Has the space program put at least one solar panel in space to see if electricity can be sent to earth?
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Answer:
No. And here is why. If you want to beam power from a solar station in space, that station has to remain above the receiving station. This means geosynchronous orbit. That is 36000 km (the space station, by contrast, orbits only at about 400 km altitude). So far, the only objects in geosynchronous orbit are telecommunication satellites, and getting there requires an additional rocket push.
Now, supposing that someone would have the cash to demonstrate this project, they would also have to build a receiving station, and because of the distance, a microwave beam would have diverged quite notably over 36000 km, and the receiving antenna would then have to be huge to collect the power (think like a kilometer in diameter). Again: huge cost.
And in order to have enough power to generate a microwave beam that can travel 36000 km and be collectable on a 1 km+ antenna farm, the emitting station would have to generate lost of power, i.e. it would also have to have huge solar panels. Such a power station would be several times the size of the space station, and see how much problem there is just to build this thing at only 400 km altitude?
So all we have is a pretty good understanding that it is feasible, with huge amount of resources, but no demo has been done. And apparently no one willing to finance such a demo.
Omg please soooo many people now days are just soo negative about things...get over it and stop whining...That's why they work for NASA and your on here whining..they are not stupid..
Theoretically, you could put sufficient panels in place to provide all our energy needs. The big problem is how to get massive amounts of energy down to earth.
They wanted to, but could not find a long enough extension cord that was UL rated. They wanted to connect a bunch end to end, but OSHA would not allow it.
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