The idea of wireless power was first explored by Nikola Tesla over 120 years ago. We’re probably fortunate that his concepts weren’t fully implemented back then, because his approach relied on oscillators that nearly brought down buildings and were dubbed “earthquake generators.”

Still, there have been a number of innovations surrounding short-range wireless power transmission – for example with cell phone chargers and prosthetics. In a column last summer, we explored the incredible promise of on-the-go electric vehicle charging via a series of roadside or embedded wireless charging stations beaming power at passing vehicles who need to top off their “tanks.”

Thinking much bigger, we also explored the idea of capturing solar power in space with large space-based solar power transfer stations that transmit the power to receiving stations on Earth – or to future installations on the Moon or other planets. This technology promises to be a much more efficient way to solar-power life on Earth compared to solar panels on roofs and the ground that can only capture the minimal solar energy that makes it through the Earth’s atmosphere during peak daylight hours.

Lasers from Deep Space to Low Earth Orbit

The concept is feasible, but before we have power transmission from deep space to earth, in the much nearer future, we’ll see solar power wirelessly transmitted to the low earth orbit (LEO) and the thousands of LEO satellites parked there, 100 miles or more above the earth.

The cube satellites and microsatellites that we rely on for scientific research, weather monitoring, global communication, and other purposes are self-powered – they need that power for maneuvering as well as processing and transmitting data. Until now, they’ve relied for the most part on photovoltaic solar panels and batteries.

But the solar panels attached to satellites are inefficient and they have to be fairly large if they’re to produce significant power. Also, these LEO satellites are often in the Earth’s shadow where they can’t collect solar power. That’s why they carry heavy batteries, which have their own challenges and downsides as we’ll see in a moment.

All in all, much of the design and size of a satellite is a function of its need to obtain and store power. It’s like having a big car that’s all engine with only room to carry one small child. We can do better.

What’s Happening in Low Earth Orbit?

There are currently more than 5,000 LEO satellites. Elon Musk plans to add several times that amount for his Starlink communications system, and other organizations are following suit as I described recently.

LEO is not only getting very crowded, there’s also an emerging energy crisis in that region of space. The power demands on LEO satellites are increasing as their functionality becomes more complex. The inefficiencies of solar panels combined with a satellite’s extended time on the dark side of the Earth necessitates even more satellites – “constellations” of satellites in fact, to keep up with the demand for communications and data on Earth.

For that reason, industry experts are endorsing wireless power beaming directly to satellites to increase their efficiency and allow for more continuous operation, presumably less LEO clutter, and smaller, more compact satellites.

Laser-Powered Satellites

A U.K company called Space Power is working with researchers at Surrey University to develop an “in-orbit wireless power grid.” They see a time when LEO satellites will be battery-free and “laser-powered” thanks to power beamed from a sourcing satellite.

The company points out that batteries and related systems makeup about one-fourth of the entire satellite, not only adding size and weight but heat as well. Because of all that, LEO satellite batteries can’t be very large – they produce typically 150 watts, as much as required by a large lightbulb.

Space Power’s laser power-beaming technology will be a game-changer. It will more than double the efficiency of LEO satellites, compared to the marginal increases we’d get from expanding the surface area of solar arrays or panels. We’d also reduce the need to mine the rare earth metals used in these materials. The group has announced it will have a power beaming prototype by next year and they’ll be in commercial mode by 2025.

The End Game

As noted, this is just the first step for this world- and space-changing technology.

Wireless solar energy transmission from space will eventually provide power for everything on Earth and in space. We’ll have efficient solar collection and then precise and efficient delivery to earthbound power transfer stations that feed as many power grids as we can develop. The world will benefit from clean solar power on a scale that’s hard to imagine. Colonies on the Moon and Mars with their labs, living quarters, and vehicles will be powered this way as well.

But first things first. Before then, we’ll all benefit from having smaller, more efficient LEO satellites powered by solar collectors found even further out in space.

The future of space research and development is tied to private enterprise – specifically private space stations. Now that government-funded programs have proven basic concepts about getting to and living/working in space, NASA and agencies from other countries will continue to turn many aspects of space station work over to private companies.

The International Space Station (ISS) will be unusable by the end of this decade and at that point NASA and other countries will resort to renting space on privately owned, earth orbiting stations.

NASA is hedging its bets and providing grants to several private companies in hopes of jump starting and accelerating their development of private space stations. No doubt any of these companies will be honored to have NASA as a primary tenant, but they’re setting their sights even higher – literally.

Space Flight Tourism Has Begun

We’ve already broken the public-private barrier with tourist excursions for low-earth, brief or multi-day orbital flights. The Russians have been making their Soyuz vehicle available for ferrying private citizens to the ISS for more than a decade.

