Can space-based solar power really work? Here are the pros and cons.

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Should space-based solar power be part of our clean-energy future?

Solar power plants in space, exposed to constant sunshine with no clouds or air limiting the efficiency of their photovoltaic arrays, could have a place in this future emissions-free infrastructure. But these structures, beaming energy toHere are the main pros and cons of this technology. Ian Cash is a British engineer, whose CASSIOPeiA Solar Power Satellite concept has been adopted by a U.K.

Space-based solar power proponents, however, don't expect the heavenly electricity to push out more humble ground-based renewables. They think space-based solar power should replace power plants that are currently being used to cover energy needs when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. In the U.K.

European aerospace firm Airbus recently conducted a ground-based wireless power transmission demonstration that tested technologies that could be used for delivering space-based solar power in the future.Space-based solar power doesn't suffer from the main drawback plaguing most main renewable energy generation technologies. In space,always shines. No clouds ever block the sun's rays from reaching photovoltaic arrays. And if you choose the orbit wisely, you can even avoid the night.

Of course, renewable power could be fed into giant batteries in times of surplus generation to be used at times of need. But energy storage technology of this scale is only slightly more solved then nuclear fusion. It is theoretically safe from Earth-based conflictin the Baltic Sea that shocked the world in September 2022 showed that, in the politically unstable world that we live in, relying on energy from abroad is rather unsafe.

. Cash, however, disagrees. Shooting down a platform in geostationary orbit, he says, is outside of the current capabilities of most states. On top of that, while disrupting undersea pipelines in a stealth way using submarines allows for plausible deniability, an adversary launching a missile to destroy a space-based solar plant of a rival would be easily identified.

 

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SpaceIntellige3 If you settle for 10% end to end efficiency

nay ... coz constant reorientation, micro & macro meteorites etc

It has been being talked about for a long time, at least 40 years

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