost-a-freakonomics-quorum/ http://wiki.idebate.org/en/index.php/Debate:Funding_for_space_exploration http://history.nasa.gov/sep.htm http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/asteroids/2 http://www.aip.org/fyi/2008/070.html http://azerbaijan-news.blogspot.com/ http://zuserver2.star.ucl.ac.uk/~iac/case_for_space.html http://www.esa.int/esaMI/SME_Achievements/SEMX29L8IOE_0.html http://www.slate.com/id/2155164 http://esapub.esrin.esa.it/microgra/micrv9n1/fuhv9n1.htm http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issues/policy/chinese-nuclear-policy/PDFs/China_Space_Johnson_Freese%5B1%5D.pdf http://cleantechnica.com/2009/04/18/space-based-solar-power-satellite-program-from-pge-and-solaren/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30198977/ http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/atlasv.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouyang_Ziyuan http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=1149636 http://www.scholastic.com/kids/exit.asp?url=http://science.nasa.gov/Realtime/jtrack/3d/JTrack3d.html

51. Appendix DReferences http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/11/27/0432/3533 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703386704576186622682563228.html#articleTabs%3Darticle http://www.trendlines.ca/free/peakoil/Scenarios/scenarios.htm Universität Leipzig, Dr. Dieter Freude 2010 http://uni-leipzig.de/~energy/ef/21.htm World Nuclear Organization (WNO) 12/2010 http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf75.html http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34746.pdf http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/technical/NRI/maps/meta/m4983.html http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epa_sum.html http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-8/iss-2/p12.pdf http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/19296/ http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/2010/07/05/us-commits-2-billion-to-two-solar-power-companies/ http://www.agci.org/dB/PPTs/03S2_DCriswell_0710.pdf http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/studies/final_report/880Chirikjian.pdf http://87.224.35.44/tech_papers/17th_congress/4_1_33.asp http://www.techeye.net/chips/moores-law-begins-to-shake-up-solar-industry