Posted on 08/20/2021 12:50:05 PM PDT by RomanSoldier19
With more than a third of days marred by fog all year round, Chongqing city in southwestern China is not the ideal place for a solar power plant. But soon it will have the nation’s first experimental facility to test a revolutionary technology allowing China to send, and receive, a powerful energy beam from space in about a decade, according to scientists involved in the project. Harvesting energy from the sun and beaming it to Earth using huge infrastructure in orbit has been regarded as science fiction, but according to a plan by the Chinese government, the nation will put a 1 megawatt solar energy station in space by 2030.
And by 2049, when the People’s Republic of China celebrates its 100th anniversary, the total power capacity of the plant or plants would increase to 1 gigawatt, the equivalent of the current largest nuclear power reactor.
(Excerpt) Read more at scmp.com ...
DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER!
Makes a pretty good weapon.
How much would that cost? $1 billion per megawatt? Let them have at it.
Doubles as a weapon
And a very big target
Icarus is more like it from Die Another Say.
ROI is negative....forever.
Factory in Connecticut still open - don’t get in the way when the shift ends at 3 PM, and hundreds of guys in pickup trucks barrel out of the parking lot.
FWIW,
- terrestrial solar averages ~10 watts per square meter (night, weather, etc considered)
- polar orbit or LaGrange point solar (always lit, no opacity) nets >400 W/m^2.
Energy density difference might make orbital solar viable.
Sun’s energy that would normally not hit the Earth now will contribute to global warming.
The luna surface is 10% a-luna-num metal. Solar powered robots could melt and polish the surface.
... along with the world’s longest extension cord.
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