With the rise in demand for solar panels across the world, Ben Nowack, a 26-year-old inventor, and a former SpaceX employee has found a new way to harness solar energy in a more effective and economical way. Interestingly enough, the young guy plans to send satellites into orbit that have mirrors deployed onto them. The plan has been deemed a success as it will provide a decent chance of generating solar energy on a large scale, as reported by Vice. Hence, the young aspirant is aiming to consign these satellites into orbit to reap exceptional benefits.
Nowack stated, “Everybody’s installing so many solar panels everywhere. It’s really a great candidate to power humanity. But when the sunlight turns off, it’s called nighttime. If you solve that fundamental problem, you fix solar everywhere. ” One of the interesting things to note is that the whole concept of designing reflectors for these satellites has been based on NASA’s James Webb Telescope. With this in mind, he will do the whole procedure of deploying reflectors on the satellites according to the telescope and will then turn the reflectors the other way around in space, so that they can generate maximum solar energy.
Coupled with this, Nowack is planning to do it in a unique way in which he will make use of “several million parabolas” for attaching them to the satellites instead of just using one gigantic and unwieldy mirror. Through this process, optimization and efficiency will be enhanced. Nowack, in conversation with Vice, stated that “You can shine sunlight on solar farms that already exist. Then I developed several more technologies which I know for a fact no one else is working on. That made the model even more economical. “
Nowack, creative with his methods, is now trying to accumulate $5 million by October for the purpose of doing a test mission with this concept and sending out one of the reflectors to the International Space Station. He further said, “Making this cheaper than everything else, that’s the challenge.” And this is what Elon Musk follows. Musk always lays strong emphasis on achieving a mission in an economical but effective way, and that’s when you start nailing it.
