Request Paid Contractor Wanted - Solar Power Satellite Module

[Orbinaut Pete]

I must say, this is all very exciting!

I assume the website below is the website of the PowerSat corporation in question?

www.powersat.com

 

[William Maness]

I must say, this is all very exciting!

I assume the website below is the website of the PowerSat corporation in question?

www.powersat.com

Yes indeed.

Best,

William

---------- Post added at 09:36 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:35 AM ----------

Are you talking about an orbital power plant that would beam energy back down to Earth?

Exactly so.

- William

 

[Orbinaut Pete]

I didn't know that it was yet possible to "send power" wirelessly. I have read somewhere that it is possible to send power wirelessly between coils* that are placed near each other, but I didn't know it could be sent wirelessly from Geosynchronous Orbit to the surface of the Earth!
*=like this:

It is a brilliant idea though, I hope it takes off. It would certainly solve a lot of our energy problems!

----
EDIT:

An idea:

You may want to think about giving the contract to multiple people, instead of just one. It is a big project for just one person to undertake, and many people who are skilled at modelling, are not necessarily skilled at coding. It would probably be better to have one person concentrate on modelling, and another concentrate on coding, etc. That way, you can benefit from the skills of many different people, and also increase the speed of development. You would obviously have to split the budget between all developers involved.

Just a thought

 

[William Maness]

I didn't know that it was yet possible to "send power" wirelessly. I have read somewhere that it is possible to send power wirelessly between coils*
... You may want to think about giving the contract to multiple people, instead of just one. ...

Hello Pete,

Inductive transmission is quite limited in range. We use 5.8 Ghz microwave transmission. The end to end efficiency is about 68%. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_power_transmission for a fairly unbiased look.

Regarding separating the modeling and programming. We've got good 3DS Max modeling skills and tools in house (that's where our visualizations are coming from). We aren't overly worried about the 3D aspect of the work, but making it go in Orbiter is something we have no skill at, and no time to develop in house.

Best,

William

 

[T.Neo]

Regarding separating the modeling and programming. We've got good 3DS Max modeling skills and tools in house (that's where our visualizations are coming from). We aren't overly worried about the 3D aspect of the work, but making it go in Orbiter is something we have no skill at, and no time to develop in house.

Converting 3d models of various formats into Orbiter's .msh format is easy. There are several free applications that can be downloaded for this task, and they do not take much skill to operate.

 

[simonpro]

It is a brilliant idea though, I hope it takes off. It would certainly solve a lot of our energy problems!

Well the major problem is the area of solar cells needed. Even in optimum conditions you'd need at least 1sq.m per home, so you'd need a huge area of panels just to power one city.

 

[RisingFury]

I must say I hope big time this project gets in orbit. What kind of an efficiency are we looking at? Would it reach as high as 15%?

Are there any specs for the satellite available to the public? What's the collective area, power,...

I know that over time such a system would drive down the cost of satellite production and launch costs, but would such as system be able to compete with today's commercial power production within 50 years?

---------- Post added at 05:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:18 PM ----------

I didn't know that it was yet possible to "send power" wirelessly. I have read somewhere that it is possible to send power wirelessly between coils* that are placed near each other, but I didn't know it could be sent wirelessly from Geosynchronous Orbit to the surface of the Earth!

You know how a transformer uses two coils? The first one creates a magnetic field and the second one exploits that... a change in magnetic field will induce a voltage in a wire. If you keep changing the magnetic field by having an alternating current, you'll keep on inducing a voltage in the other coil.


Same principle would apply in the image you posted, however, I don't think it's possible to create a field strong enough to get anything useful from orbit. Sending power from orbit would be in a form of laser or some other part of EM spectrum. You just have to pick a wavelength that doesn't get absorbed by the atmosphere much.

Still, the beam would be spread over a large area and you'd have to build a large solar array on the ground at the receiving end, which brings on the question:

Is it more efficient to have a giant solar array in orbit, converting the power to a certain wavelength or a giant mirror that would focus all the light in one spot on Earth?

^^ I don't know enough about solar cells to answer that. I'm not sure if they're more efficient at certain wavelengths then at others.

