The Begining of a revolution in Energy

I don't see why you would need the solar panels in space. You could use a lot of mirrors in space (like the one from Die Another Day) and just point all the light down do a field of solar panels on earth or to a body of water to heat and use energy from that.

 

Wouldn't reflecting more sunlight onto a body of water create an unnatural amount of moisture on the planet resulting in a a rise of humidity; thereby, in essence directly warming the temperature of the earth rather waiting for "global warming." As for reflecting sunlight onto a field of solar panels with mirrors, or rather lenses, so that the light could be focused into a concentrated beam to contact the panels, but if panels were also constructed around the lense the light that is not refracted is also captured.
Which leaves only the problem of transmitting the collected energy to earth, is that possible?

 

So I now realize that by refracting light in a concentrated beam, that is a laser..... bad. Just too many bad possibilities.

 

From the article:

I don't think we should send signals anymore specifically to contact alien lifeforms, too. You never know if it can turn around and bite you in the butt.

 

I see a dual purpose tech gadget here... cool, it makes power and oh by the way, it's a weapon too.

Everything concentrated into a narrow beam frys anything that gets into its path. Ever see what happens to a bird when it gets too close to a military dish on a communications trailer? "Phhhhzzzzzzzzzt" and the feathers flutter down to the ground. A year or so back, look what happened to that test missile that got in the way of the laser beam designed to cut objects from far away. That idea was soo cool, that the Air Force is sticking two of those things inside of a 747 with a custom nose job.

Science is very fascinating, but I see good and bad things to come.

 

Maybe for energy transfer between ships in a vacuum using radiation could be the best, like microwaves. I think gamma radiation from radioactive isotopes would be a good idea, too, if it is done in a safe manner of course.

The problem with sending light to earth is just like William said. The rain/clouds/etc can refract light (using the mirror idea) in many directions and cause a lot of damage. I don't think anything like that will be possible unless it's at one of the polar caps where no one really lives there and the skies are somewhat clear.

 

From the article, it doesn't look like NASA is ready to compete with power companies, yet. It sounds like they're looking to send ground power to a system using it to climb a space elevator, or to relay power on Mars.

The "giggle factor" is the notion that NASA thinks they're ever going to get funding to do anything with Mars except throw Tonka Toys at it, or funds to build an orbital infrastructure. That pork barrel doesn't feed enough hogs.

Seen the ads for "Descent"? Great premise: The sky is falling, let's crawl into a hole.

I doubt NASA could find an "acceptable" "power beam" to get space energy back to earth. Heck, people are afraid of 60 cycle power lines -- and there are peepil actively campaining to blame power companies for cancer (and bad karma).

There is no politically correct technology in a dark age.

"To Serve Man": It's a cookbook!!!!

 

William, I don't know about that...Remember the "Alien Nation" TV show from the late 80's? Klingons and Romulans could prove troublesome as well...We need an isolationist policy for the solar system.

 

Finally, I can put all these old AOL CD's to good use.