China is pointing high and aiming big with short- and long-term goals of becoming the leading and the most significant power in space, and it's not just about solar power.
After the second largest world economy got its taste of lunar success with the Yutu-2 lunar rover, launched in December 8, 2018, then the rover having successfully made the far-side landing on the moon's Von Karman Crater near the South Pole Aitken Basin in January 3, China has much loftier plans in the next five to ten years.
An experimental base is said to already be in the making at the city of Chongqing in western China. The goal initially is for small but highly functional power stations between 2021 and 2025. The first could be up by the year 2022 and will then be named Tiangong (Heavenly Palace).
The plan is for the station to be built with three modules, a core one and two for carrying out experiments. Such a facility could support three people and carry out research in the different scientific fields of physics and biology, for instance.
Next on the list is a solar facility which has the capacity equivalent to one megawatt slated for 2030. With those in place, the plan would be to build larger, and then larger generators, with a gigawatt-level facility aimed for by the year 2050 or earlier.
A solar power station orbiting the earth in space at 36,000 kilometers would be a first of its kind, and with a budget of $8 billion annually, not many would be able to compete with that. The possibilities for inexhaustible power supply may not be too far off and could be the solution to the energy shortages around the globe.
A plus factor would be that it is a virtually clean source of energy as well as a reliable supplier at the rate of 99% and an intensity bearing down six times over. The only hitch is that China will have to figure out how to get all that power beamed down to earth.
As for that, China has proposed to utilize possibly a laser or microwave beam directed earthward to a collection facility. Some kinks may need to be worked out yet with regard to that issue, but the possibilities that can be achieved with that capability for producing that kind of power may be huge.
Scientists believe that amount power may even be used to fuel future missions deep into space.
And China, according to the Vice President of the China Academy of Space Technology, Li Ming, is committed to being the first to provide that: an inexpensive, virtually inexhaustible clean energy sourced from solar power.
If successful, this could also mean a solution to decreasing utilization of fossil fuels, not only in China.
