FYI,

"Mitsubishi, IHI to Join $21 Bln Space Solar Project"
Bloomberg News
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=aJ529lsdk9HI

: Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and IHI Corp. will join a 2 trillion yen
: ($21 billion) Japanese project intending to build a giant
: solar-power generator in space within three decades and beam
: electricity to earth.

: A research group representing 16 companies, including Mitsubishi
: Heavy Industries Ltd., will spend four years developing technology
: to send electricity without cables in the form of microwaves,
: according to a statement on the trade ministry's Web site today.

: "It sounds like a science-fiction cartoon, but solar power
: generation in space may be a significant alternative energy source
: in the century ahead as fossil fuel disappears," said Kensuke
: Kanekiyo, managing director of the Institute of Energy Economics, a
: government research body.

: Japan is developing the technology for the 1-gigawatt solar
: station, fitted with four square kilometers of solar panels, and
: hopes to have it running in three decades, according to a 15- page
: background document prepared by the trade ministry in August. Being
: in space it will generate power from the sun regardless of weather
: conditions, unlike earth-based solar generators, according to the
: document. One gigawatt is enough to supply about 294,000 average
: Tokyo homes.

: Takashi Imai, a spokesman for the Institute of Unmanned Space
: Experiment Free Flyer, which represents the 16 companies, confirmed
: the selection when reached by phone in Tokyo.

: Far, Far Away

: Transporting panels to the solar station 36,000 kilometers above
: the earth's surface will be prohibitively costly, so Japan has to
: figure out a way to slash expenses to make the solar station
: commercially viable, said Hiroshi Yoshida, Chief Executive Officer
: of Excalibur KK, a Tokyo-based space and defense-policy consulting
: company.

: "These expenses need to be lowered to a hundredth of current
: estimates," Yoshida said by phone from Tokyo.

: The project to generate electricity in space and transmit it to
: earth may cost at least 2 trillion yen, said Koji Umehara, deputy
: director of space development and utilization at the science
: ministry. Launching a single rocket costs about 10 billion yen, he
: said.

: "Humankind will some day need this technology, but it will take a
: long time before we use it," Yoshida said.

: The trade ministry and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency,
: which are leading the project, plan to launch a small satellite
: fitted with solar panels in 2015, and test beaming the electricity
: from space through the ionosphere, the outermost layer of the
: earth's atmosphere, according to the trade ministry document. The
: government hopes to have the solar station fully operational in the
: 2030s, it said.

: In the U.S., the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and
: the energy department have spent $80 million over three decades in
: sporadic efforts to study solar generation in space, according to a
: 2007 report by the U.S. National Security Space Office.

Mark Reiff