Diamonds Are A Space Station's Best Friend

strredwolf writes: "Research is being done to replace standard solar cell pannels commonly used in satelites with one's made with diamonds. Supposedly, they would be more durable to conditions in space, as well as generate more power at the same cost. Same cost? The kicker is that they're not using gem-quality diamonds. Article on Beyond 2000, which amazingly is still around." Note: this is still a work in progress, not a finished technology, but if it pans out, this offers several benefits over traditional solar cells.

Comments

Value of Diamonds

[NSupremo]

The worldwide diamond market is cornered by ONE COMPANY. (Someone find the name for me, thanks.)

They carefully control the quantity and quality of diamonds released to the public so that the level of supply and demand remains constant.

There are so many diamonds available that if even a fraction of them were released the value of diamonds would fall to nothing.

If it were not for this fact, I would assume that synthetic diamonds would be far more expensive than real ones.

But I feel synthetic gems would be required for manufacturing since you would have a billion identical.