Low-Energy Fridays: The Truth About Jewish Space Lasers

In space, no one can hear you scream about permitting delays. That’s the theory behind an ever-growing number of entrepreneurs seeking to move everything from energy production to manufacturing into low Earth orbit.

A common trope in classic science fiction, the notion of a space-based economy has remained confined to that realm thanks to technical and economic challenges. However, a combination of advances in rocketry and regulatory uncertainty have revived these ideas.

Among them are plans to generate solar energy using satellites. Solar panels are booming on Earth, but space-based solar panels have some advantages over their terrestrial counterparts: a lack of atmosphere plus the ability to receive direct sunlight 24/7 means that space-based solar panels could be many times more efficient.

Energy from these panels could be used to power other manufacturing processes in space or could potentially be beamed down to Earth in microwave form. Multiple countries, including the United States, are pursuing this general idea, with early tests indicating that transmission on power from space is technically feasible, albeit subject to various challenges.

Aside from technical and economic issues, there’s also the question of safety. If energy beamed from space were to miss its target, whatever it did hit would burn to a crisp. While there have been proposals to transmit the energy at levels that would not harm individuals who accidentally found themselves in the path of the beam, there are tradeoffs involved, and the issue hasn’t been fully worked out.

In a society increasingly full of conspiracy theories, announcing plans to begin beaming energy from space could inevitably provoke paranoid reactions. You may recall a recent controversy regarding “Jewish Space Lasers” in which a former member of Congress blamed California wildfires on exactly this sort of space-based energy transmission. One can only imagine what people might say once space-based power transmission actually exists.

The biggest issue is economic: Even with increased efficiency, it’s unclear whether the cost to build power plants in space and beam energy back to Earth could compete with regular on-the-ground power plants.

If transporting energy to Earth remains unworkable, solar power satellites might still prove useful for powering other activities in orbit. For example, there is increased interest in building data centers in space. But while data center expansion is happening at an unbelievable rate (and has helped fundamentally change the trajectory of American power consumption), these centers are also increasingly controversial. Many are worried that we won’t be able to build the necessary computing capacity—or the necessary energy infrastructure to power it—fast enough to accommodate demand.

Proponents of this idea seem to have adapted a quote from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes: Once you have eliminated the impossible, the remaining option—however improbable—must be the case. If environmental and/or other regulations impede the development of necessary computing capacity, then we must build that capacity in a location with minimal environmental and regulatory concerns. That said, it might be better to look at matters from the other end of the telescope: If regulatory red tape has gotten so bad for an industry that it might make sense to relocate to outer space, it might indicate that regulation has gotten out of hand and should be revisited.