The sun produces staggering quantities of energy each second. The hard part is harnessing it.
(Image credit: Darius Puia for Live Science)
The year is 2050, and as the sun sets, the night’s first constellations emerge in perfect rows. But these amber-glowing arrays aren’t stars at all; they’re satellite clusters, harvesting the day’s last rays before beaming their power back to Earth.
If it reads like science fiction, that’s because it started that way. Called space-based solar power (SBSP), the concept featured prominently in the techno-utopian imaginations of 20th-century visionaries and writers. But for decades, it was dismissed — a pie in the sky proposal.
Ben Turner is a U.K. based writer and editor at Live Science. He covers physics and astronomy, tech and climate change. He graduated from University College London with a degree in particle physics before training as a journalist. When he’s not writing, Ben enjoys reading literature, playing the guitar and embarrassing himself with chess.
https://www.livescience.com/space/were-not-a-competitor-to-fusion-we-are-fusion-inside-the-race-to-harness-unlimited-solar-power-in-space
