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The Defense Department this October quietly issued a 75-page study conducted for its National Security Space Office concluding that (1) space power — collection of energy by vast arrays of solar panels aboard mammoth satellites — offers a potential energy source for global U.S. military operations.
It could be done with today's technology, experts say. But the prohibitive cost of lifting thousands of tons of equipment into space makes it uneconomical. That's where Palau, the tiny western Pacific nation, comes in.
In September, American entrepreneur Kevin Reed proposed at the 58th International Astronautical Congress in Hyderabad, India, that Palau's uninhabited Helen Island would be an ideal spot for a small demonstration project, a 79-meter-diameter "rectifying antenna," or rectenna, to take in 1 megawatt of power transmitted earthward by a satellite orbiting 480 kilometers above Earth.
That's enough electricity to power 1,000 homes, but on that empty island the project would "be intended to show its safety for everywhere else," Reed said in a telephone interview from California.
Reed said he expects his U.S.-Swiss-German consortium to begin manufacturing the necessary ultralight solar panels within two years, and to attract financial support from manufacturers wanting to show how their technology could make such a system work. He estimates project costs at $800 million and completion as early as 2012.
Patrick Collins of Japan's Azabu University said a lower-power beam, because of its breadth, might be no more powerful than the energy emanating from a microwave oven's door. The beams from giant satellites would likely require precautionary no-go zones for aircraft and people on the ground, he said. ■AP
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