Space-Based Solar Power Breakthrough to Be Announced

First-of-a-Kind Long-Distance Demonstration of Solar-Powered Wireless Power Transmission Technology

WASHINGTON, Sept. 11 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The following event announcement was released by the National Space Society:

What: Space solar power could be a clean, renewable solution to America’s long-term energy needs. John C. Mankins, former manager of NASA’s Exploration Systems Research and Technology Program, and one of the foremost experts on space solar power, will announce on Friday a milestone demonstration of the critical technology enabling SSP: long-distance, solar-powered wireless power transmission.

The project demonstrated wireless power transmission between two Hawaiian islands 148 kilometers apart, more than the distance from the surface of Earth to the boundary of space.

It will be featured in an hour-long special that evening on Discovery Channel as part of DISCOVERY PROJECT EARTH, an eight-part series on the most ambitious geo-engineering ideas to tackle global climate change and the need for new and sustainable energy sources.

Discovery Channel to Show Documentary on Space-Based Solar Power!

I told Mike “Green Hornet” Hornitschek that we’d be famous!

The Discovery Channel (which my kids LOVE and we LOVE them watching it!) will show a documentary on Space-Based Solar Power at 10pm on 12 September, 2008. We filmed it in Washington DC at the Space Frontier Foundation’s New$pace 2008 conference (you are a member, aren’t you?). It was so totally cool working with the pros from the Futures Channel who did the filming (they must work closely with the Discovery Channel). It was amazing watching them do their thing.  They turned a small conference room at the hotel into a studio, wired us up, created mood lighting, and all that Hollywood stuff. These guys were entirely professional and WOW, it was entirely motivational being around professional media people who want to tell a story so kids get excited!

So, here is the preview from our most excellent friends at the Futures Channel:

Space-Based Solar Power on the Futures Channel

Make sure you tune-in to the Discovery Channel when it airs. Record it, and share it with all your friends, consistent with the laws in your viewing area*!

Cheers!

Coyote

* We’ve got to be careful with copyright laws…I once got into a kerfuffel because I described a baseball game to a friend of mine without the expressed written permission of the commissioner of major league baseball!