Now, in addition to ferrying crews to the ISS for NASA, SpaceX also is using its equipment to provide multi-day orbital flights for private citizens. Late last year, SpaceX hosted four space tourists for a three-day orbiting tour.

Space Destination Tourism

Axiom Space, one of the companies supported by NASA, is planning to rent out the SpaceX vehicle from Elon Musk’s team to transport company clients to an eight-day literal “around the world” orbital flight cruise aboard the ISS. This represents the second phase of the space tourism industry – to deliver space tourists to orbiting modules and stations. We’re there already of course, but these programs are in their infancy.

When the ISS goes out of commission, we’ll see private space stations take up the slack – both for NASA’s important work and for wealthy space tourists’ once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Axiom has a leg up on this venture, as it’s planning to attach a module to the ISS for several years before detaching it to form the basis of its own private space station.

Orbital Vacations

Over time, space station tourists won’t be content to live even for a few days in a lab-like environment – the kind we’re used to seeing on videos from the ISS.

Private, orbiting space stations will be upgraded. They won’t be luxurious at first, but they’ll have slightly upgraded sleeping pods and small common areas for lounging instead of working.

NASA will still have its labs and astronaut quarters on board. The tourists will need to stay in their own area, although some will want to do more than look out the window for days at a time and will volunteer to participate in research after receiving some on-the-ground training before liftoff.

The Next Frontier

The next step in the space tourism progression is to break beyond the Earth orbit and place space facilities in other locations – orbiting the Earth’s moon or on the moon itself.

We’ll also see space vacations and research destinations in non-planet orbiting space.

Supporting Space Commerce

Down the road even further, space workers for commercial ventures will become another category of private citizen astronauts. These workers will be hopping from one private space station to the next as space station entrepreneurs place facilities at ever-more distant waypoints in space. Tasks like asteroid mining will be done by robots, of course, but in some cases, human intervention at the mining location may be needed to keep things progressing. These private space stations will serve as staging areas, regional offices, and warehouses.

Space Highways

It’s not too hard to imagine that eventually, along well-established routes to commercial areas in space and to other planets, we’ll see the emergence of additional space structures – hardly space “stations” anymore – with specific functions. Passing vehicles will dock to resupply, make deliveries, make repairs, refresh crews and passengers, and provide almost the same variety of services you’d expect to see along a U.S. interstate highway.

Even further into the future, we’ll see scheduled flights from earth to the larger space communities and then between those locations, similar to the familiar hub and spoke arrangements used by the world’s airlines today. As we scale these operations, space recreation and tourism will be open to far more of Earth’s citizens.

These flights will be even more necessary when people (originally workers on those remote outposts) choose to remain in space-based facilities indefinitely, purchasing or renting accommodations – maybe as retirement destinations.

Will Space Remain International?

At this time, the U.S., China, India, Russia, the UK, Japan, the UAE and maybe a few other nations have or conceivably could develop the capability to push into space for tourism or commerce.

But who owns space? Will we see any borders or territorial claims? Back in 1960, the United Nations determined that space was truly wide open. No country could lay claim to any areas or create any borders.

Will today and tomorrow’s nations abide by that? This neutrality principle might be tested as structures emerge on the moon and Mars and as we’re able to easily reach areas of space with valuable resource-laden asteroids. We may also come across some entities that come from other parts of the universe who would beg to differ about that jurisdiction of the UN!

Baby Steps So Far Are an Exciting Promise of What’s to Come

With these kinds of futuristic images in mind, it’s easy to see that what’s happened in the past decade and what will take place in the next few years are important steps, but they’re still just baby steps.

What needs to and will happen, though, is that as more and more tourist space flights occur on private vehicles and more and more private residents spend a few days at a time on the ISS and later the private space stations, people and investors will be convinced that futuristic, recreational space travel and residency is no longer science fiction but a legitimate, future personal and business opportunity. The Jetsons won’t seem as far fetched as they did 60 years ago.

In 2022, we’ll see a remarkable surge in this direction with more visitors going to space and to the ISS, along with breakthroughs in how to build and integrate structures in space. As long as we don’t see any major catastrophes (unfortunately, they’re almost inevitable and it’s important we keep them in perspective and learn from them when they happen), we’ll see growing confidence in the viability of recreational space travel.

Ten years from now, even if you’re not ready to book a hotel stay near Mars, you should buy a ticket for an Earth orbit trip or make reservations for a once-in-a-lifetime space station vacation. That’s where you’re going to see the greatest shows off Earth.

Never say never. That’s one principle of futurism that proves itself time and time again.

