Space...Y? What developments in space exploration industries mean for the future of energy
The benefits of space exploration
Exploring space and its mysteries has for long been a core human desire. Maybe partly driven by general curiosity and a wish to comprehend our place in existence and whether we are alone in shape and/or form in this experienced reality.
Progressive efforts to understand how our planet fits into the surrounding solar system continues to unravel key concepts in molding the understanding of our physical world. A prime example from history is through work done in early civilizations and further popularized by 15th century Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus and later Galileo Galilei relating to establishing planetary motion with respect to the Earth being a celestial body going around the sun aka the heliocentric model. This went against prevailing views at the time that the sun and other planetary bodies were the ones going around the earth aka a geocentric model and was upheld by institutions to the extent it was deemed controversial and even heretic to claim otherwise.
It cannot be understated how drastic such learnings have proved to be in developing our understanding and manipulating the physical world especially today where we reap the benefits of this in major ways such as satellites and other related functionality like GPS.
As such, it is no surprise that exploring space in various ways, creates a platform for our modern society to unlock new potentially pivotal inflections in human technology and understanding like we have in the past. In this short piece, we will briefly look at 3 areas related to space and its exploration that may prove to be important branch points in our efforts to understand and harness space for the future of energy.
Space Tourism & Sub Orbital Travel
Probably one of the most prevalent discussions on space has been regarding its consideration as a new level to tourism. This was intensified by the July 2021 sub-orbital journeys made by the Jeff Bezos on his Blu Origin New Shepard craft and Richard Branson on his Virgin Galactic VSS Unity Craft. Opening up space to tourism and sub-orbital travel would theoretically provide a new frontier to the human experience and also to mobility by potentially creating a platform for supersonic intercontinental travel.
Currently however, any form of this travel is well and fully limited and linked to the ultra-wealthy before talking about some form of mass-uptake. There can therefore be a temptation to compare democratization of space travel to how air travel got democratized to the levels we see today. However this comparison may not be an ideal proxy, for now at least, given the limitations on scale incumbent on transporting goods and people to space and back visible in statistics such as the cost per seat or cost per kg ( in 2014, Virgin Galactic had pegged price of ~$250 000 for a ticket with current price estimated at about double this). Also there are other qualitative considerations like physiological/health requirements of travelers which for example Blue Origins put down on thier maiden voyage as participants needing to be between five feet and 6 feet 4 inches tall (152cm - 195cm) and weigh between 110 and 223 pounds (50kg- 102kg).
However, the strides taken in attempting to execute this, will almost certainly have us stumble into other useful outcomes such as the drastic declines in cost per kg we already see (see below image) and therefore enabling other potential industries discussed here. For comparison when looking at below graphic, ocean shipping costs are about $2-$4 per kg and air freight at about 4kg - 8kg
Space Based Solar Power (SBSP)
Solar based solar power is another area that may come to mind given that it feels almost natural having seen solar work on earth’s surface, that this could be extended to the arena of space which is closer and less obstructed to the sun. The basic form of how this far-out idea would work is that mirrors placed in space would direct solar rays to panels attached to launched satellites and these satellites would transmit this energy back to earth to a power facility via microwave or laser.
An implied advantage of finding a breakthrough on spaced based solar power relates to the ability to largely capture solar energy despite day/night time and also the prevailing atmospheric conditions such as cloudy weather that may block sunlight for ground based solar panels.
There are many technical challenges to overcome if this is to be a reality. Some relate to the intensity of microwaves that would be safe to beam back to earth bust simultaneously strong enough to make transmitting antennae smaller while others relate to conversion losses and ease of damage repair. Either way this manifests in high implementation costs which are prohibitive in executing this form of energy delivery. This has however not deterred people looking to make this breakthrough. In August 2021, Caltech announced it has been receiving over $100m in donations towards SBSP since 2013 with the aim of sending out a test solar array in 2022/23.
In-Space Manufacturing (ISM)
The final discussion point is In-Space manufacturing which is manufacturing that takes place in the space environment of micro-gravity. The origins of it can likely be linked to the necessity for manufacturing items in space on-demand for use on long duration missions. This would have the benefit of not having to always launch required goods and materials from earth therefore among other things lowering costs.
Developments in other technologies like 3-D printing and cheaper cost per kg of launching payloads to space driven by companies like SpaceX as shown in the earlier chart have meant that ISM has legs to take further steps. Such steps include considerations of processing particular earth metals to make new forms of metal alloys, high-quality fibre optics or semiconductor wafers. Or to take it a step further, processing materials contained in asteroids in what would be called asteroid mining. Currently most ISM has been occurring at the International Space Station and about a third of that has been carried out by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies conducting R&D.
This aforementioned cost per kg metric (both for sending materials into space and returning them) also presents the key challenge of the progress in ISM because while indeed reducing, it still required to decline further to open up the arena even more. With that said however, we see quite a few players involved in ISM in various pockets from startups to traditional companies of varying industries like aviation and even whiskey distillers as shown in below image. Participants’ progress ranges from those still in concept phase to those at development, demonstrated and even active (click here to see full list courtesy of Factories In Space site).
Other considerations and final thoughts
It is worth considering as all these developments take place that frameworks pertaining to space territory law will also evolve. We cannot overlook that the same geopolitics that play out on terrestrial land as we have always seen can take a shape that translates themselves to the territory of space. The rules and regulations of space operations are captured by the term Global Space Governance and mostly entail UN treaties, UN Declarations and Principles with other non UN based bilateral and multilateral agreements.
As stated repeatedly around technological discussion of this nature, the breakthrough is not necessarily the realization of any of these technologies but rather what chasing down their rabbit hole could reveal for use or amendments in other areas and applications. We should not forget that the way we access and use energy whether as hydrocarbons or renewables has been a long journey of incremental discoveries and monumentally scaled use of materials. As such, continuing this journey will maintain a theme based on what we discover as practically possible to scale and space could provide us with one of those points of change .