---------- Post added at 05:39 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:29 PM ----------

Radio waves seem to be the best pick for the transmission, with the atmosphere being pretty much transparent for them in most of the range... however, it's worth thinking about the impact this might have to radio communications and satellites in lower orbits...

 

[Urwumpe]

That's what we're looking for in a developer, and why we are offering to compensate him (or her) for his time. We know that there will be multiple iterations of the satellite model, the control system, auto-pilot, fuel / ISP / Engine technology, etc. We also have specific requirements that aren't usual for Orbiter spacecraft, including counting orbits, pointing arrays not only at the sun, but transmitters at the earth. When we get through the basics, we're going to want to set up station-keeping / formation flying of multiple instances of our spacecraft in GEO. We might even model a power receiver to go on the ground, and have it interact with transmitting satellites to generate an end-to-end simulation. It's an exciting project to be sure, and whoever gets the contract will have much to play with.

Best,

William

Well, the autopilot work would be the major work item, as far as I see it. The universal pointing of antennas and arrays requires some math skills, but not excessively much. Who is scared of matrix multiplication should reconsider. A plain generic module job is also ruled out if you need such advanced autopilots, so C++ would be a requirement. This especially applies if you want to have interaction between satellites and ground station.

Which flight phases do you want to cover? Visualization of launch phase as well? Disposal?

I assume you will use the flight recorder feature of Orbiter for anything experimental, it is no problem to import the data of recorded flights into Matlab for doing post-flight analysis, like, for example counting orbits - unless you need the information inside the simulation for decisions.

Just to make clear: I am 99% sure that I couldn't apply for the job (Lack of time because of university and part-time job; psychologically considering Orbiter free time and fun, not work).

But that is no reason for me to not try to help you find somebody by translating the requirements a bit into "Orbiter".

 

[William Maness]

...

Which flight phases do you want to cover? Visualization of launch phase as well? Disposal?...

Ideally, I'd like to put one on top of a Falcon 9 and do sim all the way to GEO and operation. I'm not worried about simulating de-orbit / inactive orbit transfer. Of course, throwing a dozen of these things in an XR-5 could make for an interesting simulation as well .

Best,

William

 

[Urwumpe]

Ideally, I'd like to put one on top of a Falcon 9 and do sim all the way to GEO and operation. I'm not worried about simulating de-orbit / inactive orbit transfer. Of course, throwing a dozen of these things in an XR-5 could make for an interesting simulation as well .

Best,

William

Awwww. The XR-5 version is just for beginners. The real fun starts if you have to deal with realistically flawed sensors and a dense constellation. Station keeping is not fun if you are only knowing that you have less than 5% fuel left.

Or have the whole constellation dancing out of the way of a rogue Chinese communication satellite. :lol:

Of course... having it all and in a XR-5 would be even more funny.

 

[William Maness]

Hello all,

Just a quick note... I received a reply from Dr. Schweiger. He has no problem with our intended use so long as anything generated for publication credits Orbiter.

Best,

William

 

[Andy44]

Have you looked into AGI's STK program or similar? They can easily simulate earth-pointing with sun constraints and counting rev numbers, and they do animations, too.

They don't simulate systems the way Orbiter can (with a custom DLL), but they will usually be able to write custom apps for their software, especially for paying customers.

STK is expensive, but may be cheaper than a new-hire.

That said, I don't see how counting orbit revs would be hard in Orbiter. You just need to define a rev start point, such as the eastward crossing of the prime longitude or the ascending node crossing, and then check the state vector every time step to look for the telltale sign changes.

Likewise, a sun-constrained earth-pointing autopilot mode is fairly common in real life. The math is not too difficult, although I am not a coder, I have written this type of stuff in Excel Visual Basic.

 

[Nerull]

contact Martin because "using" does not equal "selling"... Language is; do not "use" for commercial purpose... if you get that using is... using it.
I could (but I don't) sell a ton of prints created from snapshots in orbiter... is that using orbiter for commercial purposes?... I would ask Martin.
Other than that... eh.. that technology is pretty good forward thinking.

...

You can't pick and choose which parts of sentences in a legal agreement to pay attention to - you have to go by the whole.

There is a difference between 'do not use for commercial purposes' and 'do not use in a commercial product'.