Space based power

Published by The Editors | Filed under future tech

In our efforts to bring you the cutting edge developments in home power, we direct you to a podcast from Stratfor on space based solar collectors.

The podcast starts off referencing the discovery of large amounts of methane gas on Mars. Energy could be produced from this methane on the Red Planet, although presumably it would be used there, and not exported back to Earth.

Then the podcast gets into the really good stuff, space based solar collectors. We’d put solar collectors in orbit and then beam the collected power down to us on Earth with microwaves. The solar collectors wouldn’t have the drawback that those on Earth do, nighttime, because they’d be orbiting high enough to always be exposed to the Sun’s rays.

Dr. Friedman, who has authored a book that talks about space based energy (and many other topics), predicts prototypes by 2030 to 2040. He also predicts that the United States military needs will drive the development of the technology. The United States could become a bigger energy producer than Saudi Arabia.