Driverless vehicles. Citizen travel in space. Robots. Global currencies. Alternate universes. Mars exploration. At some point in history, each seemed like a pipe dream, if not bizarre … until really smart people methodically made the necessary breakthroughs to make them a reality.

We’re also making incremental progress in many other areas so that they don’t seem as far-fetched as they did even a decade ago. Manned missions to Mars. Electrified interstate highways. Colonization of the Moon. We’ll ultimately put these into the “Win” column, too. Each one is progressing on its own terms and its own time frame – moving inexorably toward the day that it’s front-page news and then quickly a normal way of life. Smart and creative people are steadily working to pull “outside the box” ideas closer to the box borders.

Add another moonshot to this list of ultimate breakthroughs: asteroid mining. We have a long way to go, but it will happen.

Asteroid mining

Why mine asteroids? In the words of Depression-era bank robber Willie Sutton, “Because that’s where the money is.” And according to NASA, “the money” equates to $100 million for every person on Earth in the form of gold, iridium, silver, osmium, palladium, platinum, nickel, aluminum, and other materials.

Asteroids are the “leftovers” from the formation of our solar system and its planets, so they can be expected to have many of the same components. The majority are in the asteroid belt found in orbit around the sun between Mars and Jupiter.

One sure sign that asteroid mining has shifted from science fiction to serious business when companies are being formed around the processes and governments are looking at regulating how to authorize ownership of these interplanetary resources. U.S. government policies seem to consider asteroid resources to be fair game to whoever can exploit them, much like ocean resources that lie outside the coastal boundaries of any country.

How Much?

It’s estimated that there are 150 million asteroids in our close-in solar system but not all are of the metallic type that would be especially rich in these minerals and ores, either to transport back to Earth or to be used in space construction.

Some of the ones with the most potential could nearly pay for the entire industry investment. The 16 Psyche asteroid discovered in 1852 has an approximate diameter of 140 miles – and an estimated $700 quintillion (one quintillion is equal to one million trillions) in iron, nickel, gold, and other ores. NASA is planning a fly-by to check it out in more detail.

At this point, 16 Psyche may be an outlier, but many other asteroids have been identified containing similar element deposits valued in the easier-to-digest billions of dollars.

We May Not Have a Choice

Asteroid mining would be incredibly expensive, but at some point, the cost of obtaining these rapidly depleting materials on Earth will be greater than the recovery costs related to space mining. That’s when asteroid mining will shift from a theory to a necessity if we want to maintain our way of life.

This kind of earth-based depletions are a real possibility according to this analysis from the World Economic Forum. Interestingly, the article from just four years ago doesn’t mention asteroid mining as a solution – it focuses on other types of breakthroughs like synthesizing the declining elements, developing alternative technologies that don’t rely on those elements, and recycling efforts. Also, when pointing out the environmental damage and social impacts of mining these items on Earth (especially from gold mining), it doesn’t mention that these would be mitigated with space mining.

What Will Asteroid Mining Look Like?

Forget the image of astronauts wielding pickaxes. We will see mining machine space vehicles drop down on the surface of asteroids that have been identified as likely sources. They’ll drill, scoop, and collect material. In fact, this basic mining technology has been proven. Both the U.S. and Japan have landed probes onto asteroids, collected surface material, and departed again.

On major source asteroids, robots will do the dirty work and load these transports, sitting idle between transports. The transports will deliver the mined or intact material to moon-based or other mid and low-orbit automated processing plants where the materials will be refined. The purified elements will be shipped to Earth or used in space construction. The byproducts will be compacted into small asteroids using a safe binding agent and then delivered back to deep space in a precise location.

In subsequent generations of the technology, some level of refining or smelting will even happen on the surface of major, high-yield asteroids. And while it sounds a bit concerning, we’ll also use evolving technology to steer asteroids closer to earth orbit where mining and materials transport is more efficient.

Sounds simple, right? No, of course not. Scaling this landing-retrieving-returning-processing into major levels of production seems pretty impossible. But that’s because we’re looking at asteroid mining through the eyes of practicality, based on what’s possible today. But as we mentioned above, breakthroughs are really the sum of solutions to incremental challenges.

And numbers like “quintillions” are powerful motivators, as is the competition to be the first trillionaire!

When will we see the first space hotel? Some would say we have the prototype right now at the International Space Station (ISS). Astronauts working there have their own phone booth-sized sleeping quarters with room for their laptops and other personal items. NASA has announced it would sponsor tourist visits to the ISS where they’ll stay in attached modules currently under design and development.

