The idea of space-based solar power has been around for at least half a century: trillion-dollar orbital behemoths with tens of square miles of solar power cells beaming gigawatts of energy to enormous earth-based rectennas via microwaves. It’s an industrial-era solution to an information-age problem. But what if there’s a 21st Century solution: something smaller, lighter and much, much, MUCH cheaper?
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Steve; Re: the upper limit of Starlink. Starlink Phone takes different satellites, and will be debuting soon. Upper limit just moved waaaaay back.
And, somewhere in the afterlife, Robert Heinlein looks down and scowls.
“About Damn time!! I gave you that in the sixties.”
I can just picture Dr. Evil calling them Mini Golden Eye. I’m not one of those guys who gets neurotic about cell phone radiation, but to be useful each beam has to transmit enough power to power at least one house. With the beam fading and dissipating along the way. Sure the engineers may find try to minimize atmospheric losses by transmitting on a frequency that doesn’t resonate with water. Their companies marketing department may even claim they even have a bird safe system. But what happens if a wildlife tag or a stray mylar balloon passes through the beam?… Read more »
Really Bill, I informed you of the next energy system several years ago, now approaching completion, and it here on earth, no need to go to space. IonPowerGroup.com
From Time Bandits:
Once again, the late, great Robert A. Heinlein (PBUH) wrote about beamed power in one of his early short stories in 1942. In Waldo, beamed power was not only used for buildings, but also for cars and other transportation.
I think “Waldo & Magic Inc” was two novellas in the same book. I think it was Magic Inc that had the voodoo antennas. But don’t quote me on it, I last read the book in high school.
No, Magic, Inc. was the story about a general contractor fighting back against a wizard mob using protection racket methods to try to take over the city. Waldo was the correct story reference; I’ve read both dozens of times.
Space Laser Power Beaming Experiment:100 Days On-Orbit Operations 11% efficient is not bad, considering RF power degrades exponentially w/distance. LASER power can diffuse much less, but still degrades as a f(2-5 degree cones, over miles, adds up). Additionally, LASER is more of a point-to-point solution, as such hard to imagine 8 billion individual receivers. I still like the original Nichola Tesla idea of charging the atmosphere (Wardenclyffe Tower). Westinghouse pulled the plug (pun intended) when he figured out that he would not make any money if people had free access to essentially free energy.
I admit I always thought you three guys were very smart and way over my head, but I am super impressed by your “science” knowledge even though I honestly don’t understand most of it. I will continue subscribing because at least I hope my brain may actually learn something new.
Meh, there are a prohibitive number of technical issues that would have to be overcome to develop and deploy something like this. That’s going to take a long time. In the meanwhile modular thorium MSRs are much more promising, a lot less difficult and a lot more likely to get done. Putting a modular reactor the size of a semi-truck trailer for every few square miles of high power demand grid and a lot more square miles of domestic demand grid is a lot cheaper than cluttering up Earth orbit with even more junk. Be it cool laser beam junk… Read more »
totally agree
Decentralized power is the future. Scott was correct in stating the security benefits! I do not believe it will be done with lasers though. Tesla showed, with the idea of the Tesla tower (not to be confused with the Tesla coil) that there is free electricity just hanging in the air. His idea was that the particles coming from the sun, that pass through the Earth, would impart a charge. This charge is the power base for lightning. He envisioned building a tower 60 miles high. At that height, the tower would have access to nearly unlimited power at, if… Read more »
“Cold fusion” is rarely cold, and not exactly fusion. For example, Here’s a site with some information on LENR – research on which was ‘killed’ by the ‘smear review process’ as well as by the mobs (oil, gas, coal, and nuclear fusion/fission cartels). Perhaps ” Arthur C. Clarke said it best:
Why does my mind think, in a world of Magic, a wizard might say “any sufficiently developed magic is indistinguishable from technology”?
I will answer that myself. I.am not normal. Normal is boring (motto #2, chronologically)
Occasionally waaay out there. And not that rarely either.