From the sf-consiml Yahoo mailing list.Isaac Kuo wrote: It's been a while since I looked at it.
If I recall correctly, I started off looking at the reference links
to this wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_panels_on_spacecraft
In particular, this one got my attention:
http://www.entechsolar.com/SPRAT05b.pdf
This had near-term specific power of 300-500W/kg, which was already
within spitting distance of my usual 1kW/kg baseline assumption for a
vapor core fission reactor.
On slide 21, there's a graph which anticipates 1kW/kg around
2025...which is way before I'd anticipate any significant human
colonization of space (which is something I think of as a
prerequisite to "space combat").
That blew my mind away. I asked a few places whether this was
honestly a plausible scenario or whether these guys were cuckoo. And
the impression I got was that it could happen, and they weren't
cuckoo.
Compared to nuclear power, solar arrays don't need to be refueled,
and have a large civilian market. They gracefully accept micro-
impact damage (which is important for civilian craft as well as
warships). Solar arrays scale down well, down to the power levels of
interplanetary probes we can expect to see throughout the next
century. Nuclear reactors don't scale down well, so we can only
expect a small handful of missions for them in the next century. All
of this, it seems to me, points to a huge head start solar electric
technology will have over nuclear, with little incentive to ever
switch to nuclear. Really, the head start has already begun--solar
electric has flown and is flying. Nuclear electric has not.
Isaac Kuo
I've been switching more to solar power away from my previous preference for nuclear (though, I'm still tending more towards thermal on both more than electric, but as this thread continues, Mr Kuo might actually end up changing my mind on that too), since solar is definitely cheaper to operate.
But, I've not yet made the leap from nuclear to solar on most warships. (The A'millian SC-01, for example, has not been revised to have solar power, whereas the newer (both in and out of universe) design of the BC-01 is solar powered. Then, the older design (out of universe) of the BC-10 is back to nuclear.)
(Heck, even in not-war ships, I switch back and forth. The SV class ships are almost always nuclear. The transport, ASV Ragnarok (named for the kickass FF8 ship), is (tentatively) solar powered, but the newer transport (in universe), ASV Queen Leila, is back to nuclear.
It isn't a big deal to have them switch back and forth, but I do need to justify all the decisions. I think the only place where the type of power generation actually enters into the story is the ASV Falcon accident (which is an SC-01). I can't recall any other time where it is particularly relevant; it just means going back and changing some of my beautiful designs.)
I have stuff to do today, but the nuclear/solar debate is far from over.