Our space program has accomplished a great deal throughout its illustrious history. Yet, for every project that did go through, there were many that did not. One of the most ambitious, and one that I hadn't heard of until today, was the Solar Power Satellite fleet. I knew that the technology that this project was based on was possible, that a solar collecting station in orbit could beam down microwaves to Earth, providing power, but I had no idea that such an enormous project was on the books.
Basically, the project entailed building a fleet of massive solar panels in geosynchronous orbit around the equator, the advantage of this being that the panels would only be in shadow for a very brief time over the course of the year. Most of the time, they would be pumping out power. The logistics for this projects were incredible, it would have required massive amounts of resources, creating new heavy-lifter rockets several times bigger than anything previously built, and required hundreds of astronauts in orbit constantly for 30 years building the thing.
Unlike some of the other projects that never got past the drawing board, this one actually seems feasible. The technology required was not beyond the realm of imagination, all that really needed to be done was to get enough investment to get such a massive endeavor off the ground. Of course, that never happened, and we still depend on fossil fuels to power our world, rather than microwaves from space. It may not have worked at all, but we don't know that. All I know is that even within the realm of science, it is always worthwhile to dream.
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