In space, no one can hear you scream, but we can make a run at collecting solar power for our growing energy demands. Researchers are proposing that if we can get a solar energy installation into orbit, we will be able to capture tremendous amounts of solar power.

With an estimated price tag of around $250 billion, NASA's first designs for orbiting power stations in the late 1970s were hopelessly expensive.

“All serious work on space solar power in the US stopped around 1980,” said John Mankins, a representative of NASA's Advanced Projects Office in Washington DC, to New Scientist.

Thanks to new research on the issue of space-based solar, there has been a revival of plans to begin collecting solar energy from orbiting solar collection stations. Scientific American recently released pivotal information that has rallied support for space-based solar.

In space there is no air, so the collecting surfaces would receive much more intense sunlight, unaffected by weather.

In geostationary orbit, a solar power satellite (SPS) would be illuminated over 99 percent of the time, a major advantage to solar installations on the Earths surface. Such an SPS would be in Earth’s shadow on only a few days at the spring and fall equinoxes, and even then for a maximum of 75 minutes late at night, when power demands are at their lowest.

Power harvested in space can be transported to earth using microwaves or laser radiation. California’s state legislators have already given a green light to a space-based solar project.

California’s biggest energy utility company PG&E has announced that they would purchase 200MW of solar power that will be beamed from space by 2016.

“If this works, it would be a real game changer. But for our customers, there’s really no or little risk, so it’s worth supporting something that has credible people behind it with years of experience who think they can make it work,” said Jonathan Marshall from PG&E to cnet.com.

Americans aren’t the only ones taking a serious look at space based solar installations.

According to Ecofriend.org, Japan is also planning a $21 billion space solar project that will be capable of generating 1GW of power. The project will be developed by Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and IHI Corp. and will make use of a four-square-kilometer array of solar panels stationed 36,000km above the surface of earth.