Solar power or nuclear power?

Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 08:25:02 -0500
I think that the original NASA studies concluded that locally
produced solar cells could not compete with imported solar arrays in
the initial days of the program.
==============

True, but perhaps that is the wrong question.

Is the surface of the Moon the best place to put a power supply for a
lunar base ?

I submit that the answer is NO.

The best place to put the power source, be it solar, nuclear or
whatever, would be at the Earth-Moon L1 libration point. This is
40,000 kilometres from the luanr surface (about the same as GEO to
Earth).

It is a lot cheaper to place objects at L1 than it is to put them into
lunar orbit, let alone soft land them on to the Moon.

The power can be beamed from L1 there to the lunar surface.

We still need to soft-land components for rectennas on to the Moon, but
these weigh a lot less than PV arrays, the power per kilogram
soft-landed figure of merit would be a lot better, perhaps an order of
magnitude.

L1 is unstable, so some minimal stationkeeping is required, electric
propulsion and/or solar sailing would suffice.

Another advantage, L1 is in continuous sunlight, so a PV array there
would have 24/7 illumination. Whereas the surface of the Moon has a 14
day night time when no solar energy can be produced. That further
doubles the figure of merit for a lunar rectenna versus a PV array.

Cheers,

CR.