The National Space Society has submitted a policy paper (pdf) to the Obama-Biden transition team concluding that Space-Based Solar Power is more technically executable than ever before and urging federal investment that would be necessary to capture large amounts of electricity from space

This wouldn’t be the first time the federal government has delved into Space-Based Solar Power (SBSP or SSP). NASA and DOE have collectively spent eighty million dollars over the last three decades in sporadic efforts studying the viability of collecting solar energy in space—where the solar resource is far more intense—and beaming it to Earth.

For me three questions immediately arise: 1. How could something like this actually work? 2. Where will the money come from? And where will the political will come from? Let’s look at those briefly.

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