61–62 of 62 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It'll be the largest most fragile thing in the sky - kilometers wide and trivially destabilized/neutralized. Think black paint. We seem to be arguing It'll be terribly expensive and difficult to make work, on one hand, and It'll be trivially easy to make into a weapon, on the other.
Relatively easy to make work and quite uneconomical compared to ground solar fields. (Multiple.)
A doomsday weapon in space. As the article mentions, the station will beam the collected energy down to Earth. Whether in visible light, microwave or any other spectral band, it will need two things for everyday operations: - ability to point the beam at an arbitrary point on Earth, to track the collector ground installation, and - ability to focus the beam to proper size The second capability is crucial; if it's fix…
Can't you use a mirror to reflect a significant part of that energy back, wrecking the transmitter? If it is several mirrors focusing on the same point on earth (like a solar thermal power station), just jiggle the mirror on land to sweep the mirrors with a beam of energy.