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For the first time in decades, Congress seems interested in space-based solar power
(arstechnica.com)
this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
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Technology
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I didn’t see any mention of how they actually get the power down to earth. Really long cable maybe?
They did a test with microwave to transmit energy from space to Earth. There is some serious drawback in doing it via microwave though, so I'm curious on how they'll transmit a huge amount of energy without heating up or causing residual damage to the environment.
Yeah seems like there's a general thermodynamics problem with sending a bunch of energy through the atmosphere
And ppl think wind turbines are deadly to birds, imagine a flock flying through a trillion watt microwave beam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_gun
Ion canon ready
Most proposals I've seen involve using microwave transmission to a ground-based receiver dish.
I imagine it would be something like the wireless energy beaming tech in this TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxrB7PDLJ18