07-13-2015, 09:29 AM
Oh yeah, and in case anyone's curious, here is our reasoning for how much power is required for artificial lighting.
Pure sunlight on Earth is 1.4 kW/m^2, but clouds reduce that by 90% or so, while still remaining quite bright outside. It seems silly for space colonists to need sunscreen and hats to protect themselves from the artificial light, so let's assume a base target of 15% full sunlight.
We can assume that artificial lights will be quite efficient, but not perfect. So, end-to-end, we'll consume 20% of full sunlight power, or 280 W/m^2.
Pure sunlight on Earth is 1.4 kW/m^2, but clouds reduce that by 90% or so, while still remaining quite bright outside. It seems silly for space colonists to need sunscreen and hats to protect themselves from the artificial light, so let's assume a base target of 15% full sunlight.
We can assume that artificial lights will be quite efficient, but not perfect. So, end-to-end, we'll consume 20% of full sunlight power, or 280 W/m^2.
Joe Strout
Lead Developer, High Frontier