BBC doing a piece on Space Power Satellites at Strathclyde

Today, reporters from the BBC were at the University of Strathclyde to do a piece on Space Based Solar Power. The researchers's at Strathclyde are involved in the current NIAC (NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts) study on Space Power Satellites (SPS) called SPS-ALPHA with John C. Mankins from Artemis Innovation as a project lead. Space Based Solar Power is the promising concept of collecting the sun’s energy in space and then transmitting it via laser or microwaves to the ground. With this concept the energy can be harvested more efficiently without losing too much of the sun’s energy through the Earth’s atmosphere. These Space Power Satellites (SPS) are huge structures with diameters in the order of hundreds of meters. Large deployable structures become necessary to realise such an ambitious project. The smart structure of the Self-inflating Adaptive Membrane can be used as a reflector or concentrator to focus the Sun’s energy on the solar cells before transmitting it via microwaves or lasers to the ground. Further applications can be seen as all kinds of substructures for the SPS concept due to SAM’s adaptability. The piece will be aired probably on Monday (14^th of May 2012) evening on BBC.