Space-based solar farms, formally a subject of science fiction, are quickly growing into a possibility in the near future. The awareness has not just caught the imagination of tech-savvy billionaires, engineers and professors at prominent institutions in the West and well as the East.
When Isaac Asimov defined a space-based capability that could harvest and beam solar energy to the Earth in 1941, it seemed like a piece of science fiction. Humanity had not even sent a satellite to orbit then, and nobody possibly even bothered to figure the project’s economic viability.
Fast forward to 2023, and humankind has strategies to set up a station on the Moon, travel to Mars, and send satellites to orbit in scores at a time. Technology in numerous fields has transformed to a point where construction a space-based solar farm is not just conceivable but also happening in different parts of the world.
Motivating Engineering has formerly reported how the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is collaborating with a private defense provider in the US to create a solar panel to harvest energy and beam it back to Earth. At that time, Ali Hajmiri, co-director of the Space Solar Power Mission at Caltech, was also working on a parallel device, Maple — a ~12-inch (30-centimeter) prototype with lightweight transmitters to beam energy back to Earth.
Previous in January this year, Hajmiri’s team launched Maple, and in a dry run, were able to distinguish its signal on a rooftop building on Caltech’s campus. The quantity of energy established was so minute that it could only light up a pair of LEDs, CNN reported. However, the trial has set the tone for more striving projects that are set to follow soon.
UK-based Solar Space desires to create a mile-and-a-quarter (two kilometers) long solar farm that will be operational by 2,035. Simultaneously, China has ambitious strategies to harvest as much as two gigawatts of energy using this method by 2050. That’s more than the energy a nuclear power plant produces in the US.
Countries have now pledged to move away from fossil fuels in their attempt to decrease carbon emissions. Solar and wind power farms are being advanced in far-off places to provide the mounting energy demands. In such a situation, would it be practical to blast off thousands of tons of material to construct a giant energy harvester in space?
A decade ago, Elon Musk, who was not a billionaire then, requested for the idea to be “stabbed in the heart” owing to its poor conversion rates.
Speaking to Popular Mechanics, Musk pointed out that the method needed photons to be transformed into electrons, back to photons, and back to electrons for it to perform.
UK Space Agency’s Mamatha Maheshwarappa pointed out that one would require to create something twice the size of Burj Khalifa in space — something we haven’t done on the ground either. AI and robotics could assist, but they are not at the technology readiness levels to take up the task for now.
Doubts about energy beaming from space hurting animals, birds, plants, and humans are also to be considered, even though scientists propose it would not be different from standing close a heat lamp.
Caltech’s Hajimri was once against the idea but had a change of mind after realizing the details of how it could be done. His team is still sourcing out more details but is assured that space-based solar power will shortly be attainable with alliance.
