[ExI] More ranting on power sats

[John Clark]

On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 12:16 PM, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>wrote:

> This might have changed recently, but (as far as I know) none of these
> people who make noise about anthropological global warming actually want to
> do anything about it.
>

That's very true, all they want to do is talk and apparently some things,
like nuclear power, are so sinful they shouldn't even be talked about. But
that's not really surprising, if the global warming problem were ever
solved a lot of environmentalists would be out of a job.

> because sunlight is dilute and thus takes huge areas, often as not,
> located far from demand.
>

But the microwave power density from satellites would be even more dilute
than sunlight and thus you'd need even more land area to collect the
energy. I think the microwave-electricity conversion factor would be better
than with solar, but not enough to make up for its very dilute nature. And
I concede of course that unlike solar power satellites would work at night,
but probably not in the rain, and they wouldn't work for up to 72 minutes a
day when the earth eclipses anything in geosynchronous orbit.

  John K Clark
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