Scientists are divided
SBSP has its roots in the 1941 short story Reason, by Isaac Asimov, which depicts a space station – run by robots – collecting energy from the sun to distribute to Earth and other planets. No further thought was given to the idea until the late 1960s, when aerospace engineer Peter Glaser began to investigate its potential. In the following decades, various concepts were put forward but none took off.
But in recent years, SBSP has once again begun to attract attention with projects emerging in the US, Russia, China, India and Japan, amongst others. All are driven by increasing energy demands, soaring oil and gas prices, a desire to find clean alternatives to fossil fuels and by a burgeoning commercial space industry that promises to lower the cost of entry into space and spur on a host of new industries.
Nansen is calling for the US government to invest in SBSP research and development as a matter of urgency. “England dominated the world economy during the industrial revolution because of coal. The United States dominated the world economy after the discovery of oil in Brownsville, Texas in 1901. I'm confident that whoever develops SBSP will have a similarly dominant position in the world economy,” he says.
Article link: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130226-space-based-solar-farms-power-up
SBSP has its roots in the 1941 short story Reason, by Isaac Asimov, which depicts a space station – run by robots – collecting energy from the sun to distribute to Earth and other planets. No further thought was given to the idea until the late 1960s, when aerospace engineer Peter Glaser began to investigate its potential. In the following decades, various concepts were put forward but none took off.
But in recent years, SBSP has once again begun to attract attention with projects emerging in the US, Russia, China, India and Japan, amongst others. All are driven by increasing energy demands, soaring oil and gas prices, a desire to find clean alternatives to fossil fuels and by a burgeoning commercial space industry that promises to lower the cost of entry into space and spur on a host of new industries.
Nansen is calling for the US government to invest in SBSP research and development as a matter of urgency. “England dominated the world economy during the industrial revolution because of coal. The United States dominated the world economy after the discovery of oil in Brownsville, Texas in 1901. I'm confident that whoever develops SBSP will have a similarly dominant position in the world economy,” he says.
Article link: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130226-space-based-solar-farms-power-up
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