[ExI] Japan wants energy from space (or death ray if they can't aim...)

[Henrique Moraes Machado]

Japan Wants to Power 300,000 Homes With Wireless Energy From Space
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-09/japan-wants-power-300000-homes-wireless-power-space

Japan has serious plans to send a solar-panel-equipped satellite into space 
that could wirelessly beam a gigawatt-strong stream of power down to earth 
and power nearly 300,000 homes.

The satellite will have a surface area of four square kilometers, and 
transmit power via microwave to a base station on Earth. Putting solar 
panels in space bypasses many of the difficulties of installing them on 
Earth: in orbit, there are no cloudy days, very few zoning laws, and the 
cold ambient temperature is ideal.

A small test model is scheduled for launch in 2015. To iron out all the 
kinks and get a fully functional system set up is estimated to take three 
decades. A major kink, presumably, is coping with the possible dangers when 
a 1-gigawatt microwave beam aimed at a small spot on Earth misses its 
target.

The $21 billion project just received major backing from Mitsubishi and 
designer IHI (in addition to research teams from 14 other countries).