Your Future: Never out of Touch - cont'd

By Tariq Malik

Valuable asset

Since NASA began studying SSP concepts in the 1970s, there have been drastic leaps in solar cell technology and solid-state devices -- crucial in converting voltage from the cells into a beam of energy for transmission, Mankins said. The most modern solar cells have efficiencies of up to 31 percent, meaning they convert that much of the light into energy, compared to the 10 percent of some of the earliest designs.

A space-based solar power plant would be exposed to eight times as much sunlight as on Earth, where the atmosphere and clouds can cause interference. So the more light that can be converted into energy, the more power a satellite can generate, Hoffert said.

Independent space-based power plants, whose energy might be delivered more locally than currently possible, could prove a valuable asset for cities and nations during blackouts such as the one that crippled Italy in September and another that shut down parts of the northeast United States and Canada in August.

"In certain orbits, these satellites could generate continuous solar energy, and that's an extremely valuable asset that we haven't tapped yet," Hoffert said, adding that scientific breakthroughs aren't needed to make space power plants a reality, just $100 million to $1 billion in committed funds for the project. "I think we could do this by 2015."

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