[boris]

This is nuts for several reasons. I once saw an estimate that--to build orbiting solar stations, it would take 50 shuttle flights per year. Add that to the cost.

If it rains where the receiver is, the amount of radiation reaching the antenna is reduced.

The animal rights nuts will go ballistic whenever a goose flys through the beam and dinner is delivered--pre-cooked--out of the sky.

Not to mention the NIMBYs opposing siting of the antennas, Earth Firsters sabotaging them, airplanes flying through the beams and having various systems roasted, etc, etc.

An idea whose time is went.

--Boris

[RightWhale]

Here's the plan:

Instead of doing the blatently obvious and beaming power down to the ground so we can recharge our Makitas, we will do something just slightly non-obvious.

We will use the power in space.

The heavy industry use of power will be removed from the power grid. It is about 1/3 of the power use. Heavy industry will be moved into outer space. No more pollution, no more acid runoff from strip mines, it's an environmentalist's dream and he'll have to go to school to learn about something else to whine about.

[Salgak]

Actually, it's NOT nuts: the engineering is quite straightforward. And originally, the shuttle system was SUPPOSED to be capable of several hundred flights a year. Of course, we were supposed to be flying a second-generation shuttle 5 years ago, and finishing development of a third-generation shuttle by now.

The economic payback for setting up the infrastructure to build SPS's is also straight-forward, and has the added benefit of once you've got the the infrastructure in place in GEO and Lunar orbit, as well as on the Moon, then from that point, you can build as many more as you want for O&M costs. . . .

As for the animal-rights activists and treehuggers, if they object morally to the power, let them. . . .in the dark, with no electricity. Rectennas are a bit hard to sabotage with anything less than a squadron of bombers, and for the most part, the loss due to clouds or rain isn't terribly significant. I've been following the issue since the late 1970s. . .

[barkeep]

Your first objection is the most constraining. NOTHING will happen in space until we send the shuttle to the scrapheap of history. It is a horrendously expensive, overly complicated, terribly fragile, one-size fits all craft which has in no regard fulfilled the promises made back when it was originally funded. While we're at it, we can stop pouring money into the space station. The old sci-fi vision of a wheel in space is where we need to go. Humans do not tolerate null G well for long periods. Unless someone comes up with field generated gravity, long term work in space will require a wheel design.