• wabafee@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    We’ll probably be able to harvest solar power from space then beam it to Earth in a practical way first, than nuclear fusion becomes practical.

    • Rutty@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      I’m not sure what comment to reply to, but I feel obligated to remind people that the sun is a fusion reaction.

      • TrueStoryBob@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Basically, the idea is to build orbital solar farms (where is always sunny), then beam the energy produced back to the ground with microwave transmitters and ground recievers. It’s technically feasible, unlike fusion we have all the technology needed to do it right now. However, it’s cost and resource prohibitive. The US government studied building such a system in the 1970-80’s after the energy crisis. We could do it, but building it would take a generation to get running and about double the US’s current military annual budget. Launch costs are coming down since then, but the industrialization of space and the moon will take generations and would need to be an international effort to have any chance of success.

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      We’ll probably be able to harvest solar power from space then beam it to Earth in a practical way first, than nuclear fusion becomes practical.

      You mean solar panels?