Make Money in $pace

If you follow me on Twitter you know I'm taking a class on commercial enterprises in space (echo, echo, echo)...

My first homework assignment was to mind several new applications for space commerce that aren't on the list of typical applications (like GPS, etc.) I thought some of you guys might be interested in what I came up with. Feel free to comment.

1. Geoengineering (Sun Shade)

According to Wikipedia, geoengineering is "application of technology for the purpose of influencing the global properties of a planet". One method to influence global properties that specifically requires deployment in space is the sun shade (Wikipedia article on sun shade). The sun shade is theorized to reduce global warming by deploying a series of mirrors to the inner Lagrange point (L1) to reflect light away from the earth. Although this is one scientific solution that theoretically would need to be deployed once, it would take 25 years and cost several trillion dollars over the life of the project even using $50/kg for launch costs (see article from National Academy of Science).

See BBC report for illustrations on how mirrors will be placed in space.


2. Mining

As the world searches for renewable sources of energy one alternative is to use materials from space. One applicaiton requires mining helium-3 from the moon to be used in fusion power plants on earth. Helium-3 is not pletiful on earth, but it is on the moon due to exposure to solar wind. Fusion power is cleaner the current nuclear power plants and according to this article, "just 40 tons of this stuff has enough potential energy to meet the total U.S. electricity demand for a year. " According to this report, the Russians are planning a moon base by 2015 to mine for helium-3. One issue with using helium-3 is that the development and deployment of fusion reactors on earth is still decades away and so the urgent demand for commercializing the mining of helium-3 may not exist in the short term.


3. Solar Power Collector/Transmitter

According to Wikipedia, a solar power satellite (Powersat or SPS) is a "satellite built in high Earth orbit that uses microwave power transmission to beam solar power to a very large antenna on Earth." Three conditions required for this technology to compete with conventional energy sources are (from Wikipedia):

• "Sufficiently low launch costs can be achieved
• A determination (by governments and industry) is made that the disadvantages of fossil fuel use are so large they must be substantially replaced.
• Conventional energy costs increase sufficiently to provoke serious search for alternative energy"

One alternative being considered is to use a Powersat as the counterweight in a space elevator. The counterweight is placed in GEO and connects the tether to the climber in the space elevator. The altitude and mass of the counterweight could be satisfied by the design of the Powersat. The unification of the two solutions could reduce the cost of development for both technologies.

According to Wikipedia on the commercial value:
If the lifetime of an SPS is 20 years and it delivers 5 gigawatts to the grid, the commercial value of that power is (5,000,000,000 watts)/(1000 watts/kilowatt) = 5,000,000 kilowatts, which multiplied by $.05 per kW•h gives $250,000 revenue per hour. $250,000 × 24 hours × 365 days × 20 years = $43,800,000,000.

4. Cubesat

Although a cubesat could be considered more a technology than an application, I found this interesting article. The National Science Foundation will be using cubesats for weather and atmospheric research. According to the article, the NSF will spend $500,000 initially and then another $1 million in 2009. As more commercial uses are discovered for cubesat the technology will be source of revenue for space commerce.