That’s a more interesting idea but still quite questionable, given how expensive sending anything to space is, and then maintaining it.
It made more sense with solar was expensive per square mm, but that is no longer the case.
Also, transmission is a huge problem. It’s easy to say ‘make a maser,’ but making giant one and aiming it reliably (lest one fries nearby terrain as the satellite moves to track the sun), and making a receiver big enough from how much the laser spreads out from geosync orbit is a tall order. Geosync is super far away.
Yeah, I think it’d be a pretty silly thing for us to ever try to do. My goal was to take their stupid idea, provide a slightly less stupid idea, and then say “or just don’t do space power at all and keep everything terrestrial.” Orbital solar power stations were lots of fun in science fiction, but panels are cheap, there’s plenty of land, and giant death masers that cook any birds flying into the beam are, uh, suboptimal.
YES. That’s a HUGE one, for the maser in particular. I can’t even think of a precedent for operating (and cooling) something so high power in space, so its likely to fail, too.
It’s honestly all a bad idea, lol. It’s way less safe than nuclear, way more expensive than ground solar, so…
That’s a more interesting idea but still quite questionable, given how expensive sending anything to space is, and then maintaining it.
It made more sense with solar was expensive per square mm, but that is no longer the case.
Also, transmission is a huge problem. It’s easy to say ‘make a maser,’ but making giant one and aiming it reliably (lest one fries nearby terrain as the satellite moves to track the sun), and making a receiver big enough from how much the laser spreads out from geosync orbit is a tall order. Geosync is super far away.
There’s plenty of space on the ground, for now.
Yeah, I think it’d be a pretty silly thing for us to ever try to do. My goal was to take their stupid idea, provide a slightly less stupid idea, and then say “or just don’t do space power at all and keep everything terrestrial.” Orbital solar power stations were lots of fun in science fiction, but panels are cheap, there’s plenty of land, and giant death masers that cook any birds flying into the beam are, uh, suboptimal.
And efficiency, too. Even at a really good 50%, both for the solar panels and the maser, that’s still a fuckton of heat being generated.
YES. That’s a HUGE one, for the maser in particular. I can’t even think of a precedent for operating (and cooling) something so high power in space, so its likely to fail, too.
It’s honestly all a bad idea, lol. It’s way less safe than nuclear, way more expensive than ground solar, so…
Proportionally though, there is far more space in space.