1. I think Hermann Oberth had that idea back in 1940s, except he was touting it as a “Death Ray” in order to get money from Hitler. The space based solar panel idea has been around at least from the seventies. Like this effort, the idea back then was to “Beam” power to Earth via microwaves (a 24,000 mile long extension cord just isn’t practical right now). Just put that potato on the patio for a few minutes, it’l be baked in no time. Does anyone else find it revealing that the Pentagon is funding this research?

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   1. Not at all surprising, for a number of possible reasons.

      Mostly, though, to get something like this up you’d need a truly impressive heavy-launch capability to geosync.

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2. Ah Yes – the reliable old DEATH RAY from space trick
   VERY sneaky trying to make it look like an energy feeder to the power grid

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3. This is a basic application of radio theory, converting electricity to electromagnetic energy then back again. As someone who is intimately familiar with satellite transmission I can tell you the efficiency rate is horrible as all that electricty harvested by the lack of atmosphere blocking the solar rays in space will be attenuated by passing through earths atmosphere to get to the receiver. Any transmission strong enough to provide a usable amount of electricity really would be a death ray but considering the amount of energy we need to produce a usable laser weapon system I don’t think we have to worry about death beams from above anytime soon . I will worry when we finally figure out how to make a usable direct energy weapon and I will believe this might work as intended if we ever figure out how to transmit electricity using quantum affect or something that does not send energy through a highly attenuating atmosphere. If the Pentagon wants space weapons they are better off spending the money on lifting kinetic penetrators into space or investing in the infrastructure in space to make their kinetic weapons up there. Of course the Pentagon probably knows this and it’s just using this as a excuse to send rockets into space for their covert satellite programs.

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   1. What we need is a superconducting material with a tensile strength higher than carbon nano tubes to make a tethered geosynchronous satellite (like a space elevator) that collected power above the atmosphere and transmitted it to earth with no loss.

4. Jerry Pournelle was evangelizing about this in the 1970’s after the “Energy Crisis” started.

   They have done the small scale demonstration engineering already. they have used microwaves to actually transmit power. by choosing the correct frequencies, you can even prevent the microwaves from reaching the ground below a chosen altitude, say 8,000 feet. And the microwave energy density is low enough, that birds and animals that wander into the beam are not affected. the receiving antennas resemble a collection of pipes, not a solid mass like the solar cells, you could even farm and grow crops beneath the microwave antenna array.

   Additionally, unlike earth, the solar satellite orbit can be chosen so it transmits power more than 23 hours a day.

   Now with Elon Musks cheap heavy lift rockets, this may be feasible.

   It will take political will, and I expect that if it is done, it will have a Chinese Nameplate.

5. I’ve never seen “Futurama” (no TV). But I’ve seen the 1980s movie “Real Genius. Opening scene.

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