Some ideas are so simple that you can’t believe that no-one came up with them before. Sebastian Braat, a graduate of the University of Western Sydney, has announced just such an invention – roof tiles for suburban housing that use solar energy to generate electricity and heat water. Once the idea is fine-tuned and cost effective, it could make a huge difference to the environmental footprint of the average home – at least in sunny Australia.

It might be time to stop debating whether there will be any water for Lunar explorers to use, and how they might get to it to use it. Alan Stern proposes a program called SLAM, which simply involves launching water ice at the moon using Atlas 401 rockets as boosters. It’s simple, it’s cheap, and it solves a lot of logistical nightmares for moon missions of the future.

It’s no mean feat to accurately manufacture plastic components that are smaller than a human hair is thick. But modifying a technique known as microtransfer molding may well provide a solution for the problems involved.

Settlers on the Red Planet won’t be able to rely on frequent supplies from Earth to keep the larder stocked. Professor Masamichi Yamashita of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency proposes an agricultural biodome system where settlers would breed silkworms as feed for fish or poultry raised locally or (in more desparate times) as part of their own diet.

Anyone in the space industries is worried about space junk. Earth orbit is full of flotsam, and there are calls for planning how to deal with it – including people saying that some of it should be preserved for posterity.