China wants to put a solar farm in space by 2025

Humanity uses a lot of energy, and while solar power here on Earth is doing a reasonable job of contributing to the power mix, scientists have long hypothesized that solar power gathered from space itself would be an altogether more effective scenario. And now China says it's going to be the first to do exactly that, announcing plans to build a solar power station that will orbit the Earth at 36,000 kilometers. According to China's state-backed Science and Technology Daily, Chinese scientists plan to build and launch small power stations into the stratosphere between 2021 and 2025, with a megawatt-level station planned for 2030 and a gigawatt-level facility before 2050. Without interference from the atmosphere or seasonal and night time loss of sunlight, these space-based solar farms could provide an inexhaustible source of clean energy, with the China Academy of Space Technology Corporation claiming such a set-up could reliably supply 99 percent of time at six times the intensity of solar plants on Earth. There are, of course, numerous challenges associated with this sci-fi-sounding plan.