This Satellite Could Be Beaming Solar Power Down From Space By 2025

Daniel_Stuckey writes "A NASA veteran, aerospace entrepreneur, and space-based solar power (SBSP) expert, [John] Mankins designed the world's first practical orbital solar plant. It's called the Solar Power Satellite via Arbitrarily Large PHased Array, or SPS-ALPHA for short. If all goes to plan, it could be launched as early as 2025, which is sooner than it sounds when it comes to space-based solar power timelines. Scientists have been aware of the edge the "space-down" approach holds over terrestrial panels for decades. An orbiting plant would be unaffected by weather, atmospheric filtering of light, and the sun's inconvenient habit of setting every evening. SBSP also has the potential to dramatically increase the availability of renewable energy."

Comments

Slashdot says "NO!"

[Required Snark]

All the Slashdot Pundits say this is clearly a bad idea. It's comforting to know that so many solar power experts, satellite engineers, power engineers, microwave antenna specialists, energy distribution specialists, system engineers, civil engineers, etc, have all been waiting here on Slashdot just for the moment that they can crush this awful idea before anyone takes it seriously.

If only the same Slashdot Pundits had existed in some form before the internet was created they could have shot that down as well. We would then be comfortably free of the internet, and the Slashdot crew could be practicing Morse code in their basements like god intended.