CHONGQING, CHINA — China has broken ground on a project that aims to put miles of solar panels in space and use them to power a massive microwave emitter that will hang 23,000 miles up in the sky. <br /> <br /> <br />Here’s hoping that the giant microwave beam does not go off target and start frying miles of Earth’s surface. Here are the details: <br /> <br /> <br />The Times reports that China’s government plans to launch a fleet of mile-long solar panels into space by 2035 and beam the energy back to Earth. <br /> <br /> <br />The basic concept involves a space station with a solar array to convert solar energy into electrical energy. <br /> <br /> <br />Then it would use a microwave transmitter or laser emitter to transmit the energy to a collector on Earth. <br /> <br /> <br />The Earth-based station will then transfer the microwave energy back into electrical energy, from where it would be fed into the grid. <br /> <br /> <br />As part of this ambitious project, Beijing has broken ground on the new Bishan space solar energy station in the city of Chongqing. <br /> <br /> <br />The station will begin tests by the end of the year, with the hope of having a functioning one-megawatt solar energy station by 2030. <br /> <br /> <br />By 2050, China plans to have the station fully operational and producing a gigawatt of power, the same output as the largest nuclear reactor in China. <br /> <br /> <br />Space-based solar systems can be much more efficient because it’s always sunny in space, and the sunlight does not get filtered by Earth’s atmosphere and clouds. <br /> <br /> <br />The idea of space-based solar power stations has been around since 1941. Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov first wrote about them in the short story Reason. In the story, he wrote about a space station that transmits energy collected from the Sun to various planets by using microwave beams. <br /> <br /> <br />A number of concept designs were created in the 1970s, but none were deemed economically viable. <br /> <br /> <br />
