Sun Spring-Unlimited solar power

The Ukrainian Space Agency has a unique project proposal. Code named Sun Spring, the project plans to harvest 5 gigawatts of solar sunlight in space.

 

When it comes to Ukraine, political bickering, the economic crisis, corruption and scandals and other negative events such as Chornobyl tend to dominate the international headlines.  But, after my most recent two week trip to Ukraine, I can confidently report that despite all of these negative perceptions that make the public spotlight, on the positive side of the ledger, innovation, discovery and creativity is alive and flourishing in Ukraine. In some cases, it can be ranked as world-class. After the fall of the Soviet Union, one of the few positive things that Ukraine inherited was over 1400 academic research institutes and some of the best theoretical scientists in the world  Many of these institutes were classified as secret military establishments  working on weapons of mass destruction. Now this science know-how is being converted to peaceful civilian applications (see www.stcu.int)

 

 

I presented a paper on business opportunities at the nexus of aerospace and aviation at the Canada Ukraine Aerospace and Aviation Business Summit in Kyiv on Sept 28 to Sept 30, 2009, which was sponsored by the Canadian Space Agency, The National Research Council of Canada, The National Ukrainian Space Agency and the Science and Technology Center of Ukraine. Participants included many noteworthy Canadian companies and institutions such as Bombardier, MacDonald Dettwiller and Associates (MDA),  L-3 WESCAM; MDS Corporation,  Novatel, Aerospace Industries Association of Canada, the Canadian Space Agency and the National Research Council of Canada and others.

 

Sun Spring

While a number of Canadian and Ukrainian innovations and collaborative projects were discussed, one project that was proposed by the Ukrainian Space Agency caught my eye. Code named Sun Spring, it extends the observation that every child knows, who is playing with a magnifying glass. Children quickly learn that they can easily focus the sun’s rays with a magnifying glass to burn or heat up a point source on the ground. This same macro effect occurs in space but at orders of magnitude larger. As the sun shines on the earth, the atmosphere which is about 100 miles in circumference, concentrates sunlight just like a magnifying glass does toward a theoretical point source along a spectrum line at a distance from 0.6 to 1.2 million kms from the center of the earth and opposite to the sun. This theoretic power point spectrum rotates along with the earth as the globe rotates around the sun. It creates an estimated power source of 5 gigawatts or the equivalent energy savings of 144,000 tons of coal per day.  The Ukrainian Space Agency plans to tap this Solar Spring by initially sending up satellites to measuring these power levels and locations in space and then launch and mount an array of satellites with solar mirrors in synchronous earth orbit, that would reflect this concentrated sunlight back to the earth to the more or less stationary North and South poles. Just like the existing solar farms in Spain and Quebec, these solar farms would be used to heat steam turbines to produce electricity. This 30 year project, which appears to be feasible with existing technology, is now looking for other international collaborators. Other spinoffs could include: anti-asteroid protection; weather & climate control, acceleration of vegitation & plankon growth in oceans, other geoengineering projects,