Drilling Up Into Space

The Defense Department this October quietly issued a 75-page study conducted for its National Security Space Office concluding that space power - collection of energy by vast arrays of solar panels aboard mammoth satellites - offers a potential energy source for global U.S. military operations. It could be done with today's technology, experts say. But the prohibitive cost of lifting thousands of tons of equipment into space makes it uneconomical. 

That's where Palau, a scattering of islands and 20,000 islanders, comes in. In September, American entrepreneur Kevin Reed proposed at the 58th International Astronautical Congress in Hyderabad, India, that Palau's uninhabited Helen Island would be an ideal spot for a small demonstration project, a 260-foot-diameter "rectifying antenna," or rectenna, to take in 1 megawatt of power transmitted earthward by a satellite orbiting 300 miles above Earth. That's enough electricity to power 1,000 homes, but on that empty island the project would "be intended to show its safety for everywhere else," Reed said in a telephone interview from California. More...