Tuesday, March 5, 2019

Solar Power Stations

China is talking seriously about launching a solar power station by 2030. This might be optimistic - there are problems with both getting the station up there (likely, it will have to be mostly constructed in orbit) and with power beaming (laser or microwave to a receiver on Earth).

There's a reason we've been talking about this for decades and never actually done it. In fact, it may require the rocket technology being developed by Space X to get modular parts of the station up there...

...so if we worked together we could do it. And power sats may be part of the answer to global warming. Can our politicians get their heads together, overcome our difficulties and start creating these things at the international level. Build one of them each, maybe?

Who knows. But China's demand for fossil fuels and levels of pollution are ridiculous. They have far more of a motivation than we do to do this...and it would help everyone in the long term. Of course, there's also death rays from space...don't get in the way of the power beam!

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