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from Inhabitat Website
Man hasn’t been back to the moon since 1972, but that hasn’t stopped a team of Japanese engineers from developing a plan to turn our celestial neighbor into a massive solar power plant.
The disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power station has made Japan think more seriously about alternative energy, and as a result Shimizu Corporation‘s crazy plan has been gaining traction. The plan calls for a massive 12 mile-wide, 6,800 mile long "Luna Ring" of solar panels to be constructed on the moon’s surface.
The solar belt would then harness solar power directly from the sun and then beam it straight to Earth via microwaves and lasers.
Shimizu Corporation’s plan would see 13,000 terawatts of continuous energy sent to receiving stations around the Earth, where it will be then distributed to the planet’s population.
With NASA’s plans to return the moon currently on hold, Shimizu is planning on building the massive lunar construction project with robots. In fact, humans will barely be involved and will only be present in an overseeing capacity.
In a statement, the company said,
While it is an excellent idea, echoing a similar energy concept in the film Moon, the plan is simply unfeasible.
Seeing as we can’t get robots to drive our cars yet, how can we expect them to build an entire solar farm on the moon?
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