Solar Energy - Going where no man has gone before

Building a huge solar energy array or panels outside the Earth's atmosphere is mooted by scientists. If built it would supply cheap, inexhaustible energy to industry and homes throughout the world.

It would have the advantage of having no clouds to interrupt the flow of solar energy to the arrays.

Yet the sizeable downside would be the technical challenges of construction and of getting the power down to the ground.

It's an challenge that has been likened to the building of the Pyramids.

It would require an armada of rockets carrying tonnes of material into space on a regular basis, says Lieutenant Colonel Paul Damphousse of the Pentagon's National Security Space Office.

A recent study by the Pentagon concluded that a solar energy array in space was close to being technologically possible. And robotic technology should soon make the building of large structures in space safer, cheaper and quicker.

The Near Future?

Leopold Summerer of the European Space Agency believes the generation of solar power from space may be only 20 years away.

But he adds that the cost of the undertaking will mean it will have to be another international effort along the lines of the Space Station.

For Lt Col Damphousse, despite the technical and economic difficulties, the advantages to mankind are clear.

"It opens up all the other things that we are trying to do in space; our exploration strategy, our planetary defence, commercialism in space, space tourism.

"If we're able to do this as an international effort this helps to relieve some of those pressures on resource shortages, overpopulation. This is something that's in the interest of the entire planet.

"Once we open up the medium, there's a whole new world waiting for us out there."

Quite literally!....

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