This post is not the last word on this topic. The usual caveats apply. I’m curious if you have strong opinions on different fuel mixes. I’ve p

Powering the Mars base

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2024-11-06 11:30:02

This post is not the last word on this topic. The usual caveats apply. I’m curious if you have strong opinions on different fuel mixes.

I’ve previously written two posts on powering the lunar base. The first explores solar power towers and thermal storage. The second reveals that beaming power to the lunar base region with microwaves from Earth is by far the cheapest, most flexible option – for operations on the Earth facing side of the Moon. 

This, incidentally, is the only business case I know of for using microwaves to move power at scale between Earth and space. In particular, beaming power the other way as envisioned with space-based solar power doesn’t make financial sense. 

The natural business case for using microwaves between space and Earth is via low Earth orbit comsats, as we’ve seen with Starlink, which I wrote about in 2019 and in all likelihood used to post this piece! 

I’ve previously written a couple of books on Mars-related topics. The first concerns primarily the transport problem, addressed by Starship. The second focuses on Mars industrialization, and has a section on electrical power as well as an early exploration of an off-world synthetic hydrocarbon supply chain which ultimately inspired my start up company Terraform Industries (we’re hiring) and will be further examined in this post. Robert Zubrin has also written a number of books examining the Mars settlement question. 

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