01-02-2021, 11:27 AM | #21 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: GURPS O'Neill Cylinder Design
Solar power sats make sense if you can get launch costs below a certain threshold (which we are nowhere close to).
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01-02-2021, 11:32 AM | #22 | |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: GURPS O'Neill Cylinder Design
Quote:
Or occasionally some mega-structure like an space elevator or orbital ring.
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01-02-2021, 11:45 AM | #23 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
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Re: GURPS O'Neill Cylinder Design
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01-02-2021, 03:33 PM | #24 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: GURPS O'Neill Cylinder Design
SPS is easily achievable at a cost of ~$300,000/ton launch cost and the development of lunar mines. As long as ~99% of the materials are taken from the Moon, the economics are actually fairly good, as it ends up resulting in a wholesale electricity cost of ~$10/MW-h. It is actually much better than contemporary renewable sources when you subtract the tax credits and other subsidies, especially since you do not have to bother with the environmental consequences of mining rare earths.
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01-02-2021, 05:54 PM | #25 |
Join Date: Jan 2006
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Re: GURPS O'Neill Cylinder Design
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01-02-2021, 06:36 PM | #26 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: GURPS O'Neill Cylinder Design
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01-02-2021, 06:38 PM | #27 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: GURPS O'Neill Cylinder Design
By designing your microwave transmitter without the ability to focus to dangerous levels. A typical geostationary orbit transmitter is something like a 1 kilometer transmitter and a ten kilometer rectenna, which won't be useful as a weapon unless your power is in the tens to hundreds of gigawatts (and the physics simply doesn't permit a transmitter of that side to focus to smaller than that area).
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01-03-2021, 05:53 AM | #28 | |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: GURPS O'Neill Cylinder Design
Quote:
I mean, you probably can still use it as an economic weapon to disrupt your opponent's weather patterns, but that's a slow process that takes time to bear fruit.
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Be helpful, not pedantic Worlds Beyond Earth -- my blog Check out the PbP forum! If you don't see a game you'd like, ask me about making one! |
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01-03-2021, 11:09 AM | #29 | ||
Join Date: Jan 2006
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Re: GURPS O'Neill Cylinder Design
Quote:
Quote:
Orbiting gigawatt blasts are better for gaming mind you. |
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01-03-2021, 12:53 PM | #30 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: GURPS O'Neill Cylinder Design
The primary economic advantage of SPS is you need a 1/5th as much solar gathering capacity, plus you do not need the storage capacity for 4x the hourly production as on the surface. In essence, 50% of the time is night and, for the day, you average 50% production, as solar intensities waxes and wanes throughout the day, plus you have cloud cover and storage inefficiencies, meaning that a nation like the USA would need 140,000 square kilometers of solar panels and 80 million metric tons of lithium ion batteries. Since the materials for lithium ion batteries cost $7,500 per metric ton, the material costs alone for the batteries would be over $600 billion, and that it before prices increase due to increased demand.
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Tags |
o'neill, o'neill cylinder, oberth cylinder, orbital habitat, space station, spaceships |
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