In fact, though, seven space tourists have already traveled to the ISS for one-to-two-week visits, booked through a U.S. company called Space Adventures, which purchases unused seats on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft. It’s been a decade since the last tourist visit, but a Japanese fashion designer and his photographer have booked a ride for December of this year through that company.

But when we think of space hotels, that’s not really what comes to mind.

Sparking the Imagination

Two years before mankind set foot on the moon, in somewhat of a public relations campaign, Barron Hilton was talking about his Hilton company placing an Orbiter Hilton in the earth’s orbit and a Lunar Hilton on the moon – or at least under the moon’s surface. The plans were long on imagination and short on solutions. Pesky matters related to water, oxygen, and weightlessness in those environments had yet to be fully explored, let alone solved.

But the imagination was the fun part – and the part the public wanted to hear about. Hilton presented sketches of cocktail lounges and bars in his out-of-this-world properties. He described how guest rooms would seem very similar to those in earthbound Hilton properties. The public loved the idea, and many people wrote to the company asking to make a reservation.

From Imagination to Reality

Over the next 50 years, NASA and other national space programs worked steadily to solve those problems related to sustaining life in outer earth orbits. And in the last decade, the private sector companies of space travel pioneers like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Sir Richard Branson have made major leaps in space transport technology.

Many companies are vying for a piece of the future space tourism industry, promising everything from edge-of-space, sub-orbital flights to extended-stay orbiting hotels.

And in the hotel category, we’re seeing plans for luxurious, modest-sized, four-guest properties like the Aurora Space Station by Orion Span, all the way to the Gateway Foundation’s Voyager Station with room for 400 guests.

The Voyager Station property will have 24 modules rotating slowly like a wheel to provide gravity equivalent to that of the moon – so we can all bounce around like Neil Armstrong and subsequent moonwalkers or so that some of the more athletic can dunk like an NBA All-Star. Orbital Assembly Corporation will handle the space construction for Voyager Station using robots.

Back to Imagination

The images that Barron Hilton put in our minds in 1967 seem far more realizable today as we envision space hotel vacations. Instead of an ISS, think of these space hotels as earth-orbiting cruise ships.

Similar to an ocean cruise experience, the first matter of business for new arrivals at the orbiting hotel will be a safety drill. Attached to the sides of the core of the structure there will be multi-passenger escape ships. Instead of learning how to put on a water flotation device, guests will learn how to quickly step into and zip up their flight suits. Pilots of these escape pods will always be on board, most serving as crewmembers with other duties on the hotel airship.

The interior will be warm and inviting, a far cry from the sterile walls and halls we saw in 2001: A Space Odyssey. In fact, one scene in that movie took place in the lounge of an Orbiter Hilton hotel – a very appropriate and subtle homage to Barron’s vision and PR prowess.

Guests will be able to sign up to don a space suit and be attached to a 10-foot tether near the slower rotating core area of the structure and go for a spacewalk. I don’t think we’ll see skeet shooting – there’s no stern to safely point away from, and a purposeful or accidental errant shot could be disastrous to the entire structure.

Expansive windows will be everywhere – in guest rooms, the dining room, the cocktail lounge, and even the small half-court gymnasium.

The workout facility will be placed at the outer reaches of the spinning structure, where the gravity will be strongest – although still not as strong as on Earth. Treadmills will come with tethers for people who bounce just a little too much in their running gait. Friends will snap pictures of other guests to document weight-lifting feats that would not be possible for them on Earth.

Day and night will essentially be meaningless given the space cruise ship’s continual orbit and the day-night cycles of less than two hours. It will take a visitor one or two 24-hour days of adjustment until they get used to having breakfast while watching a far-off meteor shower and having an “evening” cocktail while watching the sun rise. This Las Vegas-esque sequence could very easily be reversed the next 24-hour day.

What will this vacation cost? If you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it. Early on, just the trip to the orbiting hotel in one of Branson’s, Bezos’, or Musk’s vehicles will likely be in the six figures. However, with further technology breakthroughs and as new economies emerge, you can expect that this entire trip might be more in line with a three-month, first-class sea cruise.

Remarkable innovation and breakthroughs in space transport and construction are making all of this possible. I’m not convinced the Voyager Station will be checking in guests in 2027 like promoters claimed earlier this year, but it’s amazing to realize that this could happen even before the end of the current decade.

U.S. government analysts have predicted that between now and 2050, energy demand worldwide will increase by almost 50%, due primarily to the use of electric cars. And by that time, renewable energy will need to overtake the share of energy we receive from traditional sources like coal, oil, and natural gas. But it will take a lot more than wind-farms and solar farms to do it.

