Holy crap!

Okay, that list of potential sponsors for the Solar Decathlon is gonna have to wait, because someone just sent us an article on perhaps the coolest thing we’ve ever heard; solar power BEAMED DOWN FROM SPACE.

Now, it probably doesn’t need to be said how much we love outer space here at Corn Car. It is a boundless prairie of stars and planets that, perhaps because it’s so danged far away, sparks our curiosity something fierce. It’s one of the last things that we can really wonder about, and just about the only pleasant one. So hearing that it’s possible, with the right technology, to harness solar energy in space and beam it down to earth, turns us into giddy children. Really. Our intern won’t stop dancing.

Here’s how it’s all going down - According to the LA Times (linked above), “a Manhattan Beach start-up called Solaren Corp. seeks to launch an array of giant solar power collectors into orbit 23,000 miles above Fresno and beam the energy to Earth.” Pacific Gas & Electric Co., after years of pulling energy from split atoms, natural gas, and falling water, wants to buy the power should it prove feasible.

How they’re going to scrape together $2 billion during a recession is for them to figure out, but Solaren already has a plan. Once enough solar collectors are rocketed into stationary orbit, the solar energy they collect “would be converted into radio waves and beamed to a receiving station in Fresno…there, it would be converted to either alternating or direct electric current and dispatched to customers via high-voltage transmission lines.”

It’s a literal pie-in-the-sky grab, and critics maintain that we should stick with terrestrial alt. energy sources, and we should. But it’s also good to keep trying new technology, considering that many of the revolutionary advances we have now were untested risks in their infancy. Plus, if we can deliver pizza to space, why can’t we give this a shot?