When Katy Perry kissed the Earth after returning from a 10-minute trip to outer space last month, the pop star probably wasn’t thinking about what her launch meant for the power grid.
But the Blue Origin flight that facilitated Perry’s stunt trip with five other women is part of a space launch revolution that could someday create a network of solar panels and power-hungry data centers in the Earth’s orbit — and off the terrestrial grid.
That may seem like science fiction, but the idea of space solar power has been around for decades. The premise is relatively simple: The sun is always shining in space, so solar panels free of the Earth’s atmosphere and rotation could capture more power more of the time. They could send that energy back to the grid through wireless technology, hitting receivers that take up a fraction of the footprint of land-based solar farms.
Executing the idea has always been held back by the high cost of launching and building equipment in space. But as companies like Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX radically drive down the cost of rocket launches and make reusable rockets a reality, boosters say a space power breakthrough is closer than ever.