Many experts believe solar power is our energy source of the future. It would be an understatement of the highest order to say that the sun couldn’t meet our energy needs if we could effectively figure out how to capture its energy. The sun emits 386 billion million gigawatts of energy on to the Earth’s surface, while we only consume a few thousand megawatts.

We’ve only Scratched the Surface with Solar

Our approach to solar so far has focused on trying to catch those rays that reach the earth with strategically placed solar panels. These panels are becoming more efficient thanks to the new materials, smaller components, and their ability to track the sun across the sky. At the same time, larger and larger solar farms are being deployed on land and on sea.

But that’s just a solar drop in the bucket. Where is the breakthrough that will create the sea change in technology that will get solar well past its current 2-3% share?

Reaching Out to the Sun

That breakthrough will have to solve the challenges not only of scale but of the interruptibility of solar power. Most of the solar energy approaching Earth is lost as it makes its way through the atmosphere. Then of course there’s the daytime, nighttime effect due to the Earth’s rotation.

Moving our point of solar power collection closer to the sun by creating a satellite power plant in space that continually faces the sun will address both of those issues.

The concept is called space-based solar power (SBSP) or solar power satellites (SPS). Many countries are steadily working on how to make this happen. Japan was one of the first, as I reported seven years ago.

Russia, the European Union, and India are also focused on this effort. China claims they will be collecting solar energy this way by 2030, but it’s unclear what kind of scale they’re envisioning.

The U.S. military is working on it as well, and is currently experimenting with satellite technology that can capture solar power and beam it to remote bases to ensure an uninterruptible energy supply in strategic locations. Additional military tests are planned for 2023 in which materials will be deployed in conjunction with the International Space Station.

How it Works

Imagine a massive five square mile solar sail in orbit always facing the sun. The energy it captures would be converted into energy waves and then transferred to antennae on earth via microwave transmissions. These transmissions are not affected by the earth’s atmosphere and cloud coverage as laser power beams currently are. Down on Earth, the energy is converted back into electricity. It sounds complex and futuristic, but in fact we’ve already solved the major technical barriers to make this feasible. Collection and transmission using these techniques are very doable.

The remaining challenges, though, are related to scaling. We’ll need to put a tremendous amount of material into orbit along with an army of workers to assemble it. But these challenges seem less and less daunting. Thanks to the proliferating private space industry, delivery of the material over a reasonable amount of time seems possible. And rather than relying on hundreds of workers housed in mega-sized space stations, we will program space robots to do the vast majority of repetitive assembly

Space is Starting to Feel Like Home…

Rocket launches and space stations are hardly newsworthy anymore. Unless there’s a disastrous launch or incredible video from the surface of Mars, space is hardly newsworthy anymore. The fact that space is now routine is a very encouraging development. Space is so routine that we’re getting traffic jams up there between activity by NASA, the Defense Department, and the private sector, not to mention similar activity from other nations. Some see our tapping into the wonders and benefits of space as a new inflection point in human history, similar to the discovery of electricity or the invention of the steam engine. That’s because we’re increasingly looking beyond our planet for solutions to challenges here on Earth. Materials for a solar power station could be mined from the Earth’s moon. Satellite imaging systems are providing detailed images of earth. Zero-gravity manufacturing environments are enabling the creation of ultra-pure products. A web of satellites will soon deliver uninterrupted and mobile internet signals to most of the world. And now we’re placing a bigger “ask” of space that we ever have: to help solve our environmental issues by giving us a location for massive, efficient solar power stations.

…Yes, it’s Messy but not too Messy

Space is getting crowded, though, thanks to all these satellite-based initiatives. What about collisions? It’s a condition known as Kessler’s Syndrome, named after the NASA scientist who has suggested that it’s just a matter of time before active satellites and space junk collide, initiating a chain reaction of collisions as more and more items get knocked off of their established orbital paths. It doesn’t appear that solar power satellites will be as susceptible to collisions compared to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites. Most of the commercial satellite activity we’re seeing these days is in lower earth orbits that are less than 750 miles above Earth. Solar power stations are being planned far higher than that – around 22,000 miles above the Earth, roughly one-tenth of the distance to the moon.

Will it Solve Our Pollution Problems?

Over the near term, we shouldn’t rely on solar power stations to solve all our pollution and environmental issues on earth. The science is sound, and many groups and nations are making progress, but realistically the technology won’t be online on a large scale for decades. We’ll be making incremental progress leading up to that, for example with targeted solar power satellites providing power for military bases or space-based equipment, but we won’t be powering entire countries anytime soon. Why some say this future tech can’t come soon enough, it’s far better that we understand the unintended consequences, from piercing microwave holes through our atmosphere before deploying it on a large scale.