British Astronaut says that the concept of solar farms in space is “becoming absolutely viable”

Astronaut Tim Peake said that the reduction of cost of sending heavy cargo into orbit can mean that large complex structures such as solar farms could potentially be launched into orbit, potentially sending significant power.

The European Space Agency is said to be exploring the idea of setting up solar farms and is hoping to present a business case to the EU by 2025.

Peake said that solar farms would be financially viable when the cost of cargoes that are launched are around $1000. Currently it is reported that the cost is around $2700 to send 1kg of cargo.

SpaceX however presents an opportunity to reduce the cost of launching cargo into orbit, Falcon Heavy (a rocket designed by SpaceX) can reduce the cost from around $2700 to $1500, and also the Starship a rocket by the same company that is in development could potentially brings that down to an order of magnitude to about $300 per kilo.

SpaceX makes reusable rockets such as the Falcon Heavy that transport cargo into space and are programmed to return back to earth. This reduces a huge amount of costs as there is no need to construct a completely new rocket every time we want to send something to space.

The ESA’s space program Polaris essentially aims to launch solar panels to space where each panel joins with another to form a huge space farm. Earth based solar panels have one fundamental problem that they cannot generate electricity in the dark or when the weather is bad.

Peake said: “If you can build solar farms in space, then you can beam that energy down to ground stations via microwaves. It means clean, limitless energy from space becomes an absolute possibility.”

---

Source: Leake, Jonathan. The Telegraph. "Astronaut Tim Peake backs plans for solar farms in space". https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/09/17/astronaut-tim-peake-backs-plans-solar-farms-in-space/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CSo%20far%2C%20the%20actual%20costs,to%20about%20%24300%20per%20kilo.%E2%80%9D. 17/09/23. [Date accessed: 23/09/23]

Edited by: Ansh Pincha