Arthur Woods grew up in Florida during the golden years of the U.S. space program, and now he advocates for limitless clean solar energy from space using the Moon as a resource. Arthur’s vision is not (just) about exploration; he also presents a business case. But first we need to wrap our minds around the finite resource limits of Earth and scrape together CHF 100 billion.
"People need to realize that energy from space is real and within our grasp", says Arthur Woods, founder of the Swiss-based think tank and startup Astrostrom. The principle behind Space-Based Solar Power (SBSP) is straightforward: unlike Earth’s surface, space has constant sunlight. We can capture this energy with photovoltaic satellites, convert it into microwaves, and beam it down to a rectenna located on Earth. This idea can be traced back to Isaac Asimov’s 1941 short story “Reason”, and Arthur says the technology is currently being researched and developed in Europe, United States, China, Australia, Russia, South Korea and Japan.
Astrostrom doesn’t shy away from addressing big problems: the company proposes SBSP as the solution to climate emergency, energy dilemma, global economic crisis, and geopolitical tensions. “So many wars and global tensions are about the production and control of energy”, Arthur explains. Limitless and affordable clean energy would disrupt the status quo, he continues, which might be why those in power don’t show much interest in the technology.
“Space solar power has the same potential as nuclear fusion”
One challenge for SBSP is the sheer scope. Solar power satellites are very big; one or more kilometers wide and 2,000–10,000 metric tons heavy. "Just to put that into perspective, humanity has only launched about 15,000 metric tons of stuff into space since the beginning of the space program", Arthur elaborates. Solar energy may be clean, but launching all the needed solar satellites through Earth’s atmosphere certainly isn’t.
But what if 80% of the mass needed for solar power satellites didn’t come from Earth? This is the Astrostrom approach: mining the materials on the Moon and assembling the satellites in space. The Moon has an abundance of iron oxides and sulfur, which can be processed into pyrite, which in turn can be used for Monograin Layer photovoltaics, Arthur details.
Astrostrom suggests building a space elevator from the Moon's surface into space: this would make it more efficient to transport materials and components to the Lagrange point between Earth and the Moon. With the Moon’s lower gravity, a lunar space elevator would be easier to build than an Earth-bound elevator, a staple in science fiction literature.
All this serves to make SBSP a viable business case and not just a noble adventure, Arthur assures. The size of the global electricity market is USD 4.1 trillion, and fossil fuels cover USD 2.5 trillion of it. Even if we didn’t care about the climate impact of using fossil fuels, they will eventually run out. We need new energy alternatives.
Replacing fossil fuels with nuclear energy is not viable, Arthur states. We would need to build 2,500 new nuclear power plants to make up for fossil fuels used in electricity production alone; that’s over five times more than are currently in operation. And if we talk about nuclear fusion instead of fission, the joke is that it’s always 30 years away. Yet we’ve put a lot of money into it: International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) alone has invested some USD 20 billion into fusion energy research in the last 20 years, Arthur points out. Meanwhile, SBSP has received less than USD 500 million. The mismatch isn’t justified, Arthur believes: space solar power has at least as much potential as fusion power.
Arthur has a number: we need a CHF 100 billion baseline investment to build the necessary infrastructure on the Moon for space solar power. This estimate comes from the feasibility study conducted by Astrostrom for the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2022-2023, called the Greater Earth Lunar Power Station.
The number sounds like a lot, but we should remember that building a single fission nuclear power plant costs billions if not tens of billions of Swiss francs. A hundred billion is absolutely doable, if we join forces. Astrostrom is lobbying for the foundation of the Greater Earth Energy Organization (GEEO), an autonomous group of committed nation states that would underwrite the initial investment and manage the regulatory and legal issues.
“Moon is the 8th continent of the Greater Earth”
Arthur is not an engineer or scientist: he is an artist by vocation. Space is his domain: Arthur has produced art together with NASA, ESA, as well as the Soviet and Russian space agencies. One of his proudest moments was sending the 3D sculpture, “Cosmic Dancer”, on board the Mir station in 1993.
Arthur experienced the birth of the U.S space program firsthand, as his family moved to Florida in 1959 and his father made liquid oxygen for rockets. As a student, Arthur himself worked as a message courier at the space center during the Apollo program. “When president Kennedy announced the Apollo program, withIn two years my town grew from 5,000 to 50,000 people”, Arthur looks back. They might have been in the middle of the cold war, but Arthur says the people in his community were not thinking about beating the Russians. Everyone wanted to go to the Moon simply because it would be a great and exciting achievement.
Now Arthur wants us to return to the Moon. One reason humanity hasn’t put enough effort into building Space-Based Solar Power is because we tend to think that Earth problems have Earth solutions, he observes. Arthur wants to broaden our perception: Astrostrom uses the term Greater Earth to refer to Earth’s entire gravitational field, which is a sphere 3 million kilometers in diameter. This space contains the Moon, passing asteroids, and 55,000 times more solar energy than hits the Earth’s surface. These can be used to solve a lot of Earth problems.
With roughly the same surface area as Africa, humanity’s birth home, Arthur sees the Moon as the 8th continent of Earth. Life is rare and special, and Arthur believes we need to spread life beyond Earth to preserve it. The Moon is a great option for humanity’s second home and for life itself.
This article is partially based on this podcast episode.
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