This thing just gets a lot more practical – very quickly.

A trillion dollars or 10 for that matter, may not seem so expensive considering the mere fact one may not have a place to spend it in 75 years.

Scientists, politicians, and consumers alike discount the "free" resources we use to live everyday because there is no monetary transaction; there is no money coming out of their pocket today.

The symptoms of our negligence is apparent and impacting people's way of life worldwide.

Many cities in Asia have "atmosphere alerts" where it is too dangerous to walk outside during certain hours of the day. Moreover, the eastern seaboard is slowly sinking into the Atlantic Ocean.

The availability and access to fresh drinking water has become increasingly serious whereby many countries have and are building desalination stations to meet the growing demands analogous in scale to the growing rate in energy consumption of quickly growing nations that represent almost 2/3 of the world population.

Albeit, I am not a tree hugger ( i don't mind their presence however) the "price tag" is not relavent. In fact, government's overspend ridiculous amounts of money on many things, this would be no different excluding an actual and substantial return on "their" money at some point

FIGURE OUT THE SOLUTION(S), try new things, KISS and stop complaining, YOUR ARE WASTING ENERGY!

is it not possible to have a HUGE generator which powers its own motion but creates an excess power which we can harvest?

it would only need a bit of power to start it off and then could keep going forever with absolute zero carbon footprint or anything

or maybe a huge pendulum that has a motor at the fulcrum?

(if there are any scientists that want to develop my idea go ahead, its best for the world)

No matter what, the concept of harvesting the power emitted by the sun for our energy needs is the most brilliantly obvious I've heard all day.

The idea is valid; the major drawback is the technical problem of getting the power to the ground in an efficient manner. Costs will be funded by government or perhaps the oil companies themselves, and as our current energy crisis worsens, the demand will only grow.

Your observations and corrections to other's misunderstandings of science are generally accurate and appreciated.

But FYI – you're a prick for your attitude and condescending tone. Your obvious sense of superiority diminishes whatever appearance of real intelligence you actually may have had.

ROFL at the comment "Nothing more than a scaling problem, really" when talking about quantum mechanics. That just made my day.

On the topic of ppl blowing the crap out of your national power grid because they are angry that you get cheap clean power… thats just stupid. Its like declaring war on some country coz they have the energy that you want and are charging lots of cash for it… oh wait, yeah thats happened before…

Anyhow im sure that if it were something like an orbiting platform then the countries involved would realise just how vulnerable EVERYTHING in space is so they would play nice and not kill the chinese power grid incase they turn around and blow up the ISS or something else we care about.

Obviously, your intelligence is far superior than the rest of us, so feel free to use your vastly supply of brainpower and guide us to a collective utopia.

We're waiting………

….thought so.

My point is that there are easier ways to get more energy. It has nothing to do with courage, and everything to do with common sense. Blindly pursuing an idea and ignoring the risk is stupid.

I'm all for solar energy, but I'd prefer to have my OWN solar panels on my roof. The government should be figuring out how to make those more affordable, so that people don’t have to rely on the “grid” as much.

Earth absorbs and reradiates 120 petawatts from the Sun. Excess Greenhouse gases return to the ground about 2 petawatts. Every energy liberating activity conducted by humans amounts to 0.015 petawatts. IF every human used energy like a American or Australian we'd be liberating 0.07 petawatts – 1.4% of what greenhouse gases trap. And using powersats would lead to the eventual end of coal and nukes as power sources – unless they pick up their game too.

Nuclear fusion might make a difference – but not as colossii like ITER. Who wants electricity costing 10 times the cost of coal and still 50 years away?? If focus fusion and/or Bussard Polywell fusion prove viable then the whole game changes… IF…

Adding energy is adding energy. However it's done, it would add to global warming by increasing the energy from additional sunlgiht..

what? no. I'm sorry, but this comment is just silly. Global warming is a problem because the sun emits energy at a wavelength that can be absorbed and retained by greenhouse gases. The microwaves that a solar power satellite will use will NOT add to global warming.

There is no feasible way to clean up the space junk that's out there.

At geosynchronous altitude, the amount of junk as a proportion of the total area, it so small that it amounts to zero. LEO is where the space junk problem exists.

There is no way to feasibly cheaply maintain the arrays.

The arrays would be simpler than the average satellite. Sure, some sats fail, but overall satellites appear to be a good idea. So if your objection doesn't apply to sateillites, then it doesn't apply here.

If China or somebody gets pissed off at the US, they could simply blast the solar panel stations into a million pieces.

This is also an objection to building the hover damn. OMFG IF CHINA GETS MAD THEY WILL DESTROY IT THEREFORE WE SHOULDNT BUILD IT!!11oneone Please, try to have a little courage.

My problem with this idea is that it must surely take quite a bit of energy to get the harvested energy to Earth… making it a bit counter productive.

And do you also look at the power lines that send electricity to your house and say, "it must surely take quite a bit of energy to get the electricity to my house, so therefore, power lines don't work" You're right, there is overhead to transmission by microwave. It is estimated that as much as 10 to 15% of the energy will be lost during transmission.

I'd rather see an increase in consumer product efficiency and a decrease in First and Developing World waste then switch away from fossil fuels to a non-CO2 energy source than just adding more energy.

1 – There is no feasible way to clean up the space junk that's out there.

2 – There is no way to feasibly cheaply maintain the arrays. NASA should not be involved, as it would take time, money, and astronaut manpower that could be used for other missions.

3 – If China or somebody gets pissed off at the US, they could simply blast the solar panel stations into a million pieces.

I think nuclear fusion is a much more realistic goal.

It would clean up the rubbish we put into orbit and turn it into something useful.

(which they are probably not, at least those places that have their sand moving around… check the info about wandering dunes, you don't want these to wander on top of your solar panels, and there's also the issue of sandstorms grinding the solar panels away – these things can rip the paint right off a car, how many of said storms could a solar panel survive? I guess even if it's not destroyed and/or buried by the first one it'd still leave the protecting glass (or whatever) cover of the panel nearly opaque, thereby greatly reducing its efficiency)

There's still the issue of "we don't want to trust our energy supply on [insert country]."

If a single country with the means to build a space-based solar power plant and without suitable space for such plants on the ground doesn't have a neighbor with enough room that they trust to 100% (and who does that today anymore?) then this might well cross their minds as a very good idea.
Take japan for example, they don't have enough room to build more houses, much less any big solar power plants. Or maybe even china will consider this, if none of their own deserts are sandstorm-free and consist of firm ground without sand dunes to wander on top of their sonal panels.

The transport of the energy would be much more simple. . Places such as Sahara, Deserts in Australia USA etc.