Why not spend $21 billion on solar power from space?

The Japanese government is prepared to spend some 2 trillion yen on a one-gigawatt orbiting solar power station --and this week Mitsubishi and other Japanese companies have signed on to boost the effort. Boasting some four kilometers of solar panels--maybe of the super-efficient Spectrolab variety but more likely domestically sourced from Mitsubishi or Sharp--the space solar power station would orbit some 36,000 kilometers above Earth and transmit power in a microwave or laser beam. [More]











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