Free energy from space with lasers?

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(CNN) -- In space there's no atmosphere, it's never cloudy, and in geosynchronous orbits it's never night: a perfect place for a solar power station to harvest uninterrupted power 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The concept has been around since the 1940s when science fiction writer Isaac Asimov posited the idea of a robot-manned space station that delivered energy to Earth via microwaves.

Today, the idea is less science fiction than a steadily advancing reality.

Clean energy from above

The United States, China, India and Japan all have projects at various stages of development that would see robots assemble solar arrays that could provide the Earth with massive amounts of clean and renewable energy delivered wirelessly.

Some variants of the idea could even see as much as 1GW of energy beamed to receivers on Earth -- enough to power a large city.

According to Dr Paul Jaffe, spacecraft engineer at the US Naval Research Laboratory, the concept is scientifically sound.

"NASA and the US Department of Energy did a study in the late 70s that cost $20 million at the time and looked at it in pretty great depth," Dr Jaffe told CNN. "The conclusion at that time was that there was nothing wrong with the physics but the real question is the economics."

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Free energy from space with lasers?