New Concepts For Solar Power From Space Collectors
In what one believer calls “the church of space solar power” (SSP), the doctrine is utopian. New work underway may make it achievable, too.
Advocates contend that if mankind could tap the boundless energy of the Sun flowing through near-Earth space, convert it to microwaves for transmission to the ground and plug it into the electric power grid, many of civilization’s problems could disappear.
The most obvious is pollution from fossil fuel burned for electricity, which probably explains why brown-sky -China is spending more on SSP research than any other nation.
Next would be the environmental damage wrought by extracting fossil fuel—oil spills, strip mining and mountain-top removal and fracking. The impact of large rectifying antennas (rectennas) sprawled across desert wastelands to receive “manna” microwaved from the heavens would pale by comparison to the mess fossil energy makes today.