Harnessing Solar Energy from Space

I came across this idea in sci-fi, but it's actually happening now. Scientists are on the hunt for clean and sustainable energy sources. One cool area they're exploring is the tech to capture solar energy right from space and send it back down to Earth. Researchers at Caltech have made some progress with this. They managed to harness energy using a satellite in orbit and transmit it to our planet. The mission kicked off on January 3, 2023, when a research vehicle was launched into low Earth orbit via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Fast forward two months, and the team started testing their MAPLE system, leading to a successful mission. Looking ahead, they aim to build a fleet of satellites like SPPD-1 that could send energy back to power around 10,000 homes. But there's still a long way to go, since right now, MAPLE only captures between 175 and 251 mW of energy up there, and just 1 mW is making its way to the ground station. The efficiency might be low for now, but if this tech advances, we could have a ton of clean, limitless electricity.

must be nice to be 20. tons of clean power for millions of years.

Riiiiggghhhtttt... Once again everything old is new again. The idea was proven to work decades ago. The technology required aside, one big issue with it is this: With many folks already (wrongly) raising hell about about the low power RF emissions from cell towers, what makes the researchers think that beaming megawatts of RF energy down to Earth from space is a good, safe idea and that it would be accepted by the public? I will fuckinguarantee it won't be and in this case the rabble rousers would be right.

Aside from efficiency, with cost of bringing stuff into space, i wonder how long it'll take until it could be competitive with other energy source (which produced entirely on earth). Are there really that many folks who actually do that? AFAIK people who oppose 5G and roughly similar technology is in minority. And if i read the news correctly, the energy (from space) transmitted to very specific area which makes government have easier time to convince people that it's safe.

Safety for humans or safety for the environment? It is very difficult for the government to convince citizens that old technologies are safe. Germany Brings Back Mothballed Coal Plants to Help Keep Lights On Three plants from RWE and LEAG in stand-by to be switched on Measure should help nation save gas, economy ministry says Germany will bring several mothballed coal plants back to the market this winter to ensure that Europe’s largest economy can keep the lights on when demand peaks. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-04/germany-orders-three-old-lignite-plants-to-operate-in-winter

That's really promising and so interesting being done in a totally different league!...But typically such high-tech solutions takes so long to go from an MVP to a commercialized product. It needs high budgets and enough incentives as well as prominent tech leaders like Elon musk!.... Europe will be one of the first customers I guess bcuz they currently care more about climate-change and clean energies.

Hey they could do it over the south pole. almost no one lives there. what could go wrong with that.

Large energy companies will defend their ionopoly in this market. Murphy's law[a] is an adage or epigram that is typically stated as: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." In some formulations, it is extended to "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy's_law