Chinese Scientists Plan Solar Power Station In Space
That is, a solar station in space that converts the energy to microwave or laser and beams it to Earth. There are ways to mitigate the danger but let me remind you…
“Microwave Receiver Dish is very efficient, clean and reliable. Launch a satellite to collect solar power, then beam it down to Earth. Unfortunately, the effects of a mis-targeted beam are, as yet, unknown.”
Posted in Gaming, High-Tech, Less Interesting News, Practice, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with 2 comments.
The concept of a solar power to microwave satellite is not new – it’s in SciFi as well as actual scientific literature since 1968. The fact the the Chinese are floating this idea is just them being the copycats that they are, and they didn’t copy SimCity :-)
Here are links to some actual research on the subject:
http://www.osti.gov/scitech/biblio/5821273
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19780012218.pdf
http://mail.nodac.net/settlement/ssp/library/BoeingCR151557-1977AUG1-Part1Vol4-TransportationRequirements.pdf
http://m.sciencemag.org/content/205/4405/451.short
And here is the expected patent troll:
http://www.google.com/patents/US4415759
I know. But everytime I see someone considering this idea, I remember SimCity.