Energy planets, how to get the energy off it in an economical way
In the universe there are several worlds where energy harvesting is feasible without pesky wild life habitat preservers standing on your patch'o land bare breasted.
So earth has set out to harvest energy from other worlds to keep earth green and blue and open for free range nature lovers.
Through a lucky invention we found out a way to very quickly(near light speed, 0.99c) transport material and people through the universe, we just haven't knacked a way to get off a planet in an energy efficient way yet so we still use these days rockets to get off this rock)
In a reasonable timespan Earth has set up some bases on several worlds to gather energy. Thermal energy from volcanic active worlds(like io), tidal energy from oceanic worlds(europa), wind energy from planets with an active atmosphere(venus). We also have some nuclear reactors buried in the moon, just to have something close, but keeping it supplied with water and fuel and crew not dead has been a hassle so on other worlds has been chosen for reneables. Scout missions are under way or building already on remote worlds in different solar systems, but sadly we haven't heard back yet.
The world will be roughly the same as ours, except maybe a hundred years in the future or a bit more, but not much has changed in energy needs except that fossil fuels are out and all is electrical. The energy need that existed in fossil fuels is now replaced by the equivalent in electrical.
How do they get the energy off the planets on the way to earth in a way that the energy price on earth would not differ from what it is today, and the energy need stays roughly the same(see the led light suprise, leds are brighter, more energy efficient, so naturally we use more because it costs the same).
Some options I thought of:
Huge lasers through space reflected by satellites to a specific point on space to boil lots o water for steam power and water desalinization and salt production. Cons, might be hard to keep the beam focused over large distances.
Energy pods: Concentrated energy in batteries. Might be to costly to launch those in space, cons: heavy, weighs a lot, how do we get it on earth without it burning up or poisoning the lands on a faillure.
Fusion produced helium3: There are reactors powered by the planets that produce helium3 thats shot to earth where it's used in reactors to generate energy. cons: You need launch and gather mechanisms, costs a lot for possibly little gain.
Which would be most economical, or is there a better way to keep earth green and cat videos on the internet?
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/105102. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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