Japan Planning Massive Solar Power Plant in Space

As far-fetched as it may sound, engineers from Japanese companies Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and IHI Corp. are teaming up with an international research group to develop a satellite-based solar power plant that will beam green energy back to Earth.

The proposed satellite would feature four square kilometers of solar panels and be able to generate one gigawatt, which is enough clean electricity to power about 294,000 homes. All of that energy would be beamed down to Earth via microwaves to large, almost two mile wide receiving stations.

This system would avoid one of the biggest pitfalls commonly associated with solar panels: clouds. Far above our climate, the panels would be able to soak up the sun’s rays all day, every day. It’s not all good news though, as all sorts of new problems—such as the cost of lugging thousands of tons of solar panels into space and dealing with micro-meteoroids and space debris strikes—will have to be tackled.

Clocking in at a rather stout $21 billion price tag, the system will undergo extensive testing and trials before going full-scale. The Japanese government hopes to have a smaller-scale test unit in orbit by 2015.

I wonder what happens to a plane that flies through the beam.