China has announced plans to build a giant solar power space station, which will be lifted into orbit piece by piece using the nation's brand-new heavy lift rockets.
I was hoping the article would explain how they planned to transmit the energy in a useful way. It says beaming back my microwave, but I have no idea how that works or if it has a good scale potential. Guessing they’re targeted at some surface that vibrates or heats up and that geberates the power on the terrestrial side of the equation?
That is very helpful. Now I want to know silly stuff like, what happens if you fly through the beam, and could you in theory reaim the array towards a completely different receiver plant, and be able to shift power around as needed (albeit very slowly)
I was hoping the article would explain how they planned to transmit the energy in a useful way. It says beaming back my microwave, but I have no idea how that works or if it has a good scale potential. Guessing they’re targeted at some surface that vibrates or heats up and that geberates the power on the terrestrial side of the equation?
presumably in a similar way to this https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19760009531
That is very helpful. Now I want to know silly stuff like, what happens if you fly through the beam, and could you in theory reaim the array towards a completely different receiver plant, and be able to shift power around as needed (albeit very slowly)
The intensity of the waves is very low in absolute terms, so they’re not harmful.
https://restservice.epri.com/publicdownload/000000003002029069/0/Product
Thanks again, you’ve managed to improve my education twice today!