It came from space!

Eli Hariton's new space-aged designs of a sky high solar facility have re-ignited excitement over such a pie-in-the-sky idea.

Recently, we gave word about PG&E partnering with Solaren to develop an incredibly expensive and potentially promising facility that would capture pure, unfiltered sunlight 24/7 and beam it down to earth in the form of microwaves.

While he lacks the street cred from a major utility, Hariton’s designs have gained traction on the Internet—a fact that points to a continuing interest in the idea of space-based solar in any form, even if it says nothing about its viability. Hariton is a recent graduate of Syracuse University's Industrial and Interaction Design program. When not designing apparel and furniture, he appears to dabble in futurist technologies. 

The designs feature solar arrays the size of football fields, hovering above a clean, blue planet and transmitting microwaves to receivers on the ground. The solar arrays would orbit the Earth so that they would always be facing the sun.

Already most satellites are solar powered, goes the argument, so if you can just scale the operation up, you would be looking at a limitless supply of energy. Well, it’s not technically limitless, but that would be a whole different challenge.

And Hariton says there are other benefits, namely the decrease in landscape pollution: “With the elimination of power lines, the world's landscapes that have been scarred by large industrial structures can be returned to beautiful natural panoramas,” he writes.

If that’s not enough space technology for you, try and wrap your head around the concept of a space elevator and how the two technologies could work together.

Clearly these are all exciting ideas, but the question is: Will they fly? Or hover?