8 thoughts on “Space-Based Solar Power”

  1. I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me how we’re going to transmit hundreds of terawatts of microwave energy through the atmosphere without causing serious and significant unintended consequences.

    My microwave oven produces somewhere around 1500 watts of microwave energy and can cook food in seconds.

    You think windmills kill a lot of birds? Just wait until we’re transmitting staggering amounts of energy through the atmosphere.

    And what happens when there are clouds? That microwave energy is going to be transferring massive amounts of energy into those water and ice molecules. Not only will it significantly attenuate the power reaching the collector stations on the surface, I can imagine it would significantly alter the weather patterns. Talk about anthropogenic climate change.

    I remain convinced that this is a very, very bad idea.

    1. The frequency of your microwave oven is not the same as the one used to transmit power. The one for the latter is not resonant with water molecules.

      1. That makes sense, but I still have concerns. One of the basic principles of physics is that energy cannot be created, nor destroyed, only changed in form. So when all that energy is transmitted to the earth, it has to be change in from from microwave energy into something else.

        The part that’s accepted by the receiving stations is changed into some form readily convertible to electricity…heat maybe, or heck directly into electricity? I don’t know, but that energy is converted.

        What about the energy that doesn’t end up in the receiving stations? What does it act upon and what is the result…i.e. if the frequencies employed aren’t resonant with water, what are they resonant with? That energy doesn’t just disappear.

        And we’re not talking about a little bit here…to be a meaningful contribution to the power grid, it would have to be enormous amounts of energy.

        I’m not a scientist, nor engineer. I may be way off on this and that’s OK, because it’s not like I have any control over or input on policy anyway, but my high school level understanding of physics and “common sense” still tell me this is not a good idea.

        1. The conversion efficiency into electricity at the rectenna is about 90%. The rest goes into heating it. It’s a trivial amount of waste heat compared to most power plants.

    2. There’s a saying in toxicology that “it’s the dose that makes the poison.” Some things that are toxic at high doses are harmless at low doses. Your microwave concentrates that energy in a small area. It’s also of the frequency that causes water molecules to vibrate. An individual solar power satellite may transmit a gigawatt of energy to receiving systems spread over several square kilometers, resulting in an energy density that is harmless. It would also be at a frequency that doesn’t cause water molecules to vibrate because if it were, a great deal of energy would be lost to clouds and water vapor in the air.

      Back in 1990, I was stationed at Shemya, Alaska operating the Cobra Dane phased array radar. That radar radiated something like 15-18 MW of RF energy in L-band. I noticed that birds were flying just feet in front of the array face with no ill effects. One of the Raytheon contractor personnel explained to me that the antenna energy didn’t become focused until several miles from the array face and that the energy density and frequency were essentially harmless.

      1. I was an Aviation Electronics Tech in the Navy and we worked on radar systems as well. What I remember vividly were the strict tag out and control protocols in use whenever we had to run tests or operate our radar systems on the ground because of the danger of RF radiation injuries…and aviation radar systems never came close to 18Mw. The most powerful one I remember working on was 2Mw and that was on a dedicated surveillance platform. Maybe because the frequencies were different?

        Even so, 18Mwatts is nowhere near the power that would have to be available for a system designed to produce electrical power at scale.

  2. Now the green fanatics have a legitimate concern. This system will put giga-watts of energy into our eco-system. We could finally get the warming they have threatened for the last few decades.

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